Holiday Season

Holidays and Health

It’s the holiday season and I’m ready for some Christmas music. How about you?

 

I try to wait until after Thanksgiving, though. At least Starbucks has all the good flavors out! One thing I love about my new workplace is my new colleagues. I’m making friends which is not something I have been able to do very well in other schools. Mostly it was just professional and friendly relationships, but now I feel like I’m actually making friends. Of course, with new friends, new relationships, and any transitions in life comes making bad choices with food. My new friend A who is a para at my school bought me Starbucks twice last week, an eggnog latte and a skinny peppermint mocha.

Oh so good! My other friend C who is the para I work with in my classroom bought us (3 adults and A’s 2 kids) pizza for lunch during conferences on Thursday. Not to mention that the 3 of us in my classroom all contribute to the coffee and chocolate stash that we have in the cupboards. Yeah, lost of bad choices. But we are having so much fun together that it’s hard for me to say no. Excuses, excuses.

Stuff

The other weekend I went to an event at a nearby mall called the Magical Night of Giving.

You pay $5 for a ticket and the mall stays open late on a Sunday night. It was packed and there were major discounts. It was a little bit like Black Friday in a way. The Coach Outlet store had everything 50% off, and clearance was 70% off! I almost bought a bag but it was so expensive I just couldn’t justify it. I met A, her husband, and her two kids there and we wandered for a couple hours. I bought a bunch of jewelry from Fuego. We spent a lot of time geeking out to Dr. Who stuff in a couple different stores, too.

Other goings on… Mike ordered one of those Breaking Bad dolls because everyone tells him he looks like Jesse Pinkman.

 

His co-worker changed the label

 

We have a Giving Tree at work so it was fun going to the store this weekend and picking out some toys for kids in need.

We had parent conferences, too. The PTA fed us well, that’s for sure. The spread was impressive!

Lots of soups

 

 

Sammies

 

 

OMG There was a lot of cake. I had a bit of the pumpkin one on the left.

 

 

 

Conference days have been half days so A’s kids have been spending the other half of the day in my classroom with me, A and C. It was really fun when I wasn’t in a conference to come back to my room and have people to chat with. A loves Dr. Who and plays some video games and so do her kids, so during our lunch break there were literally 4 Nintendo 3DS systems being played. C is older and has 2 kids in high school so she kind of laughs about how silly the four of us looked. It’s true, we did look silly. But we’re all geeks and that’s ok.

 

Video Games, Lounging, and Stuff

Our friend from California recently moved back to Washington so we’ve been hanging out more. He’s over this weekend and last weekend and it’s been fun. Seahawks are playing the Cardinals today and as much as I can hope for the best, reality predicts that the Cardinals are going to win. They are 9-1 and we are like 6-4. Yeah. Just because it’s a home game doesn’t mean much when you see those stats.

I’ve been playing a lot of video games. Is there a correlation between gaming and weight gain? People would probably say yes, but I’ve been a gamer my whole life and I can easily lose weight while gaming. Right now that’s not the case but anyway… I’ve talked about games I like to play before, so here are all the games I am in the middle of (the list is ridiculous!):

Dragon Age: Inquisition (PS3)

Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3)

 

 

Tales of Symphonia Chronicles (PS3)

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (Steam, PC)

 

Fantasy Life (3DS)

 

Harvest Moon: A Tale of Two Towns (3DS)

 

Tales of Hearts R (Vita)

And next week comes a game from one of my favorite series:

 

 

It’s that time of year where games are always coming out. I’m either a hard core gamer or a hard core bookworm. It’s nice to come home after a long day of working my ass off to something very relaxing.

Speaking of relaxing, we’re hosting Thanksgiving and that is not so relaxing! This week I will be cleaning the house and prepping for the big day. All the ingredients and the turkey have been purchased so I just have to make sure I’m well prepared to get all these recipes done.

*Where are you celebrating Thanksgiving this year?

*Game time! Anyone play any of these games or game systems? Fellow geeks unite?

