home renovation

So, I've been thinking about a lot of things lately. Some of them somewhat excessively. In no particular order, here are some of the things I've been thinking about:

1. How do you know when you're ready to be a mom? No, seriously. I'd like to know. It seems like everyone and their little sister is getting pregnant right now. I'm surrounded by women carrying fetuses. And I am beyond thrilled for each one of them! I can't wait to go to their baby showers, hold the little bundles of joy when they get here, snap a gazillion photos of the little tykes. But the thing is, even though I'm excited for them, the thought of having a baby of my own beyond freaks me out. I know I want to be a mom eventually, but I really don't feel ready to be a mom right now. I have no idea what to do with a baby. A toddler, I can handle. But a baby? What scares me about this, is that most of the women I am surrounded by who are about to become moms (some of them for the second time) are my age or younger. Am I supposed to feel ready to be a mom now? Because other people seem to think so. That's probably why I keep getting asked when I'm going to have a kid (not by everyone, but by some people). Is it bad that I don't feel ready? Does that mean I'm not ever going to be ready to be a mom? And if that's the case, does that mean I will eventually become a mom, without feeling ready, and thereby become an incompetent and horrible mother? Scary thought.

2. The incident I had with the couple in my parking lot. Last weekend my friend Callie came over to dye my hair (and did a smashing job, by the way). We have two reserved parking spaces. Since Chad and I only have one car, anytime anyone comes to visit they use our extra parking space. Callie called me when she got to our complex and asked where to park, because someone was parked in our extra space. Well, this just flat out makes me MAD! What's the point of having reserved spaces if random people are just going to use them?! So, I called the towing company to come and take away the car. I was not being malicious and mean; I just wanted to use my ASSIGNED parking space. Well, when the man got there to tow the car, the couple who had parked there came out. Needless to say, they were not happy campers. The lady proceeded to call me a b**** repeatedly. The best part though, was when they were getting in their car to leave. That's when the man turned to Callie and me and said, "Way to be LDS, ladies, way to be LDS." To which I responded, "Excuse me, maybe you need to think about that, considering you're the people CUSSING ME OUT when I have done nothing wrong." To which he responded, "Shut up, b****" before getting in his car (with an LDS sticker on the dashboard) and driving away. They were clearly intellectuals with a vocabulary like that. Callie got an apology letter on her car windshield that night from him (but not from her, she didn't strike me as the apologizing type). So, this incident (besides upsetting me terribly because I've never really thought of myself as a person who would be called a "b" repeatedly, plus I'm a blue who thinks everything is her fault, which means I must have done SOMETHING to deserve such rude behavior) has made me think about a few things. First of all, it sparked an entire conversation while getting my haircut about me being intimidating. WHAT THE HECK?!? Am I? Honestly? Because first the psycho family in Bountiful called me that, which I just thought was because they were psycho and from Bountiful, but my friend Callie telling me that means it might be true. Secondly, do people really think that they are entitled to be the exception to the rule? I mean, I know my students do, but they are in HIGH SCHOOL, that's an excuse. Do adult people really think they can park in an assigned spot and nothing should happen to them, even though there is a warning sign posted by the entrance to the parking lot? We live in a sad world. Lastly, I must be in Utah when a man with a LDS sticker on his dashboard feels the need to scream cuss words and tell ME, "Way to be LDS." Seriously. It's time to get out of this state.

3. I am organizing my lesson plan binders from last term right now. I'm a good teacher. I really am. I work hard. My students are learning. Even though things didn't go perfectly the last two terms, I feel like I've really built some strong relationships with my students. I really care about them. I really do like my job, even though I want to quit about every third day, and cry about it a lot. Some of my students really have made progress, even though most of the time I look at their writing and want to die. I had my second evaluation of the year with my vice principal last week, and she really made me feel good. She says I have been blessed with a talent, and I think I agree with her. I just hope that I'm making a difference for my students. And I wish some of them would get transferred out of my classes, because then I'd feel even better about myself, lol.

4. This summer is going to be UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME! First of all, it will be SUMMER which means it won't be 5 FREAKING DEGREES every day. I will have 3 glorious months off to sleep in, read whatever I want, and finish the next NY Times bestseller. Chad is also graduating, HALLELUJAH! We are going to be buying our first place, somewhere, we don't know where yet. We're going to ITALY!!! I am going to soak up fabulous sites and works of art. AND I AM GOING TO EAT GELLATO AT LEAST ONCE A DAY WHILE THERE!!! (But we'll be walking so much it won't matter.) AND I just found out my family is having a reunion on the Oregon Coast this summer, which is one of my most favorite places on earth, and will soon be one of my husband's once he goes there, too.

