in keeping up to standards

oh yes, I have no standards. This boring and lazy week is continuing. I have very little to say. I have to write a report and an IEP (Individualized Educational Program) tonight. Fun. I am with Angelique on continuing to celebrate my birthday week. This would be better if my idea of celebrating tonight looked more like a party and less like going to bed at 9pm. Maybe I will make it a party with a glass of wine, while I write the report. That always makes things interesting. Well at least it makes spell check interesting. I can't wait until I am living in the super flying cars future and I can have a waterproof laptop to use in the tub. Then I can combine all my favorites of a quiet evening at home, with the hell of having to bring work home.

the more I don't post

The bigger the task of posting becomes...so then I can't do it because my life feels like a novel, too long for this format.
So here is the bullet point update to get things rolling again.
October/early-November bullet synopsis

• I got married (it was rainy and fun)
• It was on the east coast and full of family and drinks and beach and rain and coastal flood warnings
• teaching is hard
  
• and as much as I hate the whiney teacher mantra about not getting paid enough etc. This is the hardest most stressful job, I've ever had.)--that being said
• I still like small children (They are cute and huggy --though often snotty--that is runny nosed not stuck up)
• I went to a week long literacy training and actually missed my kids
• I turned 30
• this involved 2 yummy dinners, a yummy breakfast,
  
• a visit from Amy
  
• and a pseudo surprise party with Michael's friends/classmates and significant others who were fantastic stand in friends
  

ta da, now I posted. All comment based questions shall be answered forthwith.
I don't actually know what forthwith means but it sounds official.

posted

Yes, um sorry if you are still checking in.
I haven't posted in about a month, because I am busy teaching and tired and often to lazy or too concerned with confidentiality issues to say things I want to say.
So things are going fairly well. No major problems. If learning is measured in dirt my kids from class are awfully smart. The Kindergarten playground has sand. Everyone goes home like they have been rolling around in the dirt. (some of them have been). My head has not yet exploded.
I'm getting married next week. Also next week there is back-to-school night preceded by a pedicure. Because I need pretty wedding toes.

wow informative, boring.

also here is an interesting article that I will so eloquently sum up by saying, ivy league sucks.

the weekend debriefing

I feel like I should do a boring weekend recap. Partly because I have been posting pretty regularly and partly because I am on the "left" coast. (a quote from one of Michael's many high school friends) and I feel that I should try to keep in touch with any east (or right) coast friends that read this.

So, the obligatory bullet point weekend retrospective:

Friday afternoon

• ADR work for some random crime movie (this entails doing silly voice overs for crowd scenes of movies to sound like the crowd) Hooked up through Michael's dad's childhood friend (said in a Long Island, New York Italian accent "from da neighborhood") received checks (woohoo! not quite as poor)[I don't know what ADR stands for, though Michael tells me the R stands for Recording and I told him I thought the A stood for Audio, and he said no)
  
• Dinner with friends-lots of yummy food, an apartment that is gorgeously decorated, and a glass of red wine unceremoniously dumped on my linen beach pants (picture this: me and a good looking young man, a camera comes out and someone wants a picture of us we move together and he moves to swiftly run his fingers through his hair, swings his arm around abruptly and slams the bottom of my wine glass, the glass goes flying into the air--along with its newly poured contents all over the apartment (and my pants) with itty bitty shards of broken glass. Lucky me, these people are so cool there was a quick clean up, and a pair of drawstring replacement pants, as well as a new drink. Yay!)

Saturday

• I am lazy; Michael goes to a recording session.
  
• We both attend a children's community theatre production of Annie! (doesn't it deserve the exclamation point, just like E!)
• Go out for Mexican food, and a show break down (synopsis: cute kids, glad we went to see the one we know, Daddy Gaybucks may have some actual talent if he can lose the sibilant S)

Sunday

• I am still lazy; Michael goes to another recording session.
• Grocery shopping, laundry, bill paying
  
• cable television (including the movie The United States of Leland--quite intense, lots of names)
  
• preparation for tomorrow: lunch making, mapquesting, paperwork preparation

In complete retrospect:
Oh, my, god, Sunday was boring, why did I even include it?
I am obsessed with commas and parentheses (am I not?)
I need to learn how to make stories like the wine incident sound funnier (I mean it isn't often you go home from a dinner party wearing another man's pants.)

