Harry Potter > Twilight

So as I was having my lazy evening last night and kicking back with my Chinese, I flipped through the channels only to discover that the first Twilight movie was playing on HBO. I had never seen it and, truthfully speaking, had never really had the desire to. However, in keeping with my lazy evening, once it started I was too lazy to change the channel. I have heard the "Twilight is the new Harry Potter" comparisons, which I always scoffed at, but as I never saw the movies or read the books I felt I couldn't really weigh in on the debate.

So what did I think of the Twilight movie? For starters, I nodded off twice during the first hours and had to rewind my DVR to understand what was going on. I thought the movie was pretty terrible. The acting was horrible, the writing was atrocious and the effects were just awful. I'm sure the books are better, as they almost always are, but you won't see me picking one up to read anytime soon because nothing about that storyline hooked me in at all. The premise of the Twilight stories isn't even all that original to me. Ten years ago, when I was a dorky high schooler I loved the show "Roswell" that was on the WB, which to me is pretty much the same premise as Twilight. A quiet girl falls in love with her biology lab partner, a handsome mysterious outsider at the school, after he saves her life using his supernatural abilities. His family and friends are beautiful outcasts from the school who keep to themselves and are unhappy that he revealed their secret to her. Relationship complications ensue because of his supernatural status and the danger it puts her in. Yada yada yada. There seem to be an awful lot of similarities. I'm not saying Roswell was completely original and the show went downhill pretty fast, but to me Twilight is just a new twist on an age-old story and it's not even told all that well. I'm all for a good love story, but the chemistry in the movie was pretty nonexistent and Robert Pattinson was just downright creepy! There is absolutely no comparison to Harry Potter!

In Harry Potter - both the books and the movies - are very original and have more layers to them than just a girl who can't live without a boy. I'm all for romance like I said, but come on. Even if it just in a movie, hearing the words "I would rather die than live without you" just make me want to vomit. Perhaps the books shed a little more light on this, but Bella doesn't seem to have much of an identity outside of her infatuation with Edward. Not something I really want to see in my heroine. I love all the themes in Harry Potter - friendship, death, loss, free will, prejudice, bigotry, and love in so many different forms. You have parental love, unrequited love, platonic love, sibling love, first loves, crushes. It's not just this over-the-top "I can't live without you" and "we're meant to be together" kind of love. It's characters have substance and depth, which are brought out wonderfully in the books, but that you can see brought to the screen through the wonderful acting of men like Alan Rickman and Michael Gambon. I also love the reality of adolescence as it is depicted in the books over the years. Not everyone is a new girl who automatically makes friends and gets the most handsome guy in school. I'm a tried and true history dork and do not read very much fiction at all, but I love and have reread the HP books.

My last reason for why I think Harry Potter is superior to Twilight (and then I promise I'm done) is because I think it's fanbase stretches far and wide and it has much more reach. I remember being so surprised at my old job at how many teenage boys dug the Harry Potter movies and read the books. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many men who have sat down with the Twilight books or voluntarily gone to see either of the films. Harry Potter is something I can share with my friends, my mom, my kids (when I have them), my students, even my boyfriend.

As I said, I'm sure the books do the Twilight story a lot more justice, but I like the multi-layered story in HP much more than the single story that was presented to me in Twilight. I was hoping the movie would help shed some light on the Twilight craze and why so many of my students still walk around with vampire shirts or binders that have "Team Jacob" written on them, but it did not. If anything it explains why so many of my kids think a boy will solve all their problems and be the answer to everything. Harry Potter wins. Harry Potter always wins!

PS - just a random rant: why weren't vampires this popular when I was in high school and got ridiculed for liking Buffy the Vampire Slayer? (still in my opinion the best show EVER)

Feeling old

Is it bad when the weekend arrives and all I want to do when I get back from work is collapse on the couch and sleep? I miss the days when Friday night meant making plans and going out and having fun. Now all Friday night means to me is I can go to sleep early! I am so wiped from this week. I had a field trip with my seniors and 2 track meets this week. I didn't get back to the school from one of the meets until about 9:30. Add in a 40 minute commute home and you have a very long "hump day" on Wednesday. This week just felt super super long. It took forever just to get to Wednesday and I feel like I barely made it to Friday.