So there you go. Just a few things I've been thinking about lately. Kinda random. Forgive me!

I am SO aggravated right now. We have ONE writing lab for our school. That's right, ONE! For a school that is so unbelievably overcrowded I don't even get my own classroom. To use the writing lab, you have to sign up ahead of time. The lady in charge prints out a schedule, posts it, and then you can sign up for time slots. The list went up YESTERDAY. I went in TODAY and there are NO SLOTS AVAILABLE! That's right, NO SLOTS! I spent my entire prep period today scheduling out the entire next term, only to realize that half the projects I had planned for my classes will no longer work. What am I supposed to do? I thought I was ahead of the game. It's only the second day the list is up, we still aren't done with second term, and frankly, as a first year teacher, it's almost impossible to plan an entire semester ahead anyway. I want to cry. But students are coming in 8 minutes, so I will have to put my game face on and pretend everything's OK before then. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While I was living in London, I encountered a major problem. I left with short hair, which meant four months without a trim was a bit out of the question. Getting a cut at a salon in London was pretty much out of the question as well. One of the girls who chose to go this route ended up spending somewhere around 100 pounds, which was roughly the equivalent to 200 American dollars. Because I preferred to spend my money in London on fabulous European chocolate and food at outdoor markets, stylish H&M ensembles (which no longer fit me, probably due to the fact that I no longer eat excessive amounts of aforementioned chocolate), and trips to the theatre (AH! To see Les Miserables on a casual week night now!), I chose not to get my haircut in London.

After a couple months of agonizingly attempting to make the mop on my head resemble a style, I went with one of my best friends, Steph, on a "live-in" visit to Acrington, England. This experience ended up being one of the most traumatic of my life, but that is a story for another time. The point for today's tale is the fact that while on that trip something possessed me to get the most horrific haircut known to man at a local "Supercuts."

Now. I am a bit of a snob when it comes to my hair. I wouldn't dare venture into a Supercuts or a Master Cuts in the states. What in the world convinced me that it would be OK to trust someone in the white-trash/armpit of England working at a Supercuts is beyond me. But trust I did. And I paid the price.

There were plenty of warning flags. I saw the girl who left the chair before me. She looked like someone out of an 80's punk band. I still sat down, watched a girl go crazy with scissors, paid MORE THAN I WOULD IN A SALON IN THE STATES for a haircut, and left with a mullet. YES. A MULLET! It was atrocious. My good friend Steph, ended up with a similar style. When I came back from my semester abroad my stylist literally asked me what in the world the woman had done to my hair. It was that bad. It took about six months to get it back to normal again.

Well folks, I now have a haircut that rivals that British mullet of a few years ago. My current stylist, who I adore, just had a baby and is not working. So, I went to the same salon, thinking another girl could at least give me a good cut to hold me over until she comes back. Alas, I was wrong. I was foolish! I was IDIOTIC!

My hair looks HORRIBLE. I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! And, I don't know what to do to fix the situation. Chad told me to go get it cut again, but where will I go? If I go to another total stranger it might turn out just as badly. And, frankly, I don't know if there's much that can be done without going terribly short all over. Plus, I already paid $40, and the thought of risking another $40 when I just GOT a haircut isn't too appealing.

Any thoughts?

I have started grading my sophomores' research papers. Aside from the fact that I want to shoot myself and have decided that the quality of writing must indicate what a horrible teacher I am, it's going rather well. Here are some things I've learned from reading their persuasive research papers about various heroes:

1) Ghandi tried to promote peace in Indiana from Britain.
2) Inseparable can be spelled "in separate able."
3) Even if someone spent their entire life doped up, you can still try to convince your English teacher he is heroic.
4) My students think I am too stupid to do a simple internet search. This must be the case,
because I have already found the sources that have been blatantly PLAGIARIZED in three
papers.

Did I mention that I got stuck in the elevator today? Yup. Sure did.

You know the ones. When you're in line at the grocery store, and you have to wait for what feels like an extra 15 minutes because the old lady in front of you is fumbling through her coin purse, counting out $3.50 in pennies. And you want to shoot yourself because you thought this was the shortest line. You picked it to save time. Now you're stuck. Trapped in between the penny counting, orthopedic-shoe-wearing, great grandma and the mom trying to pry her screaming toddler's fingers from the candy display.

Well, folks, I am destined to become that little old lady. I got a taste of my future today as I irritated dozens of customers at the local post office.

