Search results matching tags 'life' and 'uncategorized'

Frantzerland Report 2

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 14:55:33 GMT

It was a pretty stressful week last week. We were told they didn’t renew our room for another month and would be homeless in 2 weeks. I was freaking out looking for other extended stay hotels since most were really expensive or not close to a bus or didn’t take pets. So we looked at some apartments and were freaking out because in order to get in touch with them we have to speak French and I don’t know enough of any other language to talk to them.

This fountain is over 250 meters tall

But then Steven went and talked to the front desk people and suddenly NOW we can renew our room. Smashes head.

Our car was supposed to arrive mid-September. For some reason it’s not going to arrive now until mid-October, which pretty much sucks. We’re planning on getting an apartment in October and trying to move with the bus that doesn’t run on Sunday will be kinda sucky. But, we found a really good deal to rent a car for 6 weeks for like $600, so we’re excited about getting to explore more of Geneva and Frantzerland. We’re also excited about getting paid this week! Yay for real groceries! No more Ramen noodles! HUZZAH!

Last weekend I was determined to get out of the house for a little while. So we went grocery shopping really early, fought the mobs of people again but this time we were prepared for it so it wasn’t as bad, then brought groceries back and took the bus downtown. So we rode the bus downtown and went out to the huge fountain. It was firing at over 250 meters that day, so yeah, HUGE FOUNTAIN! The water sends off like a mist and you walk out to it on this tiny, slippery rock bridge thing without handrails. Naturally I was like don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall. And I didn’t. Occasionally the wind would catch the huge stream of water and it would land on the rock path. People were screaming and soaked. It was great! But due to my clumsiness and wearing jeans I decided not to go run in it this time. We stood in the dry zone right by the nozzle and took pictures of all the people though. That was fun.

And apparently swans are the Canadian geese of Switzerland. They’re horrible beggars that come right up to you to get food and chase off other smaller ducks. It was pretty awesome though to have like all these swans swimming around us with out feet in the water.

Beggars!

We took the bus to this place called The Rive. It’s an outdoor shopping district, which is really cool, but it’s all like ritzy American shops and I was not impressed. It makes me mad that American franchises come over here and try to put American values and Capitalism worship over here. It’s ridiculous that there’s a McDonald’s inside churches or historical landmarks. It really makes me mad. It’s like colonialism only more subversive. At least the British were like hey South Africa! We’re taking over all your stuff! What now, Bitchez! Americans are like buy our stuff, like our stuff, this historical building would make a great H&M. What’s that? You don’t yet worship the almighty Apple? Baby Steve Jobs in glasses is crying right now! All praise the dollar. And the Kit-Kat. Can you tell I don’t like the subtle promotion of American products, shows, and values in other places?

Last time I talked about how if you look at prices as units then they’re about the same? Well, with the exception of things like gas which is like 1.70 Euros a liter. Do the math you whiners about you’re $3 gas. Boo on you! Anyway, prices aren’t that much more. We’ve been getting a lot of boxed soups and pasta with jarred sauce because we don’t have a lot of room to cook and we were dirt broke. Prices were about the same. $1 for a kilo instead of a pound of pasta. Similar prices for rice and jarred sauce. We haven’t done a lot of meat but I’ll update on that next. We got magnum ice cream bars because they are AMAZINGLY good! I’m kind of in love with them. Now I’m going to have to go get one. Hang on.

Okay, I’m back. MMM Magnum get in my mouth. I was stupid and ate one of these on a street corner waiting for the bus with Steven. Let’s say the male drivers were not exactly polite in their gestures as I ate my ice cream. I made Steven stand in front of me though, so it’s all good.

Anyway, some things are cheaper. Like we got 9 liters of water for 1 Euro. You can get 12 liters in America for $5. And the pasta really is cheaper. A kilo is a bit more than a pound. And snack food is cheap! Huge bags of chips for 1 Euro, giant boxes of chocolate including brands like Kinder and Toblerone for a Euro or 2, boxes of 4 magnum ice cream bars for 1.60 Euros, huge bunches of parsley about the size of 3 of what we were getting in the states for .75 Euro. The rabbit food and litter is healthier and cheaper. They have all kinds of hay (she’s been eating really well this month). We can get furniture that’s really nice pretty cheap, like $600 Euros for a sofa, coffee table, and pillows that push together to make a bed (it’s one of those kinda squishy coffee tables like the storage ottomans). Some electronics are really expensive, like laptops, but you can get really cheap cell phone service with Orange and TVs are actually pretty cheap, too. And there’s the excellent bus service that comes at most every 15 minutes once you are actually in Geneva and not BFE France. So there’s that. It’s pretty affordable, too, if you only go around Geneva. It’s the crossing zones to the outskirts like where we are that get pretty expensive pretty fast.