Now Friday is here and all I want to do is sleep. I just hate being this exhausted all the time. I want to do fun things on the weekend and learn how to play tennis with Kendra and go visit my grad school pals up in Charlottesville. By the end of the week I'm so exhausted and backlogged with grading and cleaning and laundry that I hardly ever leave my room. I'm only 26, but I feel so old!

Honestly, I can't figure out if I feel "old" or I just don't know what 26 feels like. I feel like it's a very diverse age and you can have young single people who still live it up on the weekends and people who are also married with kids. I get told all the time that "I'm still young" and should be out having fun, but maybe it's the fact that the only people I ever hang out with and see on a regular basis here are all married and/or have kids. I had my share of fun in and after college, but I've never been one for going out. I'm definitely attracted to a slower pace and lifestyle. Maybe that makes me boring, maybe it makes me old, I don't know.

Today I had a couple students come in off their lunch break to make up a test and I had my pathetic little teacher lunch out on the desk and I was reminded of a My So Called Life episode where Angela comments on how sad teachers' lives are and they zoom in on this frumpy middle-aged woman eating a tuna sandwich. When my kids came in and I took out my pathetic lunch I suddenly felt like that frumpy middle aged woman. I'm sure I look awful some days when I go into work. Most days I barely have time to run a comb through my hair nevertheless put on makeup. Lots of days I forget to eat breakfast and run out the door without taking a lunch. I end up eating school lunches or grabbing one of the frozen dinners I have stored up in the teacher's lounge. I have to remind myself that this whole 'being exhausted all the time' gig that comes with being a first year teacher is only temporary. Next year HAS to be better than this year and if I end up at a different school I don't know if coaching will be on my repertoire. As much as I love it, it is sucking the life out of me.

I miss blogging and wish I could get to a computer more often. Until June 11 I think once a week will pretty much be par for the course for me.

Thankfully, we only have one meet next week and it is a varsity meet that I think we are hosting. We run a pretty quick meet and usually finish up in about 2 hours, which means I will hopefully be home before 8 PM. I start my SOL review next week, which is the 2 week review for the big Virginia state test. It will be stressful to review everything we have learned since August, but will be nice not to have to plan actual lessons anymore. SOL review is just drill, drill, drill, drill.

My Seniors have their prom this weekend and I was asked about 12 times today by my kids if I was going to be there. It's Saturday night and I've already been invited by my grad school friends to go up to Charlottesville and hang with them for the weekend so I am torn. I honestly would just like to stay here and do nothing. I get so lazy on the weekends it's not even funny. I think I will probably end up donning a dress and going to prom. I was flattered they asked me to attend. I figured they would want it to be "their" night and wouldn't want teachers anywhere within a 5 mile radius. The faculty sponsor for the seniors, the 12th grade English teacher who I conference with all the time about my kids, encouraged me to go. She will be there so who knows. Maybe I'll revisit my high school days and go hit up the prom for an hour or so. It will probably make me feel even older than ever!

Right now all I want to do is collapse on the couch though. I think before I do I may order Chinese and go pop in the "Brothers At War" DVD that I never finished from back in February. JC is going to a San Francisco Giants baseball game tonight, which he is super excited about. He's had a rough couple of weeks and didn't do as well on his speaking test this week as he wanted to so I'm happy he's going out and doing something fun. We've hardly talked this week at all, aside from a couple 5 minute phone calls and some texts and emails. I love talking to him and it is usually one of the highlights of my day, but twice this week he called and I was already passed out and slept right through it. He left me a super sweet voicemail and I replied the next day with an email. And that's just how we roll. I know he's thinking about me. He know I'm thinking about him. We just have to focus on our careers right now so we're making good decisions and focusing on our studies. Do I hate that I'm so busy? Yes. Do I know there is an end in sight? Absolutely. The end of the school year is now only 7 weeks away!

And I'll see him soon enough and we'll have an awesome time tog ether this summer. I thought these weeks after our spring break together would be so painful and, no doubt, the first one back was. But we're back into the old routine now. We set aside time on the weekend to "be together" on Skype. We have our dinner dates. We email during the day. It's all good. Whether we have 2 months left of it or 12 more, we can kick this long-distance thing in the butt. Of that I am confident.

And on that note, I'm going to go order my crab rangoons, egg drop soup and Kung Pao chicken. Ah, Friday....