 

Windy!

 

 

 

Irrational Fears

The wind has been crazy these past couple days! A couple times a year we get wind storms like this but I think this year wins for strongest gusts. It is so bad that school districts had to close due to power outages. Many friends and family have lost power at some point. I feel fortunate that we haven’t. I didn’t know that power lines could be buried, but I guess that is the reason why. We have lost power before, for 2 days, because of freezing.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, I have an irrational fear that the giant trees next door are going to topple onto our heads while we sleep at night. The gusts are very strong and the house feels like it’s shaking, so I get this picture in my head:

With all the noise I can’t sleep at night and I become a sleepless worry wart, thinking those 100-foot trees are going to fall over and crush us. I even think I can rationalize it because the wind only blows to the north which is the exact direction they would have to fall. In the end I know it doesn’t make sense but it still freaks me out. Same with flying. And bees.

Weekend and Days Off

On the upside, there was no school today! Yesterday was Veteran’s Day and since my parents were out of power and the wind created such a mess all day, I couldn’t get ahold of my dad to wish him a happy holiday.

We had a nice weekend of nothing happening so we went to Mt. Rainier.

By the time we got to the road to Sunrise and found out that it was closed, we were hungry so we went the other way around the mountain and ended up in Yakima. We looked all over for food but almost all of it was Mexican food which we didn’t really want. We ended up at a burger place but it wasn’t very good. Oh well. At least we saw some pretty yellow trees on the way.

 

All of them were the same color, which is not something we usually see west of the mountain. Mostly the trees of all different colors this time of year. Seeing all the trees turning at exactly the same time was neat.

On Sunday the Seahawks won their home game. In the middle of the game we checked the mail and got an unexpected mini windfall gift from a relative. Christmas came a little bit early, so we decided to upgrade our original iPhone 5 to the 6. I had no intentions of getting one until next year when the S version comes out, but the timing felt right and they had them in stock at the Apple store, so that’s what happened on Sunday. That and some new car tires.

Monday was school but we have late starts on Mondays so it was a shorter teaching day than usual. No school on Veteran’s Day and then no school today. It’s an odd week!

Health

Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down. It’s really hot/cold in Leanne’s world of health. The only consistent thing is my exercise. At least there’s that. As for the food, most of the time I eat well. It’s the afternoons and weekends that kill me. Even though we got burgers on Sunday I ate a normal amount of food and counted it all in MFP. On Monday I was able to keep myself from digging into the candy stash in my classroom. I also narrowly avoided the cupcakes that were sitting in the staff lounge at lunch. Overall my intake has been good these last few days. The problem is that it never lasts a whole week or more, so I often end up maintaining my weight weekly or gaining a bit. Lots of creeping on the scale. Creep creep creep. It sucks and I don’t know what to do about it if I can’t motivate myself. Why can’t it be as easy as telling yourself to get your ass in gear and just do it? I feel like I’m unhappy with what’s happening and I don’t want to accept it because it’s unacceptable. But I feel like I must have accepted it because it’s happening, you know?

Quiet Weekend

For the first time in a while, it’s a quiet weekend with zero plans. I am grateful for this because we’ve been busy a lot of the time. These are two days to recharge for a better work week.

Work Stress

This past week was very stressful with progress reports being due and one student with emotional issues, making me choose between teaching my group or helping him sort things out each of the 5 times a day I see him in the resource room. I’ve decided that it’s time to get the counselor in on this. I don’t want to be “insensitive Mrs. Marx” as I’m normally one to listen to kids’ problems, but for this student it’s something new every day (all very minor situations but he turns on the water works every time at the snap of a finger) and there are other student sitting there waiting for me to teach them.

Health Stress

All the stress has not helped my choices in food and drink. I’ve been going way overboard every night with food. We have mini chocolates at work and I am digging into that, too. Chocolate and coffee all day long at work, food and alcohol all night. The worst part is that every morning I start off well. I exercise and then tell myself that I won’t dig into the chocolate and that I will go home and eat like normal and track. Then it all goes sideways by lunch time and I’ve lost all willpower due to exhaustion.

