Missing teeth, Bon Jovi, and other scintillating stories

Josh lost his first tooth this month, followed shortly by his second. He was so excited to go to school and tell his teacher because his teacher keeps a record of how many students have lost a tooth each month up on the wall. I love Josh's teacher so much this year. I wish he would move up and teach 2nd grade so we could have him again. Josh learns so much from him. Josh drew him a picture of an octopus attacking a boat, so his teacher said, "Let's find out where an octopus would live," and sat and looked it up with him. He does little things like that all the time.

Bon Jovi was so fun. He still sounds good, he's still hot, and they played all of their greatest hits for hours. It was one of my favorite concerts. We ended up seated 2 rows apart from Mindi and Steve and just barely across the aisle from Miss Heidi, Lexi's daycare teacher. So funny. Lexi and Josh had a blast chilling with grandma Saundra. I think next up is Poison and Motley Crue this summer. Then maybe Def Lepard.





I'm on Spring Break, and I am so very happy about that. This is the first year in as long as I can remember that we aren't going down south for at least a few days. I'm bummed about that, but it will be good just to have the week off. I have no plans except getting a bunch of papers graded and cleaning out the medicine shelf in my closet. I was rumaging around in there yesterday and found a tube of something or other that expired 10/07. Hmmmm... guess I need to go through and see what all is in there.

I'm so excited to plant things in my yard. So of course it's snowing right now. But hopefully that's another thing I'll do this week. We bought raspberries, blackberries, red potatoes, walla walla onions, yellow onions, 2 kinds of lettuce, and some sugar peas. Smith's had some super cute primrose, ranunculus, and anemones. The anemones were crazy awesome and I wanted them all. They were $2.99 a piece and I just had to walk away before I spent another $30 on flowers that are not in my budget.

Speaking of my budget, I spent $250 today on groceries. $250!!! That's for a week. Hopefully next week I'll only spend $100 to make up for it, but I doubt it. It gives me heartburn. That's not including the $54 I spent at the pharmacy. Or the $150 worth of diabetes supplies I got in the mail last week. I can't think about it.

Speaking of diabetes supplies... I have had the hardest time getting the mail order set up through my insurance. Finally got it set up and working... and my doctor called in a prescription for the lancets that I don't like, and they sent me 700 of them. So now I've got to figure out how to return them and get the right ones. So fun.

Speaking of diabetes and so fun.... it's really not so fun. I hate diabetes. It's just constant ups and downs and looking at the numbers and guessing and estimating and guesstimating. There are so many variables and I take it as a personal failure when her numbers are off target... yet there is really no way to keep it on target all the time.

Speaking of failure, the last of my teams lost tonight in the Final Four. Kentucky is out. Won no money, my brackets did terrible, but still love March Madness.

I talked to my doctor about my back pain the other day, and he basically said it's from being fat and out of shape. Except he said it nicely-er than that. He said I need to strengthen my core. So lose weight and exercise.

March goals progress:
*I did not lose any weight. At all.
*I didn't entirely fix my organizational issues, but anything that I didn't accomplish is at least being worked on or looked at.
*No yard work done.
*Did not hang the picture frame. Forgot it was even a goal.

April goals:
*Not gain any weight. Exercise. I really, really want to join Gold's Gym just for the cardio cinema thing they have. Or I could just buy a flat screen and mount it on the wall across from my eliptical. Oh, oh, I could move my eliptical to the middle of the surround sound, get an awesome sound system and a big flat screen, and make my own cardio cinema at home. That would be AWESOME.

*Get flooring bids.

*Do yard work. Plant stuff.

*Hang that stinking picture frame.

*Quit reading mystery novels and read some non-fiction this month. I have had Outliers sitting on my desk at work for months. I have a diabetes book I got in January that I want to read. I have a diet book that I need to read. That should do it for starters.

*Keep the entire family out of the doctor's office this month, with the exception of already scheduled appointments.

