Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Home for the holidays....and back again.

Well, I haven't written in a really long time, so you would think I would have a ton to write about. I don't. Or maybe I am just feeling lazy becuase, yes, I have yet another cold and feel crappy this morning. Anyway, I am in New Jersey now at my parents' house. It is great to be home, and I feel like I am getting alot of time to see everyone. It is kind of hard though, to go from being alone the majority of the time to being with people nearly all the time. It's great though, I am certainly not complaining. Anyway, we had a really nice Christmas, my sister loved the jewelry box I made for her, and I loved all of the presents I got, including a new duvet cover, a pink jacket, lots of new clothes and some other things as well. It was a really fun Christmas. We decided this year to have a nontraditional Christmas dinner. We had picky foods first like crackers and cheese and pita chips and hummus. Then we had this really yummy baked shrimp scampi. With that we had salad and bread. It was delish! It was fun to try something different than the normal turkey or ham or beef with all the normal sides.
I went to NYC with my Califon friends a couple days after Christmas. It was crazy packed, and kind of overwhelming (NYC is SSOOOOOO much bigger than Boston, eek!) but it was really nice to see all of them. Then we went back and played board games at one of their houses. Those are the things I miss when I am in Boston, just sitting around playing board games with a good group of girl friends. I have good friends up there, but it is just different when you have been friends with people your entire life.
The other thing I am super happy about is that I have gotten to see my niece so much this week! She is soooo cute, and I get to go see her again today. It is amazing to me how different she is now than she was six months ago. She is almost four, and she is just so smart, I love asking her questions and talking to her, she can hold her own in a conversation with an adult very well. I think she is going to be a genius, but I guess I might be a little biased! :)
Anyway, I am looking forward to going back to Boston, but at the same time I am a little sad. I hate when I miss out on things that happen here, but when I am here, I miss my life up there, and especially D. I am looking forward to going back and seeing him and spending New Year's with him. Anyway, hopefully I will be back to write sooner this time, but it is possible this could be my last post of 2009!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The magic of the holidays

Well, today was a bit stressful, with crazy kids at work, lots to do before I go home tomorrow, and excitement for Christmas! I don't really have much to say to update here, but I will say this, I am sooo lucky to be in a classroom with 6 year olds before Christmas. They are sooo freaking adorable! It is so sweet to see their excitement, and to know they truly believe in both Santa and the magic of the season. It makes me feel like a kid again too, and I think that is the answer to the question people always ask me. "How do you love Christmas sooo much and not seem stressed?" The answer, I think, is because I always get in touch with my 6 year old self and enjoy it for the reason they do, because it is a magical season of joy, happiness, and pure magic. Even though it has been many years since I believed in Santa, I still believe in the magic of the season, and sometimes on Christmas Eve, I like to lay in bed and pretend there is a Santa, just for fun. You should try it. Try to think about being 6 again, and imagine how it would feel to enjoy the process of buying, wrapping, giving and receiving gifts, to believe in something, and to just enjoy something for the pure reason that it is fun and magical.

:)

Sunday, December 20, 2009

A Very Binghamton Christmas!

I spent the weekend in Binghamton with D for his extended family's Christmas celebration. They are a fun bunch, lots of laughing and talking. It was a good time! We started on Friday by going to New Hampshire to work on a Christmas surprise for someone...I can't mention it yet! We got up on Saturday morning and got ready to leave, but then someone called to come get hay, so we ended up being a bit later than expected. We finally got to Binghamton around....3? and were just in time for dinner with the family. (they didn't know that we had eaten Panera for lunch around 2 and none of us were really that hungry...but we ate anyway! Oink oink!) We opened presents and hung out for a while then watched "the movie." "The movie" I speak of is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which has been a tradition in his family since it came out in 1989. So we watched that, and alot of us fell asleep...we are a crazy bunch. Lol, but, to be fair, it was around 11 by the time we were watching the movie, and we had been busy driving and stuff all day, so we were zonked! This morning we all went out to breakfast, and we exchanged presents with D's parents and two of his sisters. I was really happy with all of the presents I got, but the best was the mittens that D's mom knitted for me. They are gorgeous! I also loved the blue LLBean wellies with ducks on them! They are sweet! Anyway, it was a fun weekend, and a great start to the Christmas holiday...oh wait, I still have three days of work. Yay.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The theme of the day is....food babies!