Next on the agenda is going out to the UN, getting a fan for Steven’s office, and probably going to try and take a trip somewhere fun for Steven’s birthday. I’m going to go eat this ice cream before it drips on the keyboard.

Ciao!

Tagged: Frantzerland, issues, life, traveling

Mischief Managed

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 18:09:45 GMT

I had a pretty rotten child hood. I often attempted to escape from the things going on around me in books and tv shows. I didn’t have a lot of friends because I was a know-it-all, bossy, didn’t give a rat what you thought I was going to do my own thing and if it meant sitting on the swing reading my book myself I was perfectly happy with that. At the same time, I was desperate for attention and love, for somebody to care about ME! To put ME first! To do things for and about ME! I just wanted them to do it my way. Not much has changed…

When I was 13 I saw this green cover of a MASSIVE book with some messy haired kid on it. I was like, HEY IT’S A SERIES! I won’t have to say good-bye to the characters I love and know as friends quite so fast. So I picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Harry Potter changed my life.

Here was a boy who was growing up in similar circumstances, who is kind of unlikable, and finds out he is special. He’s whisked away to a magical place where he makes friends and has adventures. It gave me hope when Hermione was being picked on for being a bossy know-it-all that someday people will understand me and care about me, too. It made me think how someday I will be surrounded with love and family like the Weasley’s, both of which abandoned their families to make a life for themselves with their brood of red-headed young ‘ins. I became completely engrossed, reading whole books in a few hours. Scouring the internets for information about new books. Watching and reading EVERY Rowling interview. I dressed up and went to book premieres. I plotted with people about all the possibilities of what would happen.

Harry Potter became my escape and my life redefined in terms that brought me joy.

Then I met in a class and I realized there were other people out there like me that shared this passion. We talked and role played for hours about the Marauders, the characters I truly loved. We made up costumes and went to premieres together. I found fanfiction and fanart and community. Some of my greatest friends I met through a book about a rag tag group of misfits at a Wizarding School. I was inspired to go into teaching and work with kids because of Harry Potter. I had hopes, dreams, community, love, and friendship because of a boy wizard I found when I was 13.

In 2007, I was devastated when the last book came out. I didn’t like Deathly Hallows, I felt it was cheap, and I swore off Harry Potter. I spent hours tearing down the Oder of the Phoenix and Half Blood Prince movies. I felt like a relationship gone bad filled with bitterness. But I still wrote fanfiction, started winning some awards for my fanfiction, and I just couldn’t let it go. I realized that yay, the ending might have been shite, but dammit it was Harry Potter. Those books made me the person I am today. I couldn’t just deny all those years for nothing.

Do I still bear rage for J.K. Rowling and some of her ridiculous writing decisions, and even more ridiculous stupidities when she opens her mouth to tell people about HER characters? Yes. Does it infuriate me when she cheapens things like Remus’s lycanthropy and the female characters losing all determination and drive to make babies? *** YES!

But you know what?

At the end of the day, I’ve realized I can leave out all of the cheap tricks, all the commentary, and I can live in my world with the characters that I grew and loved and understood in ways that I felt other people didn’t. I can relish in the joys of the Marauders and the adventures of the Trio by putting my own spin on it. And to deny myself that, is to deny me part of who I am.

Thank you, Harry, for teaching me what family, love, loyalty, and friendship really mean.

For giving me hope.

The ones who love us never really leave us. And Harry lives on for me, and always will.

Give her *** from us, Peeves.

Mischief Managed

Tagged: happiness, happy, harry potter, life, nerd, nerdy

The disabled access friendly world blog challenge: Creature Discomforts

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:30:31 GMT

Following on from the recent blog challenge on raising awareness of disability access issues, I came across the Leonard Cheshire Disability campaign whilst watching Shaun the Sheep dvds with my daughter.

The campaign is called “Creature Discomforts” and has very similar aims to the blog challenge – namely to get people to think about the way they see disability.

If you go to the Creature Discomforts website, there are eight short video ads (about 20 – 30 seconds each) and nine short radio ads. Both of these have tapescripts available, so would be relatively easy to adapt into short listening tasks – the ads are very visually appealing and would be great with young learners.

