Communicating via iPod and the radio

It's Thanksgiving.  Makes me think of all sorts of family memories and traditions that have disappeared now that my parents are gone.  It's bittersweet, and every year I think it has to get easier, but it doesn't.  I'm also missing my grandmother's stuffing.

In the midst of baking an apple pie (mom's recipe) and all sorts of other goodies yesterday, Bob Marley's song "One Love" randomly rotated through the shuffle cycle on my iPod.  I was halfway through peeling and coring the bag of cortland apples, and that song started playing.  There are over 1300 songs on my iPod, so it seemed really spooky and odd to me that it started playing right then and there while doing the traditional preparations for Thanksgiving--you get out of school early and go home to bake stuff.  Of course I started crying and had to make sure I put down the slippery knife I was holding so I didn't accidently stab myself in the eye as I wiped away tears.  It passed quickly, but it was a sneak cry attack out of nowhere, triggered by a reggae beat. 

Back story to "One Love":  On a car trip back home from my aunt's in upstate NY, my sister and I were with our parents after going there for a 25th anniversary party.  My dad and mom were in the backseat, Sis and I were in the front.  I might have been driving?  Since we had control of the front seat, that meant we also were in control of all DJ functions, and therefore in charge of what music set the soundtrack for our trip.  After a couple of hours of mom's Frank Patterson tapes, you would understand just how important it was for us to gain control...so in went a Bob Marley tape. Sis was in college and had discovered reggae.  I had become acquainted with Bob a few years earlier in college as well.   Dad wasn't too familiar with reggae and wasn't too pleased since he wasn't used to Bob's soothing tones and beats.  Funny how he didn't complain about Frank warbling "Mother Machree" but he questioned Bob...he was hard of hearing and wore a hearing aid, and somehow couldn't hear Frank, but could hear Bob.  Mom had also morphed from her 50s and 60s oldies music into "if the singer has an Irish name and there's  shamrock on the cover, it must be good" phase.  We were trying to work with her, but it was a struggle.  Some might consider Frank to be a great tenor, but to me his voice is like nails on a chalkboard. 
After a couple of songs and a rousing sing along by Sis and me, "One Love" came on.  We let it play, and pretty soon I could see Dad's  head bopping to the beat in the backseat.  It was pretty comical.  He started to sing along with the chorus and finally admitted that this reggae stuff wasn't bad.  I think we played the song again later, and Sis remembers that we also played it on the ride up.   It quickly became a joke, Dad liking Bob Marley, and every time he heard "One Love" after that, he'd smile and sing the chorus.  It was pretty damn funny. 

Fast forward to my wedding:  Dad had passed away by the time I met Mr. Wonderful, and the idea of not having the father-daughter dance at my wedding was horrifying.  Girls spend their whole lives thinking of that moment, plotting and planning the "perfect" song,  and then spend their early adult lives watching friends and relatives have that special dance at weddings.  It's just part of the deal of life, right?  You get married, you get one last dance with your dad before Mr. Wonderful takes you away from him.  Yup, that wasn't in my cards.  And in the time between dad's death and my wedding, John McDermott comes out with a sappy song, "Dance with Me Daughter of Mine" that played on the Saturday Irish hour in steady rotation.  The song is about that damn dance, and it was enough to send me scrambling maddly to turn off the radio whenever it came on.  If I was at a wedding and it was time for the damn dance, I would leave the hall til it was over.  Wimpy, yes, but extremely painful.

Long explanation, sorry.

So when it was time to plan my day, I had to figure out what to do with that part of the reception, and the song "One Love" popped into my head.  There were no uncles that I wanted to dance with, and there was no way to replace my dad on that day, so it made sense to me and my mom and sis to have the song played in memory of my dad and just dance away in a big group.  The three of us were bawling of course, but it was as happy a cry as we could get on that day. 

Since their deaths,  "One Love" seems to pop up whenever I'm doing something that makes me think of my parents.  Before it was just Dad, but now it's both of them. I take it as signal that they're present in some way...songs seem to do that.  Why, out of 1300+ songs, would it pop on then?  As I'm making a pie from mom's recipe?  Sometimes it makes me think I'm nuts, but it's also comforting. 

