Kind of a Big Deal

This is my dad on his last day before retirement as our town's Recreation Director. He chose to go out in style, as you can see, by taking a ride down a slide he put in at the local pool. He had never ridden down the slide in all the many years it had been there. When it first went in, it was kind of a big deal. To me, he's kind of a big deal, too.

Tomorrow night I'll be leaving the West Coast on a jet plane and landing in Washington, DC early in the am on July 4. From there, my parents wil pick Mike and me up, and we will drive with them down to North Carolina for a much needed week at the beach with the family. This trip is also kind of a big deal because it's my dad's official retirement celebration, and it's one of the very few "real" family vacations my family has ever taken together.

(I know you probably stopped reading and for the last several minutes have been sitting in utter confusion wondering why in the world we would possibly choose to FLY to DC and DRIVE to NC when we could have simply FLOWN to NC to begin with. The answer to that is that would have made WAY too much sense. But, to be truthful, it was a lot cheaper to fly into DC, and saving $50 dollars here and there somehow becomes important when booking hundreds of dollars worth of plane tickets. $50 is not so very important when spending a day at the fair, going out to dinner, or taking a shopping trip to Target, but for some reason saving that $50 on my plane ticket was absolutely IMPERATIVE. And, truth be told, spending 7 hours in the car with my parents who I rarely get to see is not such a bad thing.)

Long story short. I'm leaving. On a jet plane. To the East Coast. And I won't be back for two weeks.

And, I am not at all together the way my wonderfully organized sister is, so I have not thought ahead enough to schedule anything to post over those two weeks. Not that it really matters, anyway, since 99% of my readership will be at the beach with me.

There are a couple things I am really looking forward to about this trip: *Giving my dad a hard time (I absolutely LOVE teasing my dad!), *Seeing my NEPHEW who literally ups his cuteness factor every single day by huge percentages, *Spending time with my pregnant sister, and *Possibly, just possibly, getting a smidgen of a suntan.. (which is NOT easy for me to do!)

Confused

You will probably consider me to be incredibly nerdy for this, but if you have watched the latest Transformers trailer, you have heard one of my new and absolutely favorite quotes.

"Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing."

I was just talking to a friend the other day about worry and how pointless it is. Because, the truth of the matter is that it's never the stuff you lie awake worrying about at night that happens. It's always the stuff that comes out of absolutely nowhere and spins your life upside down.

It's the stuff like the phone call on a random Wednesday evening telling you that your sister has been rushed to the hospital... they think it's lymphoma. Or the regular phone call from your mom with the not-so-regular news that she found a lump. Or your husband's car spinning out of control right in front of your eyes on the highway. Or even a man standing in the back of your garage one day and scaring the living shit out of you.

Do I need to go on?

I know that every single (3) of you reading this right now is nodding your head along with me. Right now you're running down the list of your own personal tragedies and how they blindsided you in the middle of a seemingly normal summer day, or winter night, or fall morning.

Why do we waste our time worrying about the "what ifs" when generally the things that really get you, are the things you could never have anticipated.

And while I'm taking the time to ponder some of life's great puzzlers, here's a doozy for you: Why do some people have so much trouble finding their life's happiness?

It's really not very fair. I think that's the only explanation... life isn't fair. As a junior high teacher I have to explain that to my students all the time. At that age, they think everything should be fair and equal... and sometimes... as terrible as it sounds.. things just aren't fair. But why is that?

Good question.

Anybody?

The Secret

I forgot to tell you something.

Remember this blog where I wrote about the amazing 75-year-old art teacher at my school? And where I also wrote about wanting to find out her secret to youthfulness?

Well, I finally broke down and asked her. Her response?

Exericse and Attitude.

So, my dear friends, get those bodies moving and start thinking positively.

Stalker

Yesterday I had an odd interruption to my perfect summer schedule.

I was in my car about to pull out of my garage (on my way to do a 5 mile walk around a lake) when I looked in my rearview mirror and there was a man standing in my garage! I am very easily frightened, so this little shocker literally sent my stomach to my throat. It scared the living SHIT out of me. I turned around to make sure I had seen correctly, and sure enough, there was a man in the back of my garage.

He waved, and made his way over to my window. I rolled it down, and what happened next was a jumble of fast talk on his part and confusion on mine.

These are the important things that came out of the conversation:

1. He claimed to live in the neighborhood (over there - he pointed in a general direction)
2. He claimed that his parents were the owners of a mexican restaurant in town
3. He claimed to know Mike and have spoken on a couple occasions

Because of these things, when he asked for a couple of dollars to pay for gas to go pick up his paycheck, I didn't think anything of giving him $5.

He promised to come to pay me back later after he cashed his check.

Things about the whole thing that had the hair on my back standing on end:
1. He was talking VERY VERY FAST and was not making sense at first. I had to clarify exactly what it was that he was asking for
2. As soon as I opened my garage door, and I was ready to pull out, there he was. What exactly was he doing standing by my garage? Or was it just really perfect timing on his part?
3. Besides asking for money, he apparently was scoping things out in my garage because he was asking about a computer that was in there and if my husband might sell it to him
4. He wanted to know what time my husband would be home that day so that he could pay back the money and talk to him about the computer
5. He skipped a beat when I told him what time Mike would probably be home. (I'll get back to this point later.)
6. He never showed up that evening to pay back the money and ask Mike about the computer despite his insistence that he would.

It's the very last point that made me nervous about the whole thing.

Mike is a very suspicious person, especially of men. I attribute this 60% to his Marine Corps training and 40% to his protectiveness of me. I figured when I told him this story that he would be VERY concerned about it. However, I also figured that when the guy came back to return the money, Mike would be able to scout out the situation himself and figure out if he felt the guy was legitimate or not. Unfortunately, the guy never showed up. So, all we are left to do is speculate about What the F$*K this dude was up to.