April 16, 2007

This post is a day late and was supposed to go up yesterday, but I ask all my blog readers to pause and remember the 32 people killed at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007.

I had just returned from a trip visiting UVA when the news of this story broke. I was only 2 years out of college and I saw so many people I went to college with in the faces of the victims. One young man in particular jumped out at me. His name was Ryan Clark or "Stack" as he was known by his friends. I never knew him, but his picture and story captivated me in a completely unexpected way. Ryan was an RA in the residence hall where the first life in this tragedy, that of 19 year old Emily Hilscher, was taken. As a resident adviser, he walked over to investigate what was going on and make sure his residents were alright, was shot in the neck and killed. A bright young man, whose smile could apparently light up a room, who spent summers volunteering at a summer camp for special needs children, who was a month from graduating with a triple major and intended to pursue a PhD in neuroscience, gone just like that. Simply because he went to go make sure everything was alright.

I don't know why Ryan affected me the way that he did. I obviously did not know much about him, but as I said it was his picture and smile that captivated me most. The more I read about him the more I could see that the world lost an amazing young man. The world lost 32 amazing men and women that day. Lives snuffed out too soon for no reason at all. I felt helpless like most of the nation and wanted to do something to help the grieving friends and family and to make sure the memory of these students did not fade as the years go by. So I decided to honor Ryan in a very unconventional way. I made a video, using pictures people submitted to his Facebook memorial page and newspapers around the country, quotes from online tributes and messages left for Ryan. The purpose of the video was simply to remember Ryan and his life.

I could never have imagined the response that it got. It hasn't reached Susan Boyle fame, but 13,000 people have viewed the video and for those 3:30 second they remember Ryan. I have received many emails and messages about the video over the years, including a CBS news broadcaster who informed me that he had played the video for Ryan's mother and sister, strangers from around the world and a close friend who informed me how the video was shared with all Ryan's fellow Marching Virginians.

To this day, I still can't explain why exactly Ryan touched me so much considering I never met him. Maybe it was the smile, maybe it was that he reminded me of classmates I knew, perhaps it was the knowledge that in his 22 years on this earth he accomplished more than some people will in a lifetime. Just like Ross Almedinne, Jarrett Lane, Matthew La Porte and Lauren McCain and all the lives taken that day. Pause today and remember them. Say a prayer for their families and challenge yourself to give and do more with your life. That is Ryan's legacy to me.

I'm Alive!

I'm not sure how long exactly how it has been since I posted anything, but I assure you it's not 'cos I haven't wanted to. I've had a few blog posts that I've wanted to post rattling around in my head all week, but haven't even had the time to go grocery shopping this week nevertheless sit down and blog. There is lots that I would like to include in this entry, but I don't have time and just wanted to share the most amazing story ever about the wonders of the blogging world and how incredible it is.

Thanks to my best pal, Kara, an amazing good Samaritan and the New Balance company, my athletes will finally have actual running shoes!! Not hand-me downs, not lightly used donations, but top of the line New Balance running shoes.

So here's the story about how amazing the blogging community and people in general can be. My friend Kara runs an amazing health/marathon training/wellness blog over at . She is actually the reason I started blogging. She has made so many positive changes in her life and is able to successfully juggle so many things in her life and she somehow manages to document it all on her blog. I don't know how she does it. She is seriously such an amazing inspiration to me. Anyway, back to how she got my kids shoes! I told her one day when we were chatting about how frustrating it was to see these kids run around the asphalt track in skateboard shoes and basketball sneakers. She mentioned it on her blog. One of her blog readers works for New Balance. This amazing reader thought New Balance might be interested in helping out my track team. She asked for sizes and I got 17 sizes and emailed them to her, still very hesitant that anything would actually happen. That was last week over Spring Break. I returned Monday to discover an email that said New Balance was getting all the sizes together and just needed an address where to send them. I sent them her way, completely amazed that this was taking place, but still somehow skeptical. Maybe I'm just a pessimist. Maybe I was just in shock, but I resigned myself into thinking that it would take a month for the shoes to get there. I know, I know, I'm such a pessimist. I think I was honestly just in disbelief. I could not believe that a company could possibly be so generous. She emailed me the next day to tell me New Balance sent the 20 pairs of the New Balance 760's in both men's and women's sizes!