This morning, as I was finishing up my baking spree, I put on the iPod again, on random shuffle again, and one of the first songs to start playing was "Weep Not for the Memories", an instrumental by Seamus Egan. 

It's a strange way to communicate, via my iPod, but I'll take it.  Dad's other song to check in with me is "Rolling Home" by Tommy Makem.  It was playing in the limo right after his funeral as we were literally rolling towards the cemetery to bury him.  We asked the limo driver to put on the Irish hour since it was a Saturday, and this song came on.  The words are eerie if you put it in context of a funeral.  We roared laughing and crying at the same time.   The song doesn't get much play, and we didn't hear it again.  I couldn't find it anywhere and gave up, hoping it would come on some random Saturday.  I didn't hear it again for 6 years--I heard it again one Saturday afternoon as I was getting ready for a date with Mr. Wonderful.  It stopped me in my tracks and made me cry hysterically.  I figured it was Dad's way of letting me know that he approved of Mr. W, and that he was paying attention.  After we got married, the song popped up on iTunes.  It's now on my iPod, and every now and then pops up at odd times on shuffle.

Maybe I'm reading too much into things, or trying too hard to keep my parents as active members in my daily life, but it works for me. 

Off to gather my baked goods to take to dinner and ponder about my gratitude...I'd have to say I'm thankful for my Mr. Wonderful and Sis at the top of the list, for being undetectable, for being able to function after thyca hell, for my friends and in-laws who have been a great support over the few years, and for being able to live a fairly comfortable life with a job, a roof over my head and food in the pantry.  And for Mookie and O'Malley.  It isn't exactly how I envisioned it or planned it, but for the most part, it's pretty damn good most of the time. 

Wasn't planning on writing this much this morning, but it came out of nowhere.  Or out of my iPod. 

Happy Thanksgiving...

Sunday snoozer

It's a lazy Sunday morning here...oops, now afternoon...
Blaming it on inability to doze off before 2am. 
Mr. Wonderful even went back to bed around 11 and is currently snoring away under the covers. 

Lunch.

I spent yesterday hanging out with my mother-in-law while Mr. W worked on his car all day.  She fed us grilled bologna and cheese sandwiches for lunch, and they tasted absolutely delicious.  Very unhealthy but yummy.  I got some school stuff done between chats, (I love our chats)  and we finished up with grilled steak tips.  She's into Turner Classic Movies, and we ended up watching "San Francisco" with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Jeanette MacDonald.  I couldn't leave without seeing the end of the movie.  Slightly cheesey but a good story.  Preps are underway for Thanksgiving (can't believe it's next week).  It was a nice day...

Addiction....

Other highlight of the day was finally going to a stitchery store that I found online last summer but haven't had time to stop at until yesterday.  Great place with tons and tons and tons of Xstitch patterns and yarn.  Lots of needlepoint too--my mom would have been excited.  The owner said she's struggling but hopes a strong winter season will let her stay open through the spring.  She also told me about a new type of counted needlepoint that is becoming popular, kind of like a cross between Xstitch and needlepoint.  Might have to look into that this winter--she showed me some finished pieces that were really cool.  I'm now on her mailing list, and she said she'd put more info in the upcoming newsletter.  I picked up a couple of things to add to my box of stuff. 

Not going to sing opera, but I liked the picture...

