Stargazer

Sunset

I have no picture to show off since I don't carry my digital camera while running. But if you could have seen the sunset tonight as I was jogging-- the fiery sky with the silhouette of the trees, it would have made you introspective as well. Between issues at school (a really, really jerky student who tries to ruin my day) and the hospitalization of my aunt who has terminal liver cancer, plus the drama over the family trust, it's been a h*ll of a week. Because the mind opens up with exercise(I truly believe), I started thinking about the "sunset of life" and that my aunt is going through that; she's made her last trip to Cancun,  and this will be her last holiday season, if she makes it, which is looking doubtful. A year ago she was healthy and busy, volunteering at all sorts of organizations, flying to Las Vegas to visit her daughter and grandchildren, and enjoying the "light" of an active life. In what seems like the blink of an eye, she's dying. My aunt's husband is angry because the family trust won't pay for her burial, and already her vulture-like daughter is circling to see what money she can get out of her mom's estate or the trust. It's really quite revolting! Don't get me started on the story of that particular sleazebag cousin!  My mom and dad went out to visit Auntie in the hospital today; they are good people who always try to do what's right. They have shaped me into who I am, an overly responsible idiot person who offered to make sure that my Aunt's disabled son (a mere 14 months older than I) would have me as an advocate. Of course, my husband has already told me that that's fine unless I'm suggesting that Cousin comes to live with us...in that case, NO WAY. It's unfortunate that Auntie has such dysfunctional children AND grandchildren (long story) and that she has been the major force in their lives. So, as the sun was going down, I was thinking about death and wishing that it could be as beautiful as a sunset. But it's not, is it?

Freaky Halloween

It's not that Halloween was so creepy, it's that the holiday wasn't much fun without my own kids young adults around. There were no pumpkins to carve, nor stresses about costumes. I miss it...and yet I don't. I was freaked out by the number of non-neighborhood children who showed up at the door, most in costumes, but some not. (yet still expecting candy) In a couple of groups the adults also wanted candy, which I found bizarre. Mr. Stargazer tells me NOT to argue with them or get "teacherish" because he doesn't want our house/property vandalized. Thanks to Wende, we got the idea of making up little candy bags which I handed out to each child person; thus, there were no greedy hands grabbing handfuls of candy and pissing me off. (er, making me frustrated and angry) And we got some visitors!

My brother, his wife and my nephew showed up; I would have loved a photo of my face as he got out of the car in his Captain Hook regalia. I'm sure my jaw must have dropped a couple of feet! And isn't little Peter Pan adorable?

This is exactly WHY you don't put photos on Facebook that you don't want everyone to steal see. :) Although I didn't get to spend Halloween with Younger Daughter, at least I could enjoy(?) pictures of the party that she attended last night. MOST of the photos were appropriate, says her Grumpy 53 year old mom, and all of the ones of Alison were. (whew)

This is my brother Don, the one who killed himself at the age of 23. (long story) Last night his daughter, my niece, her husband and their two boys, one of which looks exactly like him, stopped by to trick or treat.It was a shock, although not an unpleasant one. We've been semi-estranged for a long time for reasons that would take a book to explain, but are really no one's fault. (or many people's fault?) We don't really even know each other very well, but it was wonderful to see her; I offered, as always, to get together, and have my parents meet the boys (their great-grandsons) for the first time; I encouraged her to call me, but I doubt that she will. She's not angry or bitter toward me, just indifferent. And maybe that's a good thing.

Categories

WORK--It's been a long and "interesting" week with a student barely making it outside where he threw up ALL OVER. Our class was barricaded inside the room until the custodian came; no one wanted to walk out there! Then there was my 3rd period class who didn't feel like singing and made an annoyingly bad job of it, with a few a*holes to goof around and make me really frustrated. But 4th period sang like angels, so that balanced it out, sort of. In 2nd year the classes are learning to talk on the phone and that can be pretty hilarious. It reminds me that phone etiquette(like other manners) is going the way of the dinosaurs.