They should be here early next week! I am hoping they miraculously arrive on Monday so our kids will have them to the meet that day. We don't have sweats or jackets or cool t-shirts or anything like that. The track team, despite winning a state championship about 4 years ago, is pretty much the lowest team on the totem pole at this high school. Football is king and baseball and softball, especially, are really popular. The kids that run track get very little notoriety or respect at this school. It's a hard sport and I'm immensely proud of the kids who have stuck with it. I CANNOT wait to see the looks on their faces when they get these shoes. I am definitely going to bring my camera and cannot wait to get a picture of them holding up the shoes and then trying them on. I am hoping to submit an article to the local paper thanking New Balance. I am still in shock that they would so freely donate almost $2,000 worth of shoes to a school in need without any annoying paperwork or verification of students "in need".

I just cannot wait for the shoes to arrive. The other coaches who know these kids, the community, their families and where they come from, have told me most of them have nothing. They told me I'd be appalled if I saw where they live. One of my favorite kids is a talented and hardworking sophomore who runs just about everything we ask him to, from the 100m to the 4x400 in basketball sneakers and never says a word or complains about injuries or being tired or anything. He wears shoes that are a size too small and, apparently, he lives in a house where you can practically see the dirt floor. And now he's going to get brand new $100 running shoes!

Is this not the most amazing story EVER??? Thank you so much to everybody involved. Kara, Emily and most importantly NEW BALANCE!!!

Smile Moments

The week started off pretty awful as I lost my keys at school Wednesday and didn't realize it until I was ready to go home after practice around 6:30. Needless to say, I literally spent two hours looking for the keys with the only people left in the school, the head janitor and his wife. The keys eventually turned up (locked in the secretary's office) but it made for a horrible night and consequently an awful start to the week. I felt like I was playing catch-up all week because of that one awful night. Throw in parent teacher conferences on Wednesday night and you have one rough week. The good news? Less than 1 week from now I will be in Monterey, California!

I have an awful lot of work to get done before then however. I have a stack of papers to grade that is about 2 weeks old that I need to knock out today. I have to finish cleaning the apartment, pack, plan, get some dry cleaning and ironing done that I've been meaning to do for MONTHS, and hopefully a couple decent workouts in and some lesson planning.

Despite my lack of sleep and planning, I somehow managed to make it through the week with my sanity intact and I even had a couple "smile" moments. The first was the day after the great key fiasco. I apologized to my kids that they had to take so many notes today, but explained that I lost my keys, got home very late and didn't have time to make them a worksheet. One of my students who is an office aide immediately responded, "oh, those were YOUR keys? We were trying to figure it out!" She went on to explain that they were examining my key ring and saw the Army keychain and stopped to think "now what teacher would have an Army keychain?"

Immediately another student in the class responded, "the one who loves World War II!" It seriously made my day. That is indeed my favorite historical period and is pretty much the reason I became a history teacher. I never told that to my kids, but I'm glad to see I conveyed my enthusiasm well. If all they remember 10 years from now about their 10th grade history class is that their teacher 'loved WWII' my life will be compete haha! It definitely also made me laugh that she was trying to figure out what teacher would have the Army keychain. She admitted she thought it might be me 'cos of how I talk to her about her best friend who is about to go to Afghanistan and how much I know. They definitely don't know about JC (I keep my personal life personal) so they just think I know a lot about the Army. I think some of them actually think I served, which is kind of comical.

Another smile moment came Thursady during track practice. I had to work with the distance squad for the first half of practice and then the head coach wanted me to do something with the girls team (only about 5 girls) to get them away from the boys he wanted to work with because, as he put it, they "go into heat whenever they're together". So for starters, in case I haven't mentioned it, I was a distance runner in high school. I have no natural speed and like running long distance because there is so much opportunity for improvement and personal advancement. Well, the 5 girls I had to work with were all 8th and 9th grade girls who - except for 1 - lack any real natural talent. That's perfectly fine with me, but add to that the fact that they have horrible attitudes and call themselves "the Black Mafia", are lazy and are only in the sprinting group because they just don't want to run anything more than a lap and you get an idea of what I had to work with. Now I come to practice every day in running attire. I like to run with the kids when I get a chance, especially the girls, even though they complain the entire time. The kids all know I have a distance background and I think whenever the Head Coach (we'll call him Coach T) says "go with Coach R" they are terrified because they think I'm going to make them run a distance workout.