I stepped on the scale and I’m 5 pounds up from last Saturday. Yep, out of control! I feel calmer now so I am going to try making better choices. Eat when hungry, eat reasonably, track, exercise, drink water. Sounds good on paper, right?

 

*How do you deal with work stress?

The Little Things

One of my new colleagues is a kindred spirit. We both have dealt with the weight yo-yo and have had a lot of issues with our bodies. Today she reminded me of little things, like the cute little rings on top of cupcakes. It was her daughter’s birthday and they brought treats, another elementary school perk. Or downfall. However you want to look at it. I love that kids want to share their celebrations with me.

The little thing today was when I finished my cupcake and slipped the ring onto my pinky finger. My colleague commented on how the ring could fit on any fingers at all considering they were made for little kids. It reminds me that my re-sized rings still fit and I am grateful for that.

Gone But Not Lost

Hi everyone! I should explain myself for being gone for so long, but honestly I think I just needed a break. Since school started in September there hasn’t been a whole lot of down time and my brain has been a bit overwhelmed with all the chaos of being new, along with many unusual circumstances that should not have taken place but still had to be managed. Now things have finally started to settle and I can say that I am very happy at my new school and I love working with elementary school students! K-5 is even more fun than I could have anticipated. The kids are happy and excited about learning, the teachers are great to work with, the colleagues I spend the most time around are amazing, and the principal is by far the best school principal I have ever seen in my life.

Health

As far as health goes, I’m about in the same place I was before – Still 20 pounds up from this:

Thinking about it, this was a bit extreme for me (and probably most normal people).

My weight is still in the healthy range for my height but I need to be careful. I want to lose at least 10 of these extra pounds because I still tend to have that problem with binge eating. It’s not nearly as bad as it has been over the past 2 years, though – It has been less frequent and lasts for less time. I think this is because I have been practicing a lot more intuitive eating and less obsessing. Unfortunately, enjoying life a little too much has its downsides. I’ve been spending a lot of time relaxing and enjoying food, mostly to a reasonable point, but still to a point where the weight is creeping up and up.

Still no FitBit. I lost it back in August and never replaced it. No big deal. I don’t think my weight gain has anything to do with that. I still use MFP regularly and try to be as honest as possible. The days when I don’t log are the days I binge and am too ashamed to show anyone how bad it was.

I’ve been drinking a lot more than usual, too. Prior to September I rarely imbibed and now it’s a little bit on most nights. With all the weekend parties lately, it’s been a much higher average.

I still exercise every morning at 6:30 before going to work. I’m a believer, now! It wakes me up and charges me for the day. There is one double-edged sword and that’s the fact that I only have time for 30 minutes and no longer. That’s a good thing because I can’t ever “over-do” a workout. Its a bad thing because I tend to eat more than necessary so that 30 minutes might not have been enough.

Life

Life has been good. Maybe a little too good. There have been a lot of time spent with family and friends.

A family of teachers.

The Seahawks haven’t been doing so well but we still watch the games.

Last weekend we had two Halloween parties and a double birthday celebration. There was a lot of candy and cake! Lots of fun to be had all around.

I went as a gothic fairy and Mike was Jesse from Breaking Bad. Since we didn’t match as a couple he decided that I should be considered a raver instead.

 

I personally don’t know what the big deal is with Halloween. There are parents who keep their kids home from school on Halloween because of religious reasons. I know they have their reasons and I want to respect that, but to me it looks like those kids don’t get to have fun with the other kids. We aren’t even allowed to call it Halloween at our school – Instead we call it a “Harvest Festival”. No one is allowed to dress up or talk about Halloween, but the teachers still have parties all day long.

 

Tonight is my sister’s big birthday bash, so that will be fun.

 

I hope all is going well for everyone! I plan to be checking in soon!

*Did you dress up for Halloween? What was your costume?