Today I'm contemplating signing up for an Irish folk-singing circle thingie....it starts in January and runs for 6 weeks.  I think you get to learn new stuff while polishing a party piece.  It's run by a singer I've seen before in concert.  However, I'm not so sure that my voice survived the thyroidectomy in one piece...I haven't really sung anything in ages, and I think the surgery may have done some damage:  my voice gets weaker faster after talking a lot, I still get some odd pulling in my throat and neck, and sometimes it feels like I can't get above a certain volume.  If I do, I feel winded.  I haven't mentioned any of this to the doctor because in the bigger picture it isn't impacting my quality of life, and it's not like my singing voice is paying the bills.  I do fine at school most days, and I wonder if my constant colds are a bigger factor.  It would be nice to channel some energy into singing--music has always been a great stress release for me, and I've been negelecting it lately.  As for the voice issues above, I read somewhere that it can take up to a year post-surgery for everything to return to normal...still, it might be worth it to explore the possibility?  Or wait 6 more months.  I can't decide, but I keep thinking about it.  That usually indcates to me that I should follow through.  What should I pick for a party piece?  Funny thing is that this woman has performed regularly with another singer I love, so it might be weird to pick one of her songs...I need a confidence boost too. 

One other note--my RAI was six months ago yesterday!  I think I'm doing ok....just keeping an eye on my salivary glands since they can swell up and have problems--lots of people on the Thyca forum reported issues around 8 months after RAI. 

Thyca.org

And I signed up to become a life member of the Thyca organization. The donation was nothing compared to all the information, support and tips I've gotten from their website and participation in the forum.  In return, I got a spiffy memebership card and 3 (count 'em--three!) medication organizers of varying sizes.  One will hold horse pills, it's so huge.  One is a purse size, and the other is closer to a normal 7 day pill box.  I kind of don't need them right now since I'm only on levoxyl, a daily vitamin and gummy calcium chews.  Hopefully I won't ever need the horse version.

So a small celebration this evening I think to mark 6 monts post-RAI....maybe my ovaries will wake up soon?  Wouldn't that be hillarious....

Off to do something productive with my afternoon! 

Can't find the sheep to count...time to shuffle the iPod

Ugh.  I hate insomnia.

My brain thinks this way too.  

Nothing like trying to survive on three hours of sleep a night.   I don't know what is worse--having to throw the covers off (again) due to a massive hot flash, or having some acid reflux issues that I've never had to deal with before.  Mr. Wonderful's snoring is a separate issue altogether--it's worse when he has a cold, and he's had a cold all week.  Honk snort honk.

So Sunday and Monday night I tossed, turned, tried my iPod to drown out the flock of geese honking beside me, watched the clock, ate some zucchini bread at 1:30am and finally dozed off around, oh, 3am.  Only to have the alarm clock go off at 5:30am.

I don't know if it's my hyper-anti-cancer state, the coffee at 2:15pm to make it through the afternoon, or my plummeting estrogen levels thanks to my non-functioning ovaries.

Problem is, I feel like I could collapse at 7pm and then get a second wind.

I did fall asleep last night though and managed to get a sound sleep, but it wasn't quite enough.  Never is, right?  So I'm on edge to see what happens tonight.  I am laughing as I type this.

What a week, and it's only Wednesday.  No heat in school still since the chimney work that was only supposed to take a week is now into week 3 and taking place during school hours.  And my clock still doesn't work, so I spend my classes setting my cell phone alarm clock every few minutes like someone with OCD.  The kids don't wear watches anymore, and they are lost without the clock clicking the time away.
I also lost three hours of my life in a training course on how to teach English language learners (ELL), mandated because my school system slightly ignored bilingual kids after the state changed the law. Now all teachers have to trained.  Guess what the first session is about?  Second language acquisition and the meaning of culture.  Sigh.  That's what I do for a freaking living.  I still have work online to do and one more three hour loss of time next month.   One of my colleagues asked me today if I had removed the pins from my eyeballs yet--he mimed it to my table after an hour and half of whatever it was.    Good times.

Time to see what happens tonight.  I uploaded all my Christmas music on my iPod, and even managed to get Mary Byrne's songs from X-Factor.  Love her!  I usually put the iPod on shuffle and keep clicking through the songs til I fall asleep.  However, I'm usually jolted awake by a live version with audience clapping.  Hate that.
Let's see what happens if I put it on shuffle--what are the first 10 songs to pop up?  Ready?  Shuffle!

