Grateful Friday

 Yesterday we had district training.  It isn't my favorite.  Sitting in a chair all day, getting a firehose of information and being forced to get up and talk to a stranger at intervals....

I talked to a woman from another school in one of our forced encounters and she said, "I hate things like this."

I said, "I do too."

She said, "Why can't we just stay with our teams?"

So we bonded over that.

What I did like about yesterday was being with my pals.  I love what they bring to the table besides being teachers. 

To illustrate background knowledge, the presenter played a very colorful sports announcer talking about a baseball game.  I got most of it because of the osmosis of being married to Adam.  One woman said that she knew it was about sports ball of some kind.

Alissa, wife of the UVU baseball head coach that she is, understood every word.

Jamie was with us and she pulled out a zippered pouch full of the best pens and they were "space pens" as in they looked like a starry sky.  She handed them around so we could all try them.  Jamie always has the newest best of something and she loves nothing more than sharing.

At one point, Alissa and I decided we wanted to order these writing posters for our rooms.  We told Miriam and she said that she had already ordered one for herself.  I logged into the print shop website and it was super confusing.  Alissa couldn't even find it.  "Can you do it and I'll Venmo you?" I asked Miriam.  She said yes, but she couldn't remember if she'd had Matt pay for it with textbook money.  (Textbook money is this nebulous account that exists for such a time as this.)  The poster was $5.  I said, "I'm Venmoing you anyway.  For time and trouble."

There was no way figuring out that website was worth $5.

Miriam headed out after work to go to Mexico for a BBQ competition.  She knows BBQ.  When we were deciding where to go to lunch and Jamie mentioned R&R (which I don't really love), Miriam gave a side eye, but she would never say she didn't like their BBQ.  She is maybe the nicest woman alive.  (Alissa and I round out the team by occasionally being snarky.)

I said, "Miriam doesn't like R&R and why would she eat BBQ anywhere other than at home?"

Honestly, her pulled pork is hands down the best I've ever tried.

We landed on First Watch, a new breakfast/brunch place in PG.  It was good.  We talked about Christmas presents and the most important Thanksgiving food and bras and soda and dialysis and nail polish and how delicious all the food we ordered was.

We work together every day, but sometimes it's so fun to just talk about nonsense.

In the afternoon Jamie switched with Maren.  Our presenter kept shushing us when we talked so I was whisper mouthing to Maren across the table about how we were going to do a writing project about inventors and she kept mouthing, "What?!?"

I found a sticky note and wrote it out and passed it to her.

She said, "Oh!  I thought you were saying vintner and I thought that was a really interesting choice for 3rd grade."

Sticky notes kind of kept us out of trouble, but we got shushed a lot.

I'm grateful for my friends.