dueling TO-DOs

What I Want to Do During Winter Break:

1. Stare out the window at the snow for hours on end.
2. Wander around my neighborhood taking pictures of the snow.
3. Drink vats of tea with my best friends.
4. Watch every movie with a hint of Academy Award buzz.
5. Snuggle with my kids in blankets whenever we feel like it.
6. Go rollerskating with my family & best friends.
7. Read every magazine on my coffee table with serious intention.
8. Bake lots of yummy things.
9. Transform the spare room into something magically beautiful & useful.
10. Morph into the most organized woman/wife/mom/teacher known to humankind.

What I Ought to Do During Winter Break:

1. Send Christmas cards.
2. Develop concrete lesson plans for next quarter.
3. Oversee my children cleaning their rooms, corner to corner.
4. Help my man clean the garage (and by "help" I mean buy containers and label stuff).
5. Establish a meaningful menu/cooking system.
6. Commit to a regular cleaning schedule.
7. Visit with parents.
8. Fix broken ornaments before packing them back in the box after Christmas.
9. Read all of the professional books I brought home from my office.
10. Enjoy whatever comes my way.

What would Jake do?

thirteen blessings in a ridiculous half-week

I was Woman on the Verge this week, but I have successfully (read: sans criminal record/with teaching job) made it to Vacation Day #1! And there are many blessings that got me here relatively unscathed:

1. A best friend, whose Monday was comparably horrible, ready to share tea, tears, and stories right after school (Thanks, Jen!), plus all the great reader friends who propped me up, too
2. Enjoying a junior high orchestra concert (wherein some of the tunes sounded like the somber string quartet in Nightmare Before Christmas, yet it was just what the psychiatrist would have ordered)
3. Inspired poems by teenagers styled after "Stopping By the Woods On A Snowy Evening"
4. Witnessing the usually checked-out students in my speech class rising to participate in an assignment
5. Listening to the lovely (or at least earnest) voices of a local girls' choir singing carols
6. Watching my best friend's frequently squirrelly first grader sitting rapt during the choir performance
7. My 7-year old daughter coming down the stairs in her black velvet pants and black t-shirt (decorated with a heart made of bones) announcing "I feel like a shadow today."
8. My son calmly & coolly completing his Moon Base model after the initial "IDON'TKNOWHOWTOPUTONTHEFOIL!" freakout
9. Digging out the jeans I decorated with my faux-edgy quotes and pictures during my freshman year of college - and fitting into them! It's a CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!
10. Two classes (20+ kids each) totally excited about playing Taboo for the entire hour & a half periods
11. Receiving an official "Welcome to the school family" present from my principal (a stained glass star in our school colors; I will hang it in my office window with utter pride)
12. Cards, chocolates, cookies, and an ornament from students
13. The train & trestle my Advocacy class created from granola bars, pretzel sticks, marshmallows, frosting and gummi bears, complete with a jumper on the top bridge beam (Merry Morbid Christmas, everyone!)

Ah. Life is good.

Visit more Thursday Thirteen listers.

things to say while rocking back & forth

In the event I end up in a padded cell or, at the very least, on a street corner, here's what I'll be muttering about:

• those idiotic cash advance ads on the radio
• students who ask "what are we doing today?" while looking directly at the agenda i've written on the board
• moving dirty spoons, every morning, from the sink to the dishwasher
• Paris Hilton - why do people care? Why? Why??
• underwear tossed within an inch of the hamper, but not actually into the hamper
• people who say "irregardless" or "Nordstroms"
• unnecessary slowness in drivers, store clerks, shoppers
• using silly words for body parts
• jackets, jackets everywhere but not one on a hanger...

Surely there is much more, but this will occupy me for awhile...please do visit, and bring chocolate.