Thursday, February 25, 2010

Milk Men

This morning I woke up to discover I had no milk. I can't eat cereal without milk and I can't get up unless I eat cereal. So I went back to bed...for 3 or 4 hours. That was my rationale. If I go back to sleep maybe when I wake up this time there will be milk in the fridge! The milk man will have come! How come we don't have milk men anymore!? That would be SO nice, to just have fresh milk on your doorstep whenever you needed it. Milk is seriously the sole reason I have to go to the grocery store in the first place. It's fine if I am out of anything else but when the milk is gone...it's time to go. Then when I got over the injustice of no more milk men...I lost all reason.

I thought maybe the milk FAIRY will have come! She will have magically sensed the need for milk in my house, like the tooth fairy magically knows when you lose a tooth...and I will stumble to the fridge in my barely-awake-eyes-haven't-adjusted-to-the-light-no-equilibrium-state and open the door to see a SPARKLING brand new carton of milk! The sound that would happen for this in the movies would happen in my house too... ahhh, to dream big.

I had a few more fleeting thoughts of waking up to realize I had been dreaming the first time when I had discovered no milk and there actually WAS milk...or that I will have gone to the grocery store in my sleep and bought milk...and lastly that it would magically be spring and it wouldn't be too cold when I wake up this time to ACTUALLY go to the grocery store. But so much for all of that positive-yet-unrealistic thinking. I woke up again and alas, no milk. AND--no Spring.



Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Blog Fog

This title is brought to you by Clay Kirkland...and although I don't have a new baby and there is still no real excuse for my absence, there are some reasons why I haven't blogged lately. OK, ever...especially in the last 2 months. I was doing 2 posts a month for awhile...and that crashed and burned somewhere in November I think...but I MUST NOT have a month in my archives that doesn't have at least one post. That would hurt my heart. It would upset the balance in my life...and I can never go back and fix it. It would be something I regretted for the rest of my life. I am serious...That is my OCP(D) talking.

Sooo...of course I can't go back and capture an entire two months in one adequately entertaining (and concise) entry I will give a short list, title and description of blog posts that I really hope to expound on soon. Also, if you want to hear about one in particular you should tell me and I will write about it sooner.

Lets see...recap... I got a promotion. I became the assistant director at "the daycare." My hours changed from 7 to 3 to 10 to 6. My schedule was ROCKED. I got sick and I hated it.

I lost my voice for a whole entire week. It was awesome. I never lose my voice and I did, for a week. AND during this wonderful time I got pulled over for speeding and I couldn't talk to the officer. Guess what? He still gave me a ticket.

My title at "the daycare" became program director. I wrote a plan of curriculum for the whole center for the rest of the year. It was really cool, we planned an event for the first month and I tied together the schools music and art programs which had become very lacking as we lost our "artistic director" (who only did music). Things began to be very fulfilling at work as I was being appropriately challenged in my strengths. HOWEVER...

We suffered a huge budget...um...issue and I had to return to the classroom. No more directorship. Back to the mundane. Changing diapers. Wiping noses. Herding cats. No support. No resources, oh, and no adult interactions. Well, there was no going backwards for me and I couldn't handle it. I suggested we restructure a LOT of things that I had encountered problems with when I was in the position of authority.

I suggested that we move a few infants (2) up who were beginning to be mobile and needed to be out of the infant room. THAT would help the constant over-ratio-ness of the infant room. But that would make us over in the 1's. SO I would move up to the 2's taking 4 of my kids with me who were over the age that they needed to be to enter the 2's room. That would leave the infant room good, and now the other teacher in the 1's would only have 5 babies. 6-15 months...better than 8-19 months. AND I didn't have to deal with one of the infants that was moving up...who is probably my second most despised child in the world. Both of them are boys and under the age of 10 months old. Spawn. of. Satan.

So then I would be a new teacher in the 2's with the existing teacher. The teacher I replaced moved up with several of her children that were "ready" for the 3's...making the numbers more even in each of the two toddler classes and giving the existing teacher in the 3's an assistant. It really was a good plan...until it sucked.

I had lots of meetings filled with lots of suggestions on how to improve the problems we were all encountering. Nothing resulted of the meetings... I would like to post some of the correspondence here that went down at those meetings...

Owner walked in my room one day and snatched up a screaming child and removed them from the room. THIS is a great story. I gave my two weeks notice today.

Lots of parents became FURIOUS and it just kind of all began to fall apart. I was leaving, parents were calling a meeting, staff weren't invited, there was hiring and tours going on...and of course the awkwardness of relationships between me and the owner...

I became Jack-aline Bauer and went dark on my tactical mission to get intel from the covert parent meeting. We arranged live feed from an inside source, tapped into a mobile phone and gathered to listen. I decided I needed to push further. This guy wasn't giving in, there was more he wasn't saying and he had to talk. He was our best lead. I dressed in all black (ok, I didn't, but had I more time I would have more thoroughly gotten into character including outfit, black smudges under my eyes and technical support. Perhaps I would have downloaded the building schematics to my PDA. ) I stealthily and skillfully moved from the location I had hidden my car, avoiding the lit areas and staying close to the shadows. I would like to be able to say that I did this cool move where you are running low to the ground and then kind of do this cross between sitting indian style while spinning around...but I only have level 3 access and haven't been cleared for that kind of maneuver. You know I always stick to protocol. ANYWAY-- I used the access code my analyst gave me (or the one I used to enter the building everyday) and I avoided the windows and other areas where I could have been seen. However, unfortunately my identity was compromised. I was seen by the director's husband (and child) and two others, parents, one a close friend of the owners. Regardless of this I didn't abandon my mission. I found a place to hide in an abandoned room, positioned myself against a partition and listened in on everything... Details of the meeting will have to be posted later although I would like to finish this story with the fact that I had to act fast to escape, climbed a fenced, army crawled (ok, jogged) across a field and then trespassed through someone's gate to get to the street to run back to my car. It was AMAZING. If you ever feel the need to have a stealth mission like this please call me. However not if the activities are of illegal nature because I think that this area might be a weakness for me and I don't want to venture over to the illegal side of sneaking and saving the world.

ohhhhkkkaaaayyyy.... I went to Disney World by myself. I ran a toll and almost got arrested and then I cried for an hour. THIS is also a VERY entertaining story.

My blog had it's first birthday.
It has been 1 year since I lived in Jamaica for a month.
I'm really bummed that I'm not in Jamaica right now.
I have been in a nice sunny city/country both times it has snowed big in Athens and I am not sad about missing it either time.

I have decided that twins might be the most unfair thing God could do to human beings. Right there along with tiny infants getting sick and their mommies being sick at the same time. Then the most recent thing I have to write about is a bit premature but I guarantee you that within 2 weeks I will be able to write about it AND post pictures. And I know you understand why now that I couldn't really write about all of the drama with "the daycare" and really why I never got to post about kid stories and cute kid pictures... but I am going to be back on my game soon.