I have decided the theme of the day is food babies. I say this because we had a staff breakfast this morning, at which I devoured deliciously indulgent things like homemade monkey bread, a blueberry muffin, and some grapes to make me feel better about the globs of butter and sugar baked into the aforementioned monkey bread. Then I had a normal lunch, ham and cheese sandwich, clementines, and a pudding..that part was fine, and a cheese stick for a snack after work. However, then I went to class tonight, and our teacher had sent us an email a couple days ago cheerfully saying we were going to "celebrate our learning!" today. I think "celebrate your learning!" is code for eat until the button pops off your pants and talk a little about the project I spent the last three months working on. (No, my button did not actually fall off). So anyway, she had told us to bring "little munchies" to eat while we "celebrated our learning". To me, this meant stopping at CVS on the way to class and picking up a bag of Stacy's pita chips, which I find delightful! Apparently I have no notion of what "little munchies" are. You should have seen the spread we had! Someone baked a layer cake with strawberries on top (which I didn't have the room in my belly to try), someone else bought a gourmet chocolate mint cake (this one I did try, yum!) and other people brought fudge, cookies and brownies. What the hell is this, a food tasting? One other girl apparently was on the same wavelength as me and brought two bags of popcorn...thank you, that is a munchie! I suppose I shouldn't be complaining about all of the culinary delights people contributed to our learning celebration, but since my stomach is cramping with sugary overload and my mouth feels cottony and parched, I am complaining. I think I have a food baby....oh well, at least they don't cry!

So....when I get to the point tonight when eating again is actually a possibility (which, knowing me will probably be an hour from now!) I am having minestrone soup for dinner.

I don't anymore sugar tonight, I don't want any bread tonight, I just want vegetables. My mother would be so proud!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

productivity is key!

Well.. I was productive today. After a semi-crazy day of work (the kids are nuts because it is a week and a day until break), I went to the post office, put in my laundry at the laundromat (ugh!), went to CVS, switched my laundry (ugh!), then went home, dropped of some stuff, went back out to Rite Aid because I realized I forgot to buy tape to wrap presents, came home, got my Christmas things ready for my work friends, made dinner, went back and got my laundry, and then came home. It is 7:39. Not bad for an afternoon's work!

Now I am going to wrap presents and enjoy a cheesy holiday movie....Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Haha...come on, you know you like it too, the Christmas movie, the crazy pigeon lady who ends up being nice, and the KEEEEVVVVIIIIN scream at the end when they get the hotel bill. Its great! Haha, anyway, some highlights and lowlights of the day.

Lowlights
1) the kids were crazy, loud, and disrespectful for alot of the day
2) I actually had to sit the kids down on the rug and talk to them about not peeing on the floor in the bathroom, not putting the door stop in the toilet, not unrolling the entire roll of tp, and not squirting soap all over the floor. That was interesting.

Highlights
1) There was a teeeeny tiiiny baby with his mom at the laundromat today. It made the laundry process much less painful as he was just so cute and tiny and innocent.
2) Christmas movies rock!
3) I was productive
4) My dinner was yummy....yet simple!

Monday, December 14, 2009

Yay! I just finished my last assignment of the semester...a 20 page paper on how text and internet language is affecting our students' literacy development! I feel happy that that is off my plate now, and now I just have to get through two more classes, one Wednesday and one Thursday, then I am done until the middle of January! Sweet!