There is also a “fun and games” section which contains a quiz about disability in the UK. It could be interesting to do the quiz (which is multiple choice, one question at a time – questions change each time you do it) and get learners to compare the answers with the situation in their country. For example, apparently only 50% of train stations in the UK offer step-free access to the platforms – what’s life like where you live? The section also offers four different games that put the game player in the position of having a disability – in the Callum the Chameleon game, you can play with or without sight as you try to catch the flies buzzing around. Sonny the Shrimp attempts to rescue fish from their hooks – from his wheelchair. Tim-the-crutches-using-Tortoise attempts the long-jump, and finally Millie the mouse attempts to feed peanuts to her elephant friend. I like the way the Chameleon game makes you think about the difference between playing the game sighted and unsighted – the other games are not quite as educational, but fun to play for the younger classes.

Leonard Cheshire Disability is also running a campaign called Action for Access from which you can download access survey forms for shops, organisations and buildings – there are separate forms for transport options. If you work in the UK, then a class project could contribute to developing the access map on the site and making a positive contribution to the local community. If you work outside the UK, then you could adapt the access survey forms (they’re available in pdf or word) to fit your surroundings and develop a class project to survey the area around your school. Some thoughts anyway!

Summer school teachers – have you considered that this could be a handy project to work with one week? You could even incorporate some of the work into one of your trips out and about in the UK?

Cuddle Attack

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 21:02:43 GMT

Steven is not a cuddler. I like to cuddle… a lot. It’s really bad when I’m sleeping. I sleep talk and laugh, but not nearly as much as I cuddle attack. While sleeping, I will roll over to whoever or whatever is next to me, glomp onto them with my arms, nuzzle my big honking head somewhere on their shouldery region, and throw my leg over them. This has been going on since I was a little girl and people called me the human pillow. My attacks were often met with hits, kicks, and bites. Or bending my neck back until I roll away. Which leads me to my story about last night.

I *** near lost my *** this morning. Steven has had a fever for a couple days now. Yesterday it was 104. I had about 27 thousand things to do and I didn’t sleep very much because he was hot and tossing and turning the night before. So we got up at 8 and start trying to get his fever down. A little worried, but he is responding to medicine and not being too pathetic. Decide to throw out the list of things to do for today and focus on taking care of him. I was awesome nurse extraordinaire.

Until last night.

I’m getting up every two hours to get him meds and I’m cool with that. Alarm is set and I’m ready to go. I put on 2 episodes of Star Trek, he’s asleep not even halfway through the first, and it’s about midnight when they’re over. TV is off. He decides he wants attention in his sleep, so he says.

Steven has talked in his sleep for years and is so sweet when he’s not aware that he’s talking, all smiles and weird. Twice in the last two weeks he’s woken me up talking and when I talk back he says “Shh, the angry man is coming. The angry man is coming.” Then he comes to, is all gruff, rough, and mean sounding and starts yelling at me about how I woke him up and I’m like DUDE you were talking to me. There’s a reason we call him Grinch. Ah well.

Anyway, he wants “to feel close to me,” he says, so he presses his hot bony leg in my side. Then he wants to drag his dragon talon toe nails down my shin. “She loves cuddles,” he says. This goes on for HOURS! I’m trying to get him to stop but he won’t. He is snoring like a bear intermittently this whole time, talking in his delirium. Now he wants to take all the blankets and push me off the bed. I’m considering kicking him to death and all of the other things he has done to remove me. He feels me get up to ditch him for the couch so starts whining that he doesn’t want me to leave. This is like 330 after laying there for 5 hours. Next he steals my pillows. I’m really possessive about my pillows. I sleep with a lot of them to prevent heart burn. Now I’m seriously raging and wanting to punch him in the face. I get my pillows back and lay on my stomach on top of them so he can’t have them. He grabs my leg and is shaking me telling me he likes to grab me and then snores and falls over.

It’s now six and he’s petting my head and rubbing my ear making weird noises. I can’t take it anymore. I get up and jump in the shower before I gut him. Maybe this is revenge for my cuddle attacks. Maybe we’re just some sort of odd couple trying to drive each other crazy so we (I) can tell the world.

A friend and I had an epic conversation about how to hide a body a la Dexter last week and cooking some nasty chili to be thrown out later sounds good to me. Wonder what’s for dinner?

Tagged: family, funny, hubby, life, steven

Reading and Misbehaving

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 23:00:30 GMT

If you are reading this blog post, chances are you enjoy reading. Hopefully, you enjoy the reading you do on my blog (wink wink) So, let me ask you this question: How often do you read the reading you love, … Continue reading →

Does It Have To Be Fun?