It wasn't until after he didn't show up that I let myself really register the *surprise the man had exhibited when I gave him a time for Mike's return that evening. Mike is convinced that the guy thought Mike was deployed which is why he was snooping around and asking so many questions about him.

I don't know. All I know is the whole thing really sucks because I have always felt 100% safe in my neighborhood, and currently, not so much.

Last night I even broke down and went to Mike's soccer game with him because I did NOT want to stay home alone.

We were joking with Mike's soccer teammates that I have a stalker. In my mind, though, that's 60% joke and 40% fear.

Let's just say I am 100% happy that this did NOT happen when Mike actually was deployed.

My Summer Schedule

1. Wake up
2. eat breakfast
3. exercise
4. surf the internet
5. wash the dishes/do laundry/tidy up the house
6. read a good book on the patio
7. surf the internet
8. prepare dinner
9. Hubby's home!
10. Enjoy our evening together

This schedule = AWESOME.

Summer

Lately I've been thinking that the world would be a much better place if more restaurants provided their customers with after-dinner mints. You have no idea how excited I get when I go to a restaurant and find out that they have them. Usually this results in Mike taking a gigantic handful of them for me. This may possibly be part of the reason why many restaurants do NOT give after-dinner mints. I will choose not to believe that, though.

Today I gave up a chance to go to Australia so that I can visit my family instead. Mike had a random opportunity to go to Australia for work for three weeks. He was going to take me with him. Unfortunately, this just so happened to fall on the exact couple of weeks that I was supposed to be visiting family. He's not going, and neither am I. I'd much rather see my family, anyway. :)

I LOVE LOVE LOVE that my siberian husky has been spending countless hours outside laying on our patio basking in the sunlight lately. It just goes to show all those people who gasped in disbelief when we told them we got a husky. "A Husky?" they said, "in FLORIDA?!" (Note: Florida is where we lived when we got him) You know what's funny - not funny "haha", but funny "interesting" - is that labrador retrievers ALSO have two thick coats of fur and ALSO are meant to live in cold weather, but you never hear anyone saying, "You have a LAB? In FLORIDA?"

Mike and I recently became obsessed with the HBO series True Blood. It's actually pretty funny (haha) how many ideas the series ripped off of Twilight. But, for those people who were/are as obsessed with the Twilight series as us, it's a GREAT vampire fix. It's rated R to Twilight's PG. It's definitely for adults, so parents of teeny-boppers beware.

Other than all that, the only other major update I have is that I am just abso-posi-tively LOVING my summer vacation.

You Never Know

If you have read much of my blog, you know that something I am incredibly guilty of is complaining about my job as a teacher. It is often very hard to deal with the attitudes of junior high students. It's very easy to get frustrated and to think you're a failure as a teacher. I have my gripes with the school that I am at, the teaching staff and the administration. But, the one thing that really, truly makes my time worthwhile there are the relationships I form with the students.

There are a couple students who graduated last year who email me every now and then and let me know how high school is going for them. And, many former students stop in to see me pretty regularly just to say hi and to tell me about the "A" they got in English class or their victory on the soccer field. I feel so honored and blessed to be part of these students' lives, still, even after they have graduated.

My first year teaching, when I was the 7th grade homeroom teacher, I worked my butt off to help an especially troubled student, Gabriel. I thought I had made a breakthrough with him, and then the end of the year rolled around, and he ended up getting suspended the 2nd to last day of school because of a situation that occurred in my classroom. He didn't come back to the school the next year. I was worried about how he would fare in the public school system, and truly I felt like I had failed him.

His grandfather worked at the school though, so he came on campus every now and then with his grandfather that year, and those times he was there he was very rude and disrespectful to me. Again, I thought I had failed him, miserably. I was very upset about it.

And then this year arrived, and one day Gabriel was on campus again. He came to talk to me after school. He told me he had gotten caught with marijuana; he was in danger of being expelled. He was on campus with his grandfather for an entire week, and he stopped in to see me every single day, just to talk. Then one day he wasn't there anymore. But, his grandfather stopped me and thanked me for taking the time to talk to and spend with his grandson that week. He said it had meant a lot to Gabriel.

Gabriel didn't end up getting expelled. The high school gave him a second chance.

Today, I went to school to tie up the loose ends there, and Gabriel showed up at my door about 5 minutes after I got there. He wanted to tell me about the good grades he was getting, and how he has turned things around at school. He's staying out of trouble. He's really proud of himself he said, and so is his mom. He also came to ask me if he could borrow that book I had told him about...

I am so very proud of Gabriel, too.

And then there is Victor. Victor was the sweet, adorable 6th and 7th grader who turned into the angry, in-trouble-all-the-time, failing classes 8th grader. He thought I was out to get him. He thought I hated him. I tried so hard to get the message across to him that I cared about him and wanted the best for him. I didn't think I ever got that message across.

Until graduation morning.

The 7th graders put on a breakfast for the graduating 8th graders in which they each gave a speech about their 8th grader. They had interviewed their 8th grader beforehand, to find out information about them.

Victor was the very last person to have a speech given about him. And the very last line of that very last speech went something like this... "Victor is going to miss all the teachers at ASM.... especially Mrs. (Sorry)."

I was completely and totally shocked. There are many students who I wouldn't be the least bit surprised might say something like that... but Victor? It made my day. Literally. I looked at the other teachers and said, "I'm so happy to hear that, but so incredibly shocked."

"You never know," one of the teachers said.

I think about that now, because it's so very true.

You never know.