Insouciance

I'm striving for insouciance. Insouciance is, according to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/insouciance, the cheerful feeling you have when nothing is troubling you. The pictures above are some examples of what I think it would look like.

Private/Public?

So, Sarah told me our blog is public. For some crazy reason I thought it was private. What do you want? By you I mean everyone. It is easy to make private. We can invite the people who have been following up to this point. e.g. Becka and Tiffany.

Thoughts?

Irony

Happily, earlier yesterday I had an interview with Vino Volo, a new restaurant opening in the airport, and they hired me knowing that I cannot work more than 12 hours a week. :)

I have caught up my reading here again. Thank you Melissa for explaining the comments however once I went to read them I could hardly get back to the posts; alas 'tis a tortuous journey. I am happy you are a little better Melissa. I worked out today by shoveling snow for hours! I am sure the energy used will show up again before I get to the scale (energy=fat), but that way I don't have to worry about buying all new clothes because I too thin. :) Suzy noticed my office is a bit cleaner, yeah!! Thank you Melissa for the borrowed post on handling anger, I enjoyed renewing my commitment to not regret saying something, ie being careful with the words coming out of my mouth. Well I need to go fix a casserole and freeze it for the homeless shelter. I am so darn good I can hardly stand myself! Hee hee

Worst Flu ever

I have caught the worst flu ever- well, almost ever. I'm not dying, but this stupid virus has beat me up. It's like everyday it picks a new target area to attack. :( I'm glad that I have not (to the best of my knowlegde) shared this crummy beast with anyone. Love you all.

Bed rest

So, on Sunday I started to spot a bit. Not much but, enough to get my nerves going. So, Trevor gave me a blessing because I really feel like I'm done with all of this crap. We both felt ok about things. Yesterday I went to work and it was a very simple day, not too busy. Well, the bleeding got worse and worse. I called the clinic and they said they don't worry about spotting. They told me to take it easy and if the bleeding got worse to just lay down and rest. Well, the bleeding got worse so for the first time in my almost 10 year career....I left work early. I cried the entire way home because I was so nervous. Trevor was so great. He was being as positive as he could and trying to get me to relax.

So, I called the clinic again when the bleeding went in to full force. They said there is nothing that I can do except rest and do the pregnancy test Wednesday. The bleeding could be bad or it could just be a bump in the road and I am still pregnant. We don't know. It seems to me that I was pregnant or may still be because my period wasn't supposed to start until next Monday. So, we will see.

I am not going to work today either. So, lots of PTO to use this week.

Now I am going to vent. I am not saying any of my below comments in search of answers or comfort. I am just venting. FYI

Why does every stinking step of this kid process have to be so damn hard? Why? I just don't get it. It's not like I am asking for a six pack on my tummy to magically appear. I am not asking for a million bucks so I can just do nothing the rest of my life. I am asking for a family so I can be a mother and teach them the values in life. My goodness.

With that being vented....I know that all things in my life happen for good reason. Trevor and I are living our lives the best way we know how to so, we will learn from this. We will move forward and we will give every single ounce of strength and every penny we get to this family of ours.

Thanks for the venting session. It's great to have you 'listen.' hee hee

Stolen from Mary Lewis' blog

I stole this from Mary Lewis' (the counselor at my school) blog as a helpful reminder for anyone.
Express Anger Responsibly
Because I spend a lot of time talking to kids about handling their anger, I can only assume that this is something that lots of people feel challenged by. So in an effort to give variety to my posts, I am throwing in a little "Life Skills 101". Here are some ideas for avoiding the loss of control when you are frustrated.
1) Take a break. Calm down before you respond. At school we call this GPS.
GET calm, then focus.
PLAN with self and others.
SOLVE or start again.
How does one calm down? Take deep breaths or go to the "happy place" (this is not the frig). This is that happy state in your mind when everything is calm and peaceful. Also exercise, counting to ten or one hundred, you get the idea.
2) Start with "I". We call these "I feel..." messages. Rather than saying "YOU so and so, YOU did this or that". Say, "I am confused when you..." or "I am frustrated". People generally can't argue about how you feel. There may be some that do, or it might not work. But, at least you get to express your feelings in a way that is as least argumentative as possible.
3) Don't look back. FOCUS on SOLUTIONS, not the past.
4) Anger is secondary. Usually anger is not the first emotion. Usually hurt, fatigue, hunger, pain, or other problems are the real emotion. Make sure you know. For me, just figuring out what is really going on with me, takes away the anger.
5) Decide that angry yelling is not allowed. We are never sorry for the things we DID NOT say. Apologies are always ok, too.
6) Listen to yourself. Record yourself sometime and see how you sound. Words can be very hurtful.
7) Write a note. If you are too emotional to speak, put together a nicely worded note.

Great Moment!

After reading a research paper that states that one of the reasons why a high population of students fail physiology and human anatomy is because they are not prepared as good note takers or "studiers" I decided to start teaching my students how to take notes. We learned several different note taking methods and we practice for 2 or so months.

Today, we started a video on WWI and I told the students to take notes, but I would not be grading the notes. When I looked down and saw that several students had formatted and outlined their notes I was proud and took some pictures.

In another note, Buddy ate a 70% pure cocoa dark chocolate bar the other evening. It was great. I saw the wrapper on the floor (it had been sitting on the coffee table for over a month) and realized what had happened. I called Mom who assured me that he would be ok- just sick. At 3 am I few upstairs to help my little one get outside where he left trails for 30 minutes. He has since been hungry all the time and off-kelter. It has made him grouchy and he pulled all the pillows and blankets off the couchs. Apparently, that was not enough to soothe the frustration because he also pulled the sheets, pillows, and blankets off of Julio's bed, took his water bowl and threw it behind the couch, and upended his food container. He finally seems better today- but it was a rough 2 days.

Waiting game

So, this leap year was pretty special for us because (as you already know) we implanted two eggs. This was on February 29th. So, we are hoping that leap year is our lucky year. We will find out either way next Wednesday. I just talked to a friend from college and we talked about fertility issues. Apparently he and his wife tried to have kids for abour 5 years before being successful. I was excited to talk to him. I was hoping that I would learn so much. Well, they didn't do as much testing as we have and they didn't do near as many interventions. So, I was very let down by the conversation. I was pretty bummed. Because all though he said they were trying.....his wife didn't even have her uterus looked at because it is a painful procedure. WHAT!!!! that was like the first thing we did after blood work. They didn't do artificial insemination either. Man, they just took some medicine one time. That is not when they got pregnant but, I just didn't feel like they were trying as hard as we are. I guess I just didn't learn anything new. O'well!!