Slice of Life Day 5: The Pressure of Sleeping In

We have yet another snow day today, though I must say I'm grateful because I have things to do around the house.

With a snow day comes the prospect of sleeping in. Last night I was telling Tim how tired I was and his response was "you can sleep as late as you want tomorrow."

NOPE! Clearly that did not happen, because here I am wide awake at 6:30. Now granted I do usually wake up at about 5:30 so that is a whole extra hour of sleep, but still not exactly the 9 or 10 o'clock wake up I was hoping for.

I think the pressure of sleeping in is getting to me with all these snow days.

I go to sleep with all this excitement because I know as you turn off my alarm, "Haha alarm I don't need you tomorrow I'm going to sleep ALL day!" I even stay up a little later watching TV (House of Cards!!) or reading because I know, "Psh I can make up for it tomorrow because I can sleep 'till NOON!"

And of course after making that proclamation of sleeping 'till noon my internal alarm clock has a little laugh of it's own, "HAHA, yeah right! Noon?!? Nope not gonna happen, I'll give you an extra hour of sleep then I'll kick in. Muahaha! You've been messing with my schedule with all these snow days so I'm going to get you back!!" (Apparently, my internal alarm clock is quite vindictive)

Then when I wake up early I of course have the internal battle of do I get up and start being productive, OR do I lay here wiling myself to go back to sleep? While I love being productive, I do also LOVE my bed so usually the later wins. So I lay here, and lay here, and lay here, until finally.....I usually fall back asleep at like 730 or 8.

BUT that is the time the dog wants to get up, or my fiance is awake and making noise.

So here I am at now 6:41 on a snow day wide awake writing a blog post. At least I can be productive from bed (take that internal alarm clock).

Enjoy your day everyone, I'm going to go back to willing myself back to sleep!

Slice of Life Day 4: Proud Teacher Moment

I had a proud teacher moment today.

The school I teach at is on a block schedule. For the past two weeks or so most of our snow days have been falling on B-days. Needless to say my kids are severely behind. I FINALLY got a chance to see them today, and with the threat of more snow (thanks Mother Nature) I am wiling to bet I will not see them again this week. On top of all of that we had a reverse schedule because of SOL testing. This means that I was seeing kids at a different time then I usually see them, and they were extremely out of routine.

When I came in this morning I was determined to make sure that they got caught up with my A-day kids. My B-day classes just happen to be my classes with some of my less motivated students in them. I was a little worried about trying to push through so much material (many wrapping up writing assignments and then introducing our next unit).

But then my students surprised me. ALL of my classes got caught up with their A-day counterparts. I was so proud and impressed by my students. I even had kids who it is is usually torture to get to write finishing writing assignments without me having to stand over their shoulders. I could not have been more proud of my kids.

I made sure to tell them that too. I told each and every class who proud I was and how awesome it was that they powered through so much work.

So as much as I may complain about work sometimes I had a day that reminded me how awesome my students are, and how proud they can make me. It was so great to have that reminder today.

And the control freak side of me feels satisfied to know that all of my classes are in the same place now. I can go into our impending snow days happy and with a little bit more grading to do now that they all have their worked turned in.

Slice of Life Day 3: Written Memories

I must confess I am a hoarder. Not in the "I need TLC to come save me" sort of way but in the "I hold on to way too must stuff" sort of way. I hold on to EVERYTHING. This means emails too. Not the junky emails with coupons that expire or reminders to pay my bills (I'll gladly delete those and pretend that doesn't exist), but emails from my friends and family.

I started my day off at work with an email from my mom telling me and my Maid of Honor about a dream my mom had about my bridal shower. Apparently in the dream my MOH was SUPER mad at my mom for inviting someone, and it was so real my mom woke up thinking my MOH was actually mad at her. She then went on to tell us how she realized that it wasn't real because we have yet to even plan my bridal shower, and it made her laugh so she had to share it with us.

