Grateful Friday

 The past few days have given me enough to be grateful for that I can muster some courage for today.  Halloween celebrations for school are scary, which I guess is on brand for the holiday.

Wednesday two good things happened.  Adam came home, always a good thing.  Also, we had our ward trunk or treat in our cul-de-sac.  The fact that it was in our driveway/cul-de-sac is 100% the only reason I went.  I don't love Halloween and I mostly love being where the people aren't.  But I had a good time!  I have a lot of good friends and it was fun to visit with them.  The primary children shyly--and not so shyly--came up to me to show me their costumes and I love that I'm getting closer to them.

It was all exhausting for the weak little link that I am, but I enjoyed it.

Yesterday was a good day at school.  I love talking to my friends.  I am getting to know the 4th grade teachers better all the time and I really like them.  We have this big thing in common: school teacher.  It is fun to connect about other things too.

After school we had a Finer Things Friday.  We have one a month.  Since today is our Halloween celebrations and no one will feel like anything that doesn't include a dark silent room, we had it on  Thursday.  Jamie had set up a mocktails bar and it was amazing, like everything Jamie does is.  I decided to skip the bottleneck of drink makers and opted for a bottle of butter beer. (See what I did there?  Bottleneck vs. bottle.) Delicious. I sat amongst my friends and we were all chatting and laughing and having a great time.  We talked about everything from school to travel to labor and delivery stories.  You know, like you do.

I am grateful for that school and those people.

I had a buzzed up sort of day.  Braeden is confronting lots of Big Boy Decisions with his career.  At one point, I was walking down the hall to pick up my class from computers and mentally spiraling.  There is freaking out about yourself and then there is freaking out about your children.  It is a whole new level.

I felt this peace wash over me.  I remembered specific times when we were guided to know what to do.  The same will happen for them.  I know that.  God is in His heaven and He loves us.  What a gift it is to me that I know that.

I am grateful.

Delightful

 My cute niece Charlotte has been having a lot of headaches, which I hate.  But I love Charlotte.  They have been trying to get to the bottom of it with doctor visits, but so far have not solved the problem.  Tabor told Charlotte that until they figure something else out, she is going to have to "live with the headaches like so many of us do."

Charlotte said, "Maybe we can all take a group picture, you know like the Olivia pictures."

It delighted me right down to the ground.

Olivia (my sister) insists every time she is in the same room with Olivia (our niece) and Olivia (our aunt) that they take a picture.

At the Murray cemetery each Memorial Day, those of us who claim to look like our generously proportioned ancestor, Ellen Yorgason, pose for a shot by her headstone.

I like the idea of a headache sufferer group.

I thought about it yesterday morning when I woke up with an enthusiastic headache.  I think headaches are easier to bear when you consider you could be posing with others in a "we get headaches" photo, especially if Charlotte is in the group.

Maybe that's just me.

Third grade swear words are also sort of charming.

I have a student who says, "Oh biscuits!" when she makes a mistake.  A few years ago, I had a girl who would exclaim, "Daisies!" when she was unhappy.  Yesterday a boy said, "Holy sherbet!"

I hope they never change.

Early in the school year, I was trying to drive home the point that I love it when my students ask questions.  I said, "When I have a student say, 'I don't understand,' that is one of my favorite things."

At the time I was standing in front of the room and holding a marker.  I said, "My job is to teach you, not just hold this marker, so let me teach you. Tell me if you need help."

It has become a thing they love to repeat.  They love to tell me that I'm not just there to hold a marker.

Yesterday, a student gave me this drawing.  I loved it so much I hung it on the wall.  

She even drew base ten blocks!

Sometimes they are delightful even when they're naughty.  I have "treat sheets" in my class.  They are on colored paper, so they are easier to keep track of.  It is a review math worksheet that they take home, complete, and bring back for a piece of candy.  A boy made 23 colored copies on his parents' printer, sure that I would hand over a piece of candy for each page.

He said, "But I did all those pages."

I said, "You copied it after you finished."

He said, "No I didn't."

I said, "You did."

He said, "OK." and went back to his desk.

If his parents are wondering why they are fresh out of yellow ink, I may have an idea....

Not all doctors are the same....

 It's not like it's the only doctor's office around; I don't think I'm going back there.  

Yesterday I got an appointment at the urgent care at the doctor's office where I usually go.  When I checked in, there was a sign that said without an appointment, the wait time was 1 hour 3 minutes.

I think my appointment was a fiction, because I waited an hour before they called me back.  (Luckily, I had my book with me.)

The doctors take turns manning urgent care and my least favorite one was working.  He said something vague about it being kidney stones, but probably not.  What?!?

