Still busy at work (obviously, since I haven’t had time to post). Got caught up on emails, mostly, but am way behind on the rest of my social media.

I spend a lot of my time at work reassuring people that 1) there’s no need to panic, 2) it’ll all be OK, and 3) yes, I will be coming back.

In non-work news…

I finished up a skirt last night that I made in the fall. I’d tell you more about it, but I don’t have pictures, and can’t exactly remember what the specific pattern is. I only had to hem it, which was a 20 minute task – seemed silly to keep it waiting. (No, I didn’t hem the pants like I should have. Those are still waiting.) I also made 4 earring and necklace sets this weekend, to coordinate with my new skirts (two for the red one, one for the blue one, one for today’s rust one – some day I’ll have pictures of them for you, too).

Finally took down the Christmas tree on Sunday… but the boxes with everything in them are still in the living room, and I haven’t vacuumed the floor where the tree was. I’m getting to it, I promise.

I have a bunch of stuff to write up on my practicum before I start student teaching – I should probably do that tonight before someone figures out that it’s not done yet.

I finished up my time at the middle school last Thursday and am very sad about that. It was a great experience, though, even that last day when I taught and totally bombed (it was a great learning experience, and I did a much better job the second time through). I’ve got to try and let go of the middle schoolers so I can adjust to high schoolers and not begrudge them – it’s not their fault they’re not as cool.

There might be other things to share, but the last week or so has pretty much been a blur, or at least that’s how it feels when I’m at work. I’m trying to have a very zen attitude, but it’s hard to do when other people are freaking out.

Whew! It’s amazing what I can do in 7 spare minutes!

I know, I know, I’ve been a bad blogger lately. But if you think this is bad, just wait until I start student teaching. That’s right, I got a placement for student teaching and start at the end of the month! I’m at the high school by my house (one block – awesome commute, no?), and I honestly don’t know much more than that.

Life was already operating in a higher gear, since this month I’m trying to get my full 40 hours in at work while only being in the building 3 days a week. Since Tuesday (when I learned I’d be student teaching this semester), I’ve had to kick it up another notch, since I have less than 3 weeks to prepare myself, my job, and my life for a 3-month interruption from normalcy. This means working like crazy when I’m in the office to finish up projects, get them to a point where they can be turned over to someone else, brainstorming ways for my responsibilities to be covered, etc.

While not at work I’m supposed to be getting my electronic folio all done, but I haven’t made much progress on it this month. They told us to finish up the “classroom” half of it before student teaching, and while I’ve got a lot of information in my portfolio, it’s not nearly where I’d like it to be. But I haven’t had time to work on it because I’ve been squeezing in hours of work (a lot of transcription) so I don’t have to use vacation hours. I also don’t have Christmas presents for and yet (sorry, girls!) and we should probably get together before the end of the month. And my house should be clean and office organized (need to put away all those sewing projects that I probably won’t have time to work on). Oh, and it would be nice to finish the business-appropriate articles of clothing in various stages of completion so that I look professional at school.

Conveniently, I have a three day weekend, so I have a little extra time to play with. Alas, classes start tonight, which means leaving work early, driving to school, attending one class, leaving an hour early to walk down the hall to attend another class (for which I’ll be an hour late) – this is seriously the arrangement my two professors came up with for this problem. And I’ve got to spend some time figuring out exactly what I’m going to do for 15-20 minutes with the 6th graders on Tuesday, because I’ll be teaching (part of the lesson) again, this time part that I’ve created.Yay! Besides just generally liking the teacher I’ve been with, the students, and the school, I’ve also loved that I’ve become so much more comfortable in the classroom and am no longer afraid of student teaching. Of course, there’s a big difference between 6th graders and the 9th / 12th graders I’ll be student teaching, but any extra confidence I can get is needed. Oh, and I should probably take down the Christmas decorations before decides that I’m crazy, lazy, or both.

OK, I’ve now spent way more time than I should have (time that I didn’t really have), and so I must get back to other things. I was supposed to have pictures of my two new skirts, but I haven’t taken those yet. And pictures from the recent tree trimming (looks awesome!), but I don’t have time for that. Maybe next week, but I’m making no promises.

Yes, yes, I know it’s been, like, forever since I last blogged. I have explanations. Not excuses, but explanations.

One: Last week, was sick, and as he was healing I seem to have caught some of his cold. Or maybe a different cold. Can’t be sure. I didn’t do much all weekend long, but started feeling better on Tuesday morning when it was time to go to work. Of course.