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 23:00:31 GMT

Have you seen this child? He* is the child who decides within a few seconds that something is boring. He is the child that finds school boring, no matter what. He is the child that rolls his eyes up and … Continue reading →

The Good About Sad

Anonymous — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 11:21:11 GMT

I have just posted the following post as a guest on So You Want To Teach. Hopefully it will be appear there soon. Sad. That is what I am feeling right now. I can give you a good number of … Continue reading →

I pledge allegiance

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:09:17 GMT

To the worst mistake I have ever made. Friending my mom on facebook. It’s horrible. Besides her inane and constant updates, she constantly harrasses me about my updates. *Sigh* THEN, the best part, is she lives vicariously through me. She friends all of my friends, lectures them, tells them they’re bad, harrasses them about their statuses. She even friends people I knew in elementary school. You know, friending people fromhigh school, work, and college is one thing. Going back 20+ years to friend my kindergarten friends, or in my mom’s case my kids’ friends, is ridiculous. Just saying.

Yesterday my mom gave my former best friend I am trying to reconnect with a lecture about saying she didn’t believe in God. My mom is a crazy *** Jesus freak that is constantly condemning or attempting to save people. I HATE IT! It’s embarrassing and so arrogant. Why is your god and way of life better than my own? Living in the bible belt I have a real problem with the number of people that try to save me like daily. It’s infuriating!

I’m not an atheist, neither is former friend, but we both claim agnostic. Actually, I claim The Lion King and natural scientific processes as my belief in religion, but that’s another story. It’s like people saying Nietzsche said, “God is dead and we have killed him.” He’s such a bad atheist! WRONG! N. was saying since science has explained mythology of explaining processes, and psychology has explained the soul, what is making us be good without fear of divine retribution? He then went on to discuss that we should live moral lives because it is the right thing to do, NOT to get good stuff in heaven.

I am not anti-Christian or religion, though there are problems in EVERY organized religion I have been a part of, I just really hate the people that want to save me all the time. So pretentious. And I hate that my mom lectures everyone about how her way is the right way, though this could be because she’s 45 years old and still lives with and depends on her mommy. I appreciate faith journeys and blogs, but don’t force your religion down my throat and I won’t force my science down yours.

Ever have someone push something on you you didn’t want?

Tagged: life, me time, my life, Oklahoma Sucks, politics

Where am I going

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:05:38 GMT

I was talking to my hubs about the goals of this blog. First and foremost I want to chronicle my day to day life. Sometimes this is sad, depressing, and messy. Sometimes I get in funks. Writing is cathartic to me, however, I understand lots of people probably do not like reading the good with the bad. I am unsure of whether or not I should post the bad things, such as unappreciative administrators. I have just decided to be true to me.

Although keeping readers interested is important, I believe that by keeping out the bad is untrue to me. I am a teacher. I am a blogger. I am crazy and random, but I am a teacher blogger. I’ve been thinking of advertising to mommy bloggers, but I’m not sure I want to open that can of worms. I want more readers, but I’m not sure how to go about doing that. Hmm.

My intentions for this blog:
1. Chronicle my day
2. Talk about teaching
3. Be crazy and random
4. be a political activist and *** people off with my ssa backwards ideals (or at least some)

Tomorrow: a look at atheism and being bored out of my MIND during state tests.

Note: The neighbor daughter is screaming and fighting with her mom again. I started screaming, too. Makes me feel better… and giggly.

Tagged: life, me time, my life

Exhaustion

Anonymous — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:44:48 GMT

After a week of meltdowns, crying, testing, and lack of sleep from worry, I crashed at about 745 last night. Curled up in a ball on the couch, actually drooled on the pillow, deep sleep. It was intense. My body was like OMG FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SLEEEEEP!!! So I did. And I didn’t wake up until nearly 10 a.m. ***! I feel way better, though. Yesterday I was feeling like my cold/flu thing was coming back and now I feel like 80% better, since I can still only use one nostril. Fever, swollen glands, and sore throat are gone gone gone!

On the drama front with my school counselor, apparently she got a hold of the mother and her come in yesterday morning to talk with the daughter and nurse (because teenage pregnancy isn’t an emotional issue but a nursing? Yeah, it’s health, too but c’mon). I talked to the baby daddy and he said the girl was grateful for me helping her and she told her mom last night, who went and got two more pregnancy tests and they were both negative so they were taking her to the doctor after lunch to see what’s wrong. The head principal called me into his office to talk about the write up I did. He said he was very disturbed by her unprofessional behavior and from this point on I will bring any case to him or the Asst. Principal and NOT her. YAY! He did say that according to the latest union vote any staff member is allowed to know who made a complaint and see what they wrote, which disturbs me because she’s gotten in my face before that. I told him that and he said, “Well, if she does tell her you really don’t want to talk about the issue without an administrator present, if she continues to press the issue or get in your face, I heard you scream loud so get someone else close by and we’ll file harrassment charges against her.” ***. That’s sad it has come to this. At least the child is getting the help she needs now, and that is all that is important to me.

