Life As I See It

Yesterday I received an email that disturbed me. I hate it when people address private issues in a public forum, but this person decided to air some laundry on a Yahoo group. I hate it when you talk to someone in confidence and they feel it is ok to share that information with a group, not naming names, but leaving the group wondering who is involved! My solution was to address the issue privately and then post a apology to the Yahoo group. Sometimes I feel like I'm back in high school, where girls try to make others look bad so that they will look good. Hmmm!

Today is my last day off for summer. Pre-planning starts in the morning and it will be work, work, work from there on! I've got the things purchased for my classroom, even found a fake palm tree on clearance at Michael's, but I won't start putting things in my room until tomorrow. If we didn't share our classrooms with the church I'd have already done it, but I didn't want to risk the church kids messing up anything before the school kids get to see it. I don't understand how the Sunday School teachers can let the kids get away with some of the stuff they do. Every year, student's pencils, markers, crayons, and other items are broken or taken. On Monday mornings, the classrooms are a mess. Why don't people clean up and put things back when they finish using a room? I leave the room neat and clean for them, but on Mondays I always pick up their markers, playdoh, construction paper, etc. and put them into their cabinet for them. Maybe since I'm in a different room this year things will be different?

Catherine and I went to Scrapbook Expo. We worked for a vendor for 5 hours, so we really didn't do a lot of shopping. I did, however, purchase a Cricut! ProvoCraft had a booth set up there, but had run out of the machines. I ordered and paid for one, plus bought 4 cartridges (buy 3, get 1 free), and the rolling tote bag. The machine was supposed to be mailed out 10 days ago, but still hasn't arrived. Of course, last week I was able to get a machine at Michael's for $180 using a 40% coupon. I went ahead and purchased it and will return the other one when it arrives. I guess I need to try and find a phone number for ProvoCraft and call them!

Two of my layouts were in the top ten, but neither were chosen for the top three. They were Blue Eyed Boy and Eat Your Veggies? I'm sad! But it was great that they liked TWO of mine. Last year I only submitted ONE layout and won. This year, I submitted eight and didn't win. There's always next year, though!

Even though I had four full weeks off this summer, I didn't get much accomplished in my house. My intentions were to do some major cleaning and rearranging, but it was more fun to spend time with the children! During the school year, I work 55-60 hours a week. Of that, 40 hours are actual classroom hours and the rest is preparation time, meetings, and grading papers. If the boys don't finish their homework on their own, then the rest of my evening is spent overseeing them. That's really not a lot of fun for any of us, so our summers and breaks are the only times we can relax and just be together. One day they'll be grown and I'll have a perfect, organized, clean house. I'll miss the chaos and clutter then.

Oh well, I'm going to pick up dirty clothes, sleeping bags, stuffed animals, and trash that they left on the den floor and then run a couple of errands.