Would you rather

Have a lobotomy or a migraine?

Today, I was thinking a lobotomy might have been a nice way to spend the day. As a student was cussing me out for losing his work (listen punk, YOU don't turn in work, YOU leave it on your table every dang day, and YOU got schooled when I showed you right where I put it all before I wobbled out the door) , and I was glaring back at him with one eye closed and a hand on my forehead, I realized I had to go home before I started cussing back.

If you've never had a migraine, a real migraine-- the kind that makes you not be able to see or properly utilize your extremities, and feels like a tiny squad of Irish dancers is jumping on your brain and at the same time magically poured a bottle of whiskey into the pit of your stomach without your even being able to enjoy it-- well, you're lucky. Though I tried my damndest to make it through the day, after finding myself ready to tell everyone it was nap time, I then found myself grabbing my stack of work to grade (which turned out to be the work I already graded FML) and rushing out of the building.

But wait?! Where does one go when you have 3 children at home who would never in a million years understand the debilitating misery of a migraine? Since most bars frown on customers sleeping in them, I turned to my sister. Thank the heavens for sisters who have houses with comfortable beds, blinds, and total silence. (I thank the heavens for the sister who has a house with the most uncomfortable beds, no blinds, and total chaos, too, just for a different reason).

After passing out and drooling (sorry) all over for a good three hours, I awoke to peacefulness. And while my eyes can open no further than halfway, and while my brain feels bruised, and while it took every last bit of my energy to drive home, I was glad I didn't go for the lobotomy. And glad we have our YouCaring site to help me look forward to the days in which I will have a room in the house that locks and allows me the same solitude my sister's house offers!

Why I teach...

A good part of the reason we have our YouCaring page is because we are teachers. We are teachers with piles of student loans, no income in the summer, three of our own babies, year's worth of bad luck, continued salary freezes, and year's worth of bad decisions to spend our money on our students because SOMEONE has to. So, I figure I should tell you why I teach.


The response I typically receive when I tell people I teach high schoolers in Milwaukee is a mix between sheer horror and what I think might be utter disbelief- or maybe it's still sheer horror.

We all know, especially here in Wisconsin, that teaching is a profession that is under fire, underappreciated, under scrutiny, under _______, go ahead- fill in the blank. And I have often asked myself, without being able to find a good answer, as to why I continue to do it every year.

If you know me, you know how much of my life is dedicated to my kids (meaning my students) and how hard it was for me to find some balance between my kids and my babies. I am still struggling with that. All of my kids need me, and that's why I keep going back.

Now, I could go on to talk about the thousands of reasons our kids need me and you and this city to stop working against them and start working for them, but instead, I'm going to get silly and tell you the most hilarious of moments that make me able to get up and do it again every morning. Because my kids can be really funny- or really terribly annoying and so naughty that I can't help but laugh at them.

My first year of teaching, I was just beginning Romeo and Juliet... I asked my class what they knew about the play and got nothing. So, I switched gears and said "What do you know about Juliet"
The first and only hand up replied at the top of his lungs "She was a virgin!" True story, kid. I still laugh at that. What was better was that his final exam included answering the same question with "she died happy ;) "

One of the things you get to do as a teacher is go on "voluntary" field trips- some that last multiple nights and even weeks! When you spend days upon days with your kids, you learn a lot- actually too much- about them. Like, you learn too late that a kid can't swim. I TOLD him DO NOT JUMP IN THE DEEP END IF YOU CAN'T SWIM! Well, I guess he didn't hear me because he jumped. I save lives in all kinds of ways.

On those same trips, you learn how to "tape" kids into their rooms. You also learn way too much about them by walking the hallways late at night to ensure they are still in their rooms. Like, you learn which teachers they think are super hot (along with other horrifying information), which then makes it really difficult to ever look at them the same way in your class again.

Two years ago, a student who clearly took after his father went on a rant about how great Scott Walker was and how he was the man who was going to hold the American Dream together... I, and the rest of the class, then continued to laugh hysterically as he ended his rant by dropping his pencil on the floor and smashing his face into the desk chair in front of him when he bent down to get it. (I know, I'm an ass.) For the record, I did ask if he was okay after I had cleared the tears of laughter from my eyes.

Last year, I was teaching Gatsby, which uses roman numerals for its chapters. When I realized hardly anyone knew how to read them, I had to give a mini lesson. My "Beavis and Butthead" in the back were arguing- I asked them if they had questions. "Yah, what language is this in?" Before I could answer, Beavis responds "SPANISH, DUMBASS!" Oh lordy... teaching takes so much patience!

Since I'm mentioning Gatsby, let me also mention how fun it is to teach that book to urban kids who write essays about what a "thot" Myrtle is. We can't forget the argument that ensues when we watch the new movie which includes Jay-Z on the soundtrack and some kids suddenly believe people of the 20s were listening to his music........ hello? Thankfully I don't have to intervene in that argument as my wiser group of students sets them straight. I'm too busy thinking about how beautiful Leo is anyway.

This year, well, this has been a tough start of a year, but we have had a few moments that have at least made me crack a smile. I never thought I'd literally have to tell a student to "please put your selfie stick away!" during class, to ask a senior student to "please remove your hand from your pants" (apparently he was wearing compression shorts for the football game and felt the middle of class was a good time to adjust them) or "please stop licking the table" of which I'm still not sure why said student was licking the table.

Now, my kids can be serious goofballs from time to time, but they are amazing. They are incredible young people who beat the odds day after day. They are my inspiration to keep doing what I do- even though I could find a million other jobs that would be far less demanding than this one. So, as I sit here with that disgusting "Monday is coming" nausea in the pit of my stomach, or maybe that's just this stomach bug my students shared with me, I know it will be a good day because someone, at least one of my 150+ students, will make me laugh at least once tomorrow.