March Madness

Lexi was telling me a story about something naughty that someone did at daycare, which may or may not have been true, you never can tell, and then she told me, "Mom, these are all the bad words that you can't say. Stupid. Dumb. Holy crap. Messing around. I think that's it. And messing in Brittney's room and messing in Courtney's gum and messing in your purse and your gum. That's it, mom." Well then, I'm doing pretty good in the bad word dept by that standard.

We've spent a good amount of time this weekend watching basketball and following scores. One of the owners at Sean's work put up $100 for the winning March Madness bracket, so we filled one out for that contest. Then a few of my boys at school asked me if I wanted to join their group, so I filled out a different bracket for that. I've kinda been keeping track of that one while Sean keeps track of his work one. He's doing better than I am, because I picked Pitt for the championship, and they got eliminated last night. Major bummer.

My little kids are having a hard time remembering that they have manners and how to use them (they've been kinda bratty is what it amounts to), so we are doing the old standby, the marble jar. In other words, we're bribing them to be good. It's going great for now, of course, but we'll see if any of the behaviors generalize into habits once the bribing is phased out. That's always the trick with behavioral modification stuff, I guess.

I'm so excited for Bon Jovi on Tuesday. I wish I had something hot to wear. I wish I could look hot if I did have something hot to wear. I lost 3 pounds. Then Brittney made peanut butter rice crispy treats and I ate half the pan. Stellar. I started reading this new diet book at breakfast yesterday morning, and in the introduction it said Have you ever finished a meal and felt unsatisfied? and I said Yes! Just now! and flipped through the book to see what it would suggest for such a problem, and instead of easy answers it had all this crap that looked like lots of effort and work, so I put it down and haven't picked it up again since. Looks like I might have to buckle down and do it.

Sean and I were just talking about emergency preparedness stuff right before the earthquake in Japan. His dad was talking to him about it, and Sean told him that our theory is that we need to store a year supply of money, not food, so that's what we're working on (so far, I think we have one week saved up, go us) rather than stockpiling food. Because in most disasters, a 72 hour kit and a month's supply of food and water would be more than sufficient. I don't think his dad was very impressed with our plan or our logic. A year supply is just overwhelming. And Sean and I agreed that the most likely disaster that we would have here is earthquake or job loss. In the case of earthquake, if our house is destroyed and/or the Great Salt Lake floods our home, our food storage would quite possibly be lost, but money would be very useful. Obviously same goes for job loss. The only time a year's supply of food would really be beneficial is if food sources became highly contaminated, and what's the likelihood of that, says I? Doh. Two days after our conversation there are nuclear reactors leaking radiation in Japan. Oh well, I'm still just going to start with our 72 hour kits and move on from there. I had them done a few years ago, but it's all expired and needs to be updated. Spring Break might just be a good time for that.

I'm so ready for a trip somewhere warm. I've been trying to talk Courtney into going to Dixie next year, which she would love. I just want to have an excuse to go down there.

March Party

It's March! We made it through January and February! To celebrate this amazing feat of endurance and perseverance, we had March Party last week. The weather wasn't really warm enough for anything outdoors, so we did our favorite indoor activity: eat dessert. We went to Yogurt Stop, and I made yet another fabulous concoction.

I really, really need to lose weight. I'm starting to look like Homer Simpson, but with more hair. We went to the mall a little while back, Courtney, Brittney, and I, and it was so depressing. I usually try to stay out of there because it always makes me angsty for a while afterward. I would like to be more fashionable than I am, but I don't have the money or the body to wear anything cute right now.