He said I definitely had an infection and he was going to give me an antibiotic and a backup antibiotic.  He said, "Why did you get this? Don't you drink enough?"

I told him I try to.  I told him I have lymphoma, so maybe that was why I got an infection?

He 100% had that info in my chart, but he clearly hadn't read it and he looked shocked.  He said, "Oh, then do you think we need to do a culture?"

I said, "I don't know."  (This is why I have come to you, medical professional.)

He hemmed and hawed and said, "I will give you two antibiotics."

He yawned an enormous yawn and asked again, "Should we do a culture?  I guess your insurance will cover it, since you're doing chemo?"

I didn't know what they had to do with each other, plus I had already explained that I was finished with chemo (plus, you know, my chart).  He said he decided to do a culture.

I said, "Do I still take the antibiotics?"

He said yes.

On my drive home, I realized he never told me the scenario that I would take the second antibiotics.  So I called back.

You'll never guess that I was put on an enormous hold.

I napped for an hour and a half in the afternoon.  

Besides that, I had an enjoyable conversation with Olivia.  It perked me up.  I sent Mark to get Papa Murphy's and I didn't really cook it all that well.  (I am not the pizza baker in the family and it shows.)  The three of us visited, Adam called, Braeden called, Emma had worked at our house because she was going to a friend's wedding in PG.  I sent her off wearing one of the necklaces my dad made my mom for the occasion.

Somewhere along that I started feeling better and I am going back to school today.  

The ups and downs of immunocompromised life....

Weekend

 We had a nice autumnal weekend.  I loved having Adam home.  He left again for a few days last night, but it is a short trip and he doesn't have too many more trips for this year.  I am so looking forward to falling into a routine of him home and nothing out of the ordinary happening.  Just us.

Sometimes boring sounds like the most delightful thing.

We went to the grocery store Saturday morning and swung by my classroom for a game board I wanted for primary.

Fabulously mundane.

In the afternoon we went to Sense and Sensibility.  Despite the comfy heated recliner seat, I didn't nap, so I felt pretty proud of myself.  I also felt proud of myself the night before when we were discussing the movie and Mark wasn't interested.  Geri said something about him not being a Mr. Darcy fan and Mark said, "I thought it was Sense and Sensibility?"

My boy knows Jane Austen and my work here is done.

I enjoyed the movie.  A few liberties were taken with the story, but I didn't mind.  

We took a walk at Harvey Park, then Geri treated us to dinner at La Costa.  It was a nice day.

Sunday was a cozy morning of getting ready for primary (but then I didn't actually do the music) and watching QEs primary program on zoom.  I even got to tune in to Boston's primary program briefly and watch him do his part.

Adam spoke in church and I enjoyed it.  He was pretty nervous and he is doing a presentation today in Las Vegas that he is also nervous about.  After church he said he now only had one pit in his stomach instead of two.

I guess that's moving in the right direction.

We had a nice Sunday afternoon.  The kids and I filled out our ballots, we had dinner, we had a Come Follow Me lesson, and we played Qwixx.

Mark took Adam to the airport, Emma went home and when Mark came back, he and Geri went downstairs to watch the Seahawks.  Mark said I could join.  I appreciated the invite, but more than that I appreciated going upstairs. 

I had a rotten night's sleep and I suspect I have a UTI.  So that's fun.  I got a sub and a doctor appointment.  It isn't the most auspicious start to a week, but hopefully things will improve.

Grateful Friday

 Yesterday was a cranky pants kind of day.  (Although I wore jeans.)

It was rainy and we had inside recess.  A boy crawled under my desk and cried because he didn't win the Blooket we played.  I told him if he wasn't old enough to not cry about Blooket, he couldn't play anymore.  He put his head inside his t-shirt, but he stopped crying.

Later in the afternoon two kids cried because they didn't have enough time to finish.  They had spent oodles of time in clipboard selection because they wanted to work somewhere beside their desks.

I hadn't slept well so I know my patience was thin.  That usually results in more fragile children, which is a losing cycle for all of us.  Between not being home last weekend to do the weekend things and trying to fit them all in this week, I've been stretched thinner than normal.

I have a pathetically small margin of stretch.  

I have a sore throat and my old friends, the mouth sores, back.  I need to rest in order for my life to work and that is discouraging.

I have a rock that a student painted in a rainbow and gave to me years ago.  I use it to prop open the door when I have recess duty.  A student complained that there was no purple in the rainbow and that is his favorite color.

I said, "One of my students gave it to me as a gift, so I didn't complain about it."

A girl said, "Also, she is a teacher and a grown up so she doesn't complain."

I am a grown up and I do complain.  I felt chastised.  I need to do better because no one likes a complainer.  

