Does anyone even read this?

Just checking. Seeing how it's been over a year since my last post, I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is "no."

Why procrastinating can be a good thing

Several times in my life I've felt pretty darn stressed. I know I shouldn't call it "really or very stressed" because that should be reserved for soldiers in battle or pregnant moms whose babies are in trouble or something; my life is nothing compared to that. But I still get this tight feeling in my chest that just won't go away because I can't seem to keep up with my mounting "to do" lists. I usually feel this way when both work and home feel out of control, and I've been feeling this way all week. I can't seem to get everything done in a day. Anyway, tonight I was supposed to eat with a friend, and she was sick and cancelled. When I heard that I thought, "that's cool; I'll get caught up on some of my cleaning and/or grading I need to do." Somehow though, I ended up not doing any of that - I looked at a magazine, did some yoga, took a bath and put on a pore-clearing mask, shaved my legs, and didn't really get much done from my work or home to do lists. However, I'm feeling much less stressed now than while I was driving home from work trying to plan out what I would accomplish this evening, while realizing that I could never get all of that done in one night. It goes to show that sometimes just forgetting about your chores is actually better than doing them!

(oh, and maybe I put a dash of rum in my gatorade. That might have helped a bit with the relaxing too. And prayers; I said some of those too.)

The Blizzard of 2010

Well, compared to all my friends who moved up north, we haven't really had to deal with too much wintery weather. But for Texas, we had A LOT of snow last week! It was definitely more snow than I've seen in my humble Texan lifetime. Here are some pictures I took on Thursday (without ever touching foot on the snowy ground).

The golf course across the street from my apt

The tree outside my apartment window (it snowed constantly all day, but my camera couldn't pick up on the falling flakes)

Snow Day

So we were out of school today. Here's what I did with the unexpected free time:

- go back to bed for a few hours and just lay there thinking about how nice it is to not be at work

- graze on snacks slowly all day

- clean the kitchen, including the burner pans from the stove

- vacuum the entire apt

- swiffer wetjet in the bathroom and kitchen

- build a fire and use up the last of my firewood

- make a facebook event for Josh

- text people

- facebook stalk random people I haven't talked to in a long time and contemplate how crazy it is that so many people my age and younger and married and have kids

- grade some papers

- dance around the apt to music

- clean the bathroom - counters, mirror, toilet, and bathtub

- lay on the couch watching basic TV

- talk to my grandma on the phone

- take pictures of snow (without ever stepping foot on the ground level of my apts)

- have a glass of wine because I've run out of entertaining things to do, and I'm somehow always more entertained when I've had a little wine!

So basically I ran out of stuff I wanted to do at like 3pm today, and if we're out again tomorrow, I might just go nuts! Snowdays just aren't as fun when you're completely isolated from everyone else. :-(

Futility

Does anyone else ever grow tired of the futility of life? For some reason lately, I've grown to resent that every week I have more laundry to do if I want to wear clean clothes, more groceries to buy if I want fresh food, more cleaning to do if I want to have a sanitary home, and more work to do if I want to keep earning money to pay for all that stuff I keep needing. And I don't even have to do that for a whole family! (although my boyfriend is here often enough that it feels like I'm constantly cooking for/cleaning up after him).

Maybe this is being brought up because I've been home grading papers, inputting grades, cleaning, doing laundry, and whatnot while my boyfriend has gone to a gunshow to buy a shotgun (I told him he was stupid, but he's always wanted to go hunting), spent most of Sunday golfing (which is probably in his top-ten list of things to do), has joined a softball team, and is going dove hunting. Why does he get to have all the fun while I've been working?! Anyway, I get a four-day weekend soon and he doesn't, so I have to think of some really fun stuff to do while he's working to even the score! :-P

Oh yeah, and I have that whole summer thing off... Somehow I always forget about that. I'll be happy with life again when that comes back around! For now, I think I'll go read Ecclesiastes!

Bad Blogger... Don't Judge!

So I'm a bad blogger, I'll admit it. This blog hasn't changed any since I set it up... Whenever that was. But can I say that I do a lot of things online and technology-wise for school and I kind-of forget about the blog when I'm caught up in the midst of it all? I was just looking at my friends' blogs (Kayla's in particular) and thinking about how ridiculously cute they are and how they seem to be updated a lot. I don't even know how to do most of the stuff required to make a blog cute.

But my excuse is that I'm figuring out all this technology stuff for school without much help, then I'm too tired from it to play around with it at home. I make lessons for a classroom remote-control feedback system, set up accounts for each of my students for the math textbook online, set up online ordering for Scholastic book orders, create computer lessons and online scavenger hunts, maintain an interactive classroom website, set up an online spelling practice page for my entire team, find online videos to stream and show on my classroom projector, and I hope that shows that I'm not a total technology dunce. I can do stuff, I just get burnt out and don't do it for my poor, neglected little blog. And in the summer I'm too busy playing and sleeping to remember to do anything responsible! ;-)

So there are my excuses. Please accept them and don't judge me for my boring, old blog!

Moving

Can I vent about how much I hate moving? I take that as a yes...

I am getting more and more OCD (yes, I know you college friends probably find it hard to believe), and I can't stand having things out of place or not knowing where they are. That being said, moving is extremely difficult on my mental health. Also, I'm not very strong, so as I move things, I tend to use my whole body and end up with sore muscles and bruises all over. Therefore, moving is not so great for my physical health either.

So two weeks ago I spend some time on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday helping my good friend Erin move. She's helped me several times, so I had no problem with it. Except the chaos. Stuff was everywhere and I had to strain pretty hard to not develop some kind of muscle twitch. I was helping her pack the old place, and I had to crawl all over random things. I'm aware that most of the world packs that way. I, however, do not. I do one or two boxes at a time, and keep them pushed aside so they don't stand in the way of anything else. Then I have to stack them in a corner so I cna pretend not to notice them. And even then I'm more prone to emotional episodes due to how out of control things get.

That Friday night after my boyfriend got off work, he had to start moving. He, of course, hadn't packed a single thing. So I ended up packing a lot of his stuff and helping him move all but the heavist of it. His move continued until Sunday. That makes 5 days in a row of moving (not constant moving, but still the chaos of it all).

So this past week, I spent time packing up my apartment for my move starting tomorrow. I also finally got to go into my classroom, which I have to UNpack from getting new flooring. And there was no A/C at school, plus everything was covered in a fine layer of concrete dust (don't ask). Oh, and did I mention that all of the furniture was stacked on top of other furniture, plus some of the bottom layers were glued to the ground because of the clear coat on top of the tile? Several bruises appeared from me trying to move a large table, bookshelf, and refridgerator off of heights by myself.

Suffice it to say, I'm sick and tired of moving and I haven't even picked up the key to my new apartment! But the boyfriend did help me move a lot of stuff into his truck tonight and tomorrow I'll get my key and take little stuff over. Then Thursday I've hired movers for all my big furniture (thankfully, Erin had too) because there is no way I could get that myself. But they charge by the hour so I'll be spending several hours myself (and getting Erin and Josh to help in the evening) moving stuff in so I don't have to spend as much money.

After all this, I've concluded that I either need to never move again or let go of many of my material items.... I think we all know which one of those I'm most likely to choose! ;-)