I laughed as I read through the story and quickly filed in my "Friends and Family" folder in my Gmail account. I use this folder to store all the emails from just that my friends and family. Not emails about dinner dates or upcoming events, but meaningful emails. This of course prompted me to look through some of the other emails in that folder. I have emails from my mom telling me to have a good day, and notes from my fiance telling me he loves me. I found an email from my now MOH from FOUR years ago when I was going through a tough time with a link to an uplifting quote. It almost brought tears to my eyes.

This reminded me why I obsessively save stuff, and why I never delete emails. Whenever I need a pick me up or just a little reminder of how loved I am I have it all right at my finger tips.

So, while some people may think I'm nuts for saving SO much stuff, or while some people poo-poo the digital age for not being personal I say =P

Slice of Life Day 2: When your dog is lazier than you are

Just about a year and a half ago my fiance, Tim, and I adopted a little brown dog. I say brown dog because he is a mutt (some mixture of lab, hound, terrier, goodness knows what else). His name is Geordi and he is my little baby booger (he actually responds to the name Booger now which Tim hates).

He's a lot bigger now than he is in that picture. Geordi weighs about 60lbs now. He is a smart stinker too.

So, this morning on my slightly unexpected snow day I got up to walk him a little later than I usually do, which I knew would not be a problem since Geordi has become quite used to sleeping in with all our snow days recently.

As I'm pulling on my boots, gloves, and jacket I'm calling for him to get out of bed. Nothing. Doesn't budge.

So I grab a bag of treats and rattle them around calling for him to come here, saying it was time to out. Nothing, just sits there and yawns in my face.

Then Tim tries to help. He gets up and offers Geordi a treat. So this time Geordi gets up and lumbers off the bed. We praise him profusely for getting out of bed, almost like when a student never does homework finally turns something in.

I turn to grab his leash and the little stinker hops right back up into the bed and curls up. So there I am fully dressed in my layers of winter weather gear trying to now physically pry my 60lb dog off the bed so he can go use the potty. I finally am able to get some leverage and pry him from the warm covers, and this time I remembered the leash. I was victorious!

Now we are both tucked back up in bed watching the ice melt.

Slice of Life Day 1: The best laid plans

With so much going on in my life right now I doubt I'll have any trouble coming up topics to write on each day this month, and even beyond. Today I had no problem at all knowing exactly what to share. 

I feel as though as a teacher I should know that even with a perfectly laid out lesson, or a well thought out unit plan something always goes wrong. I know that with a lesson but I seem to have trouble remembering that life lesson when it comes to life outside the classroom.

I am getting married in October of this year, and have been engaged since last May. I was able to book my first choice photographer and we quickly set a date for our engagement photos. Well those photos have yet to happen.

Originally they were scheduled for November 2014, and it rained. Then January 2015, and it snowed. So I was hoping beyond hope as our newly rescheduled date which was today approached that everything would fine. Well clearly mother nature is out to get us judging by the wintery mix falling outside my window. My fiance and I were preparing to drive down to Yorktown (he is from the area and wanted to have pictures done down there to represent a little bit of him since we are having the ceremony up here) yesterday when we started seeing increasingly awful weather reports. We made the gut wrenching decision to reschedule AGAIN.

As I sit here watching it sleet/snow/freezing rain outside my window, and hearing about the rain that is falling in Yorktown I know that we made the right decision, but that doesn't make it any easier. It makes me realize yet again how little control we have over some things.While logically I know that we will get the photos taken, and everything will be okay, the somewhat bridezilla emotional side of me is losing it.

So I am going to attempt to do something productive with my day. I will grade book reviews, plan out my week, and hopefully (fingers crossed) be able to run some errands. 

Let's give this a whirl...

Welcome!

My name is Meagan.

I am hoping to use this blog as a way to not only keep track of my own thoughts and life, but also to connect with others. It's going to be a little bit of everything. Teaching, wedding, running, and life in general.

My first challenge to myself is the Slice of Life Challenge. I'm hoping to break myself into blogging by completing this daily blogging challenge. Nothing like starting off easy.

Until tomorrow!