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School Day

Today I came home from work before 4pm, which is very unusual. I came home and sat down on the couch to take my shoes off. I noticed a magazine on the end table. I picked it up. Leaned back on the couch while starting to thumb through the pages. Before I knew it I was sound a sleep.

An hour later the phone rang and I was shocked that I had fallen asleep. I couldn't wake up enough to answer the phone. I rubbed my eyes and looked around the room. I was in shock! I couldn't believe that I had actually had a nap in the middle of the afternoon on a school day. I never get that chance! It was amazing. I woke up energized and happy. I was thrilled that I had finally had a day that I could stop and slow down and relax for a minute. I just wish I had decided to take a nap on purpose. I wish that I had enough in me to stop and slow down to take a minute to relax more often.

If any of you know me or my family, we don't know how to relax. It's not that we don't want to. We just simply don't know how! Braden has tried to teach me the art of relaxing. I am really good at doing it when he is around to relax with me, but I have yet to learn how to stop and relax on my own.

Hopefully one day I will learn. Probably not, but maybe. I will keep trying. In the meantime I will keep being grateful of those quiet afternoons when I leave school, come home and fall fast asleep. I will continue to be grateful that I have such a full life that keeps me busy and happy, but cherish the moments that I get to relax.

I am greatful for my nap. Its the one thing that might keep me going strong for the rest of the week.

(P.S. Lets just hope I can still fall asleep tonight!)

Twitter

Twitter is so appealing to me. I love the fact that on twitter you can only write 140 characters. That isn't much. This post would be over by now if I only wrote 140 characters. I like that factor. Short and sweet. I like the fact that I can write a quick message telling how I am or something crazy that I saw and leave it at that. Enough said. Concise. I like the beginning so close to the end. But something is wrong. I feel incomplete.

A blog is different. Sometimes overwhelming, but very rewarding. It can be hard to start, then even harder to stop. I sit and I wonder. I wonder: Will the readers like it? Will the readers read it? The answer is yes. YES! If I will write it the readers will read it. The question is then: Can I write it?

Can I write what my ideas are? My goals, my secrets, my hidden talents? Can I express the feelings inside of hope, of sadness, of gladness? The gratitude, the discoveries, even summaries life that are boring and dull? Yes. I can. It only takes but a minute, maybe more. It clears my mind. It helps me reflect and think of what is happening. It helps me to see the things that I lack. I will write it. I can write. In the end, I feel more accomplished, like I am the one writing my life. Each letter I write the lighter I feel.  Blogging can be daunting but even more rewarding.

This blog is no twitter, I am thankful for that. It gives me a blank canvas with no end predetermined.

 Just like life, I am free to write it.

July

I have come to love the month of July. I have only now realized that July is the only month that I am not thinking about school. Its the month that I can devote all my time to Braden. I wish that I had more time during the school year to stop thinking about school. If I am not at school I am thinking about the seating chart, or how to teach science, or what should I do with my children that don't follow directions the first time. It is daunting to come home with hours of correcting, or projects to work on. Today I spent a few hours at the library looking for books to teach cause/effect and compare/contrast. It never ends and my mind is full, crowed and complete chaos. 


Since I have a job that I never truly ever leave at work, I guess I am going to have to learn to make due with the time I do have to myself. It is time I want to spend with Braden. Laughing together, telling stories, sharing new and exciting things. I just like spending time with him. He is so kind, caring and patient. I know that our time we together each week isn't very much but we can make the most of our time together. When we are apart I think about him and wish that I was with him. I wish that we could be going on a drive together, or walking through the cemetery.  


How I long for July. I wish that July was here tomorrow. I wish that my mind could be clear and calm and I could devote every moment to Braden. I guess we make do and think more about quality rather that quantity. I just hope that Braden knows that we may not have a lot of time together right now in life, but we have eternity to be together.  Eternity that is just like July. Clear and calm and focused on the family that we love the most. My eternity will be spent with Braden. Clear and calm and focused entirely on him because I love him. 

Library card

I've written before that I don't read much. At least not books/newspapers/magazines. I actually do a lot of reading of blogs online. That's where I get most of my news.

Yesterday, I went and got a new library card from the public library. I blogged about it. And now I can check out books, CDs, DVDs, etc. from the vast catalog available. 

I think the last time I actually used a library card was more than a decade ago. But there is so much readily available online, I lived without a library card for so long. This all begs the question of what is really the future of the library? Am I actually alone in thinking that having a library card is obsolete, and anything I need to read is online? Probably not.

The reason I got one yesterday is to help Katie. She needed a reference for her students. And since I had the day off I had time to go and get the books she wanted from the library. And it wasn't that hard either. It was so easy a child could do it.

Actually maybe a child should do it. I think the libraries are a lot more relevant for students than thier adult counterparts. When I am no longer in school, I am no longer soaking up new knowledge. And if I am it's because I have to for my job. And I don't need the library. 

But children, especially those growing up in homes without a large collection of books should regularly go to the library and develop a love of reading. The younger you start, the more successful you become. 

At one point in my life I did have a love of reading, but it became such a chore to read all the required readings for classes that I stopped reading for enjoyment and only read what I had to. Even then, sometimes it was read the first and last chapter and skim the inbetween. 

My point I'm trying to get to is that once in a while your perspective changes. And that's a good thing. I have some books I need to finish reading that I started once upon a time. Maybe you do too.

Acronyms > L337

Acronym n. a word formed from the initial letters of other words
example: RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging)

Acronyms gave the english language a way to say something faster than before without losing meaning. (Useful in morse code, etc.) Some acronyms became universal, some did not. (i.e. SOS) But when there are so many acronyms, some become repeats and make it harder to differentiate, making them less useful.

The rising generation has developed a new system of writing similar to acronyms, although less direct. Email started it, and instant messaging and texting has also given the english language some silliness as well.

In a hand-written note or letter, you can doodle or draw extra symbols. But with the limits of the standard keyboard, more had to be done. So here come "smilies" to add a touch of personality, and to go beyond the capabilities of the font families.  ;-)  8-)

And the internet also brought us a different alphabet called leet or leetspeek. Using numbers in combination with letters to spell. It used to be used in chatrooms and online bulletin boards to trick the filters from blocking forbidden topics such as hacking. But now leet is more mainstream, and is more often used to censor words or mock newbies in online multiplayer games.

Dog stroller?

We were driving down 700 E next to Liberty Park recently and Katie told me that she saw a dog in a stroller. I was paying more attention to driving so I hadn't seen it. So we turned and went into the park to try and find it again. And sure enough a lady was walking her dog... in a stroller! I had no idea they actually made strollers for dogs. I thought the point of walking your dog was to let your dog actually walk.

We tried to snap a picture but there were too many trees in the way and we couldn't stop and block traffic, but here's an example we found on the internet.