Happy New Year!

Crazy crazy crazy few days here!

Happy New Year!  The 2011-12 school year is off to a roaring start, and I'm barely able to keep up.  I'm logging 10-12 hour days so far and keeping a large to-do list on a clipboard that I'm trying very hard no to misplace during my zipping all over the building throughout the day.  I have a cart to roll my stuff around on thru the halls and so far have not mowed down any sixies (7th graders, the little guys, running bewildered all around the building with me) as I move from my kind of cool basement office to the classrooms on other floors that I have to invade twice a day.

Great Husky tool bag I bought at Home Depot to organize all my desk stuff!  

I can carry everything with me and keep it on my cart at the same time...anything to keep me organized...

Whew!  My classes seem fine, but I haven't shell-shocked them yet with all Spanish, all the time.  That's coming soon.  I have larger blocks of time when I'm not teaching to do other stuff, like read about using data to inform your teaching practice,  and brushing up on exactly what the state standards say, and looking for ideas for the new teachers that I'm supposed to mentor once a rotation.  The larger blocks of time tend to fly, and before I know it I have to pack the cart to get moving again.  And I have lunch duty.  It is amazing to watch 800 kids come streaming into the dining hall, line up, inhale their lunches and be on their way again 22 minutes later.  Sustained controlled chaos for 22 minutes, and then it's over.  I haven't figured out a rhythm to my day yet, and it's keeping me slightly off-kilter.  It will get better I hope.

So, not much blogging lately, but I'll try to work it in occasionally.  Energy level crashed a little last week, but picked up again off and on.  So damn frustrating that it won't stay stable.  This week I'm so tired at times that it physically hurts.  Off to dreamland now...what should I wear tomorrow?

I forgot to mention that I turned 43 on 9/11--Happy Birthday to me!  It was a nice weekend with Sis and Mr. Wonderful, but the 10th anniversary brought me right back to the actual 9/11 events, and made me not really want to celebrate much.  It was low key, but full of great food--BBQ at Redbones, a full Irish breakfast and pint at the Kinsale, and two cakes from Patsy's!  I'll have to pedal for hours to work that off!