Author Archives: midlifenatalie

Wait!  Everyone stop!  Do not proceed forward with your day.  If we all protest the hands of time maybe, just maybe, tomorrow won’t come.  I don’t want tomorrow to come yet.  Tomorrow means the start of another school week.  I’m not ready to go back to school yet.  And seriously…where did the last week go?  I know much of it was spent stuffing my face and pretending not to notice my expanding waistline.  Yay for stretchy pants!

I had a great vacation.  I spent several days at my parent’s lakehouse with my family.  It was my first official holiday without my Wasband, and while I had fun I did wish he could be there.  It seemed wrong that he wasn’t out by the firepit with the other guys.  I felt his absence when football was on TV and board games were played.  I know those things will take some getting used to, but it made me sad for him.  I was sad that he was missing it.

And yes, I was with my family minus my sister.  She and her husband went on an overseas trip.  She took her oldest kids with her and left the youngest in the care of my parents.  The youngest doesn’t really know me.  She’s 3 and since my sister and I don’t really have much of a relationship I’m never around her.  Over the holiday I got to spend some time with her.  Granted there were lots of cousins around to distract her, and I certainly didn’t want to do anything to upset my sister, but I did enjoy watching her with the others.  At one point my boys were horsing around in the living room.  She came in to see what was on TV.  I watched her survey the room and decide to sit as far away from their commotion as possible.  That seat was in my lap.  My dad walked through the room on his way outside a few minutes later .  He saw her in my lap and smiled.  I knew what he would do.  He got his camera and took our picture.  I guess he thought it might be a good idea to capture the moment.  I’m sure it won’t happen often.

I’ve been thinking about Christmas this year.  Last year it stressed me out.  I wasn’t sure where or what or who to be.  I deferred to others when it came to celebrating.  I wasn’t invited to the regular Christmas Eve celebration at my parents’ because of protests by my sister.  The kids went with their dad to spend time with my family.  I was thankful they didn’t miss out because of me.  They were a tad upset that I wasn’t invited to the traditional meal and gift opening time.  It made no sense to them.  They didn’t know why their dad and I were divorcing, but it didn’t matter.  It was Christmas, and I was part of the family.  According to them if my sister didn’t want to spend time with me she is the one who shouldn’t go.  I tried to explain that she was upset, but not mad.  That seeing me there would make her sad.  That I was ok.  That I would see them when they got home later that evening.  They went feeling a little unsure but came home happy.  They also brought me presents.  My sister’s family didn’t get me a gift, but my brothers’ families did.  I was surprised.  My parents did a special Christmas Day dinner and invited everyone back including me.  My sister’s family didn’t come, but both of my brothers brought their families back to celebrate with me.  It was a little strained because it was the first chance I’d had to spend time with them, but I was so thankful they were willing to try.  Over the last year I’ve seen them quite a bit and things are mostly normal.  I know they wonder what’s going on, but we don’t talk about it.  I don’t avoid the topic; it just isn’t mentioned.  Honestly, I’m glad.  I don’t want it to be about that.  I am their sister and part of the family.  My kids are there and we eat and laugh and play like normal.  Like normal minus my sister.

Which brings me back to this Christmas.  Our family does the every other year thing.  This is the Christmas where everyone goes to the in-laws to celebrate.  My parents usually go to an uncle’s house for the holidays since their kids are all out of town.  After Christmas and before New Years everyone comes home and gets together for our celebration.  I have no idea what that will look like this year.  I don’t know if I will be included since my sister will be there.  I can’t imagine my parents doing 2 celebrations this year since the celebrating won’t be taking place on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.  I just don’t know.  I will be deferring to other’s wishes again this year.

What I do know is that the kids will go with their dad to his parent’s for Christmas.  They’ll only stay a few days.  I’m sure they will freak out a bit that I won’t be there, but I think the promise of a celebration when they get back will be enough to make it ok.  I know that I will be spending Christmas Eve and Day with Fleur de lis.  It will be quiet and cozy.  Sounds good to me.

It’s here.  The day and time I’ve been waiting for.  Thanksgiving Break.  It was much needed.  My school kids are mostly good.  Mostly.  I do have days when the kids are crazy, and I am crazy.  I like to blame the weather, the fact that they ate Halloween candy for breakfast and dinner, the extra visitors in our classroom, and the last minute schedule interruption for those crazy days, but the truth is some of the time it’s my fault.  I know my lesson, but I haven’t pulled all the materials until right when I need them.  Those minutes of unpreparedness bite me in the butt every time.   I should know better.  I do know better, but I don’t always do better.  My kids can’t handle downtime minutes.  There must not be any lag time between tasks or things can get pretty chaotic.

