Tidbits

A few interesting anecdotes from this week:

* I am always in a hurry when I leave the house, but Wednesday, I was in an absolute tizzy. I got to school though, and was just calming down when my cell phone rang. A friend of a friend passed our home on her way to work and saw the garage door open. I had forgotten to close it, and we were both already in town. The woman who called said that her husband would close it when he went by, and so it was seemingly not a big deal, and I didn't even bother Jason with it. Fast forward an hour~ Jason calls to tell me that one of our neighbors saw someone in a red van pull into our driveway and disappear into the house, so the neighbor called the sheriff and then Jason. So I had to quickly relate my mistake with the garage door and my friend of a friend, and we had little fires to put out for sure! Jason called the sheriff and told them that they did NOT need to be on the lookout for a red van. Then he called our neighbor to explain. I called the friend of a friend, and told her that, due to a nosy neighbor, the sheriff may or may not question her husband. Mess!

* That same day, I told my 5th period class that a Fried Ice Cream blast from Sonic would put me in a better mood that afternoon when I planned to make their tests up. I said it in passing and completely forgot about it. After school, here came one of my boys, blast in hand. I just don't want to forget that that happened, because it made my day.

* Then there's Thursday morning, otherwise known as insanity personified. I needed to make a test for my 6th and 7th period classes, and thought Detention Hall duty would be the perfect time to do that. I go in at 6:45, and watch kids sit there. I usually get a ton of stuff done. My plan was to spend the first 15 minutes buying airline tickets for Christmas break, then put the test together. I found some reasonable tickets, entered all the information, and clicked "confirm". The screen that followed told me there was an error with my order, and that my order was not complete. This happened three times, and forty minutes later, I finally got a confirmation screen. The confirmation screen said that my confirmation number would be in my email, and so I opened up my email. There were FOUR email confirmations for EIGHT different tickets. I kid you not. I did some internal panicking, and as soon as DHall was dismissed, I called Jason and begged him to try to fix it. Of course he got on the phone right away. I still hadn't made my tests, I thought our account was about to be charged four times, and I had 21 kids waiting for me in my room. I just kept telling myself, "You can get it all done during 2nd period conference." Jason emailed me halfway through first period to tell me that the tickets were (probably) going to be okay, so that calmed me down. 2nd period rolled around, and I was just sitting down to make my test when my intercom beeped: "Mrs. White, can you please sit in on a 504 conference?" 504 conferences are hard to explain, but all you need to know is this: "sit in on" is a literal term. They just need a teacher in there to represent the student (or something). So I sat and listened for 45 minutes, and still had no test. I had just enough time in my 30-minute lunch to get the test made, and it turned out to be not so bad.

Needless to say, I am glad Friday is here. I have a cold, so I plan to spend the weekend holed up in the house grading essays and blowing my nose. I may go to Piggott for a baby shower Sunday, depending on how bad this cold gets. It's supposed to rain all weekend, so it's the perfect opportunity to stay in and catch up on grading. Hope all is well with everybody!

Weird Story

This little tidbit may strike some as weird, but it's my blog, so I can show my true colors if I like.

In 2000, when Jason and I were dating, we discovered a song together. Well, it felt like we did. It was a song on a new CD by a popular band, but it was a little-known track on the album and is little-known to this day, and we both loved the song the first time we heard it. The song has a girl's name in it, and that is all the details you get, blog reader, because we like to keep things private. Anyhow, we were leaving In 'n' Out one night after a date, and we were headed back to my house. This song, which we had listened to just a few times, came on and we began to talk about it. At some point in the conversation I said that I loved the name in the song, and Jason told me he loved it too. And so, back in 2000, we decided that if we ever got married, we would have a girl and name her this name.

*Disclaimer: We are NOT pregnant! Not even close!*

This memory came to mind because this song came over my iPod today, and I realized that every time I hear this song, I am warmed by the fact that the song has both a memory and a future. I have never been one of those girls who "wants a baby SO BAD!", but when I hear this song, I do get a peacefully excited feeling about the hypothetical baby who will have this name. And she will probably hate her name and hate the song, but it was chosen for her at least ten years before she will come to be, and, like me, I know she will think that is pretty cool.

Labor Day: The Oxymoronical Tease

Everything about my morning smacks of the summer mornings I just said a woeful goodbye to. I slept until 7:30 (unheard of!), I watched the Today Show, I ate breakfast at the kitchen table, then stayed there while I read my book and finished my coffee. It feels like summer, it looks like summer, but it's not. It's Labor Day. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the three-day weekend. It's just so close to summer that it seems slightly cruel.

I am probably not alone in that I will be using today as a catch-up day. I did laundry on Saturday, went grocery shopping on Sunday, and thankfully, I have today to tidy the house, grade papers, and do my own homework. I still have class tonight (Harding thinks it's above National holidays), but I have the whole day to make the rest of the week easier. We will be gone this coming weekend, so I'd like to maintain the order as much as possible. We'll see.

Both of us started our classes at Harding this past week, and it was not awful, but it was an adjustment. We have decided that we need to be really organized, really understanding, and really patient if we're going to do this (and we are). I hate to leave dishes just sitting in the sink, but homework takes precedence over housework, so they there stayed. I usually plan a few meals and then improvise the rest, but now I have to plan what meal I will make on what day for about three weeks. I actually kind of enjoyed doing that though. This is our life now, and we are going to enjoy and be thankful for the chaos!

And so ends the worlds most boring blog entry.