Monday, January 30, 2012

Resolution Challenge 2012

Do you have a New Year's Resolution?  I have never done one before, but I am giving it a good go this year.  I am doing something a little different and I think I am setting myself up for success, rather than failure.  For each month (30 days or so) I am going to set one or more very small goals.  The point is that I will try to complete all 30 days and then realize that it wasn't so bad after all and continue on with in life.  Or at least part of it.  I will pick one or more things at the beginning of each month, share them, and then also give an update on how the previous month's goals turned out (completed or not).

January consisted of three very small goals:

  1. Floss my teeth every night.  (This only takes a minute or two, but somehow always seems like a huge pain in the you-know-what.)
  2. Take a daily multi-vitamin every day.
  3. Do not watch TV in bed for the entire month.
I figured those were realistic goals. I only have 1 1/2 days left in January and I will update on the status of these goals at the beginning of February.

Here are some ideas that I have for monthly goals:

  • Read a chapter of The Purpose Driven Life every day.
  • Run/walk a certain number of miles every day.
  • Get up early and work out before school every day (this one may be impossible).
  • Spend 5 minutes every day being thankful.
  • Don't eat any junk food/sweets for a whole month.
  • Do something really special for someone every day.
  • In the summer: Weed/garden/spend time outside in my yard "X" amount of minutes per day.
  • Watch Oprah's entire Life Class in 30 days.
  • Clean a room of my house EVERY DAY.  Yeah, we will see.
  • Do "X" amount of minutes of grad school work every day.
  • Write a blog post every day.
  • Don't eat any meat for a whole month.
  • Don't drink any alcohol for a whole month.
  • Eat "X" number of servings of fruits and/or veggies every day.
  • Try at least "X" number of new recipes in a month.
Does anyone have any other ideas that I could give a go?  I think I have at least one good idea for February, but don't know if I will add any more.

Friday, January 27, 2012

The Worst Post You Will Ever Read.

Yeah, I know I haven't blogged in a while.  I have been busy.  I have been taking advantage of all of the free time I get (like 25 minutes a WEEK) by watching Toddlers & Tiaras and Keeping up with the Kardashians.  You think I'm joking, probably, but I'm not.  In the time that I was gone, I experienced the worst time of my life.

Have you ever had a broken heart?  I don't mean your 8th grade boyfriend broke up with you.  I mean literally your heart broke in half right down the middle, leaving jagged edges...  It freakin' sucks, dude.

On Friday, January 13 I woke up thinking "Today is Pay Day.  YEAH!  Today is Friday.  YEAH!  Today is Casual Day.  YEAH!  Today is a B-Day (we rotate schedules at school and B-Day is my favorite one).  YEAH!  I am deejaying my school's sock hop tonight.  YEAH!  Who said that Friday the 13th has to be a bad day?  I don't buy it."    Well, it turns out that less than an hour later, my heart was broken.

See, I have a thing about being a teacher.  I don't believe it is my "forever job".  But I do believe I am a teacher for a reason.  And that reason is that I love children.  I seriously have fallen in love with every single one of my students.  Even the annoying ones.  I try so hard every day to let them know that I love them.  Maybe some day I will be a foster parent or something, I don't know.  But I'm not a teacher to help kids learn (which is probably what most people think) and I'm not a teacher for money (because if I wanted more money, I would be an engineer), but I am a teacher because being around kids all day warms my heart right up and almost makes it want to explode.  If I ever have my own kids, who know what I will do.  I will love them so much I probably won't be able to breathe.

Well, I got to school the morning of Friday the 13th to find out that a sweet, beautiful 9 year old student had passed away a few hours earlier.

I was shocked.  I never thought it would happen.  And my heart just split in half.  I couldn't breathe.  I couldn't think.  I couldn't talk.  I couldn't even stand up.  I couldn't even cry right away.  I could honestly feel the heart tissue tearing apart right down the middle. 

I am happy to announce that I am much better now (exactly two weeks later).  I pondered writing a blog post about it every day but I couldn't until today for some reason.  I will probably write more about it later.  But I will leave you for now with her sweet picture...