Learning Experiences

Once again I’m posting about once a week. It’s been so busy I just haven’t been able to keep up with much, so I apologize. I love reading everyone’s blogs and writing some of my own posts. When life settles down I’ll get back into things.

School

My desk. The toys have been something new I’m learning for the younger children.

This week was the first full week of school and it was full of learning experiences. I have some truly amazing colleagues, especially the para who works with me in our classroom and another para who works with certain kids around the school. Our principal is of a caliber I’ve never seen before. He is always around the school with a big smile on his face. Yesterday he came in the room as he was passing by just to say hello and chat with one of our little 2nd graders who was calming himself with a breathing ball after having a melt down.

I’m learning how to work with children who have autism and how to support their teachers. This year I have three children with autism and I have already learned a lot. That is a new one for me and the learning curve has been pretty large due to the quick responses required in terms of creating and providing visual schedules and calming strategies and also responding to the regular meltdowns our first grader has daily because the poor little dude has no para support in his regular classroom.

I learned how to figure out a schedule to see 18 groups of kids for social time, reading, writing, and math throughout the day. It’s quite an organizational puzzle!

I am learning how to respond to irrational end-of-the-world melt downs and have discovered that the tears don’t scare me. This is mostly because I know they aren’t true tears, so I can calmly talk to them or work through calming strategies with them. I only have a couple young students who behave like this about tiny little things and I’m figuring out ways to calm them and work with them.

As for the rest of the students, they are amazing! 3rd-5th grade are all so much fun. They are all very happy kids and have been positive, cooperative, and flexible. I’m just learning all the curriculums available because all of it is new. My para loves teaching math and since I’m not a fan of math, we set it up so she teaches it. I focus mostly on reading which is my specialty and have a couple of writing groups and of course my fun little morning social group.

Birthday

This week was Mike’s birthday and our California friend just moved back to WA! We had a double celebration at The Ram.

This is one of their 100 calories alcoholic drinks. Meh.

I ate soooo much food. I had two drinks including this “purple viper” and I ate everything.

This is probably more a look of fear than anything. Somehow our friend managed to eat this entire plate! I’m just glad it wasn’t me.

Health

As of last Saturday, I had lost 4 pounds in 2 weeks. I’ve been doing a combination of intuitive eating and tracking on MFP. I have been really happy about the results! Everything was going so well until we went out to that dinner on Wednesday. Then it kind of went downhill.

Mike was at a pre-wedding-karaoke-celebration for his sister on Thursday so I ordered a bacon stuffed crust pizza at home while working all night. I was pretty stressed out. The good news is that I could only manage to eat 3 pieces and not the whole pizza.

Friday was the rehearsal dinner and there was a lot of Mexican food and chocolate cake. I also had my first student birthday cupcake earlier in the day.

Today I am feeling pretty bloated. I haven’t exercised since Wednesday morning so that doesn’t help! I’ve been feeling too gross in the mornings and somewhat uneasy in the evenings. We have a wedding at noon so I better see if I can find something to wear.

Tomorrow we are celebrating Mike’s birthday with my family by hanging out and watching the Seahawks game. Its a weekend full of celebrations and food. Oh my!

 

*What do you do when you have 3-4 days in a row of big events and lots of food in your face all the time?

Weekly Updates

Where did the time go? Too many things have happened and blogging has taken a back seat for a bit. Sorry!

Last Weekend

Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were full of good times with people.

On Saturday my best friend and her boyfriend came over for a game night. We had originally invited probably about 9 people and somehow most people ended up dropping out. Whatever, we had tons of fun just the four of us. We played Last Night on Earth and then many rounds of Cards Against Humanity. Mike made caramel corn and we had a bunch of other snacks all night.

 

 

Cards Against Humanity

On Sunday our friends from Montana were in town so they came over and we had an afternoon of Magic.

Yup. We’re geeks.

