Sunday, January 28, 2007

Winter Weekends

Saturday night Sabrina and I went over to Diane's. She was sad 'cause Charlie isn't feeling well. He has been at the emergency vet. Luckily for me, Diane sad means company and free dinner. Jean Shunder was there too (she's like a dog whisperer in her own right.) Now I have some more things to work on with Sabrina.

Sabrina was entranced by her reflection in the window. It caused her to get quite excited.

I continued cleaning the house today. I had to do more work on the TV room. But I think I finally have it the way I like it. I had a big ole black chair at the desk, but it was way to big and very irritating. It is now in the back bedroom waiting for the mother of all garage sales to find its new home. I moved the sewing table so that it faces the window. Unfortunately I now have to use the same chair for the sewing table and the desk.

I got the kitchen totally clean. Took longer than I expected but that is because I started with the floor. Trust me, if you had been here you would have started with the floor too. It was gross.

I took Sabrina for a walk late this morning. She can be a bit of a pill. I can say she is quite likely to turn out to be the best weight loss plan I've ever had. Way better than diet pills.

At one point today, I couldn't stop myself from making a door draft stop. (I don't know if that is what it is called.) Isn't it lovely? I think it is going to do a good job of keeping the draft out.

This photo also enables you to see the bells on the back door that Sabrina is supposed to ring when she has to go potty. I have to admit she still has some issues with that.

She got into grass or something this afternoon and threw up all over the place. I've been keeping my eye on her to be sure she is ok.

I finally finished cleaning at about 5 or so. Emily and I took Sabrina for an evening walk. She did very well. She is quite popular. We had a great time. I just wish it wasn't so damn cold!

Eva, in the meantime, has been awake for most of the day. It is making me nervous. She isn't usually awake so much.

Did I mention my house is finally clean?

Saturday, January 27, 2007

A Most Productive Day

The bathroom is scrubbed down and clean. My bedroom is clean. I'm working on the front bedroom and Sabrina has been walked twice today.

I have to say the disappointing part of the bathroom being clean is that it has been painted so many times and the floor is so old, it doesn't look as clean as I know it is.

Now I knew you would want to see some more pictures of the hellion. I think I've had lots of sleeping pictures, cause she's so darn cute when she sleeps, so I threw in some awake pictures , notice awake and on the attack.

She enjoys her trips to and from school as well as her quality time at school. Some times she gets worn out and has to nap.
I included a picture of the hellion with her green toy from about 15 days ago and the one I took Friday. Does it hurt to grow that fast??

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Sabrina is 18lbs!!!

She is a beast. Her next appointment is in 4 weeks. In order to prevent separation anxiety, mine, not hers, I'm going to start weaning her off school. 3 days a week for a couple of weeks, then 2. Otherwise when we finally get caught, I'll be tramatized by not having her with me. She might be a little put out too.

I've started reading Dave Ramsey's book The Total Money Makeover "A proven plan for financial fitness." Let's see if any of it takes.

Today we have TAKS field testing, so I have to stand over freshmen for three hours as they take the math test. That ought to give me hives. Freshmen and math.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Mid week chaos

Did I mention that Monday there was a leadership meeting at the middle school with all of the principals, superintendent and other bigwigs? I showed up at the admin building before realizing it was at the middle school.

Theeeennnnnnn Tuesday night, we had a high school presentation at the middle school about organizations at the high school (band, choir, journalism, etc). I showed up at the high school . . . nooooo at the middle school. sigh.

After that I was meeting members of the cult at SaltGrass for dinner. I had a salad. Very lovely. The waiter was refilling my water, the glass slipped from his hand, crashed onto my plate, and broke it with a very loud crack. I wasn't facing forward when it happened, I just heard the noise and nearly had a heart attack.

Oh, and Sabrina rang the bell this morning when she wanted to go out.

I arrived at school, feeling good. I had gotten a pair of pants and a top this weekend for a total of $12.00. Power buy at Ross. I leaned over . . . and my pants ripped at the seam of the zipper. Hmmmm, this is a problem. So, I called down stairs to let someone know I had a small emergency, raced home, changed pants (larger size thank you very much) and returned to school. In the meantime, I called my senior photo editor, told her to hurry and get to school to be in charge, since I wouldn't be there. Yes, she did tell the class what had happened.

Tonight Sabrina has her next Vet check up. I can't wait to see how much she weighs.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Sabrina takes a walk

Third period I took Sabrina for a walk. We happened to go by Deborah's house, so we gave her a shout out to come say hi. She is looking rather fabulous. She tells me the ensemble she was wearing has become her standard wear for all occasions. I say stick with it. We had a nice chat and then back to school we went.