My poor little Joshy needs clothes so bad too. If I get pants that fit him better in the waist, they are floods. If I get him pants that are long enough, they fall off when he runs, even with the adjustable waist. He was walking into school the other day, after I fought him to wipe the booger off his nose and brush his teeth, and I noticed one of his cow licks was sticking up. Poor kid. One day Courtney took him to school and she didn't notice that his hair was sticking straight up on the side he slept on. So after school I was like, Dude, that's some crazy hair you've got going on there, and he's all, "Yeah, this one kid said I look like a wolf!" He thought it was a pretty cool thing to look like, so I guess no harm done. That's one thing I love about Josh. He just doesn't care what other people think yet. He wanted his fingernails painted green and black, so his sister did it for him, and when some kid told him it looked girly his response was, "OK..." He doesn't care. He made a key chain to clip on his backpack, and he used all kinds of beads, including pink beads and flower beads, and someone again told him that was girly, but it's still hanging on his backpack. Josh's teacher read Pippi Longstocking to the class, and he loved the whole idea of "going finding," and so he is always out looking for "treasures" (garbage), and then he combines that whole idea with his love for Man vs. Wild, and he takes his treasures and uses them to "survive" in the backyard. It's pretty cute, except for the part where I'm always finding his garbage in places where garbage should not be.

Tonight was the best night of my TV life. Russell was voted out of Survivor. And he cried, and I laughed as he cried. We decided we needed to celebrate afterward, and the prospect of donuts was raised, and there was much rejoicing, and then Sean and I looked at our waistlines. Donuts were vetoed. We celebrated with banana bread and vegetables. What a party.

February goals: I did OK at sticking to my budget. I think I did the best I could. I did pretty well at trying to get things done without mental whining and dragging of feet. I improved, at least.

March goals:
* I have to find a way to at least start some weight loss. A few pounds would be great. My back went on strike last week, and I spent any moment possible sitting or reclining for 3 or 4 days, and that didn't help the current weight gain trend at all. The scale creeped up another 2 pounds. Got to reverse the trend. I can't even be specific right now about how I'm going to do it. I just know it has to be done.

* Organization stuff. Fix some problems with the chore schedules. Adjustments to dinner time and Lexi's breakfast time. Get everyone in to the eye doctor. Get bids on some work I need done on the house.

* Get some yard work done. Some flower beds that were never cleaned up in the fall, and get ready for potatoes and onions. Maybe peas? Maybe lettuce?

* Hang up the picture frame I bought like a year ago.

Babies, pictures, and mottos

Lexi told me that we are getting a baby girl this summer. She said she told Miss Heidi at the daycare. Great. Now someone is going to ask me when my baby is due and I'm going to cry. I asked her where we would get this baby girl, and she giggled and said at the grocery store. As much as I'd love a baby girl, I have neither the money, time, patience, energy, or uterus necessary for a baby.

Random pictures:

Miss Court


Josh and Britt


The Holy Terror of Primary Children's Hospital


Eric and his awesome train birthday cake made by his awesome mom


My mottos for the week:

"It takes as much energy to go positive as it does to go negative, and I would much rather drive myself positive." -- Bret Michaels

"I shoot for the moon
But I'm too busy gazin' at stars
I feel amazing and
I'm not afraid" -- Eminem "Not Afraid"

I love feminist poetry and complaining about life

I've been thinking a lot, for a long time, about what I contribute to the world, and the concept that where much is given, much is required. Thinking about my duties as a Christian and as a human. I came across a few interesting articles in the blogernacle the last week or so on the Relief Society and how much more good it should possibly be doing in the world, rather than the current mission to make homewoven handicrafts and make people feel guilty about not being better at being perfect. It's something that, as I've said, I've thought a lot about, except not so much the Relief Society part. On Feminist Mormon Housewives, Joanna Brooks posted this quote from Audre Lorde, a poet whom I just love, and it really struck me.

“Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior poet doing my work – [I have] come to ask you, are you doing yours?”

The work that she was talking about for herself had to do with enlightening people and making change. And the answer for me has to be, no, I am not doing my work. At least not in full. Not as I'd like to be or as I need to be. I am not doing enough to ease the burdens of others or to make a positive difference in the world. But I am doing all I can. I think. I'm tired. I'm so exhausted. Everything feels so hard right now. I don't think I can do anymore, but someday. Someday.