On Labor Day we went to a meet & greet evening at my new principal’s house. It was a beautiful day and there were a ton of people there! We all brought our families so there were many spouses and kids. Several of us newbies tended to hang out near each other but we also branched out to meet other staff members. I was pretty anxious and there were so many people crowded around that I just stuck to a couple glasses of wine and skipped eating any food for dinner. When we got home I made a bowl of oatmeal with dried cherries and PB2. It was so satisfying!

 

Health

Food and exercise have just existed these last couple weeks. Not a lot of thinking has been involved in any of it. I prepare my breakfast/lunches, I exercise every morning at 6;30am, and I track my intake. I’ve been doing well on calories if you look at MFP. The choices aren’t the healthiest but the overall daily calories are fine. The only thing is that I haven’t bothered to weigh myself. I have no idea how much I weigh. I feel pretty good and my clothes fit, at least! The best part is that I’ve been so preoccupied with work that cravings have been non-existent most of the time. Maybe one of these days I’ll get my act together and see where I’m at. Last time I checked I was aiming to lose 10-15 pounds.

 

The First Week of School!

School started this week. Yay! It’s been 9 years since I’ve worked with elementary kids, so I’ve been waiting to jump in and get things started! As the resource room teacher, the first three days have been devoted to classroom/curriculum prep and student observations. We won’t be teaching kids until maybe the middle of next week. Until then, I’ve been trying very hard to have strong communication skills with staff so they know what to expect. This year there are 3 students with autism in my pull-out program. I’ve been teaching resource room in secondary since 2005 and have worked with very few students on the spectrum, so this is a valuable learning experience for me.

It’s been a good start to the week. Wednesday was DAY 1 and the first thing I noticed was a bottle of lovely apple-scented hand soap from Bath & Body Works with a card from a fellow new staff member.

One of the first things to go on my teacher board.

This morning the principal called new staff members in to the library and told us how well received we’ve been. It was nice to hear that. Then he so graciously gifted us with Starbucks gift cards!

The Starbucks just down the road is going to be dangerous!

Today was a somewhat stressful day. Being Day 3 of school, the teachers are starting to note their concerns and bringing them to me. I’ve been doing some problem solving when it comes to student behavior concerns because that is always the first thing that will pop up on anyone’s radar. I’m just hoping to do the right thing and make the best choices on behalf of the kids. Other than that, the classroom is just about ready!

That letter poster was a pain to put together but it was worth it!

 

Gotta have a number line.

 

My para’s corner plus some punctuation.

 

Hall passes.

 

*How was your week?

*What would you buy with a Starbucks gift card?

Adventures in Laminating

Damn Stick Shift

Last week on Friday I finished the longest week ever, full of looooong trainings and newbie work-related obligations. Then Mike came home and said, “You deserve a reward. We’re going to go get frozen yogurt!”

Naturally I imagine he thinks I deserve a reward for working a full week. Silly me. No, instead he said I deserved a reward because he was going to make me learn how to drive the Lotus.

“Noooo!” I hate driving stick shift and in a car like that… I hate driving any car in general. I tried to convince Mike that I’d end up acidentally damaging the car. This thing is expensive to fix and easy to total. Well, he decided it was time for a stick shift refresher course because apparently it’s “important for me to know how to drive stick”. I grudgingly set up the date and time. Grumble grumble grumble.

Saturday we found an empty parking lot. I was just grateful that he wasn’t going to make me drive it on the road. For those who may not know, Western Washington is a world of hills. Hills with stop lights and stop signs. Then it wasn’t bad at all. As it turns out, stick shift is like riding a bike – It just comes back to you as if it never left. I was pleasantly surprised. Plus this car is much easier to drive than Mike’s old WRX.

Mike set out some cones for some slalom.

Powwow

Since my new school district has close ties with the Native American community, I was fortunate to receive an invitation to a local powwow. It turns out that they are open to the public in general, but all staff were sent an e-mail with details and a district booth was set up. I met a woman who I will be working with since on of my students is Native American and her mother is a strong advocate.

The weather was beautiful if not a bit on the hot side. We tried fry bread for the first time and Mike also ordered a Navajo taco which was HUGE.