So he told these 5 girls yesterday to go with me and you would not BELIEVE the complaining he and I heard. When I told them we were going to go run through the woods on the cross-country trails, I may as well have said we're going to fly to the moon. I told them I would run it with them and they seemed to accept it a bit better after that. I fudged the distance and told them we were running about 1 mile (it's really closer to 2200 meters, which is almost 1 1/2 miles). They complained for the first 5 minuets almost nonstop. What if we get attacked by a bear? What if a "wild Cujo dog" runs out and tries to kill us? What if a crazy man runs out of the woods to get us? What if we got lost? What if they got impaled by a stick? Complain. Complain. Complain. After about 3/4 of a mile they all started taking off their sweatshirts (I honestly think it's the first time they've worked up a sweat in track practice). When we popped out by the back baseball field with only about a half mile left they were all in pretty good spirits. I honestly think they couldn't believe they did it and that it was so much easier than they thought. We got back to the track and, for about the first time all season, we stretched as a team. One girl remarked "I really feel better after stretching." AMAZING. Another finally admitted "that was kind of fun." Still another - the one with the worst attitude in the world who scowls all throughout practice - asked, "can we do that every week?"

I was seriously on Cloud 9. The girls found something they like to do at track practice and it involves running more than 100 meters. I'm excited because I think it will be good conditioning once a week to build up some distance. I also think it really helped those girls realize I'm not so scary and I won't make them run 10 miles. I doubt they'd ever admit to it, but I think they liked that I ran it with them.

Another good thing that happened this week: JC's running shoes are now being worn by 2 of my favorite boys on the sprinting team. Like most of the track team, they were running in pretty sorry looking basketball shoes before. I have made it my goal to get them all in proper running shoe and thanks to the donations of a parent and my old pair of shoes I have now outfitted 4 athletes (out of about 30) with lightly used running shoes. Never mind that one of the boys is running in my size 11 girls shoes and has no ideas. Running shoes are running shoes and they're definitely better than what he used to have.

Other smile moments include an exchange with a particularly tough parent at conferences. A father that came in noted the flag on my wall and the several pictures I have on my "Heroes Wall" of people in uniform. He asked where I got the flag and I told him my boyfriend who returned from Afghanistan in November. He seemed to have an interest so I asked if he served. He said, "still do. I'm just on medical leave." I asked what branch and he responded, "the ONLY branch, the Army". I immediately replied with an instinctual "hooah", which just made him grin from ear to ear. It was a very tense conference up until then and after that he slapped me on the back! It was a fun way to end parent teacher conferences. I relayed the exchange to JC later that night and he complemented me on my excellent use of 'hooah' and told me he'd never been prouder.

Today has been a more productive Saturday than usual. I have been alternating cleaning, organizing and grading (packing will be added in tonight!). I do a little of this and a little of that and the day has flown by. I actually have to run to Kroger to go get my ingredients for my cooking date tonight. We're doing it tonight because JC has a big German test on Monday and I have a fantasy baseball draft. We're making a couple of old family recipes his dad passed along to him so it should be fun. I ate both things we're making back when I met his family back in January and they were delicious. I'm definitely looking forward to having them in my fridge all week.

In other news, my ex boyfriend will be deploying for Afghanistan. I found this out last night via Facebook and my stomach has been all queasy ever since. He is going to a particularly volatile and dangerous part of the country. I talked with JC at length about how I felt about him deploying. It's his 3rd deployment and his first as a sergeant in charge of other soldiers. Despite not being the right guy for me at all, he is a good person with a good heart and an outstanding soldier. Obviously, he is not a part of my life anymore like he used to be, but I still care about him and would ask you to keep him and his soldiers in your thoughts and prayers throughout the year.

Alright, I'm off to go pick up the ingredients for "Burger Puddin'" and "Ro Ro Salad". I do love my South Carolina boyfriend!

Still Moovin'!

Well, I've been pretty awful at both posting about and keeping up with Casey's Get Moovin' Challenge...or at least the aspects of the challenge that she set up. As a reminder the challenge for the entire month of March was: #1 No fast food! #2 Workout at least 3 times a week! So here is how I've done so far....