COLLEAGUES--I try to keep my mouth shut or remain tactful, but at lunch when three young teachers (two childless and 1 with small children) were expounding on how troubled kids should be blamed completely on the parents, I couldn't restrain myself. I wanted to say, "What in the H@ll do you know about it? Just wait!" However, I managed to talk about other influences on a child, no guarantees that anything would work with certain children, and youngsters making their own decisions, sometimes bad ones instead of good ones. The importance of strong parenting is obvious, but it's not the only factor. I despise people who think they have ALL the answers or that it's really that simple. Just wait...

FAMILY--Although we've been hoping for it for months, it was still emotional to deal with Alison's boyfriend break-up this week. He's been a real jerk and we hate dislike him, but it's still difficult to hear the pain in her voice. She wrote this on her Facebook:

I think loving someone despite what people think is fearless. I think allowing yourself to cry on the bathroom floor is fearless. Letting go is fearless. Then, moving on and being alright...that's fearless too.

Wouldn't that break your maternal(paternal) heart? Selfishly, I also don't want this to distract her from school since she has REALLY hard classes. (eek) In addition to my sometimes crappy week at school and Alison's boyfriend trauma, my sister-in-law asked me to babysit my 3 year old nephew on FRIDAY NIGHT. I said yes because I really didn't have any plans; he's a great little boy who just happens to be three. Any of you who've had a three year old know what I mean. (lots of work and attention) SIL sent along a video for him to watch; I was unfamiliar with it (veggietales?) and soon found out that it wasn't just subtly religious with nice messages, it was hit-you-over-the-head with Christianity and Jesus, PLUS it was about Christmas. I don't do Christmas until the end of November or early December! It was revolting. Today I'll be talking to my parents about my aunt who is dying of liver cancer (spread to her blood stream) and about my uncle's mismanagement administration of my grandfather's trust. Uncle's secretive loans and the disappearance of most of the money are causing some definite family issues, with more to come...Oh, joy.

Judgemental--who me?

I am convinced pretty sure I won't like you if:

• you have a  convertible BMW with a license plate that reads: I'm a Princess, who in the hell are you? I think I'm much too smart to have such an inane license plate, that's who!
• you don't want to go over a bump in our road construction mess and so you swerve into my lane as I'm peacefully driving along. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?
• you're driving a 4 by 4 pick-up and go so slowly over speed bumps in the Albertsons' parking lot that you actually stop on the top. Hello? A 4 by 4? 
• you live in the Pacific NW and have Confederate flags all over your Jeep. This is not the south, thus you are not making a statement about tradition. And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't agree with you on much, if anything.
• you bring in a third party check that's been supposedly signed over to you to the bank, then get loudly pissy with the teller about not being able to cash it. Have you been living under a rock? Fraud? Forgery? Identity theft? 
• but then I'm also judgemental of myself. My Night Owl persona who loves to read until 11 hates my Morning Person who gets up at 5 and vice-versa. Why don't I go to bed earlier? It's like I'm two different people!

Just what the "doctor" ordered

Geeze--y'all should have told me in a nice way: STOP TAKING PICTURES OF YOUR HOUSE! I just looked at my blog, and in nearly every post, I'm talking about or showing you our remodeling/painting project in progress. I know it's only interesting (and exciting!) to me, so I appreciate you true friends who have put up with it and even left supportive comments.First of all, going out with friends to coffee is just about my favorite thing in the world. I love the ambiance, the chatting, and the sharing of joys/woes; the two sisters I met this morning at the Evil Empire Starbucks know me very well and I feel like I can tell them ANYTHING. (and usually do!) Thank you for your friendship, Deb and Eileen.  Je vous aime! Today was also a fabulous fall day in which I accomplished a lot: mowing both lawns and winterizing the biggish back lawn, then taking off for a run in the perfect crisp (blue sky) weather. After that, Mr. Stargazer and I ate dinner out with friends at a local pizza place, owned by one of my colleagues and her husband. And to top off the evening, we enjoyed a HUGE Wii tournament chez Carl and June where we wore ourselves out bowling, canoeing (ouch), playing table tennis, and doing archery. The "boys" also did some kind of fighting game which involved trying to knock each other off a platform with their swords. It was fun to watch, but there was no way I wanted to try it!

