That quote is from Nick Offerman's (Ron Swanson) book. I'm almost finished with it, and as has happened with every single non-fiction book I've listened to that is narrated by the author, I want to start it over again to relive the joy of listening to him speak and talk so frankly about his life. Other favorites include Amy Poehler and Anna Kendrick (her book I HAVE listened to twice). They're amazing, and funny.
HOW has it been a month. HOWWWWWWW. God there is too much to write about!!! How will I ever catch up?!?! Even now while I'm writing this, I feel like I don't have the time to. Ugh. So damn busy. Because of this, I have also fallen too far behind to catch up on the entire last month of reading my friends page. So sorry! I've kind of gotten bits and pieces over the last week but it's not enough and I hope you'll understand.
I just checked when my last entry was... I DIDN'T EVEN WRITE ABOUT ERDKINDER?! oh my god. Okay. I'm making a list for myself on entries I need to catch up on. In the meantime, things have been up and down.
I can't wait for winter break. It's simultaneously too far away and too soon. Too soon because there is so much to do. When I came back from Erdkinder there were FOUR new initial evals waiting for me, so stressed! Todd wants me to do some testing on a kid I don't know (which I'm doing tomorrow), mine and Tealie's class is coming apart at the seams (to be fair, the whole 6th grade is), and I'm gonna put Brian's head through a wall because he can't prioritize.
Example, he emailed me tonight saying that one of my students has an IEP that says she should be receiving all of her services in special ed but she only get's 11% pullout at this time, and he had the fucking nerve to say, "Is this something that will be revisited in her IEP meeting?" I went from zero to red zone immediately and started typing out a really bitchy response about 1. He was looking at the wrong IEP and 2. To mind his OWN FUCKING BUSINESS and worry about the students on HIS caseload, who are ALL having much more issues... before deleting it. Instead I called Tealie and vented and then just sent a terse response about the current IEP vs her old out of district IEP. Tealie said I should confront him in general about putting his nose in my business (and everyone else's) and acting like our boss when his own shit isn't getting taken care of.
On a good note, on Friday we had a college and career day for the 6th graders, and I brought in Courtney, who does graphic design work, and my vet Dr. Clinch. It was sooo much fun and it sounds like it went really well overall. They each got a couple thank you cards from kids, and the spellings were sooo damn funny. Dr. Clinch got "Dr. Flinch" on a card, and Courtney got 1 that was spelled Courtnie and another that was Quartney XDDDD She was so adorable grateful for the opportunity and said she had a lot of fun. It was really cute having her there. I thought her presentation itself was amazing, but she was pretty quiet and non-emotive when she was actually presenting. I was surprised, because she is really animated when talking generally, and anytime we were interacting during the day she was expressive and giggly, but even during her 3rd and 4th presentation she was still pretty quiet. Luckily students signed up for ones they were interested in, so the kids were able to deal with it, but I think it would have been better received if she had acted more excited and less like she was at a conference. Since she does graphic design as a job, of course her PowerPoint was insane with graphics (tastefully) and her art and color schemes were everywhere. It was really neat. I loved seeing her professional work. She also came up with an activity for kids to design their own logo at the end of the presentation using the three tips she gave. AND she created and printed a list of graphic design jobs that students could do in the future depending on their interests. She was great!
( College and Career Day! )My math class has been going really well overall. Students are working on grade-level adding and subtracting integers, and I really like how they're doing. I bribe them with Goldfish crackers, but that's a small price to pay for some learning and work. I think it's all ending soon because we're creating a resource room and my name is on the schedule for one of the periods, which I assume means combining my two pullout math classes. That will likely be a disaster, as kids are split on purpose into each section to avoid conflict. It will be okay though. I've had worse.
Last week I had training in the evening two of the days 4pm-8pm and Tealie and I had a training during school another day. I was basically never home and the house became a complete disaster zone. So Saturday Steve and I deep cleaned and got some organization done. It's beautiful. The upstairs is so much bigger and nicer with the ITG machine not taking up the living room. We moved the bookcase upstairs that Ron made me when I was like 12, and it looks really good there. Steve and I have begun reading at the table during downtimes drinking tea or eating meals. Having the bookcase there really helps. We pared down the books we love and got rid of ones we don't. We put all our signed books on display on top of it too.
We've been playing a ton of ITG, and the other day I got FOUR new tri-stars (99%). It was awesome. I've been getting pretty good at ITG accuracy on the Officials. I should really start practicing for the upcoming tournament. The songs in that are very different from officials, but having good general accuracy helps. I'll be an insane amount better than I was a year ago. I might still be in the bottom tier at the tourney, but I'll have a fighting chance.
I've been obsessively watching health and food documentaries lately, and I realized this weekend that it's not about the information really anymore, I feel like I know a lot about that topic and how food interacts with the body, etc. and how to reduce cancer and other illness. It's that I just find seeing good food, particularly produce, inspiring to eat more. I love seeing the colors and arrangements and meals made with fruits and veggies. I like seeing sustainable farming and the passionate people in those jobs. I've doubled down on eating right for me, which looks like a crapton of greens (in smoothie form in the morning and a salad at night, plus embedded within my lunch), some sort of bean dish for lunch (this week it's lentils, last week it was chickpeas), and a bean or noodle dish for dinner (this week it's a pinto bean chili).
I really encourage people to check out The Blue Zones. I finished the audiobook and it makes a great case for living a long and healthy life.
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