1.  "Time after Time"-- Eva Cassidy
2. " Creep"-- TLC
3. "What Can I Do"-- the Corrs
4. "Buile Mo Chroi"-- Karan Casey
5. "Breathe 2AM"-- Anna Nalick
6. "Smooth Operator"-- Sade
7. "Ice Cream"-- Sarah MacLachlan
8. "Oye Como Va"-- Celia Cruz
9. "Thorn Upon the Rose"-- Mary Black
10. " Take It Easy"-- the Eagles

Hmm.  Interesting mix, a little bit of everything.

Time to go see what else shuffle can do while I attempt to sleep again.  Maybe I'll count pelicans, or anteaters, or penguins, or toads....

Coming up for air again

Whew--a day off just in time!
Tomorrow is Veteran's Day, so no school. 
I wonder why we don't make a bigger deal out of Veteran's Day?  Or maybe it's just me.  Mr. Wonderful is going to work to oversee/particpate in the flag burning ceremony in the town where he works. 

I will relish a little time tomorrow and say a prayer of thanks for all the veterans who gave so much and then some so we can live the way we do. 

Tonight was my annual guest appearance at my friend Sally's grad class on teaching methods for foreign languages.  She brought three of her students to my room and I spent a little over an hour talking about behavior/classroom management, the reality of teaching vs. what they tell you in grad school, and various toys you can play with while getting kids to use the target language.  One student had been teaching already for 4 years, and the other two are still observing.  I think I scared them.  We went out for dinner afterwards to an Irish pub where I inhaled a plate of curry chips (fries)...so damn good!  Makes me want to jump on a plane and find a late-night chipper in the back of beyond in Ireland.  The waiter had a Dublin accent and took good care of us.  Fun evening. 

I posted a query about my dad's radiation on the Thyca forum, and the resident radiation expert posted back saying that dad probably wasn't radioactive when he came home, so no worries.  I'm still not so sure.  I think I just would like to have a neat way to package all of this misery up into a small box, that it would have an explainable cause rather then be caused by  scary randomized bad luck.  Pinning it on my dad's cancer seems more comforting, but I don't know why.  Sis still doesn't have her bloodwork result and is waiting. 

Off to bed since I can barely keep my eyes open....I stayed up last night til midnight working on a website for my classes (done! kelspanishbls.blogspot.com), and today didn't come up for air until 6:30pm.  Long day. 

Buenas noches!

Glowing when we were little?

This post gets me back to thyca issues. Happily, I haven't had much to post lately regarding my thcya because 1.  it's undetectable! and 2. I feel pretty good most of the time. 
Not happy with the weight gain at the moment, but if you read the previous post, you can see why Dunkin' Donuts pumpkin muffins were necessary to jump start my day all week.  I broke down, telling myself that they are only here for a limited time.  Good God are they delicious.  Unfortunately, my endo says my body loves to hang onto all the fat I take in, so the muffins went immediately to my waist.  Scary.  Plan on setting up my new Wii Fit this weekend, and plan to go back to yogurt for breakfast.  If the heat is fixed. 

The reason for getting back to thyca is my sister's latest mess.  She went to see Dr. N a couple of weeks ago for a checkup, and the news was dismal at best.  Her thyroid is thick and wrapped around stuff in her neck, and has multiple little nodules.  Her body is showing signs of perimenopause, and she's only 38.  Her hormones are compeltely skewed and confused, and she feels pretty awful most of the time. She's on a low dose of synthyroid that helps, but not completely. She's also having discomfort swallowing and feels pressure on her throat, which is not a pleasant sensation.  Plan is to ultrasound her thyroid again by the holidays and see what's up with the nodules.  They were too small to biopsy a few months ago.  So Sis is basically going down the same road I went down. 

Both of us are devastated to say the least at the idea of never having children--that was not in our plans at all.  It's not a total impossibility yet, but it's becoming increasingly unlikely that it will happen.  Sis made a dark joke a couple of years ago during my infertility hell that our family tree was a chopstick, and a family member cruelly replied, "No, it's a stump."  Little did that person know how cruel or telling  that remark would be. 