I would hate having a photo of me taken while I was looking constipated concentrating on playing wii! Thankfully, I'm usually the one with the camera. :) Oh, and I also finished an excellent, but  long book called Cutting for Stone. It seems weird not to be reading it any more; I got very involved in the story and the characters. Even though it's late, I'm off to start another book because I'm a definite Bookaholic.

Blah week

This post was going to be whining and self-pitying, but life turned around for me a couple of hours ago. It's not that the week has been terrible, it's just been blah.(except for a political war of words that I innocently started on Facebook) :) I AM thankful for blah, but this has been a discouraging sort of grayness of spirit. I don't feel exciting as a teacher or a person. Coffee dates have been difficult to arrange, and my kids have been pretty silent. (hope that means everything is OK!) Then College Daughter called tonight and we chatted; some upsetting things have been happening to her at work and with school. She has a very uncooperative class at gym that's giving her issues, plus some of the parents are complaining that she can't control them. (Geeze, they're your kids and she's 19 years old with no children!) The gym directors are very supportive though, which is helpful. And chemistry is kicking her butt. I asked her if she still wanted to major in biochem; she said absolutely YES.I think she's insane! While I was talking to her, the home line rang; it was Mr. Stargazer to tell me that he would be late from work. He actually has jobs! Unfortunately, there are three of them at the same time. I thought it was nice when he remarked that I sounded tired and asked if I was OK. Alison also texted me because she was concerned about why her dad was calling. It's weird that all of this made me feel better, but it did--maybe it was those small signs of caring and interest. The truth is that I have been  tired and a little depressed, so I've been having a pity party all week. By the way, our neighbors are also painting their house, and they have chosen THIS:

If you love lemon yellow with green trim, I'll have to offend you because I HATE IT. But it's not my house or my taste, which runs more to this...

It's hard to believe, but it's about 99% finished. And I still love it!

Monday, Monday...

It's FINISHED! Well, not quite. Obviously, the ladders remain in front of the house, there is still a mess, and Mr. Stargazer showed me one side of a trim piece where he's deciding between the blue/gray body or the cream trim. However, it looks *darned* good to me! Every time I pull up to my house, I feel a sense of pride and calm. (well, if he would only put away all the junk-I'm never satisfied, am I?)

Vegetarian (and vegan) pizzas and apple crisp with Older Daughter in Seattle were amazing. I very much appreciated the invitation and the time we spent chatting. Her apple crisp is better than my mother's! (shhhh!) I didn't much care for the traffic on the way up there, but as someone who drives 7 minutes on county roads to get to work, I'm horribly spoiled.

Don't you wish you had gotten invited to the homemade pizza fest? (yum!) But then today worked out to be a semi-rotten day. Bad attendance, sleepy kids and a boring plan, for which I have to blame myself. I love grammar though; why don't the students? :)

One thing leads to another

First of all, it gives a real sense of accomplishment to replace the toilet seats at your house with shiny, clean new ones. REALLY,  it's great, but when you're up close and personal with the toilet, you see all sorts of other *things* that need to be cleaned. And so it took a lot longer and was much harder than  I thought. As for photos, I'm not taking any because these are just basic white toilet seats, but make a huge improvement to the look of the toilets,all three of them. Who knew? As I was ready to head out the door for lunch with my parents, Mr. Stargazer decided(he's so random!) that it was a "perfect" time to do all the digital cable boxes. Thus, I stood on a chair, dangled a string behind the entertainment center, held a flashlight, ran up and downstairs, read the instruction manual, called Comcast to activate them, etc... ETC... while my stomach protested! I love him, but he tends to be a bit autocratic when HE wants a project finished. He helped get me started on my toilet seat project though, so I'm not complaining too much. (and thanks for the tools, honey!) Then, there's the house, NEARLY painted and just waiting on some decent weather. It's warm enough to finish the trim, but VERY, VERY wet and unpredictable right now. (thunder, sun, torrential downpours--like during my run yesterday,hail, sprinkles, wind...) The good news is that Older Daughter called to invite us me to homemade pizza in Seattle; the bad news is that Mr. Stargazer finally has some work and is too "busy" to go. He adores his children and is a wonderful, supportive dad, but can be a bit(?) obsessive when it comes to his job. He's been UN underemployed lately which I know worries him, plus he doesn't see things from the same perspective that I do. I lost two brothers who were very dear to me when I was young, so I value the MOMENT because I know how fragile life is. He has never experienced what I have, but lived on welfare as his mother struggled to support the family when his father deserted them. So, he is much more of a workaholic than I am, even though I work hard, and appears on the surface to be much less interested in spending time with his loved ones. (NOT TRUE) Anyway, I hope our girls understand him well enough to realize that there is nothing more important in his life than they are;he's so very proud of them. Now if he could only show it more!! As for Friday, it went better than Thursday, although I stayed late at school to try to finish all my tests(unsuccessfully); my two antagonists in 3rd period actually exchanged pleasantries after their test. I rushed over when I saw them talking, only to find out that they were laughing and chatting about her older sister. And we had a fabulous Fete Africaine (African party) in two of my classes, with amazing food... One of my students has a Senegalese friend of the family, so they prepared yassa poulet and thiebu djen! They were delicious. Plus, the friend helped deliver the food, so I got to speak French with her. I love being able to do that.