Friday afternoon I was asking myself why I bother with some of the things I spend so much of my time and energies on. Students just want it to be easy. Parents just want me to figure out why their student is failing and fix it. Thursday one of my former students walked by me at the assembly and then stopped to say "hey" and give me a hug. Friday a former student stuck his head in and said he wanted to come to my class that day because he always learned something every day in my class. It feels good, but only for a few moments, because soon enough students are complaining that everything is too hard, that what I'm asking is too impossible, a parent is e-mailing or calling wanting me to take responsbility for things that are not mine to take. I had a discussion with 6th period that took a turn into contraception and how the morning after pill works. I gave them some info that frankly could possibly get me in trouble, told them that we probably shouldn't delve too far into that topic, told them all not to have sex, and then changed the subject, but I overheard one girl say to the boy next to her, "Where else am I going to learn this stuff. My mom sure doesn't teach it to me." It's frustrating and draining and I love it, but this week I don't feel qualified or equipped or energized enough to do it. I led class discussions on Thursday and Friday, and it drained me. There were a few tears over topics that hit close to home for a few students, we had passionate argument. Passion and connection are essential to education... and then I got a phone call that, among other things, someone's delicate little flower skipped class because those types of things are just too scary for her shy little self. What the hell am I supposed to do, then? Cater my lesson plans to your child? Ensure that she never has to do anything that would be uncomfortable for her or require stepping out of her comfort zone for 20 seconds of her day? I've got parents that think I have 180 students, but somehow I have time to monitor theirs one-on-one at all times to make sure she's doing her work, no one is bothering her, oh and by the way she's too shy and won't come ask for help so you always have to go to her and make sure she understands. Even though when you do, she'll just say "yes," but you should know that she really doesn't and somehow intuit what she might need help with. It was a crappy week. I have a bad attitude.

Lexi had a bad night Friday night. I don't like it when she gets low and starts throwing up. It's scary. We were giving her 15 minutes and then we'd have to take her in, and luckily she started to feel better and be able to eat enough to get her sugar out of the 50s. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't dare to leave her with anyone else. I may end up giving away my Bon Jovi ticket. We'll see how it goes.

OK, so this is an excerpt from one of my favorite Audre Lorde poems, called "Stations":

Some women wait for themselves
Around the next corner
And call the empty spot peace
But the opposite of living
Is only not living
And the stars do not care.

Some women wait for something
To change and nothing
Does change
So they change

Themselves.

It means something different to me each time I read it, and I love it.

We're rich!

We won $200 on the Super Bowl yesterday! :::Happy dance::: Sean got so nervous/excited as the quarter wound down and we had the money numbers... I was laughing so hard at him. And they kept stopping the clock, putting time back on the clock, there was a challenge on a play... I thought he was going to have a heart attack. So I immediately started spending our winnings mentally on fun things, and Sean says, "Well, I need to do some work on the car and the truck." Major buzzkill there, buddy.

This whole diabetes thing is kinda crazy, but mostly it's going OK. She's had a few low moments that scared us, but hopefully we'll work it out. Sometimes she throws up kinda randomly, like she's not really sick or anything, and that's just hard on blood glucose and then you have to worry about ketones and blah. I'm still learning so much, I don't even know everything I have to worry about yet. Just taking it a little at a time. We're supposed to go to a 3 hour class this week, but Sean's going to have to go alone. For me to be out in Salt Lake for that time period I have to take a whole day off of work and get a sub, and the daycare isn't trained to handle it yet without me anyway. Just not worth the extra stress at this point.

Every year we talk about going to Disneyland, and every year when I start to add up how expensive it is, I say, "Why? Why would I spend that much money to go there?" It's so ridiculous. I've spent a good chunk of time looking up hotel packages, and the park tickets alone are like $1000. That's absolutely ridiculous. How does anyone afford to do this? For a family of 6 it's gotta be a $2500 vacation without even breaking a sweat.