The no fast food part I figured would be super easy. I can count on one hand the number of times I've eaten fast food in the last year so I didn't expect that to be a problem...except that was BEFORE track practice started. Ever since I started coaching and leaving school at 7 and 7:30 I have become a Chick-fil-A junkie. Okay, to be honest "junkie" for me means I went there once during the week, but I did it two weeks in a row. I honestly don't feel too guilty about it considering it IS Chick Fil-A and is not that awful compared to say a Big Mac. I actually check the calorie counter for my chicken sandwiches and I'm doing alright. Maybe it is JC's sad stories about no Chick-fil-A's in California, but I'm definitely starting to become obsessed with the place. I can definitely see myself getting into a habit for the rest of track season of going to Chick-fil-A once a week. I'm not proud of it, but sometimes I just don't have the energy to grade, plan AND cook dinner. The good news on the eating front is that JC and I are doing awesome with our Sunday meals. My interpretation of fast food in this challenge was always fast food in the sense of frozen/microwaveable meals that are fast to prepare. I am proud to say that since I started the challenge I have not had a single frozen meal! That includes my teacher lunch, which is still going strong with a Peanut Butter Crunch Cliff bar and a fruit cup. I recently switched over to the Dole No Sugar Added mandarin orange fruit cups as the Del Monte peaches were just WAAAAAAY too sugary for me and I absolutely love them. I think cooking with JC on Sundays has really helped my mission to eat better. Not only do we cook relatively healthy and balanced meals, but we cook enough to last the week, which helps me out a ton. Last night we made broiled salmon with mustard sauce and steamed broccoli. I just put a little bit of lemon juice and garlic powder on the broccoli (no butter!) and it was delicious. We were both pretty proud of ourselves for cooking such a healthy meal. Not to mention the fact that neither of us had never actually prepared fresh fish before so it was quite the accomplishment

As far as working out goes, I have unfortunately not had the greatest luck there. I had a great first week to start off, but track practice has completely derailed my attempts to get back into running. I have to spend too much of the practice actually coaching (which I really didn't think I would do), timing or babysitting and I don't have time to actually run anything aside from the occasional 400. I'm frustrated because I just bought a new pair of running shoes (my first pair of Brooks, which I adore!), but I think I'll probably only get to run on the weekends the way life is going right now. I honestly can't believe I've made it through two weeks of coaching. My life feels so busy right now. This half hour I'm taking to blog will be some of the only free time I have all day before I get so exhausted I fall asleep at 8:30. Words cannot begin to describe how much I am counting down to Spring Break...but back to my plan for the week.

Monday
B: cereal and banana
L: Cliff bar and fruit cup
D: salmon, broccoli, wild rice

Tuesday
B: cereal and banana
L: Cliff bar and fruit cup
D: leftover thin crust pizza (not the greatest, but it's in the fridge!)

Wednesday
B: cereal and banana
L: Cliff bar and fruit cup
D: salmon on top of a spinach salad

Thursday
B: cereal and banana
L: Cliff bar and fruit cup
D: salmon, wild rice and small spinach salad

Friday
B: cereal and banana
L: Cliff bar and fruit cup
D: haven't decided yet....possibly a take out night...

I know it's repetitive, but I don't mind eating the same thing throughout the week at all. If I get bored with it I will change it, but I never usually get tired of leftovers. I will need to try to resist the urge to run to Chick-fil-A on either Wednesday or Thursday. By then the work and grading starts to pile up and I get super exhausted.

I will also try to run more at practice when I can, though I highly doubt it will be for 30 minutes. If I get one workout in at practice then I can probably can fit in 2 runs Friday-Sunday, possibly even some EA Active action on the Wii on the "off" day. We shall see! I realize I've been awful about posting my updates about this (blame it on track season and my tendency to pass out between 8:30 and 9), but I have been trying to keep up with it as best I can.

Pinch Me Moments

So it has basically been a week since I've updated. Sorry I'm such a bad blogger. Life is going well, it is just very very busy with track season now. We ran an inner-squad 'mock' meet on Friday and it was absolute insanity, especially without the head coach there. It was exhausting, but a whole lot of fun. I had a ton of out-of-body moments during the week where I looked in on myself and could hardly believe it was me coaching.

Do you ever have moments where you have to pinch yourself to believe the life you're living? Lately I've been having a lot of those moments where I wonder A) how the heck I got here? (in a good way) and B) if only my family and friends could see me now...