So we got to thinking about why this is happening to both of us.  The parallels are too eerie to ignore.  While no one can say for sure exactly what causes thyca, there is evidence that childhood exposure to radiation is a major factor.  After the nuclear accident in Chernobyl in the 80s, the number of pediatric thyroid cancer cases in and around Chernobyl skyrocketed.  There are places in the US with higher radioactive fallout exposure from the 50s, and thus higher evidence of thyroid cancer. In the US in the 40s and 50s, some people were treated with doses of radiation as children to deal with certain medical issues (SIDS, bad acne, recurrent tonsil infections) thinking it would cure them.  Instead, the massive doses of radiation directly affected the thyroid gland resulting in cancer later, especially in children under 5 years of age at the time of exposure. 

Once you've been exposed, you're supposed to follow up with doctors because you will most likely  develop nodules.  The nodules usually have a 10% chance of being a thyroid cancer for a normal person.  However, if you have been exposed to radiation, you now have a threefold higher risk of developing thyroid cancer.  Hmm.

Why am I looking into this?  Our dad was hit with cancer of the nasopharynx when he was 30 in 1973.  I was almost 5, Sis was about 18 months.  I have fuzzy memories, but I remember stories about his ordeal.  He was given two years to live since the tumor was inoperable, but doctors used radiation  to shrink the tumor as much as possible.  He underwent radiation treatments that left him with 2nd and 3rd degree burns on his neck and resulted in 85% hearing loss.  From what I remember my mom saying, he was really sick from the treatments and lost a ton of weight.  I don't think he stayed in the hospital for treatments, but went in to have them and came home.  I read somewhere that during this time, doctors would blast the hell out of the tumor and damage to other body parts was par for the course, since their goal was to get rid of the tumor.  Now they are be much more precise and careful about where the radiation goes and how to minimize the effects of it.  I'm assuming that there were no restrictions on him during and after his treatments, and that we were able to hug and kiss and be generally close to my dad during this time. 

Were we all exposed to the aftermath of his radiation?  How else to explain that both my sister and I are in the state we're in? 

I had a sheet of restrictions after my RAI treatment, and I'm certain my dose was nothing compared to the months of treatment Dad had. 

Sis mentioned this to the endo, and her eyes went wide.  I don't know why my mom or I never thought to mention this exposure before.  Mom's thryoid was hyper, and she started menopause around age 37.  I know that they say that your mother's age at the start of menopause is an indication of when a daughter is likely to start, but her mother had her when she was 41...kills that theory. Were Mom's issues caused by exposure too? 

I have some more research to do.  Dad's medical files are in a box somewhere, so I can probably find out what kind of radiation he received.  He managed to live for 25 years beyond the diagnosis date.  Just before he passed away at 55, he was having all kinds of difficulty walking, and turns out he was slowly becoming paralyzed as a result of the radiation.  I forget the term they used.  However, the doctors were amazed--they said that they rarely saw patients with his condition because most of them were dead within 5 years of being diagnosed.  He was a medical marvel I guess. 

I think it's kind of ironic--the thing they used to save Dad may now be the underlying cause for our stump.  I'm kind of glad that my parents aren't here to watch this play out.  They would have been such great grandparents, and it's so sad to think that once we're gone, our line ends.  Just ends.  That's it.  It's all the more ironic since my mom was very  into her family history, and we don't really have anyone on either side of the family who is particularly interested in it to whom we could leave it. Oh, that's another post for another day. 

I'm chatting with St. Peregrine, hoping he can keep Sis in the percentage of people who have benign nodules and not have it morph into thyca.  In the meantime, I'm going to see what else I can find out about this.  Maybe I'm way off base, but something in my gut tells me no.

Also, great new book out if you are looking for everything you wanted to know about the thyroid and then some.  My brother-in-law sent it to me this past week.  It's fantastic!  Title isn't very origninal: "The Complete Thyroid Book" by Kenneth Ain, MD and M. Sara Rosenthal PhD.  I have books written by each of them separately, but this is the first time they've teamed up.  Turns out they married!  Their story is in the book--quite interesting.  It's a great resource and explains everything in regular English.   Oops--guess this is the second edition.  It's published by McGraw-Hill, and the copyright date is 2011.