I have decided sleep might be at a premium this week, because I have so much stuff to get done before a) Binghamton Christmas this weekend and b) New Jersey Christmas on actual Christmas. It is a busy time of the year, I suppose, and at least most of what I have to do is fun stuff, disregarding the completely annoying things such as laundry. ugh..I hate laundry. Actually, that statement is a lie. I don't mind doing laundry, in fact, I kind of like adding the soap and the satisfaction of knowing the laundry is clean when you switch it from the washer to the dryer. Its a great feeling of accomplishment. Here are the things I do hate about laundry: 1) I hate folding and putting away my clothes. If I could have someone do that for me, I would be perfectly happy to wash all the laundry in the house. 2) I HATE HATE HATE going to the laundromat. It is awful. First of all, it requires me to lug my laundry down two flights of stairs and to my car. Second, I always seem to wait until the day when it is snowing/raining/some other form of awful weather-ing, and I can never wait until the next day, when it is inevitably beautiful and sunny, because I run out of things that are pretty essential, like underwear and socks! Third, I NEVER have the coins I need, and that usually means I have to either go rooting around my house for quarters, or go to somewhere where I can get cash back, buy something, and then use the quarter machine, or go to the bank, which is located on a one way street where the parking lot is ridiculously small and hard to manage. I also am not fond of the idea of washing my clothes where hundreds of other people wash their clothes...something about the idea that I could be washing my sweater in someone else's leftover jock strap gunk really disgusts me. Anyway, that is my laundry rant for the day.

Just for a laugh, here is the story of a day in the life of a first grader, written in the language of a first grader.

FrsT i waKd up and then i go t drsd and i ward my favoort shrt and then i eetd bekfust and then i wokked to scool weth my mom and dad and then i did scool and it was fun and i had piza for luch weth chez on it and then i went hom and i playd outsid and then i went to bed and red a bok.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

It's beginning to look alot like Christmas :)

So, I have found it hard to get into the Christmas spirit this year, and I think I figured out the reasons why. First, it was such a weird fall, it was warm for so long. Usually I feel Christmassy before Thanksgiving and I am in the mood by then. This year though, I felt like it was September/October weather until about two weeks ago. The second reason I think is because this fall has gone ridiculously fast! I have been so busy that it seems like all the sudden here it is a week and a half from Christmas, and I feel like I have hardly enjoyed the spirit yet. I think I finally morphed into the spirit though. When my mom was up last weekend, we went to see the Urban Nutcracker, as I said before, and then on Sunday we were walking around the Pru. When we came out of the mall, it was snowing. It was so beautiful, and we turned onto Boylston Street and strolled along with the snow floating down on us. It was amazing, so Christmassy. Then it starting raining and it all melted, and there went that flicker of Christmas spirit. This weekend, I went up to D's house in New Hampshire, where they have about a foot of snow on the ground. I could feel my spirit growing as I drove past the snowy farms listening to Christmas tunes on the radio and thinking about the Christmas shopping we were going to do. Last night we went Christmas shopping, and we spent the majority of the weekend working on a Christmas surprise for someone. Today I wrapped the Christmas presents we bought, and then we came back to Boston. I have been home for several hours, and the spirit is still with me! I think maybe I finally got into the season...jeepers, its about time!

On another related note, I have been feeling alot lately how wonderful it is to be in love during the holidays. Don't get me wrong, I love D so much all year round, and I am thankful for his love all the time, but during the holidays there is some special spark that is in the eyes of everyone who loves someone. I walk down the street and see a woman wrapped in a scarf on her tip toes in fluffy boots with a man's arms draped lovingly around her shoulders, just barely kissing her forehead, and it makes me feel so lucky that I know exactly what they are feeling at that moment, that feeling of complete satisfaction and comfort. It's wonderful. I just thought I would share that with everyone....because it is important to remember during the holidays and all the time to be thankful for the people you love, and those who love you in return.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Colds suck. Thats basically all there is to it. I am sitting here at my computer wearing my work clothes and my green fleece robe, with my shoes still on. I have to be at class in 25 minutes and I have abolutely NO motivation to get off my butt and move to the car. I also have to meet a prospective roommate tonight, which would be fine otherwise...but I am sick, I want to go to bed! Jeez...can't a woman catch a break!? I am grumpy, cold, and sick.