On my forty minute commute to and from school every day as I drive past the now familiar farm stands, tiny train stations, family farms and livestock, I can hardly believe that I've made it to March of my first year teaching. I remember thinking I would never even make it to Thanksgiving back when I first started. JC kept encouraging me and telling me I would hit my stride soon enough and I just didn't see how that would ever be possible. But now I can make up lessons literally on the spot. Obviously that's not ideal, but I made up my history lesson Friday on the formation of the UN and the Marshall Plan on the fly first period. And it was GREAT! The kids were asking all kinds of awesome questions and the graphic organizer I put together in about 10 minutes was PERFECT. Sometimes when I'm up teaching in front of the class, whether it's my seniors or my 10th graders, I just can't believe this is me. I still think it's amazing when I say something and my kids go and scribble it into their notes. They take notes about what I say? I'm a teacher? Seriously?? We had to hand out grades to our homeroom classes at the end of the day yesterday and I remembered how nervous I was the first day of school when I first met my homeroom. I didn't know any of them and wasn't sure what I should even do in homeroom. Now both the routine and the command of my classroom is so natural. It's hard for me to believe this is really me. I feel like I was just in grad school "playing teacher". My school district is kind of a mess right now - much like every school district across the country - and I'm not sure I'll be here next year, but I really hope I am! I can't wait to incorporate everything I've learned this year into next year. In good news, I had my evaluation meeting with my principle and I got satisfactory all around, which is the highest I could get. So yay me!

The other pinch me moment in my professional life has been this past week in track practice. My first week with the team was really just all about getting my feet wet and learning the routine. This week I actually ran practice a couple of days and taught kids how to hurdle and how to high jump and work on their form while running a 400. I honestly cannot believe I am coaching track. I can't believe when I talk to these kids, who for the most part would be labeled 'at risk youth' in today's PC world, that they actually pay attention and seem to care. They are 9th and 10th grade students I have never met, but whose names I know from seeing on the In School Suspension list just about every week. They have behavioral issues in the classroom and many have serious attitude problems. I won't say their behavior issues go away completely when they get to the track, but when I'm coaching them...they listen. It's amazing. I seriously have to pinch myself that little ol' me is able to keep and hold their attention and keep them working for 1 1/2 hours. I started four kids on Thursday on the 300m hurdles and really couldn't believe how I was able to hold their attention. I ran the 400 hurdles in high school and am pretty surprised at how much I remember about proper form and technique. I heaped on praise about specific things they did right and videotaped them so they could see for themselves. I think it really went a long way. I was talking to a friend about this and she was having a hard time coming up with other examples either of us knew about a girl coaching boys (and I hate to play the race card, but a white girl coaching a bunch of black kids). The head coach was out Friday so the distance coach and I ran the practice meet with our team all by ourselves. I was in charge of all 30+ sprinters and spent all day making teams and relays and choosing who would be anchor and who would be in what heat. Of course, two of the best kids didn't show up so my perfectly matched teams went out the window. Running the meet was absolute INSANITY since most of the kids had no idea what to do or where any of the races started. We had students pulling up with muscle cramps and I had to make up new relays on the fly. It was crazy and a serious headache trying to corral all these sprinters and get them to the right place at the right time, especially since we had to finish up before the late bus got there at 5, but it was a lot of fun and makes me excited for the real meets, even though I know they'll be a much bigger headache. It was a great way to cap off my first real week of coaching. It's frustrating. It's time consuming. But it's a whole lot of fun.

My final pinch myself moment occurs all the time outside of my professional life and is all about my personal life. Yes, that's right, I have to gush about the boy (again). I have to pinch myself several times a day to believe #1 that this wonderful man - who calls me every night just to say goodnight, sends me thoughtful texts and emails throughout the day, pays for my $450 flights out to see him, sends me packages full of random stuff that he 'just saw and thought of me' - exists at all and #2 that he is mine. I honestly cannot believe that we found each other and I cannot believe that he has become such a tremendous part of my life. I know that's a little sappy so I guess I'll leave it at that and get ready for Bunco. It's a brunch theme and I have to go buy a quiche from the amazing bakery down the street. Yeah, I'm copping out and not making anything but I totally think it's worth it for this bakery.

Do you ever have "pinch me" moments in your life where you can't even believe this is your life (in a very good way)?

(PS - I still need to pick a recipe out for tomorrow!)