MaryBeth just called, so we are actually getting to chat for a bit.

She sleeps

Last night, for the second night in a row, Sabrina slept until 6am. Now, I didn't. I started waking up at about 3am worrying that I'd missed her call or that something horrible had happened. I felt a little like Woody Allen as I came up with possible reasons that she hadn't woken yet.

In addition, remember the bells on the back door? This morning as I was getting ready, she was in the kitchen whining. Rather annoying. I thought about it and decided she must want to go to the bathroom again. I am grateful she whines to let me know which is still more than Eva and her passing glance to pee which lasts about 30 seconds and leaves me cleaning up the carpet 90% of the time.

Back to the story, so I went to the back door and pointed at the bells and said, "Outside" - Guess what she did????? That's right, she went up and pushed the rope of bells with her cute little nose!! She's a genius I tell you.

I meet with the real estate boys today. I think I'm going to have to be firm with them. Now that they have the funding they are reading for everything to happen and once. It's not going to quite work like that. Tiresome. Truly tiresome.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

End of another weekend

Burgundy, her cousin, Brent, and I went to The Magnolia to see Notes on a Scandal. Brent felt sorry for us and paid. Strange movie.

I'm remembering why I had trouble reprimanding middle schoolers. They were so cute and so funny, even when what they had done was bad, I still wanted to giggle.

I'm having the same problem with Sabrina. Sometimes she is funny as hell, but doing something that I'm going to regret letting her do when she is older. Don't worry. I'm being firm. I plan on raising a lady.

Oh, the other piece of good news is that I finished writing the recs. Mostly

What the Bleep

We started the movie at 8pm and finished it at about 11:30. I'll admit we stopped it a couple of times for explanation. Yes, it was THAT type of movie. Really, I think it is important to begin a movie that requires great thought to start much earlier in the evening.

The movie is about quantum physics. It was more like a PBS special than anything else. It talks about the Laws of Physics change once you are at the molecular level and then it talks about the power of thought. My brain hurt by the time it was over.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

A drizzly Saturday

I survived the Ac/Dec essay grading although I wanted to poke my eyes out at one point. Some of the English teachers are constantly trying to fight windmills. So annoying.

This morning I joined my neighbors, Emily, Gary and Linda, and we walked to The Garden Cafe down the street from where we live. My friend, Burgundy, joined us, and a good time was had by all.

Ran a few errands. Took the Hellion on a walk. She did pretty well. It started to rain while we were walking which made us both soggy.

I'm meeting with the photographer for the real estate book at 4pm, and then going over to a cult members house to watch a movie called What the Bleep. No idea of what it is about.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Early release day

Today we are hosting the Academic Decathlon meet. We only have 4 periods (two of which I don't have classes during yippee) and we get out at noon. Sadly, I agreed to be a grader for the writing portion of the meet which means I have to stay at school anyway. Sigh. There is a lot I could be getting done. I left the hellion at home. She was being obnoxious, and I'm going home after second to take care of her, so I figured it would be ok. I kinda miss her though.

I'll write more later. P.S. Fran is back "in country" and we have found out that Mike will be stationed in Oklahoma next. It's not pretty but at least MaryBeth will be in the same time zone and close enough for weekend visits!!

Journalism I

So, I've been concerned about the fact I'm not teaching the yearbook Journalism I. Is that going to reduce the number of kids that apply? Probably. Although it isn't my favorite class to teach, I've been worried about the fact I'm not teaching it.

For the last 9 years we've been working on "curriculum" getting it uploaded onto the website so other schools and /or parents can see what we do. For the last 9 years the penguin and I have wiggled out of actually producing anything.

So, it comes up again. Marta passes these sheets out and says we have to do an analysis of the website and our stuff and we have to work on curriculum this summer.

Scooby Doo tells me yesterday he was trying to find me during fourth to talk to be about curriculum. I talk to him after school. He says Marta said we had to do this. I agreed, but the beauty of it is that he has to do BOTH Journalism I classes since he teaches them, it only makes sense. I, of course, will take care of the yearbook stuff. Evil laugh goes here. Very happy not teaching Journalism I. You should have seen the look on his face. Bless his heart.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful . . .

Wednesday morning we were supposed to go to St John's school in Houston (where the conference was held) and watch classes in action using the Promethean board. However, school was cancelled so they decided to divide the participants into small groups for discussion. They divided by grade level/then for secondary by subject. There was only 1 other English teacher and 1 other social studies teacher, so I went back up to my room with a couple of the other girls from HP. We had our own small group of sorts.