I finished a really good book A Child in Time, by Ian McEwan
I really didn't want to start this book because my stress was begging for a Devil Wears Prada, type of cushy girl reading. Instead I got desperate and ploughed on through as is typical for me when I am short on reading materials. (of course my copy is from the library)

Here is my favorite quote:

"To have a destination, a place where you were expected, a shred of identity, was such a relief after a month of game shows and Scotch. To show his pass to the familiar taciturn guard, to saunter across the marble hall among well-dressed, self-important people, to penetrate deep into the building, knowing without giving the matter a thought which staircases and corridors to take, to arrive at just the room and make small talk with colleagues, to sip coffee from the plastic cups bearing the ministry's stamp, bought from a machine in the corridor that dispensed onion soup down the same nozzle -- it was for little repetitions like these that people kept their jobs, however dull. It was all Stephen could do to refrain from bursting into song."(p. 155)

In one paragraph, my life, the last month full of television and wine versus the previous years of alarm clocks and office work, summed up. I can't wait to be back to the bored me that knows how to get places and who will be there when I arrive. Then I can add my own drama through weekend trips around the city or out of town.

the healthy and creative pact

Michael has proposed (starting yesterday) that we each try to do one healthy thing and one creative thing each day. Similar to New Year's resolutions that I fail to keep or even to make for that matter-- we seek to better ourselves*(I hear this in a snooty accent)--or at least look pretty good for the wedding and not go crazy from working all the time and never doing anything for ourselves. The idea is a good one because it is far to easy for me to fall into patterns of work and school that involve breaks in the evening only to eat a bag of chips drink a couple glasses of wine and start all over the next day. Barring gifts for friends I haven't really painted throughout the time I was in graduate school, so the proposed creative/healthy streak is Michael's effort to get me back in gear and not let himself fall into an all work all the time routine with schoolwork. Examples of our healthy and creative things are easy to think up, but of course much harder to actually get my butt off the comfy IKEA chair to do. One day for me might include playing with some watercolors and going on a long walk, for Michael it might be nightly push-ups and sketching out a piece of music that is not for school. I am immediately behind one day because I did crunches and push ups yesterday but no truly creative thing. Though my lazy procrastinating self is already cheating the pact by thinking of things I did that could fit into the creative part. I printed all the wedding invitations and double checked the envelopes, I made a quick chicken stir fry for dinner...that's creative!, how about if I floss tonight?, that's healthy right? But truthfully the creative and healthy things need to be separate from the daily things. So Michael can't count his walk to the bus stop and I can't count cooking because we do these things every day. Instead our creative and healthy things need to be more intentional and more suited to our creative outlets musical and artistic and become more physically active. So today I prepped a canvas (that's the start to something creative) and maybe later I will do some yoga stretches.

lame

I am still being lazy about posting pictures. Too busy watching crappy episodes of law & order while I procrastinate my school work and try to piece together invoices for my job from an old calendar and deposit slips...mmm falsification of records (just kidding I will check with all my parents and my dated behavior logs before I print anything legal for billing/tax purposes)

This laptop will be the death of me. Remember the good old days when I would have to wander down the hall from the office to watch bad t.v. while writing papers? I would think about disabling the internet while I work if my profs weren't so enamored with blackboard and if the online article databases weren't so necessary. Maybe I need to set up some parental controls for myself. Caitlin seems to know what I am talking about, except her guilty pleasure expands beyond E! and blogs to facebook where all the (baby) undergrads hang out.

goal

So I haven't posted for almost a month for no good reason other than I needed to fully apply myself to my procrastination and not writing my thesis wasn't enough, I needed to also ignore this space. My goal for the new year has nothing to do with fitness (though Michael had to forego his full gym routine this morning because so many people are making good on their fitness resolutions) or our wedding plans, moving plans, or thesis writing. I have decided that I need to bring back the chatty letter type emails that I remember from college (undergrad) now my email is something dreadful that contains, bills, junk, work schedules and the like. I think I am going to start writing some nice letter emails to friends in hopes of brightening up my own in box. Wish me luck. Write me back.