Two: I have taken a database project upon myself at work that I promised would be done by the end of January (which may have been too ambitious – it’s too early to tell). I am at the terribly boring and tedious part of the project, and I’m afraid that if I pause too long to browse the internet or otherwise have fun, I won’t go back to the terrible stuff.

Three: I’m working 9-hour days in January, in order to make up the hours that I’m at the middle school. I asked for this. I’ll also be doing some work from home.

Four: Life has otherwise been fairly boring. The most exciting thing in Minnesota might be the weather, which has been very weird this winter so far. Last Thursday I went to ‘s for Christmas ( kept his sick self at home) and had a fun time. I posted pictures to Flickr but haven’t had the time to blog them. came over on New Year’s Eve, and we had guacamole, glogg, and watched some movies. Totally missed that whole ball drop thing. I made a new skirt and wore it on Wednesday, but didn’t get pictures yet. Did my nails to match, and am totally in love with this manicure. I might never take it off (we’re on day 3 and still no chips!). I have some photos from my iPhone that don’t adequately capture their beauty.

So, there you have it. And now I should get to work on that less than fun project. I will leave you with a link to one of my awesome Christmas gifts from : History of the Political Parties. Instant social studies classroom mix; just add classroom.

Side note: Had glogg for the first time this weekend (using this Saturnus Glogg concentrate I’d been given a year or two ago) and discovered it’s fabulous (best way to consume red wine ever), and am now disappointed because I can’t seem to find it anywhere in a store near me. I know it’s sold at stores that are not in Minnesota, but it’s not on Amazon and only online at one retailer that I’ve not heard of before). Still looking – haven’t given up hope yet.

The number of cookies made, that is. It was a lot. And there are still two batches of dough in the fridge (chocolate crinkles and ginger chewies, because I couldn’t resist). Those should be easy to make up tonight with plenty of time to wrap gifts. I don’t have to spend any time getting ready for teaching tomorrow, because of some chaos yesterday and generally not knowing what’s going on tomorrow. I’m just going to let what happens happen. (Is it just me, or has the Celexa made me more laid-back?)

During yesterday’s really boring 3 hour [pointless] meeting about student teaching, it was implied that my chances for student teaching are higher than I had thought. I will be fine with whatever happens, and it’s out of my hands, and I’m just not going to worry about it. But it’s good to know that it is still a possibility.

How about a cute story from class yesterday? During fourth hour the teacher had me sit next to a student, N, with whom I had not previously worked. The students were supposed to think about what someone should have to do to become a citizen (if one isn’t born in the United States), and write down their thoughts. Then we turned to share our ideas with the person next to us. N shared his thoughts, which were good. I told him, very casually, that I knew there was a test people had to take to become citizens. He looked at me and said, “You know way more about this stuff than I do.” Well, um, yeah. That’s kind of my job.

My co-workers are dutifully gorging themselves on cookies, as instructed. I’ve had to refill some of the cookies once already. (I brought in a 9×13 pan full, but laid some out prettily on a plate – I didn’t dare bring a wrapped plate on the bus, naively thinking that it wouldn’t somehow get destroyed.) Those hours spent baking were definitely well spent.

Whether or not I’ll make it back here to say anything before Christmas is unknown, so I’ll say “Merry Christmas!” now. I hope your holidays are spent with loved ones, happy and celebrating all that we are blessed with.

So Friday night was lazy, and we had a very late start to Saturday, but from 12:30 on, the weekend was a whirlwind. We got 90% of our Christmas shopping done Saturday afternoon in about 3 hours (Bed Bath and Beyond, Toys R Us, Mall of America, and Sams Club, plus some online shopping). Then I went to St Paul for ‘s birthday party at an Italian restaurant I was unfamiliar with (but it was good). On Sunday morning, I finalized my cookie list while got his hair cut, and then I finished up my Christmas apron (sorry, no pictures! I thought might have one posted on her blog, but she only has one of my summer fruits apron that I never photographed) so that I could get on with the cookie making. I decided to forgo going to the grocery store and just make what I could with what was in the house, and stop when I ran out of things to make. Total success on that front, by the way. Had to order flour and both kinds of butter when we did our groceries online last night.