A rant on the state of public education.

So let's sum up this most recent week in public education...

Or one of those weeks...

1.  We had no heat.  Zero heat.  All week.  My classroom was registering 62 degrees most of the time.  I rather like working inside layered up.  My giant pink fleece makes me look like a fuschia Tootsie Pop.  I had to get creative and match my scarves to the pink fleece.  And I saw kids visibly shivering.  Didn't help that they were wearing t-shirts even though I told them of the situation.  Supposedly we'll have heat next week.  November in New England is the perfect time to be without heat. 

2.  Grades were due, then they weren't due.  And the announcement came after the bell rang at the end of class, so did they really think we could hear them over the sound of 2400+ bodies moving simultaneously?  Oh wait.  Admin probably planned it that way.  Deal was our grades were due electronically by 11am on Thursday.  I stayed up til after 11pm finishing my grades off so that I wouldn't have a panic the next morning, and I had to teach the first three periods on Thursday.  Muffled announcement was that the due time was moved up til midnight on Thursday due to a computer glitch.  WTF?

3.  Along with the grades announcement was something about senior grades needing to be in three days earlier on Nov. 1st, and that guidance needed those grades.  Good thing I could ask a kid about it, because the kids findout about stuff way before we do.  No one had ever mentioned that date--how am I supposed to do something if I didn't know it was something I was supposed to do??  God forbid someone tell a teacher directly.

4.  The main copier broke down repeatedly.  The riso copier on my floor is broken and despite calls to have it fixed, no one has shown up.  At various times the risos on the other floors go in and out of commission, so it is very easy to spend a huge chunk of your time every day searching for a copier that functions while praying you won't have to wait in line to use it because you've already spent 35 minutes of your 45 minutes of your "free period" hunting for it.  One story I heard is that we, the school, had our own maitenance contract with the copier and riso companies, so we could call for fixing when needed.  Now, the city has taken it over and it's out of our hands.  Does that really make sense? 

Maybe this would work better?



5.  In relation to number 4, we ran out of paper.  Yup, no copier paper anywhere in the building.  So the remaining 10 minutes you have during that period are most likely spent trying to remember where you hid your secret ream of paper that you stole just for these occasions.  I would love to know if the paper budget is really smaller than what it would cost to buy books?  If the kids could have the workbooks that accompany the text books, I wouldn't have to spend half my life making copies.  Or plan to stay til 6pm because if I can find a copier that's working, no one else will be in the building that late and I can make tons of copies.  If there's paper.

6.  It's probably a good thing that we are out of paper, because it's getting increasingly difficult to find a computer printer that works.  Since the city cut technical support to trim the budget, regular teachers with a little knowledge have been asked to "oversee" the printers and tech issues.  They also have to teach 5 classes a day and know about as much as I do about where to get help.  And that isn't much. 

7.  Two kids came back to class this week--I haven't seen them since mid-September.  They have both been out with "documented medical issues", but I can't be told what those issues are.  And, both have waivers for term one, so they can make up the work and get a grade for it;  but, they are supposed to "jump in" with term 2 material and we'll worry about term 1 later.  Um, my subject is cumulative, as in term 2 needs info from term 1 to do well and make progress.  It's kind of hard to "prioritize" the assignments and have the kids only do the "essential" ones.  In my opinion, they're all pretty essential, and they need to be in class so I can TEACH them.  If they only needed a textbook to read on their own and become fluent, then attendance wouldn't be an issue, would it?

8.  I have an AP  student who went blind in September.  As in legally blind, can't read anymore, can't write anymore.  Instead of going to battle with the copiers during my free period, I'm recording things for him so he can "access" the curriculum, and trying to figure out ways for him to be assessed.  Or what to do with him when I have the class use a picture prompt for a discussion.  The whole thing sucks, especially for him.  No diagnosis or prognosis yet.

