Happy Days are Here Again!

I left school today exhausted and feeling rather sick. The flu I had been fighting a few weeks ago, it seems, had never entirely gone away and came back this week with a vengeance.

It has been a rough week with lots of sadness, sickness, exhaustion, and work, work, work.

But, all of that was forgotten when I got home today and plopped down in front of my computer.

There it was... the email I had been waiting for from my Key Volunteer with the official date and time of Hubby's return from Iraq!!!!

While, of course, I cannot divulge this top secret information on my blog for all (three) of you to see, I can tell you that I am currently in a state of excited shock as to how soon my husband will be back in my day-to-day life.

I can't really explain the feelings that are bubbling up inside of me right now.. anxiousness, excitement, joy, anticipation.. all accompanied by a teeny tiny bit of nervousness.

I am still pretty much in a state of shock, so I will leave this post at that. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we prepare for our reunion. :)

Sad

The father of one of my students died last week. It was sudden and unexpected and incredibly tragic. He was 40 something. All I knew was that he had been alive the night before and never woke up the next morning. I assumed heart attack.

Today was the funeral. Due to the crowd, I ended up in the front of the church, to the side of the altar, where the choir used to sit to perform. In my perfect line of vision was the mourning family, including the 7th grade young man who is my student. I tried not to look at them; because their grief was almost too much for me to bear.

After the funeral I found out that this man had committed suicide. It knocked the breath out of me.

At the end of the day I was conducting meetings with my 8th grade students. It's something I'm doing to better reach each student and to find out where he or she is coming from. We just talk about how they feel about school, parents, extra-curricular activities, what they like to do with their time.. etc. So far, it's been great. Today my meeting was with a boy who has very obviously been having some emotional problems. We were talking about this, and he told me that he has been contemplating suicide.

My heart broke.

On my drive home I just kept thinking of the sadness of my two students.

This was a sad day.

But,

maybe now I know why I am a teacher. I hope I can help my students. I know I can at the very least try my best.

Words

I have two stories to share today, one good one bad. I'll start with the bad and end on a positive note.

I have a few boys in my class who I have identified as having a particularly difficult time with the emotions of being a teenaged boy. These boys have difficult home lives, and in my opinion, really just need some encouragement and for someone to believe in them. With this in mind, this morning when tasked to choose 3 of my students to miss class and help the 3rd grade teacher blow up balloons for a party, I looked past the hands of the usual "responsible" kids and chose 3 of these boys to help. They left the room with big smiles on their faces, excited to have been chosen.

A few minutes later, one of the boys came back with tears in his eyes and angrily slumped down in his desk. I asked him if he got in trouble and he said no, he didn't.. but that the principal just hates him. A minute later, the principal showed up at the door and asked to see me outside. She told me that I shouldn't have chosen those particular 3 boys to blow up the balloons because I needed to choose students who could easily catch up with the work that was missed. And, she also told me that she thought they just wanted to get out of class to goof around.

They hadn't actually gotten into any trouble. She had just decided that they were not worthy of the privilege of missing 15 minutes of class to blow up balloons. A minute later, the next two boys came back to the classroom looking just as angry and dejected as the first. One of the boys commented that the principal thinks they're too stupid to miss class.

I wanted to cry for them. How could a person who has been working with teenagers for as many years as my principal be so misguided in her interactions with them? Sure, they may have missed out on 15 minutes of instruction had they stayed and continued blowing up the balloons. But, being sent back to class for no better reason than that the principal did not deem them worthy was more damaging than missing 15 minutes of class could ever have been.

I was trying to empower them, and she squashed whatever shred of self-worth they had.

:(

I did promise you a positive story, though, so here it is:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/29158145#29158145

Follow that link and you will find a heartwarming story about one of the marines deployed with Hubby. It made me cry - in a good way.

These two stories remind me of a quote I once heard, "Words can hurt or heal. What did yours do today?"

Never Take a Shower Without Your Cell Phone

You're probably familiar with the book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It's been a while since I've read it, but I'm pretty sure it's about this little boy who is going on and on about his awful day, and when you get to the end of the book you realize that he hasn't even gotten out of bed yet.

Well, Alexander, I can relate.

I've said it before, but today really was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. And, it really was horrible from the very instant I woke up.

