I Think They Like Me

Another week of student teaching down. I realize that teaching is all I've been talking about lately but I can't seem to make myself think about anything else. Tonight, for example, I told myself I wasn't going to even take my books out of my bag. I had a date with Ben, Jerry, and David Duchovny and I was going to watch him treat women like shit on Californication while I devoured a pint of Chunky Monkey and not think about school. At all. Yet, I put Mase to bed - Mase.. I know, I've even been neglecting taking pictures of that guy, but it's taking all the energy I have to remember to feed the two of us - and here I am, writing lesson plans and blogging about school.

Somewhere, over the course of the past seven weeks, I've learned how to drop my kid off at daycare in the morning without crying. I can function on five hours of sleep, but not four and a half. Sometimes, I come up with my best ideas at 4:30AM. I can work a copy machine and, even at twenty five years old, I'm still tempted to photocopy my butt (every single time). And tenth graders... well, they're the most terrifying creatures on the planet. They're mean to each other, they get mouthy with adults, and they develop crushes on their extremely good-looking student teachers (ha).

When there's thirty of them and one of me, it's tough not to feel intimidated. But the other day, after a conversation with one of them, I realized we had the same taste in music. I'm not sure if it's a good thing that I have some of the same musical preferences as someone ten years younger than me, but in any case, it earned me some respect. It's funny, really. In the mind of a fifteen-year-old, it doesn't matter that I have a 3.7 GPA, am extremely well-read, and have kept another human alive for 2.5 years... I listen to Sublime and I listen to the Beatles. I must be cool.

I Love My Kid Because...

He's really cute.


He looks up to me.


No matter how exhausted I am, he keeps me smiling.


He makes sure I'm getting enough to eat when I don't feel like eating.


And he makes me laugh, 100% of the time.

Life Changes

It's Wednesday, which means I'm halfway done with my fourth week of student teaching. On one hand - the part of me that drops my baby off at daycare every single morning with tears in her eyes - four weeks have felt like a lifetime, dragging on and on in an exhausting, never-ending ritual. The days are long, the sleeps are short, and I miss my kid every minute of every day and I never stop thinking about all the little parts of his life I'm missing out on. But on the other hand - the part of me that loves teaching and loves learning even more - four weeks flown by, and I'm finding my days in that classroom, in front of those kids, to be more beneficial than any class I've ever taken. If I have to work, if I have to provide for Mase and myself, I know without question that there's no other job in the world I'd rather have.

Fall is fast approaching and as the weather starts to change, so is seemingly everything else in my life. In twelve short weeks I'll be done with school and ready to finally take on the career I know I'm going to love. Mason and I are in our new house - "lellow house", as he calls it - and although we've only been here about a month, it already feels more like home than any other place I've lived in my adult life. I love being near my family and Mason does, too. He's grown so close to my dad and Kim and Nichole and Liz and my mom and Dan and my brother and Krissy, and Haylie in these past few months and it's amazing, seeing that baby so happy and that tiny heart so swelled with love. Speaking of love, I found it too, and at the most perfect time, when everything else is coming together and everything fits and all the trouble and worries of my past are... well... being left in the past.

I never was perfect. I'm still not, but there were times when I wasn't even trying or caring. I was coasting through, faking smiles, messing everything up. And sometimes, I still worry that Mason will look at me poorly for all those mess ups. For the longest time, I was terrified I'd never be able to get a job and now I'm realizing that I'm more qualified than most because I've been there. All those experiences came together and taught me more about life than any number of years of college education could. So really... go ahead, ask me about my DUIs. Ask me about quitting school and waiting tables instead. And in fifteen years, ask my kid if he's proud of his mom because - somewhere in between school and work and grocery shopping and the park and laundry and lesson plans and reading bedtime stories - I'm going to do everything I can to teach him that, at any moment, you can turn it all around.

I Just Need to Whine a Little

"She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children
just because they are one's children,
but because of the friendship formed while raising them."

I'm reading Love in the Time of Cholera and nearly cried when I came across that part the other afternoon on my lunch break. I miss my kid like crazy. It's like being away from my best friend. I drop Mason off at daycare at 6:30AM, pick him up at 4:30PM. He goes to bed at 7. Even an English major can do that math.


