Did ya miss me?

I’m back!!!!!!!!
It has been a really long time since I have blogged, but I will get into the excuses and explanations later. First I will catch everybody up with everything that has happened since I last blogged.
James goes grocery shopping.
Today was a really great day. James and I got to sleep in. When we got up we went to the grocery store together, which is a huge step for James. James doesn’t like going to the grocery store. You wouldn’t think it would be that big of a deal to me but for some reason I always want him to go with me. My dad likes grocery shopping and I always enjoyed going with him. I guess I always thought when I grew up my husband and I would go to the grocery store together. James is so perfect in every other way that I was shocked to learn that he doesn’t like going to the grocery store. He says when he used to go with his sister to the store she would always take 400 hours to decide whether she wanted green or blue Dawn (that is a hyperbole, but my students don’t understand that). So, since James is perfect and always wants me to be happy, he has agreed to start going to the store with me and I have agreed not to ask him questions about what we are buying. We have been to the store several times in the past few weeks and it seems to be a pretty successful compromise!
Janus the jack-o-lantern.
So, anyway we went to the grocery store and picked out a pumpkin to make a jack-o-lantern. It didn’t take us long as we both spotted the perfect one at the same time. Last year we carved two jack-o-lanterns (one each), but the town house we live in now doesn’t have as much covered front door space as our last house, which had a large front porch. The year before that we carved one together, or I guess I should say we attempted to carve one together. James let me clean it out and carve one eye and then he took over because “I didn’t make it look scary enough”. So this year I cleaned it out and we each carved a face on a side of it so it is a two faced jack-o-lantern.
Frou Frou Lamar Carr
A few months ago I used the term frou frou to describe something frilly (a term I picked up from my dad). James had never heard the term and liked it so much he looked for opportunities to use it. One night he jokingly told me that if we have children we should name the first one Frou Frou Lamar Carr. A few weeks later he started asking me if we could get one of those Beta fish (a male Korean fighting fish). Apparently James used to have one, but I was a little surprised that he wanted any kind of pet because James has always been against having anything that adds to our load of responsibility. So about a month ago we went to Wal-Mart and purchased Frou Frou Lamar Carr along with a peace lily for him live in and eat off of and a clear glass vase and some decorative stones. All in all Frou Frou seems happy. He tries to fight me when I change out his water and he likes to hide in the roots when anyone other than James or I approach his vase. He didn’t really like it when I tried to take his picture. He kept swimming to the opposite side of his vase. I don’t like having my picture taken either. James says if we don’t in any way contribute to the eventual death of Frou Frou then maybe we can graduate to a cat or dog and if we handle that okay, maybe eventually children. That is why Meredith isn’t having children, her beta fish (I won’t release his name) committed suicide while she was changing his water. He jumped right out of the vase and down the drain. We’ll see if James and I have any better luck!
Broken computer + broken truck = broke us
This month almost everything that can go wrong has! James’ laptop is still not working right. Last month it suffered from a virus and had to have its’ hard drive reformatted (a la James) but now we think the hard drive is going out. We still can’t figure out why my laptop won’t work with our cable internet (it works fine on dial up but we don’t have dial up here) and we can’t find the printer driver software to put it on my laptop. So we can type things on my computer and save them, but we can’t print them or upload anything to the internet (that is one of my explanations for not blogging). James took it to see if John could fix it and the whole time John had it the stupid thing worked fine. John did a hard drive scan and said it looked fine but it is possible that it is starting to go bad because that is usually the first thing to go on a laptop. James’ truck had a radiator leak or something, and somehow water got into the engine and cracked one of the cylinders (part of the engine for people who don’t understand how cars work). So when your engine cracks that is not a cheap thing to fix, plus we had to pay someone over a hundred dollars just to verify what was wrong with it! While we were contemplating what to do, his parents offered to buy him a new truck as an early graduation present (he has seven more hours of college left before he finishes his BS in Mechanical Engineering—I married a younger man, he is eight months younger than me). So that worked out great but there is still all of the additional expenses involved in getting a new vehicle that you don’t think about, the additional insurance and all the little things add up. I only get paid once a month (James gets paid twice a month), but next week is payday!
The British are coming!
Well, actually, they came and went (another reason I have been too busy to blog, plus since they are half of my audience and they were here to see and hear my life in action I didn’t feel as bad about not blogging). Gran and Granpa arrived at the beginning of the month (October) and left this past Monday. James and I drove over to Fulton to see them (and Mum and Dad) two weekends and then they came over here to see us one Sunday. The Sunday they came over here we met them for lunch in Oxford so that my step great grandmother Aggie, who was up from Natchez visiting her granddaughter, could see my grandparents again. Aggie and my great grandfather (on my fathers side) visited my grandparents (on my mother’s side) in Scotland once, where they live, and my grandparents used to visit my great grandparents in Natchez when they came over to visit me (and Mum, Carrie and Daddy). Since we moved to Fulton, my grandparents have not been back to Natchez and so it has been over ten years since they have seen Aggie.
Stepfamilies:
Aggie is pretty funny. Even though she was at my wedding and has met James several times since the wedding and even one time before she never seems to remember who he is or that I am married. We ate lunch with Aggie, Kathy—one of my grandmother’s half sisters, and Lane—my dad’s half cousin, which would make her my half first cousin once removed. I know this along with her age, her marital status, her sisters' names, ages and marital status. Lane, however, not only admitted at lunch to having no idea how we are all related but also kept asking my Mum how her girls were doing (before I arrived) apparently having no idea that my sister died a year and half ago. Why do so some people even bother to pretend they care? I hate obvious insincerity. Aggie got on to me for not coming to see her in over a year, even though James and I both went to see her in May when we went down for Kati’s high school graduation. So, since she can’t seem to remember when we do visit her I am tempted to not visit her or visit her and make up a bunch of stuff since she won’t remember anyway. All she does when I visit her is talk about her grandchildren anyway. She doesn’t seem to be interested in what I am doing otherwise I think she would at least remember that I am married (she was there) and that his name is James (her husband, my great grandfather’s name was Thomas James so it wouldn’t really be that hard). It is funny how your opinion and ideas about people changes as you both grow older.