Two weeks ago I had one of those weeks.  I did my lesson plans, but despite my good efforts the kids were crazy.  I can’t say best efforts, because it was just an all around hard week and I gave up trying to do my best by Wednesday.  By Friday I was in survival mode.  I arrived at school hoping a few kids were absent just so there would be fewer to corral.  I opened up my email and noticed that my principal had emailed the evaluation schedule.  My window to be evaluated started that day.  She sent the email out the evening before.  I figured she wanted to start evals on Monday since she had quite a few teachers to evaluate.  This would give everyone the weekend to make sure they were prepared.  Exactly 45 minutes after reading the email she walked in to do my evaluation.  I was quite shocked.  I had a student observer from a local college in my room which always excites the kids.  They wouldn’t sit still, talked while they were supposed to be listening, talked while they were supposed to be working, and bothered anyone in their general vicinity.  The lesson I had planned was a good one, and I had already taken out all my materials, but the kids were hyped up big time.  When all was said and done she decided not to use that as my evaluation due to extreme craziness in my room.  I felt terrible about it, but she seemed understanding.  Mostly.  She blamed much of the crazy week on the Halloween festivities the weekend before.  I appreciated that.  She said when she came back the next week she expected things to be different.    She showed up on Monday morning at the same time.  The lesson wasn’t as good just because it was an opening lesson.  The material was completely new to the kids so they weren’t yet excited about it.  The behavior factor was much better though.  I haven’t gotten the results yet and don’t expect a spectacular review, but thankfully my principal is good.  She is so supportive and knows the type of kids we have at the school.  She has dealt with many of them in her office over various things.

Speaking of the kids at my school…

The majority of the kids come from very low socioeconomic backgrounds and many of them have absentee parents.  The school where I teach is fabulous at making sure to meet the needs of all the kids, but I can’t say the same thing about the parents.  Many are in jail, on drugs, or quite neglectful.  It is the school’s responsibility to make sure these kids are getting what they need.  We take that very seriously. Unfortunately behavior issues are a work in progress.  If the parents were involved in the process it would be so much easier. I do what I can in my classroom, but I never feel like it’s enough.  I am so thankful to be working with the staff there.  I honestly don’t think I could have better coworkers.

I started this on Friday night.  Because it was the first day of the break.  It’s been 2 days.  I’ve mostly slept.  I decided that if I didn’t hurry up and publish this the break would be over, and I had planned to write a couple other blog posts over this break.  Hmmmm…

I am a lover of words.  I love the allure of writing down my thoughts, and putting them out there for the world to see.  Lately my thoughts have been tired.  Tired, old, worn out and weary thoughts.  Nothing worth writing about so I haven’t been.  An occasional burst of energy causes me to put fingers to keyboard, but most everything that trickles out is blah.

I remember when I posted daily.  Sometimes I posted twice a day.  2006 was the beginning of my blogging career.  2007 was a good blog year.  2008 phenomenal.  2009 started the downward spiral, and here we are in 2010 and this is only my 80th blog post for the year.

I can look back at the months of posts over the past 5 years and remember events that were blog worthy or soul piercing.  I see how the words flowed…sometimes 40 posts in a month.  I needed to write.  Some of it was just fluff.  Just filler.  But much of it was meaningful to me.  Even the silly taste tests were events.

Of course there was time to blog.  Time is essential to a writer.  Even one whose sole work is a personal blog.  Time is what I don’t seem to have much of.  And when I do have time…I am tired.

But I want to write.  I need to.  And so here I sit.  Eyes drooping.  The weight of my little world on my shoulders.  Staring at white spaces and willing my fingers to fill them.

So I failed at NaBloPoMo. I am being evaluated next week in school so any blog writing free time was spent obessing/worrying/planning for next week. And as I mentioned in my last post I spend the majority of my day disciplining kids so I feel like I’m not teaching enough. And it stresses me out. I’ve heard of all kinds of discipline techniques but the reality is that I’m not consistent enough. I want it to be ok for a kid to get out of his chair to trade pencils if his is broken. If someone needs a tissue or an eraser or has a legitimate question I don’t mind if they get up and take care of things. I don’t want every kid to then get out of his/her chair just for the hell of it which is what they do. I can’t give an inch or they take a mile. I like a relaxed atmosphere which is next to impossible in kindergarten in my school. The other teachers are rigid but good teachers. I don’t like being that way. My way isn’t working well.

More later on something other than school.

Some thoughts…

I didn’t get into teaching so I could discipline other people’s children ALL FREAKING DAY!  Sometimes I actually want to teach.

Using self-rising flour and a tin can as a rolling pin when making dumplings will result in what can best be described as subway tiles floating in the broth/gravy.  I don’t recommend it.

While I realize school taxes aren’t ever enough to pay for all that our kids need I am tired of fundraisers for EVERY FREAKING ORGANIZATION/CLUB at the school.  I don’t need half the junk I buy, and if I did I would buy it so much cheaper at Walmart.

A size 8 foot will never fit into a size 6 shoe.  Portia DeRossi

NaBloPoMo is frustrating!

I’m so glad tomorrow is Friday.  I can’t wait for the weekend.

Does NaBloPoMo count if you don’t actually sign up for it or if you don’t actually write a post, but instead use pictures as filler?

The sunset over Lake Limestone as seen a month ago.  It was beautiful.

What I saw before the sunset.  It was beautiful.

Does this count as a post?