I did get to finish downloading more video of Sabrina giving Charlie hell. I took it when I dropped her off at Diane and Kendall's.

So, back to Houston. We left for the airport about 2 hours before our flight. I called Mike, Ann's husband who I think works in operations of Southwest and I'm pretty sure has something to do with moving the planes around. He said to stick with the afternoon flight (they had been canceling morning flights and things were a mess in Dallas.) Robert and I get to the airport and we see a bunch of the people that were supposed to have already departed . . .uh oh. We are there for maybe 5 minutes when the ticket counter dude says that Love Field is still shut down and they will let us know when flights start resuming.

I call Mike . . .
"What's up are you kidding me? Love Field is closed?"
"No, Love Field is not closed."
"That's what the ticket counter guy at gate 22 is saying."
"Give me a minute, we'll take care of that."

Within another five minutes the ticket counter guy is announcing two flights that passengers need to board because they are taking off for Dallas.

Wow. That's fun. He also very sweetly said he would watch my flight and see what was happening. They were trying to get everything on track but it was such a mess . . .

Luckily we got on a 4:30 flight that left on time. When we changed flights we were still in group A which is really weird, but then the plane was full, so maybe they announced at the gate that all the 3:30 people needed to get over there for the 4:30.

Got to Dallas at about 5:30. The captain was funny. He said,"We've performed another Southwest miracle, left late and arrived early, but someone is still sleeping in our bed, so we'll have to wait for them to leave our gate."

When straight over to pick up Sabrina. They had done a marvelous job of taking care of her . . . But she GREW while I was gone. It is amazing. I know one of the pictures isn't in focus. I don't know what happened, but the point is that she is sleeping on one of her toys. awwwwww.

I didn't get Eva until yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately I didn't leave for Plano until 4:30 so it took about an hour to get there. I'll admit I was a little disappointed in the lack of enthusiasm for their new grand dog. So, Eva, Sabrina and I hit the road to head home. It took TWO hours to get home. There were wrecks every where. Central was a nightmare. Then I got off at Forest. Horrible. Another wreck on Forest. Finally got home. I basically took a bath and went to bed! There wasn't even ice yesterday. Today is going to be a total disaster.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Houston

Survived Monday's inservice. Thought I would poke my eyes out it was so damn boring. Photoshop class. Not good. We started school late because of the weather. I had to take a blow dryer to my car to open the doors! So we started at 10am. Lunchtime I took Sabrina over to Diane's house.

Good news is that I got to leave early to head to the airport. I left my phone in the car, but thank heavens, I remembered I was supposed to call Mom and Dad back . . . so I raced back to the car then back to the very long line to get to the gate. The flight was highly amusing because I sat beside one of the districts administrators (names not included to protect the freaky) who is afraid of flying. Even after some medication and 2 bloody marys the boy was a stress case. One of the elementary school principals has the same issue but apparently his drugs worked better cause he was just Mr. Happy. No concerns. Highly medicated.

I'm in Houston for a Promethean ActivBoard Conference. It is so cool! I could give more detail, but it's easier to send you to the website.

I have to say all these yearbook trips that I make requests to the hotel for a larger room or a sitting room, and it never works out are a set up for this trip with just be and this huge room. This dang room has a kitchen, living room, king size bed and a pillow that says Sweet Dreams!! I know I look like a big hick putting my hotel room pictures up, but I just can't resist.

At any rate, when I woke up Monday morning for the inservice I realized that I would need to pack better for Houston. Yes, I brought a warm coat. The school where this is being done has multiple buildings so the coat came in pretty dang handy. Might have frozen my knickers off if I hadn't brought the coat.

I got a call this morning that school is delayed two hours, hope they let the sub know. The school we were supposed to visit today to watch them using these whiteboards is closed, so they set up small groups only they are all elementary and only 2 other English/social studies secondary teachers, so a couple of girls and I are just hanging in my room watching tv. Not a great use of time, but atleast I'm getting to blog. Some of you get quite petulant when I don't keep up.

I haven't heard from Fran, but I am hoping she has finished hurling and is now accomplishing many things in Taipei.

MaryBeth and company continue to wait with baited breath for word of where they are going next. Since almost all of the airforce officer personnel know where they are going, we are finding this a very frustrating situation.

Over the weekend


I got a nasty migraine Saturday morning. It hurt me to see my headache pills floating in the toilet. Do I get them out? No, I left them. Took more. Later, floating in the toilet . . . sigh.

Burgundy called me late in the afternoon and foolishly asked what she could do to help. So, she came over and let the dogs out and played with the hellion.

I made it to church Sunday morning (after the Sunday I missed when all hell broke lose, I really think twice before missing!)