This reminds me of an elephant ear minus the sugar.

This is basically the fry bread with lots of good stuff on top.

We enjoyed the food and watched several of the dances.

 

To be honest I know very little about Native American culture and I’m interested in getting to know more as I work with this family and likely other families over time.

Ice Bucket Challenge

Yup, the time finally came on Monday night when my sister did the ALS ice bucket challenge on Facebook and called me and Mike out. We were going to do the ice bucket thing Tuesday night but ended up donating more $ without doing the buckets. We were stuck delivering the car to get serviced and got stuck in traffic that night, anyhow. I think it’s wonderful that this disease has gotten so much awareness, donations, etc. I wonder, though, about if the many other causes out there. I went looking online on Tuesday to see what else there is for future reference. I the world could donate in the same way to every charity, but then we’d all be broke or in extreme debt, right?

Sorry if I’m sounding soap-boxy. It’s not my intention to devalue ALS or the ice bucket challenge in any way. I simply dislike the “chain letter” aspect because of my first experience with chain letters. It was nothing special, but in 5th or 6th grade I received a chain letter but didn’t understand what it was. My mom had to explain it to me. This was pre-Internet. That said, I broke the chain and I’m pretty sure no one noticed. It wasn’t for the sake of being a jerk but the principle of the thing didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t want to force anyone else to spend their time writing a bunch of letters that they then had to give to a bunch of others and so on.

The difference with the ALS ice bucket challenge is that it’s for an excellent cause. I can appreciate that. 🙂 I just didn’t want to call anyone out because it reminded me of that chain letter.

 

Classroom

Oh yes, the laminator.

I learned how to use it! Finally. Now I feel like a real elementary school teacher.

 

This will go outside the door.

Fun wall decal.

School starts next week on Wednesday! This week has been more trainings. I got to spend two days with the staff of my new school and they all seem really nice, supportive, and positive people.

Found some foam letters in the staff work room. Next I need to learn how to use all those die-cuts.

Health

Time to briefly talk about the food and exercise world. I stopped eating all the crap food last Saturday and got back on track. It feels great! On top of that, I have kept up with the 6:30am workouts and it has been going incredibly well. I’ve even reincorporated strength training after 3 months of nothing! I was hurting last week but it’s much better this week. I strength trained full-body once last week and twice this week. The rest of the time has been Zumba.

I’ve eaten well through planning ahead and pre-packing school breakfasts and lunches. I’ve avoided fancy local donuts for two days of professional development and avoided Jimmy John orders for lunch along with many other  yummy snacks provided.

Guess what time of year it is? It’s time to start making honey almond power bars!

I love my morning oatmeal but I was really missing these.

 

These are great because no cooking is required. They are excellent for classroom consumption.

I hope everyone is having a great week.

*What are your weekend plans?

*Love driving? Hate driving? Stick shift opinions?

Excuses Excuses

Sorry I seem to keep dropping off the face of the planet every week. I haven’t been on WP at all and haven’t been eating well, either.

Work started this week. It was all new hire training where every day was a different time and location. There was a huge lack of routine.

That’s excuse #1.

~~~

Every day they gave us a whole hour for lunch. I’m used to scarfing down my food in 5-10 minutes because teachers only get 30 minutes to eat. So what to do with 60? Oh! What food do they have around here? I can drive someplace and get something fun.

Excuse #2!

~~~

Sitting in a chair listening to someone talk at you is more exhausting than it sounds because it’s so dang boring! On the positive side I learned a lot and I’m cautiously hopeful that this district is a million times better than the last one.

But anyway, boredom was excuse #3. I deserve a reward for sitting on my ass for 8 hours, right?

~~~

Two of the days breakfast and lunch was provided. Free food and it was all tasty food, too!

Hello, excuse #4!

~~~

I could go on but that seems like enough. You get the point. They are all just that – Excuses. Yeah, it’s stressful to make such a huge transition after working in the same place for 7 years. Everything is new and exciting and stressful and overwhelming at the same time. I could have made better choices this week, though. I did exercise in the morning for 3 days and that is another huge change. Those first couple days left me far hungrier in the mornings than usual.