I leave you with this, my friends. Not every student wants to have a photo taken with me, but many do. And I treasure that! P.S. Yes, the young man in the back requested to be in the picture too, but then he got a little shy. :)

This week can't get over fast enough

If this is the way our five day weeks are going to work, I want to retire. TOMORROW. The students have been off task and chatty, plus a girl had a melt down when I did new seating charts yesterday. Didn't I know that she could NOT sit in the vicinity of a certain guy that she doesn't like? Her insistence that I needed to give her a new seat in spite of my pep talks about getting along with different people in school, in jobs, in life continued into today when she threatened that her parents were planning to come to school over it. REALLY? I put 170+ teenagers into new seats, many of whom probably weren't happy about it, but she was the only one to complain! So, I sent a CMA e-mail to her administrator and counselor, explaining that if I have to give her preferential seating (which I normally only do with medical issues or 504 plans) then I will want some conditions attached. Because in a class of 40, this is bad precedent to set--all a student has to do is make a big stink and she(or he) will get whatever seat she wants...because OF COURSE she's more important than those other 39 students. Can you tell that right now I hate my job and am not fond of this girl? It may not be professional, but I don't care. I'm also doing lots of testing which feels thankless. And I'm utterly tired of people, papers and road construction. Thanks for listening to my rant! :)

Bye bye weekend

I could get used to four day weekends, and all this *relaxation* will make a five day week full of testing seem VERY stressful. That must be why there are books, chocolate, coffee and beer in the world! I didn't accomplish nearly what I wanted to over my mini-vacation; my nails and hair could have used some attention. The back lawn desperately needs mowing, but I really couldn't have done so with all the chairs, ladders, tables etc... that are stored on it(blame the painting project). However, I DID manage to do many things and lots got done around the house. I dusted and vacuumed, mowed and winterized the front lawn, cheered on the painters (except when the helper broke my favorite sprinkler), had coffee with one friend and beer with another. I also, for the first time in a decade or so, waxed a car; it's my mother-in-law's old car(formerly my  parents' old car) and now that she doesn't drive, it's our "new" car. You  have to understand that this vehicle had not been driven since February and it had moss growing on it! (don't ask how much we paid to get it fixed!) In spite of all those repairs, the radio has a short and the air conditioning doesn't work, but the budget has stretched about as far as it's going to. Anyway, on to the photos:

Here's a side view with most of the trim done. (don't look at the window wraps though or around the front door) Every time I think it's getting close to finished, about 100 more items turn up.

Look at the trim around the garage door; isn't it cool? I asked Mr. Stargazer how hard it would be to make the wood bigger around the door, and he said it would be a little challenging. So, I told him to forget about it; he'd already done SO much work on the house. But I came home from school one day, and there it was. (and now it's painted, but only one coat) I LOVE IT!

Seriously, my neighbor was washing his mid-life crisis car red Porsche while I was waxing and detailing this 1984 Buick Century. Is that really fair? Waxing is a lot harder work than I realized when I started; I'll be sore tomorrow. I'm hoping that I'll be able to lift my arms, or someone will have to come over tomorrow morning at 6:30(yuck) to help me dress...any volunteers? :)