Such a long time...

Dear blog,

I'm sorry I've neglected you of late. I've missed you and longed to write to you, but life has been complicated lately. It's no excuse, but please allow me to catch you up on what's been going on in my life these last few weeks.


School has really heated up these last two weeks. Today, I spent all day grading essays and exams that have piled up. Yesterday, we had to go out to Greeley for the homecoming football game, and then drive down to Boulder to drop off a broken yearbook camera at a repair shop. Last week was homecoming, so there were after school and evening activities on top of the usual teaching responsibilities. In addition, my student teacher has taken over control of my classes now and for the next six weeks, which has me seriously stressed out. I spent a great deal of time worrying that my students aren't learning what they need to. That's not to say that she isn't working hard and learning, because she is and I'd rate her as advancing just fine, but there are still some gaps in her educational preparation that make me cringe. I've had the truth of the statement "You don't know what you know until you start, and you don't really learn the material until you have to teach it" in front of me for these past weeks. It's shocking what she can't explain to students, but I was probably like that too. And, she can't spell! This really drives me crazy. Of course, I'm willing to admit that I'm a control freak and just don't like giving up control of my classroom too, so I fully admit that all the fault is not with the student teacher. It's going to be a long time until December when I get my classes back!


In other news, the low cost remodel of the guest room is done....sort of. We switched plans slightly in the middle, and now the wall color behind the bed doesn't quite work. We were originally planning a bedspread and pillows that were green, which would have worked with the wall color, but the blue we ended up with clashes a little with the yellow and green tones in the wall color. So, we'll have to repaint sometime, but that will have to wait for a little while. We did well at keeping the changes affordable. We didn't buy any furniture but rather painted existing pieces. And, we used paint that we already had leftover from other projects. The most expensive purchase was the bedding.

I've also been fighting illness the past week. It started with a head cold and an inability to sleep on Wednesday, which hung around but luckily didn't get worse. So, I've been tired all week and then dealing with some other personal issues as well. But, this part is getting better too. I'm still tired, but I'm slowly catching up!

I took breaks from paper grading today to do some grocery shopping, go on a quick bike ride around the neighborhood with Mike and Aspen, and to paint the frame for the bedroom artwork, so it's been a busy day. Aspen also got stung by a bee today, poor girl!

I'll try not to let so much time go by before I write again. I hope everyone on the homefront is doing well. Give my best to everyone.

Faithfully yours,

Lori