Let's try that again in the form of a personal ad:

brn hr, grn eyes, 23 y/o f with nasaly voice, dry, hacking cough, cracked icicle hands and sexy purple bags under her eyes. Enjoys long naps with her fluffy duvet, sudafed, and chicken noodle soup with crackers. Also enjoys sleeping late and large boxes of tissues. If interested, email ifuckinghatebeingsick@personals.com.

hmm...well that made things more interesting...and made me slightly less grumpy. Time to drag my ass to class....at least I can still rhyme.

see you...ACHOO!...later.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Spicy risotto on a cold day with a cold.

The title of this blog is confusing, misleading, and, if I may say so myself, fabulous! Haha...so I have a cold, which kinda sucks, but its not too bad, so thats good. It was snowing this morning and I was hoping so much for a snow delay, but no such luck Miss Harper! Anyway, work was fine, nothing exciting or really worth writing about. I left at about 2, which was awesome and came home with intentions to go to the gym. I quickly ditched that idea and took a nap instead....my reasoning was that I have a cold and I don't want it to get worse. Yes, I know there is that whole theory about "sweating it out" if it is anything above the chest...but ya know what? I think I believe more in "snuggling it out" in my cozy warm bed on a freezing cold, sleety, icy, snowy, rainy, shitty day. So anyway, that's what I did, and I feel good about that decision.hahaha.

I woke up thinking about Christmas stuff (specifically the chocolate bark I am making for my friends at work) and dinner. Figures....always thinking about food. I decided to ask my sister for her recipe for asparagus and shrimp risotto because she always raves about it. It looked pretty simple, and I figured that since I had asparagus already I may as well go for it. I went to the store to get the stuff and to get stuff for my chocolate bark. I was feeling kinda down in the dumps until I was rounding the corner on the baking aisle and spice girls "if you wanna be my lover" came on. As I sorted through the baking chocolates and nuts, I had a moment of pure, 6th grade, pubescent bliss! I smiled and even let out a little, shameless giggle right there in the baking aisle. I flashed back to the day Michele, Sarah, Marissa and I went to the movie theatre to see Spice World and there were no seats together, so Marissa sat in a seat by herself, refusing to do something as crude as sitting in the aisle. Haha...the rest of us sat down in the front in the aisle and watched the movie from there. When we stood up to leave, one of us had a leg that was so asleep that she nearly fell over. I can't remember which one of us it was, but in my head it was Sarah. I also remember that after the movie we went to McDonalds right near the movie theatre and bought an obscene number of 50 cent apple pies and sat on the curb and ate them. Damn, those were the days.

So anyway, I brought my goods back home, humming a mix of Spice Girls and an acapella version of the 12 days of Christmas the whole way. I started making the risotto, the smell was delicious, like roasting chicken and garlic mixed with sauteeing onions and the starchiness of rice. Awesome. Then, the stirring started. According to this recipe, you are to add 1/2 cup of the 4 cups of liquid at a time. Then you have to stir until it is absorbed before you add more. This takes about 5 minutes per addition, adding up to over 30 minutes of stirring. 10 minutes in, I pulled up a barstool and made myself comfortable. At this point, I feel it is necessary to add that all this stirring was totally worth it, as the resulting risotto (oooh..alliteration!) is creamy and thick, with a deliciously al dente bite. The Shrimp and asparagus were cooked well, and the olive oil garlic bread I had on the side was crispy and tangy...yummo!

As I am sitting here, I am crunching on my last few bites of spicy, oily bread, and I am gearing up for round two of my cooking for the night....I think it is going to be toffee chocolate bark and maybe peppermint chocolate bark too...I know, I'm livin' on the wild side.

bon apetit!