I love what I'm doing, I really do. But this is just hard. By the time I pick Mase up from daycare, I've already been up for twelve hours. I've dealt with fifteen-year-olds all day, talked until my throat hurts, exerted all the energy I can muster from coffee alone, and I'm exhausted. The worst part is, I haven't even gotten into the hard part yet.

Tomorrow's Friday, but I work all weekend and I just want one day to lay around and take my kid to the park and stay in my pajamas. Not gonna happen. Fourteen more weeks 'til graduation.

Good thing I'm thinking about getting my Master's after this. Ugh.

Quickly...

I'd completely forgotten how much I love this.

Well, maybe not the getting up at 5AM part. Missing Mason all day. And I don't think high school boys have made me this nervous since 1997.

But the teaching part. And having to use my mind. And learning again. I love this.

I'm Doing This

Well, school starts tomorrow morning at 8 and I'll officially be a student teacher. I'm still terrified, but I think I'm starting to realize where my being so scared comes from. I went to a meeting at Lock Haven all day on Friday and was thrown back into my education so fast that when I pulled out of the parking lot, my mind didn't know where to land. So much to think about: things I learned back then have changed, I don't remember as much as I probably should, I'm not used to having so much to do and so little time to do it... all things that I haven't had to worry about over the past four years.

I also realized at that meeting that this is what I want to do with my life and I'm completely sure about that. That's what makes it scary, isn't it? If you don't know what to do, if you don't know what you want, there's nothing to be scared of because there's no chance of messing anything up. When you have goals - big ones that you refuse to let go of - you can fail. You can be crushed and you can be let down and when your mind is set on something so good and so important to you, you have a long way to fall if it doesn't work out the way you want it to. I could put this off another few years if I wanted to. And waiting 'til Mase is in school would be a lot easier on me since I wouldn't have to put him in daycare or anything. But waiting won't really help either, would it? Because there's always going to be an excuse as to why it's not the right time and I'll probably always be scared. Why wait when what you want is right there, just waiting for you to make a move.. to take the opportunity that'll finally make you happy after you get past the fear.

And I just realized I'm talking about two things at once, but I do think the same logic applies to a lot of people in a lot of situations. If you quit, you'll never fail, but you'll never know what could have happened, either. I could waitress for the rest of my life and make decent money and live comfortably and semi-easily, but I'll never know how happy I could have been, doing what I honestly feel like I'm supposed to do. So yeah.. I'm going to suck it up tomorrow. No quitting for this chick.

Prepared to be Unprepared

After spending a small fortune (but it's a credit card, so it's not real money, right?) on 'teacher clothes' I still don't feel even slightly ready for everything that's going to happen to my life on Monday.

The panic attacks I have when I think about standing in front of 30 pairs of cynical, bored, merciless eyes are nothing compared to the panic attacks I have when I think about dropping my baby off at daycare.

Three days. Ugh.

Eggs and a New Kitchen

We're finally moved in, more or less. There are still a few things I want to get done before I take the official "after" pictures, but we had our first breakfast at our new house this morning. I think, in general, people take things like this for granted, but I'm not sure there's anything as comforting as having coffee and reading a book while watching your two-year-old eat scrambled eggs in your own house.



No.. there's definitely nothing like it.

Being Grumpy isn't Always a Bad Thing

Every once in awhile, Mase just wakes up from his nap unhappy. I guess we all have days like that, really, where we wake up in a bad mood for no apparent reason, and Mason is no exception. Sometimes though, his after-nap grumpiness just makes him cuddly... and who am I to complain about that?

Pronoun Confusion

As it turns out, kids have trouble with pronouns early on. You know, the difference between you and me and I and we. It's why they speak in the third person: "Mason juice?"

Sometimes, the English teacher in me tries to correct it. Other times, I'd much rather let it go... like this morning, when a grumpy Mason wanted to be held. He crawled up in my lap and I know he meant to say, "hold me?" but instead said, "hold you, please?"... and yeah, actually, that was exactly what I needed.