made us some lunch and then went to a movie with , and I started up the mixer. Chocolate roll-and-cuts were first, and are still in the fridge, as they needed to refrigerate 3-4 hours (up to overnight). Matcha (green tea) shortbread Christmas trees were next, though they had to sit in the fridge for an hour after being cut out, so by the time came over, I was 2/3rds of the way through White Christmas and still hadn’t turned on the oven. did almost all of the work on the spritz cookies and all of the work on the Snickerdoodles, while decorated the spritz cookies to perfection. I spent my time moving things in and out of the oven, finding ingredients, changing the movie (the Christmas classic Rudolph, followed by Love Actually), and talking on the phone ( called to finalize plans for our trip down). Oh, and I made up meatballs for dinner. Whew! I was going to make up the chocolate roll-and-cuts after dinner, but it was 8 pm by that time and I was exhausted. The dishwasher was filled and ran, the sink is overflowing with more dishes, and there’s more flour hanging around than there should be, but there are 4 tins full of cookies. refused to take any cookies home, as she’s leaving for Ohio shortly. I managed to get to take a few home, but basically, there are a whole lot of cookies at my house. I’m planning on bringing in a big plate to work on Wednesday, and a tin to the teacher’s lounge tomorrow or Thursday.

Oh, I also got ‘s Christmas hat done, so I just have to finish up the scarf with whatever yarn remains. It looks pretty good, even though I messed up my cables a few times before deciding that doing them without a cable needle (as recommended in the pattern) was ridiculous and not working for me.

Despite not having any homework or volunteer commitments outside of the work day, I have a very full week planned. Tonight I’ll get the last of the dough made up for the remaining cookie recipes (chocolate crinkles, maybe some ginger chewies, and something else that I bookmarked but can’t remember at the moment), and hopefully get most of them baked. Tuesday night after I go to a mandatory student teaching meeting I will wrap presents and bake any remaining cookies. Wednesday night I’ll prep for teaching (I get to do that Thursday with the sixth graders), Thursday night is Christmas dinner with and company, and then we’re leaving for Chicago on Friday. Whew! Can’t say I didn’t give it my all this year!

Yesterday, we got the tree up, Christmas decorations out, and even got the lights on the outside of the house! We’ve never put up outside lights before, so there was a bit of a learning curve (especially since our gutters have covers, so we couldn’t use the gutter clips as they were designed), but after we figured it out, it went quickly. Everything is on a timer and the house looks so pretty.

But I forgot to take pictures, so you’ll have to take my word on it.

Saturday was ‘s birthday party, which was a lot of fun. Legos ruled the day, which is good, since we’d already bought Legos for part of his and ‘s Christmas gifts.

I managed to make it through the whole cable section of ‘s hat (more on Ravelry), and am very glad that part is done. Now there are just ribbing and tapering to the top. Easy.

I went to JoAnn on Saturday morning (yikes, there is a good reason to not leave the house before 2 pm on Saturdays – people are crazy!) and re-stocked on green thread, so hopefully I’ll be able to finish my Christmas apron, and then I can bake some cookies. Now that I am homework-free and have fewer commitments after today (last day of tutoring), I think I might devote myself to sewing and cookie baking. Sounds like an ideal life, right? Better make sure we’re stocked up on flour.

And all the while, I’ll be listening to Christmas music and probably driving crazy, between that and the Christmas movies. It took me several hours yesterday to get my iPod updated with Christmas songs, but I finally did it and got to listen to seasonally-appropriate music on the bus ride.

As you can see, I don’t really have anything of significance to say. However, I am still without necessary software on my computer to do any work, so I’m kind of stuck trying to entertain myself. Bummer.

I have lots to be happy about today.

I’m wearing my 40-year-old sweater (sadly with a turtleneck and long underwear beneath my jeans, because it was 7* this morning), and even though it wasn’t made for me and is a bit big and perhaps not the most flattering thing I could wear, I love it. I love looking at the tag inside that says, “Fashioned and Hand Made by Karen.” I love the color, an early 1970s olive green that flatters my redhead complexion nicely. I love who it was made for and who made it. It feels like a big hug from the past, kind of like a Norman Rockwell painting.

While I’m not at the school today (so sad), I was yesterday, and it was a good day. I’ll spare you of all the details I need to include in my official reflection. I think it’s sufficient to say that days I’m at school end with me being tired, but happy, while days that I go to work end with me being slightly less satisfied (usually). And while I have no doubt there will be a fair amount of horrible days when I’m a teacher, especially during that first year, it is really encouraging to know that I picked a career that is so right for me, and that makes me happy more often than not.