Positives

• I got to meet a lot of new people. My introvert battery drained pretty fast but I still love meeting all these new colleagues and the higher ups, etc. I have yet to meet an unfriendly person and the district staff has been incredibly helpful even with the overwhelming amount of 150-odd new hires.

• I weighed myself today which brought me back to reality. It’s been a couple weeks since stepping on the scale.

• I learned a lot about my new district.

• My commute one-way all week has been 15 minutes.

• Morning exercise has gone better than I thought it would. Turns out it’s actually pretty energizing and I don’t feel sluggish at all!

• I discovered I can live without my FitBit and it’s weird not worrying about getting in those steps, but I’m still trying to move around when I can regardless of all the junk food I’ve been eating.

 

The Week

This week a lot has been happening! Monday and Thursday were teacher evaluation training. Nothing too exciting.

 

Tuesday and Wednesday were new hire general stuff like benefits, district strategic plan, etc. Tuesday night we all went down to the superintendent’s house and personally met all the school board members. He lives right on the river with some beautiful property.

The cool thing about Wednesday was the bus tour.

It was 3 hours of painful bumping around to check out all the schools (my muscles were still so sore from Monday!) but a very cool experience. We had tour guides and stopped off at the library, got library cards, and checked out the local museum where they were showing an exhibit of women’s shoes from the 1900’s. Wow, those were little, narrow shoes! Many of them still looked stylish even in today’s terms.

Sole Obsession was the name of the exhibit.

My favorite part was having lunch at the Muckleshoot Tribal School. I didn’t realize what a strong relationship my district has with them, but it makes sense considering the reservation is right next door and many of their children attend our schools.

They hosted a traditional lunch with salmon, root veggies, and berries. Then they spoiled us with a wide spread of desserts like pies, carrot cake, and mini cupcakes. While we ate we learned about the importance of community, they taught us how to say “shake my hand”, and our main presenter sang a thousand year old song that he described as a time when humans and animals spoke the same language. There is a powwow this weekend that everyone was invited to visit and bring family.

Wednesday night I made new friends. Yay friends! Mike’s old buddy from college contacted him and we hung out with him and his wife nearby with some drinks and pool. They both work at Wizards of the Coast. How cool is that? They like Magic (well duh) and fantasy/sci-fi books.  I have entirely too much in common with his wife. The guys practically had to drag us out of the bar because we didn’t stop gabbing. 🙂

Thursday we had Mike’s mom and her sister over for dinner. She has so many siblings it was the first time I’ve met this one because she’s from Idaho.

Friday was another training. Yay. But hey, the Seahawks kicked butt so that was fun.

Luckily there are no big plans this weekend. I think it would be fun to check out the powwow but mostly it will be nice to have some freedom to relax and enjoy this Saturday and Sunday. Oh, and Monday and Friday! There are just a few more weekdays of summer break left. Time to get back on track, too. No more waiting until Monday.

*What are your weekend plans?

*What do you do with an hour for lunch?

Rushing

There are so many things to talk about, none of them extremely interesting! Today was my first day back at work. It’s two weeks until school starts and, as a teacher in a new school district, I have lots of trainings. Every day this week consists of all-day trainings. Today was the new teacher evaluation system. Fun! The next two days will be district intro stuff mixed with benefits. Then more teacher evaluation stuff. Then special ed IEP system training. Then 3 days next week for more excitement!

Weekend

Let’s go backwards in time. The weekend was pretty fun. I think I’m taking a last-ditch effort to get in some social time before I become too tired to get off the couch on the weekends. Saturday we spent a couple hours with my dad and my uncle at a Ford car show.

Lots of Mustangs at this show.

My dad’s classic truck.