I can't believe it's midterm already! That means only 1.5 terms left in the whole school year. That seems unreal. I have Parent-Teacher Conferences on Valentine's Day. Not expecting a huge turnout, but maybe I'll be surprised.

My life lately

Man, who writes this blog? It needs some work. Some new music, some links added, some links to blogs I don't read taken off... That would take time and effort, though. Two things in short supply.

First, I must say that I try not to swear. Very often. I like swearing, actually. I am a fan of the well-placed curse word. But, I feel like it is lazy. It's easy to use a swear word rather than think of something else to say, and I like to set an example for my kids. I try, anyway. But sometimes... I just gotta swear.

Speaking of that... this cold weather makes me want to swear. When I step outside in the morning and it's 10 degrees I just want to let loose a really big one. A stream of big, bad words. But I refrain.

So. Life is weird. Whenever things start feeling too easy, I get worried. I start looking to the sky and wondering what great cosmic shit storm might be heading my way. I've been praying for the last while... Lord, I know that my life has been kinda too easy lately, but please, pllleeeeaaaassssse, let it stay that way awhile? I really can't deal with anything else right now. But the universe had other plans for us, and that's OK.

So last Thursday I decided to call the doctor and see if they would just test Lexi's blood sugar since she'd been having uncharacteristic bathroom accidents and was so thirsty for the last few weeks. My pediatrician is awesome and he ordered the labs and had them sent to the main lab with a runner and done immediately for us, even though it was the end of the day and everyone was going home. I really wasn't that surprised when it came back Type 1 diabetes. Stunned, numb, scared, but not surprised. So he sent us on up to Primary Children's Hospital immediately, and we spent a few days there over the weekend learning about how to manage Type 1 diabetes. It was overwhelming at first, but it doesn't take too long to get the hang of it all. It's a whole new set of issues, though, that's for sure. I'm just glad she got it now, rather than earlier or later. This really isn't a bad time if she has to have it.

So I've had Josh with me off and on while he's heen off track. Courtney takes him some of the time and he goes with Sean's mom one day a week, and then there were a few days we were out of school. He does really well hanging out with me for the most part, but I'm very excited for him to be back on track next week. He's made all of my paperclips into chains. He played games that he found on the internet, and in the process he changed my home page, default search engine, and tool bar and I had to figure out how to change them all back. He sometimes sits in a desk and raises his hand when I ask questions and takes the handouts that I pass around. My students think he is the cutest thing ever. On Monday when I walked up and started writing on the board, Front Row Joe said, "Mrs. Chamberlain it appears that you have a sticky note on your back, and I think it says 'I am stupid.'" So I peeled it off, and sure enough, in Josh's handwriting it said "I am stupod." I was like, "JOSH! What the heck?" And he's all acting innocent, all "Wha? Who, me?" back behind my desk, trying to deny it. And my students thought it was funny. Me, not so much.

I took Brittney to get her permit on Monday. She's pretty excited about that. Now we just need to get her out driving so she can get practice hours in.

Tonight was incoming sophomore night at school, but I didn't have to do anything so I got 1.5 hours of work time in my room. It was so needed and so nice.

OK, so January goals:
I lost absolutely no weight whatsoever.
I have not been to bed before 11:00 since I think sometime in 2009.
I stuck to my grocery budget so-so.
I did make a year financial plan.
We tried to have family fun night with my family, but a few of us ended up in the hospital instead.

February goals:
Stick to my budget.
Don't drag my feet and dread doing things that need to be done (taxes, chores, errands, doctors appointments)... just do it and don't analyze how I feel about it. I tend to get all, "But I don't feeeeeeeel like it," in my head, and then I just make myself feel miserable instead of just doing it and not thinking about it, so I'm trying to stop it. So far I'm already doing better.