My co-workers continue to be super supportive, which is awesome. They don’t have to be. Also, everyone is here in my row today, which makes the day more fun. I have a good row. (We named it “Main Street,” a mock homage to our own importance and awesomeness. Don’t judge unless you’ve worked more than 5 years in cubicle-ville.)

My house is clean. Well, at least the first floor, and I picked up my stuff that was laying about the family room. It took me three hours yesterday, but I dusted, vacuumed, cleared off surfaces, moved a piece of furniture, scrubbed down most of the surfaces in my bathroom, vacuumed the floors and even cleared the ceilings of spiderwebs. Whew! I’m putting the tree in a new place this year, hence the furniture moving, but I think it will be nice. Since everything isn’t all messed up like it was last year at this time, and we got rid of some superfluous furniture in the last year, there’s more space and I think it will be nice. Tonight before I go to class, we’ll pull the boxes of decorations and the tree out of storage, and then tomorrow we’ll hang lights on the house and I’ll decorate the inside. Yay!

Tomorrow’s plans also include going toy shopping for a certain little boy who turns 5 on Monday. I can’t believe I have a nephew who will be 5! There’s a family party that evening, where I might steal a moment with my sister’s belly, the current home of my niece. As much as I complained about it last Saturday at No Coast Craft-o-Rama, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t learn the gender of her unborn until yesterday, because I would have bought everything that was vaguely girly, and now we’d be broke.

My Wednesday night class is over and all my assignments have been turned in. Of the grades she’s recorded, I have a 98%, so I’m not too worried about the one shorter essay and my participation grade that are not yet in the system. I do have class tonight, which is a bummer, but then I’m done with classes until January 9th. Yay! That light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter. (See counter. –> )

So, I have a lot to be happy about these days. (It would also appear that the Celexa is working, don’t you think? I mean, it’s hard to tell how much of my mood can be attributed to spending 2 days a week doing something I love and how much can be attributed to drugs, but I think it’s safe to say the Celexa is doing something.)

What are you happy about right now?

One class tonight, one class Friday night, one more volunteer tutoring gig on Monday, and then it’s basically over. I mean, there’s still that Tuesday-Thursday middle school thing, but all I really have to do for that is show up, do whatever I’m told, and write reflections. At some point, I need to teach 3 lessons, but I’m not concerned about that. I’m assuming that he’ll want me to teach an already-prepared lesson and that I shouldn’t have to write up a lesson plan.

Last night, grabbed dinner at Jimmy Johns, and as he frequently does, he brought me home a chocolate chip cookie. What can I say, he’s good to me like that. Well, last night’s cookie was kind of short on chocolate chips, but it was still soft, and it really made me want a peanut butter cookie. This led to my talking aloud about baking such cookies, and then deciding that I need to finish my new holiday apron before I can do this. laughed at me for this, but since he doesn’t have an apron (because I still haven’t made one up for him – bad crafty wife!), he doesn’t know how cool they are.

This is the one I’m working on right now:

I actually have three of these planned out with fabric already in my stash, but I seem to have lost McCalls 5825, which has some half-aprons and the oven mitts as well. Major bummer. (This isn't even the cutest apron planned, but the missing pattern forced me to do this one instead.)

I’ve got the bodice done except for attaching the shoulder straps to the back and the tie (the last apron I made with this pattern has straps that are a bit too long and continually fall off my shoulders in a very annoying way). I had to stop last night because I ran out of green thread. Like, completely. No green thread in my possession, in any shade or tone. Major bummer. All of the exposed seams have been bound using that red print for the oven mitt. It’s mostly a bunch of straight seams left, other than those ties (which are really long, but it’s a very nice feature), so it should go quickly. The other nice thing about this pattern is that it nearly meets in the back, so you get good coverage. Plus, it’s sized well (8-10-12 instead of S-M-L).

They re-imaged our computers at work over the weekend, but mine didn’t take, so I spent most of Monday morning watching it update itself. And then I temporarily lost all of my bookmarks (they’re back now – something about the sync key in Firefox that wasn’t matching up), so I couldn’t blog because I had no idea what the address to the editor was. Seriously.

Things seem to be mostly ironed out with that, other than the fact that I’m missing three major software programs and a mapped drive, so I can’t actually do a bunch of my work. Minor detail.