Monday, December 7, 2009

Cannoli, spray on faces and the bathroom in Saks

It's been awhile...sorry! I haven't been able to write because my mom was up visiting this weekend and we were too busy having fun! She took the train up on Friday so I went to pick her up from the train station and then we went back to my school so she could see my classroom and meet some people. So Friday night we decided to go into the North End for dinner, and the bf was going to treat us...he's so sweet :) We called this place that I knew of called Antico Forno, and they said they didnt have any reservations until 8. We decided we would just go with the names of a few places and pick whichever one had the shortest wait. Turned out that when we got there, they had a seat available and they sat us right away. Score! We had amazing food, and afterwards we went to Modern Pastry for cannoli! We ended up buying 8 small ones and 3 big ones, so we had some left over for the next day....which was obviously sweet!

On Saturday we decided to go into the Pru and walk around since it was snowing. We went into Sephora and were looking around and we saw that they were doing free airbrushing to try to market this airbrushing machine. This is the time when I was happy that I hardly ever wear makeup, because I decided what the hell, I may as well get my face sprayed! I figured she would spray a little foundation on and I would go about my way. Boy, was I wrong! I sat down and she began "examining" my face. She looked a picked a "pod" (this is what the makeup containers are called), and then she connected it to a mini air compressor. Think power washer but on a teeny scale. She started spraying my face, and kept spraying and spraying and spraying. I figured it would take a minute or two, but it took several minutes in reality. What is the point of spraying on makeup if it is going to take just as long as putting it on with a brush? Anyway, then she sprayed on "highlighter" and blush. At this point I am pretty amazed and thinking I must look amazing. Then she says "ok, close your mouth so I can do your lips." I was baffled, but I closed my mouth and she sprayed my lips. The air pressure forced my lips apart at times and I think I swallowed my fair share of spray on makeup. When I was finally done and looked in the mirror I thought I looked great! I had a huge zit on my face and it was completely gone, my dark circles were nowhere to be seen, and even my freckles had disappeared (this part I didn't like so much). Anyway, we left the store and decided to go to the "ladies lounge" in Saks Fifth Avenue to go to the bathroom and freshen up before dinner. My face felt funny, kind of stiff and rubbery, like I couldn't move my muscles. I was wondering if I was feeling a bit of what it feels like to get Botox. By the time I got to the bathroom in Saks, my face was itchy and felt hot. We freshened up, and i decided I looked way too weird, like a plastic doll or something. It does not look natural to have absolutely no pores, freckles or imperfections. My mom touched my face and immediately pulled her hand back. "eww!" She said "you feel like a corpse!" Wow...thanks mom. Haha. She was right though! My face felt rubbery, stiff, and unnatural. It really felt the way a dead person's face feels, except warm. (Yes, I have touched the face of a dead person in a casket....and no, I don't think it's weird!) We ended up having an awesome dinner at Legal Seafoods, and I washed my face twice when I got home. It was still red, itchy and hot the next morning. I think I may have been allergic to the spray on corpse makeup. Darn.

Sunday we saw the Urban Nutcracker. It was my second time, and it was amazing. I really love seeing the ballet mixed with Jazz, doo wop, tap, and lots of other types of dance and music. It was so fun to spend all that quality time with my mom. Not every girl would want her mom to come stay with her, sleep in her bed, and spend three straight days with her, but I do, and I wish she could have stayed longer. I feel bad for girls who say they don't have a close relationship with their mom. I think my relationship with my mom is the one I value most, because she is a woman, because we have a special bond, and because, along with my amazing dad, she made me who I am, and for that, I love her. This post is for you ma, Happy 60th Birthday! I love you!

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

'tis the season...for Word Girl?

So there is this show, I'm not sure if it exists anywhere other than Massachusetts, but it is called Word Girl, and it is supposed to be a show that expands the vocabulary of 5-8 year olds. The production company for the show is near where I live, and the crew decided they wanted to do a focus group of 6 and 7 year olds to see how they could improve the show. They chose my school. So today, after a month of trying to track down permission slips and hearing "Word Girl rocks" "Word Girl is for girls" etc, they came in. The kids had to watch an episode and then answer some interview questions. Tough life these first graders have, right? So anyway, this one little boy in my class was being interviewed, and was asked whether he had siblings at home. He said "yes, I have a sister in 5th...." then he stopped and looked at me, I looked at him with a confused look, and he said "...I mean, 3rd grade." I didn't look back again, but continued to listen, and he said "and I have a brother in Kindergarten." Sounds like a perfectly acceptable answer, right? Wrong...this little boy has one brother who is 2 years old. Sometimes I wonder what makes them want to lie? Was he afraid he would be the only one without a sibling? Did he want to be cool by saying he had two siblings? He has been known to lie about his family before, like when he wrote that he likes to go home and watch his dad to funny stuff. This would be fine, except that his birth dad is not in the picture whatsoever. 6 year olds puzzle me.