All work and no play.
My job seems to be growing increasingly harder instead of the other way around, my principal (who is not pal of mine despite how the word is spelled) keeps heaping stuff on me and my only reward for doing what she asks is the task of helping other people do their stuff and then getting more stuff heaped on me since I am doing what I am asked when I am asked. She never gives me any positive feedback without lacing it with criticism. I was surprised when Ben and Mr. Rowland both told me they thought I was doing a good job this week (after observing my classes). I do not feel successful, I feel horrible, and I don’t think I am doing a good job at all. My students remind me a lot of the stray cat I befriended. They want attention and love but they are scared I am going to lash out at them and hurt them; they also don’t know the proper way to get attention. Then when you do give them attention and they finally trust you enough to get close to you they get too excited and claw or bite you (literally in the case of one of my students who scratched me last week) because they don’t know how to act or how to react. I am torn between a desire to help them and a desire to protect my own self-interest. If a wild animal bites you how many more chances do you give them before you have them put down? I really don’t think I am going to be at my school next year. I honestly believe that I would be happier teaching at the high school level and I know I would be happier teaching Social Studies instead of Language Arts. However, in some strange way I feel guilty about not staying there next year, like I would be quitting on them. I have to remind myself that the students I am teaching now would not be the same ones that I would be teaching next year (unless they fail and then I am not sure I would want to teach them again). I definitely do not want to deal with my principal another year and if she leaves or is fired I am not sure that I would want to be there during a transition. James is not sure if he will have a position at the company he interns at once he graduates in May, and even if he does we are both tired of driving 45 minutes one way to work everyday. If James’ can stay on in Batesville than I might try and find a job closer to Batesville for next year. I am still planning on going to law school after next year and I think I would like to teach high school social studies if for no other reason than to have a varied teaching experience.
Since I compared my students to something I would like to share a metaphor that I feel sums up my principal’s approach to school improvement. My school reminds me of a fat person who orders every diet pill and miracle machine known to man off of the T.V. while sitting on the couch eating cheetos instead of getting off her butt and going for a walk or two. EVY remarked one afternoon that she wonders what the satellite dish behind the school is for (or was used for as it has vines growing on it). I told her it was probably meant to teach the children but was abandoned when it failed to understand what they were saying. We have computer programs to teach them to read, learn math and now they are spending more grant money ordering another program to teach them math in addition to the two we already have. Our math teacher is frustrated because it is overwhelming for her to have to learn all of these programs and keep up with all of the different reports. I have been told that we are supposed to get to the point where we teach without using any books by next year. I really don’t think that I could successfully teach English for 90 minutes everyday without a book of any sort but that explains why the school was so reluctant to give me any books when I requested them this summer and why it took me such a long time to get literature books for the students. God help whoever takes my place next year. I am going to try and help them as much as I can by leaving behind what I do this year and some insights into the way the school works that I was not blessed with.
Teachers do not take their own advice.
It dawned on me during my afternoon class at Ole Miss yesterday for about the billionth time since this summer (another hyperbole) that teachers do not live by their own advice. We were doing poetry explications in class and the general message behind two of the poems was that life is short so what will you do with it. I was expressing my dislike of the last three lines of one of the two problems when one of my peers suggested that I didn’t like the lines because I was scared of facing the fact that life was short and answering the question of what I would do with mine. This really annoyed me because (a) I hate it when people try to put words in my mouth and (b) I am probably more aware of how short life is than she is and I now what I am doing about it (although that was multiple choice it was not MCT format in case you were wondering). Carrie only had 20 years to live. I have already lived three years longer than her and I don’t know how many years I will have. I am determined not to waste a single precious minute of it. That is one reason why I decided to do the Teacher Corps, but it is also the same reason that I will only be teaching for two years. It is not that I don’t like teaching or that I don’t think it is an honorable profession, but there are so many things that I want to do before I die—teaching was just one of them. Besides, does anyone other than me see the irony in a 60 year old women who has lived in the same 60 mile radius for most of her adult life who retired from teaching high school to teach an occasional college class teaching poems about how short life is and how we need to seize each day and live it to the fullest? As a side note the woman who told me maybe I was afraid of the question posed in the poem is about twice my age and I don’t see evidence that her life has been that eventful!
The frustration mounts.
I am sorry if I seem bitter or negative in this blog, it is just that I have grown increasingly more irritable. Little things set me off here lately and although I know that it is a result of the stress I am experiencing but somehow knowing what causes it doesn’t really help, since I don’t know what I can do about it. I spend all of my time either at work, traveling to or from work or working at home. I don’t feel this is fair to James, or me but even with everything I am doing I feel like I am treading water. If I quit even for a second I am afraid I will drown. I promised myself I would not stay late after school every single afternoon this nine weeks, but so far I have managed to leave before 4:30 only twice in two weeks. After Ben visited my school he said that it was probably the most challenging environment he has visited. While this provided me with validation, so that now I know I am not crazy, however it kind of depressed me and has made me wonder how much more I can take before I do go crazy. Maybe next time I will have found my happy place or something and I will have a more positive spin on things. Until then…