Yesterday at the school was not nearly as stellar as the other days, though I still enjoyed myself overall. I had a few difficult students, and couldn’t come up with solutions when asked by the teacher (strategies to use, ways to help them improve). After thinking about it the rest of the day, I have some thoughts on what I would do differently next time, and I suppose that’s all that’s really important (at least in terms of “reflective teaching”), but it was still disappointing to feel like I could have done a better job. There’s always tomorrow!

I am finding it hard keeping track of my online life while doing the school-work thing. This doesn’t bode well for the blog once I get an actual teaching job, but that would be a small price to pay to have a job I love. I think I’ll need to significantly cut down my subscriptions in Google Reader, and maybe even on Twitter (most of what I have there is news, but even then I usually have too much to read). And then there’s Tumblr and Pinterest and Facebook…. Good thing I’m easing into this spending whole days away from the computer thing, or I’d go into social media withdrawal.

I think the Christmas tree is going up tomorrow night, and lights should be delivered and installed this weekend (we had to order the lights we wanted online, since they were out at all of the Home Depots anywhere near us). I’ll have to forgo the garland on the fence this year, and try to get out to the stores super early next year so I can hopefully find something satisfactory. Also, I need to make my way over to the music store and buy some more sheet music; in particular, I need a solo piano version of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite (I have a water-damaged one piano four hands version, which is not very usable without another proficient piano player in my life).

Alright. Now I need to go be reflective. And summarizing. Would love to get some work done, but alas, I am missing some key things still.

If everything stayed the same all the time, life would be boring, right? Right? I’m telling myself this is true after looking at my calendar for the next two months and realizing how … different it’s going to be. Starting tomorrow, I will be completing my middle school practicum hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I will only be at work Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Hopefully, I’ll be getting an hour or two of work done from home after school, but that’s not set in stone yet. Thankfully, my Monday afternoon volunteer tutoring will be done in two weeks (three Mondays, including today), and there are only two Wednesday evening classes left, and one Friday one. After that, I’ll be able to perhaps work longer days when I’m at work, so that I don’t eat up as much vacation time.

What this means for you, dear readers, is that I will probably be posting less often. I expect that my days at work will be busier, since I’ll be here less often, and I obviously can’t blog while at the middle school. Plus, I’ll have to be writing “reflective” journal entries on my practicum experiences, so I might not feel as much need to share.

However, there is an up side. Minnesota is in the season of dark from now through… March, which means that I leave home when it’s dark, and when I get home it’s dark, and therefore I can’t take any pictures to share with you until the weekends. Well, I should have a wee bit of daylight hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so if I’m able to complete any projects or my cats are especially cute, I should be able to share that with you sooner. We’ll test this out tomorrow, since I finished several projects over the weekend that I’d like to share, but it was grey and icky all weekend long.

In other news, I did not get to decorate my house for Christmas over the weekend. Someone had told me the weather would be better on Sunday, and I didn’t check on the accuracy of that. I should have, because Sunday was near freezing and there was a strong wind that made being outside miserable. However, that’s not the reason I was unable to decorate. The reason is, I was unable to find 1) lights to string up around the house, and 2) garland to hang on the fence. I was able to get an outdoor extension cord and a timer for the lights, but those really aren’t very exciting. Do you know how expensive lights are? Somewhere in the 90-cents/foot range. Do you know how much gutter we have to decorate? 200 feet. Yikes. Couldn’t find what I wanted at Home Depot in bulk (to bring the price down a bit). We also need approximately 200 feet of garland and 14-ish bows for the fence. I was told to get the fluffiest I could find (which makes sense, and is important since our fence is large and imposing), and what I found at Michael’s could only be described as stringy or emaciated. Home Depot only had lighted garland, which is not what I wanted. I’ll be checking Target and JoAnn’s later this week, but perhaps my plans to decorate the outside of our house will, again, not come to fruition this year. Seeing as how no one else in the house has caught my holiday spirit, it’s pretty much up to me, and, as previously mentioned, there are quite a few things that I need to keep track of these days.

Our two Thanksgiving dinners were lovely, as was the time spent with family. Days of sleeping in, however, did not come. I think that I have the most minor of colds. Something has been messing with my sleep (too hot, too cold, wide awake at 5 am for no reason), and I am slightly congested. Oh, and I have that icky need to clear my throat thing, though it’s minor and doesn’t happen often. So, instead of being well-rested after a four day weekend, I am actually quite tired today. Bummer. Life goes on.

Well, I hope that holds you over for the next day or three. We’re just going to have to play this by ear. But, rest assured, I have not fallen off the planet or succumbed to some disease, I’m just… busy.