Monday, November 23, 2009

Again with the black clothes

I was doing laundry this weekend and needed to do a load of very, very dark clothes because I have some black jeans that are still in the bleeding stages. I thought, "Eh, this will be a small load. Kind of a waste, but oh, well. I don't want my other clothes to suddenly develop this strange gray haze to them." So I started separating my clothes. When all my black clothes were in the washer I peeked in just to see how small the load was. Yikes! I had a full load of all black clothes (except for 2 renegade pieces of navy blue clothing).

I think I have a lot of black in my wardrobe.... I've been trying to wear more colors lately, really I have!

Monday, November 16, 2009

The flip side

So the dude and I were discussing possible meanings for the phrase, "See you on the flip side," this morning. He claims he's never heard it before. Ironically it turned into a real life situation during my day today. No, I didn't flip over in a boat or anything drastic like that. It was much more subtle but still an important lesson.

Let me start out by saying that I have a headache. A stress headache. Brought on by--stress and a lack of belief in myself and the skills and talents I have been blessed with. I walked into my classroom today to find the temperature at 59 degrees. It only got colder from there until our wonderful custodian fixed whatever was causing the problem. The man is a saint! Needless to say I had all my morning classes in their rooms not mine. Not terribly stressful. As soon as the last morning class ended, though, things went downhill. I ran out of q-tips for the kindergartners to paint with. I couldn't find their color wheels from before, so we had to start all over. I was observed by my mentor, and got almost nothing but negative comments back. In reality I do believe the lesson went well, but I'm still trying to figure that out. ANYWAY, as we sat down to talk about it, and the negative waves started to roll the headache waves started as well. I was barely able to have enough time to set everything up. Commence the growing of the headache. And the feelings of failure.

Then my day flipped, when I read a couple of emails from one of my mothers-in-law (both belong to the Dude, don't worry) that she had sent me a couple of days ago. I hadn't had a chance to read them until then, and I'm kind of glad I didn't. Each of them contained a message that I needed to hear about enjoying life and being thankful for what we have, and the pointlessness of complaining. I still had a headache, but I no longer wanted to quit and I chose to actually look forward to the rest of my day with excitement rather than dread.

Thank you, Mum, for the flipping.