All the food and drinks were free for everyone! Except ice cream. That was $1. Go figure. There was a lot of free kettle corn, polish dogs, hot dogs, chips, and soda. I had a couple diet 7UP’s but the kettle corn got me after a couple bites. Luckily I avoided the polish dogs because they were tempting and we were hosting a BBQ at 12:30!

We went home and met up with our friends who recently adopted the cutest little baby. Yes, the one I held the other weekend and pawned off onto someone else as quickly as possible. It was good to hang out with them and their little 7-week-old. We made burgers and ate chips and leftover kettle corn. Mike and I had a couple drinks and grazed on the chips for 5 hours a long time.

The next day I met up with my best friend, Kat. I’m so happy that she no longer works weekends and graveyard shift as she had since I was in college. Now we get to do normal people stuff together during the daytime! We went to see The Giver.

Before that we ate at Johnny Rocket’s. I’d never been there before but yeah, burgers and french fries. I ordered some sweet potato fries. After lunch Kat wanted a milkshake to sneak into the theater. My defenses were down so I joined and got a Black Forest shake. It was so good!

The movie was great, too. I think they did a very nice job with it. It’s not completely to the book but I figure that has something to do with satisfying audience members who didn’t read it. I was happy with it, regardless. We read it in 6th grade and were asked to re-write the ending, so I am open to some differences in the film.

The rest of the day I did not eat well. Monday morning was not the best time in the world.

Monday

Back to the present! Happy Monday, BTW. My gentle FitBit one alarm woke me up in the middle of a dream. Waking up during REM sleep always makes me feel extra tired even after plenty of sleep. Anyone else have that? I rolled groggily out of bed and what did I do for the first time in my life? Put on workout clothes.

Hi, Jackie! Long time no see!

Yep, 6:30 in the morning and I exercised. I’ve never done that before. On top of that, I STRENGTH TRAINED, which is something I haven’t done in probably 3 months. Legs and arms. Afterwards I was all wobbly. Everything was shaking getting into the shower and at training. Just leaning on my arms at the table during the lecture had me shaking.

I was feeling pretty food hung-over all day, but proud of the morning workout. It really wasn’t as problematic as expected! I thought I’d be way too sleepy but it went very smoothly aside from being somewhat all over the place. I was rushing to get started and rushing after it was over. On the way downstairs to begin the workout, I called to set up racquetball but they asked to put me on hold so I panicked and hung up. Ain’t nobody got time for that! Then I exercised and made the call again successfully.

Everything was a whirlwind because it’s been so long since the end of last year. Do I have my coffee? Did I give Loki his Kong treat? Did I remember the tablet? Did I remember my breakfast and lunch?

In all that rushing I briefly noticed my FitBit was not very secure on my left khaki pocket…

Then I got to the training and they had us driving to an unexpected other location at the last minute. I was glad I’d arrived early!

The training was very helpful. As of the last year or two, teachers have to bend over backwards about 50 times every year just to prove they deserve to keep their jobs. Yay!

…Back to the FitBit. You know where this is going. I am conditioned to notice it. And then not notice it. It was gone. I retraced my steps several times and then went back to the original building at lunch and retraced my steps, asking office managers if one had been dropped off. Nothing. It didn’t fall off at home, either.

All the rushing this morning! I knew it wasn’t secure and I didn’t take the 5 seconds to make sure it was on there.

RIP

This comes to the part where I say it’s ok. Maybe not living with a FitBit after a year and a half could be good for this technology-freak. I could go get a new one but maybe this will be a learning experience. No more waking up to a gentle vibrating no-noise alarm, though. That sucks a lot. Waking up to any kind of noise is way worse.

The thing about a pedometer is that I noticed today how I felt like nothing I did counted because I couldn’t see it in “steps”. I played an hour of racquetball with my husband today and my brain seems to think that all that exercise means nothing without the evidence. The truth is that my body knows more than anything.

I’ll still be using MFP and even the FitBit app because we have an Aria scale and you can still add body measurements among other things. Who knows? We will see how long I can go without any kind of pedometer. :p

 

*How was your Monday?

*Would you be bothered if you lost your pedometer?