Allow me to explain. This past week, I had been suffering from a communication drought with Hubby. It had been 6 days since I had heard from him... and when I say "heard" from him I mean it had been 6 days since I had even received a one line email from him let alone actually spoken to him over the phone. (I'm pretty sure that last time that happened was right before this post where I bitched about being woken up in the middle of the night and losing my precious sleep. Oh, how I eat my words today.)

Moving on.

As you can imagine, I'm sure, I was literally about to lose my mind. Every day I woke up and optimistically told myself this would be the day when Hubby would finally have email access again. Every day I went to bed disappointed. So, you can imagine my great excitement when I finally received a short email from Hubby on Sunday along with a promise of a phone call "that night".

"That night" could mean many different things. It could mean "that night" for Hubby which would mean "that DAY" for me. Or, it could mean "that night" for me, which would actually be the next morning for Hubby. What he meant by "that night" I still can't be quite sure, because due to the discrepancy of meaning in "that night" I hovered around my cell phone religiously for the entire day yesterday and jumped with anticipation each time it rang.

It was never him.

Instead of calling "that night" he called "the next afternoon" for him and around 6:15 am for me. 6:15 am.. part of the short 20 minute period in the past 24 hours where I was in the shower and NOT within hearing distance of my cell phone.

I want you to take a moment and imagine this scenerio. It's Monday morning.. a still-groggy-from-sleep Sarah turns off the shower and opens the shower curtain only to hear the "ding" which indicates she has just missed (by only a few moments!) a voicemail. Now, I would like you to further imagine her stomach dropping to her feet as she realizes with 100% certainty that the message on her phone is from her husband. The very one she had been jumping at the bit to speak to for the past week.

Now, do you see why I say that I can relate to good old Alexander? This day was truly a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

The moral to this story: never take a shower without your cell phone.

Or, as my more practical sister said, "That's it - no more showers!"

Shedding, Shedding, Everywhere

I am convinced that my siberian husky has a keen sense of awareness that there is change in the air at my house. Hubby will be back from Iraq in about a month, and this shift in the household environment, I believe, is affecting my dog.

Let me backtrack a few steps. Hubby returned from his first deployment to Iraq in November of 2007. Right before his return, my husky went berserk in more ways than one. One day I came home from work to find that he had dug through my couch. Even though I wasn't mourning the loss of my couch - it gave me a good excuse to buy a new one as I had been wanting to do for a LONG time - I was very concerned about the development of this suddenly destructive behavior. That was also the time when my husky began to shed....

Siberian Huskies are known to completely shed their coat twice a year. The only upside to this is that the rest of the year, their shedding is suppoesd to be minimal to none. I had owned my siberian husky for 2 and a half years at that point and had NEVER experienced a shedding like he accomplished that month. It. Was. Horrendous. There was hair everywhere, and I was physically unable to keep up with it.

I figured it was just his natural "shedding" time, though, and never made a connection with the impending change in our lives.

Remembering the ultimate shed of Nov. 2007, this November I braced myself for impact. But..... nothing happened. I wiped the sweat off my brow, acknowledged to myself that I had dodged a bullet, and moved on with my life.

Fast forward to February 2009 - current day. I am once again up to my eyeballs in fur. I vacuum one day only to find hairballs floating through the air an hour later. I wash my bedspread only to find it COVERED in hair the moment my husky lays down on it. I spend HOURS brushing my husky and giving him baths.. but the hair is neverending.

All I can think is, WHY NOW? How odd that this is happening once again on the eve of Hubby's return from deployment. Is it possible that my husky does not shed in response to change in the weather, but rather, in response to major changes in his home atmosphere?

It sure looks that way.

But, mark my words, I love my new couch and will not be held responsible for my actions if it becomes my husky's next victim...

This week at school everyone was sick. In one of my classes the chorus of coughing students caused me to change my lesson plans so that the students just worked quietly at their desks. If I had tried to teach any kind of lesson, I was convinced that the students wouldn't have been able to hear me over the sound of coughing. It was that bad. I also had two students leave my class in one days to throw up. At one point, I got out a surgical mask, (that my 8th graders all have in their things for science labs) put it over my face, and walked around the room giving each of my students a squirt of hand sanitizer. I was desperate.

But do you think that kept me from catching that awful bug that was going around? Of course not. I think I knew after hearing the very first cough that I would be its next victim. About halfway through my day yesterday, I found myself feeling disoriented, achy, and requiring multiple layers of clothing. My students told me it wasn't cold enough in the classroom for me to be wearing my shirt that I came in with, a sweater, and a jacket. I told them that I must be getting sick.

