Just call me Ebert

Over winter (Christmas) break, I have watched a GAZILLION movies. Just as a way of reflecting, I've decided to do my best at listing and rating all of the ones I have seen in the past two weeks. Some of them I have seen before, but most of them were new to me.

1. Walk the Line - good, love it
2. James Bond: Quantum of Solace - eh, okay
3. James Bond: Casino Royale - decent, but I can't get over how the title reminds me of that line in Pulp Fiction
4. Step-Brothers - let's just say that this didn't help my already poor opinion of Will Ferrell
5. The Prince and Me - charming
6. X-Men - love it
7. Valkyrie - met my expectations...good
8. Dr. Suess Cat in the Hat - seen it a million times
9. Lara Croft
10. Burn After Reading - don't waste your time
11. A Christmas Story - a classic, everyone has to watch it every year
12. about one-quarter of Wall-E - I'd like to finish it

That's about all I can remember for now...

maybe I wouldn't be a good stay at home wife after all

For the last several years, I have often wished that I could just stay at home and not work. We don't have children right now, so the whole issue of staying home with the kids never really came up. The idea of not having "real" responsibilities was just sort of romantic. I often reminisce over how much I loved sleeping in until 9, shopping at Target at 11am, and making my way to class around noon during college. While that was well and good then, I don't think having a wide-open schedule would suit me very well, but I sure wish that it would!

I am at the mid-way point of winter break. While it has been amazing to sleep, watch movies, and generally do whatever the heck I want, I don't think it is healthy. I can feel myself getting more and more lethargic. I eat like crap. And my nagging old depression is tugging on my sleeve. I truly think a huge part of this is that I am energized by a little bit of stress. I might as well face it, I like working.

If you have not yet read Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Love Pray, you really should. In this book, the author goes on a year-long journey of discovering herself and finding balance in her life. One of the themes that I pulled out of it is the ability to just sit still with oneself. This is a quality that I long for but do not yet possess. This is likely the main reason that I couldn't stay at home by myself: I would LITERALLY drive myself insane. Seriously.

So, this week, I am going to work on that by actually practicing sitting still and being quiet with myself. Usually, this lasts for about 30 seconds until I find something to read, clean, or fuss over. Maybe I'll shoot for a few minutes. Hey, we have to start somewhere!

Top Five Reasons I am a Bad Gift Giver

No, really, I am. I admit it.

1. When I go to stores, I get far more excited about buying something for me than for anyone else.
2. I tend to buy things that I would like...assuming everyone has my taste and sense of humor.
3. I'm cheap. If I do see something parfait for someone, I'm likely to think, "Nice, but way overpriced."
4. Crowds in stores annoy me, so I'm more likely to just leave than keep shopping.
5. I am a last minute shopper. I'm the one that's stopping by Patina on the way to a birthday party, or fighting through crowds of lazy guys on Christmas Eve (which does not agree well with #4.)

So, it is December 22 (still early for Christmas shopping in my book) and I'm off to battle the crowds at yet another store. Good luck to me!

How I know that I have reached adulthood

Today is my first day of Winter Break during my first year of teaching. I have a solid two weeks that will be free from asking kids to quiet down, staring daggers at the ones who won't, and "holding it" because there's no time to get to the bathroom between classes. Yes, I have some work to do during break, but most of it is the fun kind. I "have" to read 11 chapters about how to teach writing, but I am quite fond of the authors of these books. There are 60 pieces of writing that I need to grade from my 7th graders, but I'm really looking forward to it. The topic of the write was "Mrs. McWilliams's Very Bad Day," so all of the students wrote about a super bad day that I might have. I am as egocentric as most people, so it's fun to read about myself. Plus, I get to laugh at how much or how little the students seem to actually know me and my life. There are a few other random items on my checklist, but I really won't mind doing any of them. I stayed at school hours later than most teachers would on the eve of two weeks off so that I could finish all the mundane grading, score entering, and worksheet key making that needed to be done. The custodian--Tony--who cleans my room each night checked in on my about three times. I think each time I told him that I would be leaving soon and every time he would laught and tell me that, No, I wouldn't. I finally left around 6pm. The only other car in the parking lot was a fellow English teacher who is also in her first year of teaching.

When I was younger, I didn't really mind having projects and reading assignments to work on during breaks. I don't like to be bored, so having something to do was kind of nice. No, being excited about having "homework" during break does not indicate that I have reached adulthood. Here is what does:

Last night--when I probably should have been hooping and hollering about this vacation, which has been the carrot on the end of my stick since August--I picked up take-out and fell asleep at 8:30pm. And, I didn't even care. It felt so good to sleep. I woke up this morning at 6:45am. Now, I generally do not sleep ridiculously late, but I figure it's only respectable to sleep until at least 8am on a Saturday.

To reclaim some of my youth, though, I had ice cream for breakfast. Right before my daily cup of coffee...

Geez.

The snowball effect

As I am sitting here writing this blog post that no one will probably read, I am smelling the stench of a garbage can that badly needs to be emptied. I am looking at the kitchen table that is piled with bags, coffee mugs, and books. I am dreading turning around to see the mountain of dishes in the kitchen. Our dinner plates are still sitting out. There is laundry on the floor...