It all began with Christmas cards. I send them out every year. Last year, I found an amazing after Christmas deal on a beautiful set of Christmas cards. They were gorgeous, originally quite pricey, and marked down fabulously. I couldn't resist. In fact, my mother-in-law also fell in love with them and bought the same ones.

So. Just before Thanksgiving, when I got the cards out to start addressing, I wasn't too phased when I saw a little label on the envelopes that said "extra postage may be required." After all, I'd saved money on the cards, and "may be required" didn't mean "will be required."

Well, the problem comes with the fact that there were four different styles of cards. This means they were four different weights. I obviously did not keep track of which cards were which as I got them ready to be mailed off. So, today, the gentleman at the post office was only too thrilled to find out that he got to help me weigh EACH ONE to see how much it was going to cost. He ALSO had to slide each one through this little plastic slit to see if it required ADDITIONAL postage on top of the ALREADY more costly postage for weight.

I'm sure the people behind me in line (for we know how delighted all people are to be waiting in line at a post office before Christmas) were ready to kill me.

It ended up taking over an hour to get through the post office. And, I'm not so sure I saved too much money by buying my cards on sale at the end of last Christmas. Some of those babies cost me 75 CENTS to send! 75 CENTS!!!

So, if you get a Christmas card from me with a Valentines day stamp, or one with a horrid portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe, instead of a pretty Christmas one, please know it is not because I don't love you. It is because I'd already held up zillions of people, and did not want to become know as the old, penny-counting lady while still in my youth. It was much faster to buy the stamps with the exact postage, rather than add 2-3 more stamps on top of the pretty Christmas ones.

On a brighter note, I've never encountered such a helpful, kind, postal employee before. Usually, asking a postal worker to go out of their way to help you is like death. So, thank you for your patience, Mr. Postman. Even though you made fun of me for how much it cost me to send my Christmas cards this year when you told me my total, without you, I would have been completely lost today.

Chad and I apparently are plagued by the curse of the Christmas tree lights. Let me preface this by saying, I am very picky about my Christmas tree. First of all, it MUST be real. No fake trees allowed. I love having a real tree. We never had a fake one when I was growing up, and I never intend to have one in my home, unless it is a second tree. Having said that, a lot of extra work goes into making a real tree perfect.


First of all, you have to drive around and find a perfect one that is still at a decent price. We did pretty well this year, I'd say, because our tree is beautiful and it didn't break the bank to buy it! After buying the tree, you then have to lug it up to the third floor, leaving a trail of pine needles behind you. This is to ensure everyone else living in the complex can know that you are real tree people. Then comes the time to get it into the stand, and following that comes the unavoidable "it's leaning to the right..."and "No...forward...no...back" discussion until it is arranged just right. For us this year, that discussion also included fishing line (our tree was too tall to stay up straight without a little extra assistance).


After all of that comes the fun part, right? Wrong. The lights have to go on first. And lights are the man's job. OK, so that is horribly sexist, but that is the way it goes. Chad calls Christmas tree lights the bane of man's existence. You know how women got stuck with the whole child birth thing after the oust from the Garden of Eden? Well, according to Chad, Christmas tree lights, even though unmentioned, were given to men.


We've had something go wrong with our Christmas tree lights every year, but this year probably tops the cake. I had to go buy new lights three separate times. Finally, Chad talked to his Dad, and it turns out...you're not supposed to string a gazillion 100 bulb light sets together. Even though this is cheaper than buying the 400 bulb sets, don't give in. You will blow fuses. And thus, the whole tree will go dark when you plug that last set in. Anyway, after Chad adjusted things a bit, he saved me from ANOTHER horrendous journey to Satan's Five and Ten to return things, and the tree was lit and ready to decorate.


So. After a week-long fiasco of trying to get the tree lights to all stay lit, we finally have our tree up and it is beautiful! Chad was very patient as always and even though it took a lot of time, it is straight, well-lit, and nearly fully decorated (it is still missing the star...I think it's somewhere at my parents' house where we've been storing all of our Christmas stuff). Anyway, here it is:

As a disclaimer, I took these photos. Obviously, if Chad took them they would be better. But, I wanted them now, so I took them myself.

Here are some photos of the other decorations we have around the condo:

Garland and WillowTree Nativity on the bookcase. Also, they aren't Christmas decorations but please notice the lovely "Family" blocks made by yours truly at Enrichment last month.

Stockings hung by the chimney with care...or from the shelf between our living room and kitchen, because we have no fireplace.

Table with Christmas place mats and my adorable magnet board I made last year in the background (where all of the Christmas card photos go when they come!)

I LOVE CHRISTMAS! It is going to be so hard to get myself to work over the next couple of weeks. I am so ready for Christmas vacation!