My 40 minute ride home yesterday evening was completely miserable. The only saving grace to that was my heated seats which thoroughly soothed my aching back. Now, here I am wasting a perfectly good Saturday away lying on my couch and taking naps with a few short trips to the computer... only to head back to the couch for another nap.

Don't get me wrong. I love being lazy on Saturdays... I would just prefer not to have a pounding headache, burning throat, and aching body.

But, I figure if I was going to get sick this is really the best time. It hit me at the end of the week so I can (hopefully) kick this before Monday, and because I am sick now I hopefully will be healthy as a horse for my mother's visit next weekend.. and of course Hubby's return from Iraq.

Speaking of Hubby's return.. I finally found out a date. It's not set in stone, of course, until 10 days before the return, but it's nice to have a frame of reference. It's later than I thought it would be.. but what's another week or two?

As long as I can keep myself as positive as possible, this last month is sure to fly by. That's my plan! :)

25 Things about Me (New and Improved)

If you have a facebook account, you're probably well aware of the 25 Random Things About Me phenomenon going on over there. I jumped on that bandwagon rather early and have (true to my nature) since then wished I'd waited a little bit. Because, after reading everyone else's 25 things.. I've thought of some additions. They are as follows...

1. I am a recovering chapstick addict. There was a time when I would actually break into a sweaty panic if I realized I had left home without my chapstick.
2. Due to anxiety, I didn't get my driver's license until I was 19. I didn't drive on the highway (alone) until I was 20. Yet, I drove from FL to PA alone when I was 23.
3. My brother and I used to play a game where we would lock each other out of our house, and we'd have to find a way to get back in. One time I locked him out of the house when we weren't playing the game; he found his way inside that time by kicking the door down.
4. My sister once slapped me in the face with her jeans at the dinner table. She also once convinced me that my barbies came alive at night and murdered people.
5. I love my brother and sister more than you will ever know.
6. It's really easy for me to forgive and forget. This is not always a positive thing.
7. I write and eat with my left hand but do everything else with my right.
8. People often confide in me... sometimes people I don't know very well. I, on the other hand, confide in very few people. Even if you think you're one of my best friends, I probably don't tell you too much about what I'm feeling.
9. For some reason, though, I'm comfortable writing the majority of my feelings on the world wide web for all to see.
10. This might sound really stupid, but I think that part of the reason why I have so much indecision about my career life is because in the long run I know that my true happiness comes from my family. Therefore, I believe that my job is what I'm doing temporarily until I'm ready to start my own family with my husband.
11. I know that I have led an extremely blessed life. Because of this, I am constantly waiting for something really horrible to happen.
12. When my husband is deployed, I regularly go over the scenerio of his death in my mind. I imagine exactly how I would respond and what I would do. I thought I was crazy until I read other military wife blogs and found out this is completely normal; it's called anticipatory grief.
13. Despite #'s 11& 12, I am actually an extremely happy person 99% of the time.
14. One thing that I feel certain every single one of my students would say about me is that I love to joke around with them.
15. I enjoy being alone and have spent entire weekends at home by myself.. completely content.
16. My dad and I share affection by teasing each other. (See #14 and make the connection)
17. My dad is also the only father I knew growing up who went grocery shopping, packed his kids' lunches, made dinners, washed dishes, did laundry. My dad also always made it very clear to me that he trusted me to make good choices for myself. My friends were (are) all so jealous of me for having such an amazing dad.
18. I obsess over food. I absolutely have to know what I'm going to eat and when. For example: I already know what I will be eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner tomorrow.
19. I drastically change my hair color on a regular basis but have (basically) had the same hair style since 6th grade.
20. My brother calls my husband and me Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. I actually agree that this is a fairly accurate description of us together.
21. I HATE: bowling, playing pool, skiing, and go-carting. I can attribute each of those activities to a traumatic experience in my life.
22. I journaled pretty much every day from 3rd grade until my freshman year in college. Because of this, I have an extraordinarily amazing memory of my yester-years. I often go back and read my journals and never cease to find them entertaining.
23. When I was in 8th grade I fully believed that my mission in life was to be a spiritual advisor to death row inmates. Somehow, reality and being a teenager got in the way of my dream.
24. The worst arguments I've ever had were with my mother... I'm talking all out screaming/crying battles of will.
25. I really do not think I have the ability to adequately describe in words how much my mother means to me. When she had breast cancer I never believed anything other than that she would be healthy again - I couldn't believe anything other than that.