i am pilfering off somebody else's wireless connection right now in our new home.
the weekend has been spent hot and dirty and moving, moving, moving. it is truly an exhausting process that seems to have no end in sight. you think it is "done", but it is never even close.
saturday night, around 10, we realized we had forgotten coffee and were forced to go to the dreaded starbucks (every suburb has plenty, fyi). this is where i discovered the new suburban practice- you do not have to sign for credit card purchases anymore. when did this happen and why? it's happened twice to me since moving. exhaustion was rampant last night- bone-aching, confusing exhaustion that had me delirious. however, i was forced to forage ahead to one of the endless malls here in town and spend much time looking for random items at target. we then visited our local coldstone creamery, which i had never been to before. they sing there. when they are given a tip, they have some sort of coldstone thank you song that is just embarrasing to witness.
bella has not adjusted quite as well to the move. everytime we've left her alone, she has destroyed something. yesterday, it was all of our dirty clothes, including my favorite pair of comfy pants and a pair of sevens jeans. we are considering drugging her in our absences. no, i'm not kidding.
tomorrow is back to school. 9 more days.

i am pilfering off somebody else's wireless connection right now in our new home.
the weekend has been spent hot and dirty and moving, moving, moving. it is truly an exhausting process that seems to have no end in sight. you think it is "done", but it is never even close.
saturday night, around 10, we realized we had forgotten coffee and were forced to go to the dreaded starbucks (every suburb has plenty, fyi). this is where i discovered the new suburban practice- you do not have to sign for credit card purchases anymore. when did this happen and why? it's happened twice to me since moving. exhaustion was rampant last night- bone-aching, confusing exhaustion that had me delirious. however, i was forced to forage ahead to one of the endless malls here in town and spend much time looking for random items at target. we then visited our local coldstone creamery, which i had never been to before. they sing there. when they are given a tip, they have some sort of coldstone thank you song that is just embarrasing to witness.
bella has not adjusted quite as well to the move. everytime we've left her alone, she has destroyed something. yesterday, it was all of our dirty clothes, including my favorite pair of comfy pants and a pair of sevens jeans. we are considering drugging her in our absences. no, i'm not kidding.
tomorrow is back to school. 9 more days.

dear readers,
it may be hard to reach me for a bit, as we are moving in the morning and will have no phone, no dsl, and no cable for a few days. whatever will we do? i'm sure there will be the unloading of many boxes, the adjustment to suburban life, the jaunts to purchase misc. household items, the searching for the off-leash dog parks. but i will be back, hopefully in time for my birthday, which is in... um, 5 days.
xoxo

sometimes i forget what an amazing city i live in (at least for another 3 days). i was getting off the phone with my mom tonight, and said "i just need to crawl in bed with my mexican chocolate ice cream". damm, i'm spoiled.

i will not get into the details of my school day today, but let's just say it involved me getting pushed by a student, and an innordinate amount of yelling. i vacillate between wanting to be perfectly honest in my blog about my feelings and then fearful that i will be found out, tied up, and never allowed around children again.
anyway, let's just say my day was not-so-good, but that i decided to turn it around with my 4th period class by greeting all those boys with the offer of 'free hugs'. most of them declined, but one came back for a second. my students are supposed to have 'learning disabilities', but quite frankly, they are like a group of abused and abandoned puppies. i may get into this subject more over the summer, when i have more time to think about it. i wish i could have just spent the year healing their little souls, but i had to teach them about complex sentences- which they STILL don't get.

i like to pretend, when belle is all cuddled up to me, staring at me with her big brown eyes, that her love for me is limitless. but, sadly, i know it's only because she wants to lick the bowl of ice cream i'm eating.

i honestly do not think i can go on one more day. the mere prospect of facing my students tomorrow makes me want to bury my head under the blankets for the next three weeks, or throw myself in front of a moving vehicle, whichever is easier.
i had no idea i would feel this much frustration at the end of the year. i expected it at the beginning- at the beginning there was still hope, and ideals, and energy. now there is nothing but expaseration, frustration, and rage. i'm sick of being called a fucking bitch. i'm sick of students who tap their goddamn pencils ALL PERIOD LONG. i'm sick of them only doing the most basic work. i'm sick of being in a closet with boys. i'm sick of helping them, and being nice to them, and forgiving them. i know this all sounds terribly harsh, but i am at the end of my teaching rope. i want this year over. i want a break and a fresh start and some freakin quiet time. i want to be able to give a little to the people who actually love me back, instead of being so unbearably wiped out by the end of the day that i can barely read a book. right now, i would tell anybody that they should NEVER, NEVER even consider becoming a teacher. it is evil.

last night i was reminded again that laughing with girlfriends really makes everything ok.