I took Eva up to Mom and Dad's since I was getting ready to go out of town Sunday. Sabrina got to have another play date with Charlie to be sure they would get along.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

A Dallas Diva Dog

Let's just admit the sad truth odds are good this dog will be rotten. I bought the "pee" pads guaranteed to make puppies want to pee on them. Sabrina chooses instead to sleep on the pee pad. I brought the little garden fences that I used for Eva and Zsa Zsa. They immediately understood that although it was small, they were not to cross. Sabrina didn't buy into the idea quite so easily. By yesterday afternoon she had started to understand the concept. We are still working on it. Every once in a while she goes ahead and makes the leap for freedom. Speaking of which as she wandered the house last night she made her way under my bed and began gnawing on the slats. I pretty sure her time fitting under the bed won't last for much longer.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Trying something new

Photos don't get across how cute she is nearly well enough. So, let's try video! Sabrina, sadly, gets bored upon occasion. Don't be fooled, her life isn't easy. Bored can lead to bad behavior. Please notice the distance between Sabrina and the toys she chooses to leave untouched. Good news is, it is time for that sofa to go anyway.

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Monday Night Movie Night

It has returned! Last night Ann and I went to see Dream Girls. I didn't realize it was a Broadway musical first. There were a few times that people broke into song at, what I felt, were odd times. Ann realized the problem and caught me up to speed.

It was a good movie, but a little long. I began getting ants in my pants.

Shingles

Monday morning one of my poor editors tells me her tale of woe. She had gone to tan a couple of times and although she did not have a burn, she had "bubbling" on her skin. It didn't look good. It almost looked like poison ivy. So I made her go down to the nurse's office.

The nurses asked her what class they were writing a pass for her to return to. She told them mine. They looked at each other and told her that it was not contagious except to people who had not had chicken pox, and I was the only teacher in the building who had not had chicken pox. hmmm.

Let me clarify. Monica got chicken pox when I was 2mo old. She did give it to Fran (she's a giver) and I think my says I got a bump or two.

So, my other two editor-in-chiefs came in this morning. One is whiney as all get out cause she partied all weekend and still hasn't caught up on her sleep. The other is a insomniac, so she didn't sleep but she is freaky chipper. I can't decide which is worse.

P.S. Turns out the tanning has nothing to do with the shingles in case you were worried.

The rest of the weekend.

Saturday evening I attended my friend Kristen's bday party. It was a great party with a band and everything, but waking up every couple of hours to let Sabrina go potty is killing any shot I might have at staying up late. My goal was to stay until 10pm . . . I made it until 9:45 close, so very close.

Sunday morning I got up and went to church. I have officially joined Incarnation. After that I joined Ann at HPUMC for Kerygma.

Sabrina had a play date with Champ Sunday afternoon. It turned out to be a very short play date cause Champ freaked. Sabrina is ok. Burgundy and I are probably more freaked than Sabrina.

I did buy some paint to test on my walls. I hate how thick the texturing is - it is awful. The weekend ended with most of what I needed to get done, not done. Big freaking surprise.

Final Choices

These were the outfits chosen. She looks pretty darn cute doesn't she?

Play dates

Sabrina got to have a play date with Charlie, Diane's dog. Charlie was really thrilled. Can't you tell? Diane decided that Sabrina was shivering and obviously needed a coat. So, we took a little trip to PetSmart. She tried on a lovely black cape. A delightful purple number with a bear design on the back. A peach jacket with fur collar. I really enjoyed her "I'm a thug" outfit. And my, doesn't she look happy.

Why I live dangerously.

There is a lot to try to catch everyone up on. For instance, some people might wonder why I am taking Sabrina to school. Beyond the obvious, she is adorable and I can't bear to leave her. Please see exhibit A. Please see exhibit B. Please see exhibit C. And, finally, please see exhibit D. In the arms of Page, by 7th period she is beyond exhaustion. I love that.

Thursday, January 4, 2007

I have internet!!

I gave up trying to steal it from the neighbors, and I got my own connection. I have survived the first two days back at work, although I've ended both days with a headache. ugh. workman's comp. medic. I'll start adding pictures again tomorrow.

Monday, January 1, 2007

Heartbreaking news

Saturday night Eliza passed away. I'm not sure of what happened. I looked down, and she was already gone. Sunday morning Holly was having trouble breathing. We made it to the emergency clinic, but she died sitting on the technician's lap.

I had Sabrina checked that morning. She is in good health.

Poor Roseanne got my hysterical call Saturday night. The next day she and Burgundy buried the girls in the backyard for me. I don't think I could have done it.