Now tell me, what makes your job as exciting as mine? ;)

Where everybody knows your name...

It still takes some getting used to... having people see us and say, "Oh... you're those dollar house people, right?" and then based on the tone they use when asking, we either enthusiastically admit to it, or act like we don't know what they are talking about. Since our YouCaring site is experiencing a lull in activity, I tend to go with enthusiasm anyway ;)

I imagine this is the face we make when deciding whether or not to admit to being "The dollar house people"

We were blessed to attend a wedding yesterday for one of my big brother's best friends. It was a gorgeous wedding, full of people I've known since I was knee high to a grasshopper (thank you, Asheville, for teaching me that saying!). Everyone wanted to know how our mission was going and was more enthusiastic than us about how far we have come with the website. That's the part I've really loved about all this-- people have shown us so much love and generosity and it is such an amazing feeling to know how many people care about us. I seriously cannot wait until the day we are able to buy a home and dedicate a room to all these people! Even more, I hope you all are able to come visit us and make the house our home :) Beer and bakery will be abundant.

That day may be a ways a way, but it's somewhere on the horizon. As for now, we signed a lease to rent the lower level of a duplex. We'll be packing up this circus and taking our show 6 minutes down the road at the end of October. My stress level rises and my face breaks out worse than my high school students' any time I even THINK about how much we have to do, but I'm going to continue to be as positive as possible. While we might get insanely busy for the next month, I am sure it will bring genuine motivation and inspiration to get me blogging... I'm sure we'll also have some ridiculous stories to tell along the way.

I think the next time I write I may have to indulge in a few glasses or Aaron's homebrews, I've been a little boring lately. I'll work on my humor this week- for the moment, I shall leave you with a terrible dad-joke on the eve of the day we all dread:

What did the fish say when it ran into the wall?

(insert drum roll and cymbal crash here)

Dam.

I'll be saying the same thing when my alarm goes off in just a few hours...

Big-hearted people

All my life I've been described as two things: big boned (thanks for that) and big-hearted. Now, being big-boned has nothing to do with this post, and quite frankly, I don't even think that's a real thing. It's just what our parents started saying when "husky" was deemed a negative adjective to use for the chunky kids shopping in the JC Penny Christmas catalog. Anyway,

we had our yard sale this weekend. A few things went wrong

1) It's really hard to get ready when you have 3 kids needing something at all times, especially when the 2 year old NEEDS everything you try to put out to sell.

2) It was a holiday weekend. No one was around.

3) Big-hearted people just don't make money!

I will say that I had a lot of fun meeting the people who did come! Everyone was SO nice, and had great stories about their families and kids and dogs and so on and so forth. Because everyone was so nice, I just wanted to GIVE them things. It was one new momma's birthday yesterday, so of course, she needed free diapers and cheap clothes! I just hope that some of them do take the time to read this blog (if you're here, thanks for coming by!!!) and pass it along.

Because, we still don't know where the heck we will move by the end of October! The place we were looking at wants to rent by Sept. 15, but the new owner doesn't know if we will have to pay rent for October here (most likely that means, yes- you'll have to pay but I don't want to tell you that so that you move out and I can have the new guy move in and then you pay his rent for one month). We also couldn't take Bucket (he's our cat, in case you were wondering why I am so concerned about taking a bucket with us) to the rental we are looking at, and since we've already lost one dog and one cat in the last year, we kind of want to hang on to him! Soooooo....

We still need your help at our YouCaring site! Thank you for sharing it, reading our blog. and being an awesome person! Please keep your fingers crossed that some miracles happen and we have somewhere to move our family soon!

3 day weekend? Time for a yard sale!

The first thing I want to say is THANK YOU- to whomever brought $3.00 to our house this week and dropped it off with our amazing neighbor/babysitter! You're fantastic!

Because I'm exhausted to the point of putting random things in wrong places (Husband: What's the baby rattle doing in the fridge? Me: I have no idea. Did I do it?), I simply cannot come up with anything clever to write about tonight.

The-girl-who-always-asks-why? is having a sleepover party at her Auntie's house tonight, so we had some time to gather items for our yard sale this weekend (the one we were going to have last weekend but didn't have the time to do). I'm not one for hanging on to, well, anything we don't need, but I will say that sorting out the baby clothes made me just a little bit sad-- until I realized I had spent over an hour sorting onesies, at which point I was willing to write "PLEASE TAKE THE WHOLE BAG- I'LL PAY YOU!" But then I remembered, oh yah, we need a house to move to to shelter these little nuggets whose clothes are the bane of my existence right now. So, if you know anyone who still finds great joy in sorting baby clothes for hours on end, send them our way-- we have just what they need.

Alright, let's keep this short. We're having a yard sale tomorrow. We're selling everything we are sick of stubbing our toes on and anything our littles can't/won't wear anymore. Aaron's in the basement right now, dropping loud clangy tools and testing my faith in how much noise the twins can sleep through-- umm, I'm not sure what he is selling that involves the use of tools- so if you want to know, stop by tomorrow!

Everyone who buys something will get a "receipt" for our YouCaring site, so if that's how you ended up here, THANK YOU for helping us continue towards our goal :)

I promise, I'll write more exciting things later this weekend after I've graded the gigantic stack of work my amazing students turned in this week, bathed and fed all the children, found time to eat, and sold everything we put in the yard- so that should be sometime between the hours of 2-4am Sunday morning.