tomorrow my little (6'2", 190 lb.) brother turns 26. which seems impossible, because i think i'm still 26. but i'm....not.
he had a tough 25- lost both grandparents and got rejected from 18 different police departments for jobs. one would think he would give up, but one would be... wrong. he's spending his 26th birthday at the funeral of one of his students who died suddenly last week on the basketball court of an enlarged heart. my brother has changed a lot this year- he's given up his lifelong ideals, that i thought were merely an act of rebellion against me anyway, and become a liberal. there is a god, and i know she loves me solely based on this. of course, it's hard to be pro-bush, even if you are a republican. he's also given up fast food, which his diet used to consist of SOLELY. when he would come to visit, we had three choices of food, since i refused to eat fast food. pizza, hamburgers or burritos. the boy eats sushi now. get down!
anyhoo, this had me reminiscing with him about my own 25th year, which compared only to 13. the two worst years of my life, without question. 13 needs no explanation, as everyone i know had the worst 13th year. 25, however, was horrific in it's own special way. i got involved in a relationship that was one of the most self-destructive situations i've ever been in. i developed severe adult acne and dropped a good 15 lbs. of my already-too-thin 135. everything i had been fighting to ignore or deny all my life came up and bit me in the ass, HARD. three of my closest girlfriends lost fathers that year to cancer, and i was there with one of them during the last days. all around me were grief and angst for an entire year. i couldn't put the pieces together, i couldn't find hope, i couldn't see beyond pain. it was an ugly, ugly time that i truly thought would never end. but you know what? it did. and out of it came much deeper friendships, a lot of laughter through a lot more tears, and a groundedness i never possessed before. 25, like 13, ended, and i still stood, albeit wobbly at times. last night, i went to visit one of the friends who lost her father that year at the cancer center. she has melanoma, and was in for a biopsy to see if it's spread. if i stop to think about it too much, i will start hitting things hard, so i just brought some chocolate ice cream and the knowledge that things will be ok. which i just know they will, because now i am a person with hope. which, at 25, i don't think i was.
so austin (you, dear blog readers, might have seen my little brother on one of MANY dating shows), here's hoping your 26 turns out better than 25. tonight i will fall asleep with a wee bit of hope, and i hope you do too.

today i was not called a 'fucking bitch' OR a 'fucking liar', but merely a 'bitch'.
i'll go ahead and call it a good day.

i just realized i should not be calling the lovely beau 'the lovely beau' anymore on this blog, as he is in fact my fiance, at least for another five weeks before he becomes my (gasp) husband.
suggestions on new incognito nicknames for him? the lovely fiance and the lovely husband just do not have the right ring.

i have been in a bad mood lately. like a really bad mood. like for four days.
i'm driving myself and the lovely beau crazy with it. but i cannot shake it no matter what i do. it's like this feeling down right between my chest and my throat, telling me to cry, cry, cry, but nothing sad is on oprah today and i just can't get it out otherwise.
this bad mood is not caused by any one thing that i can put my finger on- it's a million things happening at the same time. it's frustration with the fact that the school year is coming to an end and i feel like my students haven't learned a thing. it's moving out of this city i love, that feels like home, in two weeks. it's having to pack boxes. it's trying to plan a wedding in six weeks. it's feeling generally run-down and exhausted all the time. it's being called a fucking liar by a student. it's the fact that the dog ate two cd's today- two really good cd's. it's constantly, constantly being called ms. brown and having to explain things 100 times. it's the fact that i hate all my clothes. it's that i'm breaking out like a freaking 14-year old.
it's basically all these little things adding up to ME-ABOUT-TO-EXPLODE. until i have something even slightly amusing to report, please bear with me.

what do you think of the new look? more suburban and wifely, to match my new life?
i finally finished this book, which has been keeping me up nights for the last week. keeping me up waaaaay too late. today the only reason i got up was because i knew i could take a nap after school. that "nap" turned into 4 hours of full REM sleep. i rose at 8:00, confused and ill. sometimes naps do bad things.
i felt awful this morning- sick and nauseous and exhausted. i stopped by the bakery that is close to my school to get treats for my students because 1) they finished horrible testing and 2) they got a positive note from yesterday's sub. at the bakery, i ran into two of my students, who were so excited to see me and i got greeted with all sorts of "ms. brown's!!"
it totally pulled me out of my funk and made me smile and keep on keeping on, until 3:00 today, when i chased alleged gang-members off school grounds. they hopped the fence and i decided 'nah, i'm not going there.'

your best friend
when you ask her what she wants for her birthday, she says the purse you loaned her. and even though you love the purse, you say of course.

fuck all other reality tv shows. this one takes the cake!

sorry in advance, anthony, for all the health complaints.


this weekend was not exactly a weekend. i spent friday night and saturday at a conference for stressed-out students. they were not exactly addressing the issues of my students, but rather students who are so overwhelmed with getting straight A's, taking all a.p. classes, and involved in so many extracurricular activities. hmmm, not what our students deal with, but it was interesting to hear about, in case i ever dream of working with high-income, high-test score students.
the lovely beau is suffering from mrsa, and now i have some weird skin problem, so we're just a barrel of laughs around here.
but we are dog-sitting tonight, and this picture should make anyone smile.

in the next 6 weeks, i will-
1. finish my first year of teaching
2. move to the suburbs (yay- we got a place! an adorable little cottage with a big garage and a front yard. we are going to need a lawnmower, for the love of god. a lawnmower.
3. turn 29
4. get married

i'm feeling calm now, but i'm seeing a nervous breakdown in the not-so-distant future. aren't you?

yesterday, while visiting my hometown, i was stopped in a restaurant by my childhood best friend and neighbor, who i haven't seen in about 15 years.
she hugged me the entire 20 minutes we spoke and immediately asked if i still cried alot and if i still scream as i cry. i said no and asked if she was able to spend the night away from home now, remembering many tears and midnight runs by her mom from her house to ours to pick her up, hysterical.

isn't it funny what people remember about you?

further evidence that i am going to be a low-maintenance bride:
i bought the first dress i tried on for the wedding. we were in & out of the store in 15 minutes.

one of my students told me today that he got drunk for the first time this weekend. i gave him the perfunctory "your dad is an alcoholic" talk, and then told him that at some point he would get sick enough from alcohol to curb his drinking (at least this is my hope). he asked if i had ever (gasp!) gotten drunk and i replied that of course i had. his response was a look of shock and then he said "i didn't know geeks drank".
i don't recall when i was a student classifying my teachers like that- they were all just teachers.