On a side note, I have been incredibly busy during each of my planning periods this week and did not have a chance until yesterday to go talk to the head principal about the successes I was able to share with our Vice Superintendent. The previous day I had tried to tell the principal that attended the conference with us but had to leave early, but could not because then the issue arose with the child during my planning period, and she came and interrupted my class twice to talk to me. So I made an appointment to talk to her Friday and told her I was sorry I couldn’t make it down there during my plan Thursday, but there was an issue with a student that I had to deal with and couldn’t abandon her because it could have escalated into a DHS issue. She was pissy but left it alone. I went down there Friday to tell her about the meeting and presentation, and in the middle of what I was saying she interrupted me to say “What did you say about me?”

“I’m sorry,” I responded. “I didn’t mention you because this was like a job interview about me and my success now about you.”

“Well what did you say about the school?”

“I said that the program has changed the entire climate of reading and writing as positive things. I may have said something about your getting parents involved, but I didn’t talk about you, it was about me and my classroom. I talked a little about my co teacher and head principal and what all they’ve done, but I didn’t talk about you.” *** I practically don’t talk to you anyway. She got kind of pissy again and said she would make an appointment for me to talk to the head principal about this. I was like ok, I can go down there when he’s not busy but whatever, thanks. She sends me a note with an office aid saying to go to head principal third hour. Co teacher wants to come like a proud mama. OK, no problem. I get down there and asst. not my principal walks in with head principal then comes and sits down at my meeting and starts telling him my news. I just look at her like excuse me? Then she’s like well I’ll let her tell you. So I get to tell him. He’s ecstatic. I get to go to a conference in FL! WOOT! Then she cuts in that I was supposed to go see her first and not come straight down here as per her note. I was like um, no. And she gets all pissy. When I went to meet with head principal about the counselor, he said that she said I wasn’t following protocol and began complaining about my unprofessional attitude and demeanor. WHAT? Apparently head principal told her he thinks I’m way more professional than most anyone in the building and I always follow protocol and converse with him and my direct supervisor, my principal, then reminded her she wasn’t my boss and he would hear no complaints about me. It was nice he told me, it makes me feel like he trusts me with stuff like this and to warn me to watch my back, but I’m like ***.

My principal told me later she was complaining this morning because someone told her last night that I was spreading rumors about her. WHAT? This woman is the most hated staff member because she is aloof, doesn’t care about anything except her own agenda, and when in front of a group rattles on and on about her agenda to the point the head principal asks her to stop, she won’t stop, then he dismisses everyone while she’s still talking. Yeah, that sounds unprofessional, but this has been going on since summer and everyone is tired of it. Despite all of this, I have tried really hard to find things I like about her. I reprimand other people for talking bad about her. In fact, Thursday night and made my principal and the 7th grade principal apologize to her spirit because they were being unnecessarily cruel. And someone put this idiotic rumor in her head and now she’s going to start talking about me and treating me like *** and I’m the only one that defends the ***? I’m definitely having a talk with her Monday about what the *** happened, I thought we had a good professional relationship and what’s her deal. Then when she goes off I am going to be like I have been the only person in this building that defends you and you treat me like *** instead of knowing that I always talk to you, greet you, sit with you when you are at lunch because everyone else gets up and leaves. Whatever. It’s like the people in this building that are unprofessional and don’t care about expanding their knowledge adopt the personality and maturity flaws of our children. I guess that makes sense since humans usually adopt characteristics of those we are around a lot, but still. GRR!

Ok, that’s enough bitching. In good news, a district person came and observed me yesterday and said, mind you while my boys were misbehaving for attention, that I had excellent classroom management and he’s never been in a first year’s classroom like mine. He called it a breath of fresh air since some other people in the building really need some help, to the point his ears were ringing. ***. I felt both uplifted, dismayed since I thought my kids were misbehaving, and sad for the other students.

I have failed at exercising this week, on a personal note, but I still lost 3 pounds probably from running around all week like crazy.

My bunny is rearranging some cardboard boxes so I’m going to go play with her and enjoy my beautiful weekend. If you read that whole thing, you get a gold star lovvis!

Tagged: dramaz, issues, life, me time, teaching