A couple of months ago I was contemplating taking my kids to church.  Not to their church, but to the church I mentioned in this blog post.  I knew it would be a major stretch for them, and I wasn’t sure they were ready.  Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was ready either.  Their dad was going out of town on the Sunday I would have them so I mentioned it to him to see what he thought.  I told him that the church was a reconciled Methodist Church.  He doesn’t think there is a way to reconcile homosexuality, but he was willing to let them go.  He figures they’ll take one look around and know that things aren’t right there.  I think they might actually learn a few things.

Since I was having trouble making up my mind about it all I decided to ask them what they thought.  Now keep in mind that I still haven’t told them that I’m gay.  I’m sure they’ve got a pretty good idea, but it hasn’t been something I’ve been ready to talk about yet.  I told them about the church.  That it was different than what they were used to.  That in and of itself scared them some.

They are pretty sure that the only good church is the one they attend.  It has everything to do with where they’re comfortable and what they’re used to, and nothing to do with what’s being taught.  We visited a few different churches when we first moved back to the states and they didn’t like any of them.  They were basically cookie cutters of the one we already belonged to, but the people were different and their friends weren’t there.

I decided to tell them about some of the people they might see there.  They were wide-eyed and giggled some.  They said they didn’t want to go.  I told them that their reasons couldn’t be because it wasn’t their church.  The boys said they thought they might laugh at some of the people they saw.  I thought that was interesting, because they aren’t mean kids.  I guess when they see a person who was obviously born male wearing women’s clothing it could seem funny to them.  The only other time they’ve seen something like that is on kids’ TV shows.  Hannah Montana’s brother, Jackson, dressed up like her Nana and was hilarious.  Eddie on That’s So Raven wore dresses on a couple of occasions and provided great comic relief.  Those people are funny.  The point of the show is to make people laugh, and it works.

I tried to explain that to this person there was nothing funny about what she was doing.  She dressed that way because that’s how she felt.  That if she happened to be there I would not expect them to sit by her and engage her in conversation.  I knew that would be a lot to expect from them on their first day.

Ultimately I decided not to attend church that Sunday.  I just wasn’t ready.

Fast forward to 2 weeks ago.  The church was having a clean-up day.  They had painting, gardening, and general cleaning projects that needed to be done.  I decided that it was the perfect time to introduce them to the church.  Since it wasn’t a formal service they didn’t need to worry about the liturgical nature of the meeting.  They were put to work doing odd jobs around the building.  On the way home one of my sons said that he didn’t see a straight guy there except the security guard.  He said that it weirded him out a little.  I hate that.  He was nice and friendly to whoever talked to him, but he was uncomfortable.  The other kids didn’t seem to have a problem with anyone they met.  They were all aware that most of the people they met that day were gay, but working alongside them wasn’t a big deal.  I wonder if worshiping with them would be.

I’m not sure when I’ll be ready to take them to an actual service.  It might be a while.  And I might decide to do it gradually.  Take one or two kids at a time.  I’m not brave enough to handle their feelings all at once.

On Saturday night I decided it would be fun to order pizza for dinner.  I briefly considered cooking, but learned that all but one of my kids had other plans for the evening.  AG and I decided that pizza and a movie would be a fun way to spend time together so I hopped online and ordered a pizza.  Well, I ordered a couple of pizzas.  Ok fine, I ordered 4 pizzas and some breadstick bites.  For 2 people.

But really they were mini pizzas so it wasn’t so bad.  Never mind that neither of us could even begin to eat a whole one, and now we had 4 to consume.  I just couldn’t help it.  The last time I ordered from this place I tried the Hawaiian Pizza.  Ham, bacon and pineapple deliciousness.  I really wanted to try the BBQ chicken pizza, but I hated to miss out on the Hawaiian so I decided to order both.  Click, click.  Then I thought about AG and how she really doesn’t like BBQ.  I thought it was only fair that she have a 2nd choice pizza as well.  She wanted a Margarita pizza.  Click.  But then I saw the Alfredo Chicken and Spinach and knew she would probably like it more than the Hawaiian.  Click.  So I reasoned that she had 2 of her favorites, and I had 2 of mine.  And unfortunately 2 + 2 = 4.  As I was getting ready to process my online order I saw the words “garlic butter coated breadstick bites” and I couldn’t help myself.  Click.

And when the delivery guy came to the door and said, “Here are your 4 mini pizzas and breadstick bites”, I may or may not have called into the other room using the words, “GUYS, the pizzas are here.”   And AG may or may not have looked at me like I was a weirdo because she knew there were no “guys” to help eat the pizza.  But whatever.  We ate pizza.

(We’re still eating pizza.)

Thanks to Bossy for featuring me on her site!  I know I’ve been a lazy blogger the last few weeks, but I plan to fix that.  While my blogging might have been lazy, the rest of my life has gone on full force.  And after a full weekend of Halloween festivities I’ve awakened with the sinus infection that I’ve been fighting for a few days.  I called in sick so I can go to the doctor and get meds, but since they don’t open for another 2 hours I think I’ll go back to bed and dream about gumbo.  For some reason that sounds delicious.