I didn’t have a drop of caffeine until 3:38 in the afternoon. I have no idea how I not only survived today, but, at times, thrived. Maybe it was the unexpected puppy.
Pardon the hiatus. Here’s some quick thoughts.
* I love teaching so far. Although, sometimes I think the teaching I do is akin to the surgery the folks on M*A*S*H* did. I do what I can, how I can, when I can and hope for the best.
* Sports no longer enthrall me. Sure, I want the Bears to do well. And I’ll watch a Brewers game on the tube. But, I’m not following anyone with any real passion. Heck, I might not even play fantasy baseball this summer.
* We have a sweet new pad. With washer and dryer. With two bathrooms. With insulation. It’s pretty sweet, like I just said.
* I’m not 100 percent sold on online grad school. I like being a grad student. Everything is simple — the readings are downloadable, the discussion board is lively, the assignments are challenging. I can’t put my finger on what’s missing. Maybe nothing is? And, in the end, nothing will be if I get the master’s.
* I have a cold and I’m tired. The cold should be gone in a few days. The tired will probably stick around until the end of May,
Just got accepted into grad school for a M.Ed, pending my eventual passing of the GRE.
So I had my first desk tipping incident today. Luckily, that’s where it ended. I knew this day would come. Everyone stayed calm and everything go back to normal. I even got the desk flipper to talk about what X-Box games he would play this weekend less than 15 minutes after the flip.
Apparently being a school teacher means all of your free time goes swirling into some vortex, never to be seen again.
I absolutely love what I’m doing right now, although it scares me that I’m getting my 98 percent on instinct and 2 percent on knowledge/know-how. Obviously, that ratio should change in time. For now, however, I think I’ve been a bit too fortunate in a lot of regards.
Some of those regards: no fights, no weapons, no angry parents yelling at me, no potty accidents.
Sure, I’ve been threatened with a hypothetical chainsaw, but I just don’t find the six-year-old’s threats credible at this point.
I haven’t Tumblred in more than a month. And what a month!
Started teaching. Got sick twice (cold and headache). Wife started a new job. Got a big new TV and a Wii to play.
It’s Sunday afternoon. I wasted all Saturday watching TV and feeling sick with a head cold. That means today is all about trying to figure out how I’m going to keep control of/teach my tiny, yet energetic, class this coming week.
Really I need to just steal the stuff from the 2nd grade team. They work together to plan. I’m supposed to be teaching the same stuff. No reason to reinvent the wheel. Unless, of course, that wheel is the textbook, which I don’t have yet.
Back to work…
Just finished up the two-week swim lesson. Most of the second week was just me swimming back and forth, instead of getting instruction. I mastered the crawl and breaststroke pretty quickly and others in the class were still learning to go under water.
All that means that I got plenty of exercise this week. Swimming seems to be magic. I took off around three pounds this week. And, now, my body wants to swim every day. It isn’t going to get that, but the whole swimming for fitness thing seems sustainable.
My first Red Cross adult swim lesson last night was a slight disappointment. Let’s just say it started slow, with instruction in dunking under the water and blowing bubbles.
That’s OK. It was cool to get into a pool again. And I did some short, awful, laps with my lousy crawl stroke afterward.
Even though I still don’t really know what I’m doing when I’m swimming, I have high hopes I’ll learn and like it. I’ll never be a runner because of my legs (two previouslu broken ankles, numerous sprains, two knees that suffer from water on the knee and two feet with high and painful arches). Houston just isn’t a cycling town or a cross-country skiing town. And the skiing and cycling machines at the gym are a failed substitute for the actual thing.
That leaves swimming as a possible, quasi-daily exercise activity that won’t leave me injured or in the poorhouse (like rowing, yoga or other activities might).
So, I’ll keep learning and force myself to be a swimmer, because, Lord knows, I need regular exercise.