9.  There is a train wreck in department who is also greatly distracting a bunch of us.  This person is probably a very nice human being, but absolutely sucks in the classroom.  It's painful and demoralizing to watch every day, knowing that this person's students will feed into some of my possible classes next year, totally unprepared, unmotivated and angry.  They do get angry, because while they are having a blast with all the chaos, they are smart enough to realize that they are being cheated and will have to pay for it later.  We are about 40 days into the school year, and so far I've only seen admin show up once or twice.  I'm hoping that there is more going on behind the scenes to address the daily derailments.  What pisses me off more is that this person has something like 7 years in education.  Therefore, this teacher has tenure/permanent status and probably isn't going anywhere.  This is when I hate the unions.  In the meantime, the noise level is horrendous (and it's not "good" noise), my room is regularly trashed after this person's classes, and the kids are learning very little. 

10.  On a happy note, one of my AP classes got so wrapped up in a disucssion about tecnologia that I hated to cut them off--I heard subjunctive used correctly!  On a downer note, the other section asked me if they had to speak in Spanish.  WTF?

11. College rec letters for early kids are done.  Now I have to chase down the regular kids and get working on those. 

So. I'm complaining.  Just a little.  But things seem off this year.  I can't figure out what it is, although that list looks pretty damn annoying.  Notice that very little of it has to do with actual lesson planning or the art of teaching?  One thing I've noticed is that there are times when I will actually plan out a lesson based on whether or not I need copies, or will spend time trying to minimize the number of pages I have to copy.  I've had ideas planned only to find that there's no paper or no copier or no printer, so I have to chuck it.  I'm getting good at using half sheets of paper, or making the font as tiny as possible to cram everything on one page.  Does that sound like good educational policy to you?  

This is pretty typical....

This is why I slept in unintentionally on a Saturday til 11am. 

Next week has to be better. 



Whew. Cough cough?

Grades are done for term 1 and turned in! 

18 college rec letters are done and mailed by November 1st deadline!

Insert happy dance here.  Wait.  Too tired to dance.  Insert smiley face with eyes barely open here. 

Whew. 

So term two started Monday, and I already have 80 Spanish 4 quizzes and about 150 short essays to read....it never ends.

And, my chest thingy came back today!  I spent the day feeling more and more congested while constantly coughing into my elbow and scarf, so I went back to the dr. and saw a different physician's assistant.  She said I still have the antibitoic in my system, and this is something unrelated to last week's performance.  What??  She confirmed my low-functioning immune system due to radiation theory, and then asked if I wanted both a flu shot and a vaccine for whooping cough.  Did she not hear my low-functioning immune system theory?  I begged off on those since I already felt pretty crappy.  I'll follow up with Dr. N and ask her. 
So, I have to let this one play out.  No fever, lungs sounded fine and oxygen was fine. 
Last night Mr. Wonderful and I found a new Mexican restaurant, and during dinner I started getting this odd fluttering in the middle of my chest.  I had it once before, and figured it was palpitations from the thyroid hormone.  I thought it might be the chile relleno I ate, but most likely not.  It's such a bizarre sensation!  It continued until I fell asleep and hasn't come back.  I wonder if it was this viral thing setting up housekeeping in my lungs.  Today my chest just feels heavy. 

Did I mention that we literally have zero heat in the building and last night was the first hard frost we've had?  There was ice on my car windows that had to be scraped.  It's freakin' freezing out there, and we have no heat.  I wore a long sleeved t-shirt, a heavy cotton sweater, my big pink fleecy thing that is about 3 inches thick, and a huge scarf around my neck.  I had on heavy winter pants, heavy socks and really unattractive Bjorn loafer-like comfy shoes.  There were kids sitting in front of me shivering in tee shirts.  I have to figure out what layers to wear tomorrow...

I really like this cartoon and felt the need to put it in here again. 

I'm going to bed now.  I'm tired and cranky due to being scrunched up all day trying to keep warm.