The funny thing about it all is that I probably won't do any of it tonight. It's not for lack of time, because I truly do have at least an hour to spend on such endeavors. It's also not for lack of motivation. I really do love a clean home and derive pleasure from putting in a little work to make it that way. No, I am not lazy. That is the simple answer. But it is wrong. Rather, I am a perfectionist. I do nothing half way. If I begin, I will not stop until I finish. I will do all of it--or none of it. I think I am like this in a lot of ways. So, the easiest thing to do is to ignore it. To let it be. To just take the night--or week--off from doing those tidious, never-ending chores. The problem is that, because I am a perfectionist and want everything to be in its place, if I let one thing go, I let it all go. For example, if I come home and do not hang my coat up immediately, the entry/dining room/office (hey, it's a tiny apartment) will look messy and I'll start letting everything go out of place. It snowballs. Two days ago I didn't feel like putting my dirty clothes in the bin and hanging up the clean ones, so I left them on the floor. The next day, the bedroom already looked messy, so I tossed down my clothes for that day. This morning I figured, Hey, this room is already a dump, why bother making the bed? See?

And the worst part about the whole thing is that I am sitting here over-analyzing why I am chosing not to just get over myself and clean up. I suppose this is what life is like in a tech-addicted, self-reflective, post-modern society. Or, at least I think so...

A random post that no one will probably read but I feel like posting it anyway

If you are reading this (and you're not me), then you must be one of the most faithful & hopeful people I know. I've pretty much given up on the prospect of keeping up with this blog. Although it is fun and a great release, it didn't seem appropriate during the past few months. I'm in the midst of my first year of teaching, and most of my posts would have waivered between disaffection, anger, exhaustion, and downright sadness and would have been written hastily. Recently, I've been able to take a few deep breathes and actually start reflecting on things. A lot of teachers talk about the value of keeping a personal journal or log to keep track of their thoughts and ideas about lessons (failures, triumphs, and hopes for the future). While good in theory, this was pretty much a joke for me this Fall. I was far too consumed with cleaning out the gagillion emails I receive daily, sifting through mountains of worksheets, and figuring out what I was doing when in which class. Just thinking about it stresses me out. So, I won't. Not right now. Right now, I am reflecting.

What follows is an email that I wrote tonight. Although the email needed to be no more than a simple "thank you" for answering a question, I (typically) took the opportunity to be a little bit more wordy than necessary. I started out how I usually start talking about school: complaining. Then it turned to reflection, which is going to be my theme for this week (I do well with short-term goals).

[Teaching Romeo & Juliet] is a bear for me. I don't like the time frame in which I have to teach it. I had a week of intro lessons, then two weeks of reading the play in class. We'll finish Act 3 by winter break. When we come back, we only have 8 days until finals. We're having to read the entire play in class (the books can't go home). With 42 minute class periods, that's just not enough time. I would like to do SO MUCH more with it, but at this rate I'm mostly just trying to make sure they can comprehend the text. Ugh.

Other units I'm doing right now: Anne Frank (considering expanding this to a mini-genocide unit after break...including Hotel Rwanda possibly), Writer's Workshop, random fillers in Communications which I've labeled our "interpersonal communication" unit, and reading A Christmas Carol with the 7th graders (they hate it...and, frankly, I didn't care much for them today either!). It's not all terrible, though.

Here are some of the joys/triumphs of the last few weeks:

• helping the 7th graders know the difference between its and it's...they're pros...I didn't even figure that out until college
• teaching "word choice" to the 7th graders...it was a LAST MINUTE lesson (I literally threw it together 30 minutes before class based on some overheads from the previous teacher)...it seemed crazy and haphazard at the time, but their next pieces of writing are a million times better because of it
• getting a disaffected, drugged out 9th grader to actually turn in an assignment and get an A on a quiz (forgetting the fact that she still has a dismal 30%)
• being able to laugh when said 9th grader and two of her friends skipped my class to HANG OUT IN THE HALLWAY RIGHT OUTSIDE MY DOOR. really? they had nothing better to do???
• watching students present their biggest speech yet in Communications and reflecting on how far they've come this semester

That's all for now :)

Organizing Digital Pictures

As you probably already know, I'm a sucker for things that are well-organized. I love being organized and having things run efficiently. However, I have minor panic attacks when things are not very organized. About every two months I freak out because I hate the way I'm storing, filing, and backing them up. If you have any solutions to storing photos, please LET ME KNOW!

Here are the main areas I struggle with:

• To delete or not to delete? Do you delete photos from your memory card immediately after uploading them to your computer?
• Back-ups: Is it wise to have the photos stored in two places (for example, your PC and a flash drive)? If so, how do you make this happen?
• It's all in a name: How do you label your photos? Do you include the date in the title?
• Picasa: this seems like an amazing tool to use, but I'm not sure how to make the organizational piece work for me.

who knew?

who knew that teachers have to sit through MEETING AFTER MEETING on supposed "work days"? not me.

yet another way to waste time online

just when you thought it wasn't possible to waste anymore time on the internet, along comes the FAIL blogs: http://failblog.org/2008/08/15/scrapbooking-fail/

Enjoy.

i'm busy

i haven't posted for a while. i'm busy. deal with it.