oh...the vocabulary words that were supposed to be learned in this episode? Version and recollect. One little boy thought the words were recollect and virgin. How do we explain that one?

I need a nap.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

millions of dollars in budget cuts...but we can afford Ning. WTF?

Ok...so the good news of the day is that I am healthy and relatively happy (although exhausted!). The bad news of the day is that we had a staff meeting today and it lookes like 21 teachers from our district will be cut next year, meaning 3 from my school, meaning I am NEVER GOING TO GET A TEACHING JOB!

I am enjoying teaching right now (covering a maternity leave, for those of you who don't know) soooo much that I am so sad about how fast it is going. I don't want it to end, although I do miss working with the teacher who left, and I will be happy to have her back, it is going to be much harder than I expected to go back to being an assistant. :( I have until the end of February, which sounds like a while, but in reality it has been going really fast.

I should probably explain the title of this post at this point. I cant remember if yesterday I mentioned "ning". Ning is a networking site for professionals, which is set up almost exactly like facebook. So basically it is like having facebook and having your boss watch everything you do......very 1984. Big brother is watching! Anyway, at our professional day yesterday we were introduced to Ning, and now we are supposed to accept the invitation we got to join it. I don't want to join it! Not to mention, we are cutting teachers, but it is now someone's full time job to "manage" Ning....AKA accept friends, update things, etc. I wish my job could be to sit on facebook all day and stalk my employees. Must be nice.

The other thing I wanted to mention tonight is that my friend and I are working our way through the Time Magazine 100 best English novels from 1923-now list. By working through I mean we are on the first one! The first book on the list is The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. All I can say about it is boooooo. It is not a good book, I am not enjoying it, and I cannot wait to be done with it! I am going to try to post about the books I am reading, hopefully it wont be too boring!

Monday, November 30, 2009

That's right, I'm hopping on the bandwagon!

Ok, so right now I am sitting in a blogging workshop at our yearly full day professional day. The leader of the workshop is encouraging us to create a blog to use in the classroom. clearly this is not what I have done, but I feel like I am more likely to write in a blog about my life rather than sending home the star of the week to the parents of my first graders! Anyway, I really like reading the posts that Michele and Marissa write, and I figured that since we have been copying each other in things like hairstyles, clothing and movie choices since we were probably 8, i figured I could take the opportunity to continue the tradition of stealing each others' ideas. Haha...it is pretty much guaranteed that my blog will be super boring compared to Michele and Marissa's for the following reasons:

1) I do not live in Italy, nor do i live in any foreign country or with a family i don't like and don't know well. In fact, I have never even traveled out of the country or lived with anyone else's family, except for the summer I lived with Dave and his family in New Hampshire.

2) I do not have forty million jobs like Marissa does. She is so busy, I don't really know how she does it! Right now I work at one job, and soon I will be back to my routine of working two jobs in the same school.

3) my life pretty much consists of teaching, going to grad. school, doing homework and working on the farm in my free time. Yes, I spend alot of my weekends working with cows, building things and baling hay. Don't tease me...I love it.

4) I haven't made any huge life changes within the past year. I moved to Boston about a year and a half ago, but I am pretty much settled in now and I don't have any immediate plans for huge changes.

Anyway, I hope that i can find some things to write about that are more exciting than what I had for lunch or how much homework I have. I am hoping this will spark my writing and creativity again, and that I will start writing and enjoy journaling my experiences. Maybe i need to come up with some fake names, that seemed to work for Michele. :)