I went to recess duty and watched the children run and play and I watched the clouds dance across the stormy sky and I watched the mountains, red, yellow and brown, steadfastly looking over us.

I don't really have much to complain about.  I need to take care of my weak constitution, but my life is pretty great.  I had a student wear his bicycle helmet all morning because he wanted to.  After a while he came up to me and said, "If one more person asks me why I am wearing this, I might take it off."

I mean, these kids are nuts and they delight me.

I had a boy pull a tooth out during math.  I gave him a ziplock bag and he put it in his backpack and they all laughed at my jokes about him being a jack-o-lantern just in time for Halloween.  They are the easiest crowd to make laugh.  And several of them tried to pull out more teeth so they could also be jack-o-lanterns, but no one was successful

What really righted my ship is last night Adam and I drove to Salt Lake to meet up with Megan and Emma for dinner.  Megan is in town for a conference.  Driving to and from Salt Lake with Adam mended my soul up a bit.  It is good to be with him.

I am looking forward to a weekend.  Geri is here and we are planning to go to the new Sense and Sensibility movie and Adam will be here until Sunday night and I will soak that time up.

Also, I think we are securely in sweater weather and I love that.

I am grateful for my life and grateful for a blustery recess to remind me of that.

We the People

Yesterday we read a passage about the Constitution.  It is part of our curriculum now to learn about the three branches of government.  

I haven’t had a more intense government discussion since Braeden was 5 and demanding to understand checks and balances.  (No surprise that kid is getting a PhD in political science.)

I decided we needed to start strong so we talked about the Revolutionary War.  They all thought they knew the name of the war and none of them did.  I gave them a hint.  It starts with an R.  A boy ventured a guess, “The Repentance War?”

No, and I’m not even sure how repentance would wage a war, but I’d like to see it try.

Next stop was talking about the Articles of Confederation briefly.  The newly minted Americans didn’t want to have to pay a lot of taxes.

But that didn’t really work out.

So they convened.  We talked about what a delegate is.  We read in the passage who was there, including Alexander Hamilton. I had to tell a boy to stop singing songs from Hamilton.  You really never can tell what the range of their experiences will be.

We read that Americans now observe September 17 as Constitution Day.  A girl was deeply insulted.  Why hadn’t we celebrate Constitution Day on September 17?  

One boy told me twelve times his birthday is on September 18.  Eventually, when his hand was raised, I said, “I know.  Your birthday.  September 18.”

The righteous indignation persisted, “But why didn’t we celebrate Constitution Day?!?”

Ah ha!  It came to me.  I said, “It says we observe it, not celebrate.  So we notice it is Constitution Day.”

“OK,” she said grudgingly.

We landed on three branches of government in the passage.  I told everyone to buckle up because these were big words.  Imagine 22 wide eyed 8 year olds pretending to buckle a seatbelt.

Legislative, executive, judicial.  We got into it.  

Can you go to the Supreme Court if you don’t like someone?

No.

Who was the president before Donald Trump?  

Joe Biden.

None of them had heard of him.  They are all impossibly young!

We talked about how the members of Congress and the president live in Washington, D.C. 

The president lives there?!?

Yes, he has a house there.  The White House.

I thought Washington, D.C. was in England!

I tried to correct all the misconceptions.  I gave it my all.

I don’t know if they truly understood it, but I do know that I truly tried….

 

Haunted classroom

 Yesterday was the day everything went wrong.  I swear there was a ghost around messing with things.

During math, the document camera wouldn't work.  It was frozen with an image of the remote sitting on the desk.  I picked up the remote with the intention of trying to figure out what button would unfreeze it (like I really have any idea) and the kids got freaked out that they were seeing the remote on the desk, but "it is in Teacher's hands!"

Ghosts.

During phonics I couldn't get my slides to cooperate at all.  I was trying to extend the display so that I could see the notes and show the slides and nothing doing.  I tried multiple times.  No dice.

During my specialty, I was talking to Alissa and I said, "What am I doing wrong?!?"  I showed her and it worked perfectly.

Haunted.

On Monday, the tech guy replaced the battery in two computers and assured me they were fixed and charged.  

They wouldn't work.

Eerie.

During literacy, first I was the ghost and messed things up.  I had been planning ahead (a teacher work day will do that to you) and I was all prepared with the next story.  We halfway through reading it and I realized, wait, this is next week's story.  

Ugh.

I told them my mistake and we went back to this week's story.  

During writing, I have no idea what was afoot.  The slides that I had been using, that I had in fact written on with my Apple pen, were just gone.  I know they were there at one point, but they were gone.  I imported them again from my Google Drive and my notes were there.  

Then they weren't.  I found it again and it was a brand new slide with no markings.

Spooky.

I just gave up and wrote everything again.

I know when I've been beat.