time warp

I was thinking of posting a week one back to school update. Then I realized I've been back at school for 2 minus a day weeks. How have I been back at school for two weeks?

If you haven't talked to me, myself and the two other learning leaders were in charge of organising our entire staff PD day on the second day back to school for teachers. This involved hours of meeting time, not sleeping Sunday night, more hours of work, and a general feeling that I may have been just a teeny weeny bit totally batshit crazy when I applied for/accepted this job. Guess what? Success! Everyone totally loved the day (for real, not in a we're just saying this so you don't cry, kind of way)! So at least our staff doesn't hate us from the get go. That part can happen a little later when we really dig into things. Just in case you're thinking when I say "my staff" I mean a happy little elementary school staff of 30ish people I do not. I mean 110 cynical high school teachers who instinctively roll their eyes when I get up to talk at least 50% of the time. The love, I rarely feel it.

So, as I'm sure you can guess, all the typical back to school things are good. My kids are great, classes are good, blah blah blah. The teaching bit, I still love it. I'm also really gaining some appreciation for the comfort factor that has really let me become a better teacher 6 (6!!) years later. My new job, however, is best described as challenging on steroids. It's a very bipolar position - one minute I'm just so excited about the dialogue and things happening, and the next I am beyond frustrated. There are lots of little pockets of very exciting things going on, they just happen to be buried under administrivia and garbage, not to mention a huge lack of time, clarity and real direction. I just hope the good parts are enough to outweigh the million frustrations as the year progresses.

So that's my first two weeks back. I'd be kidding myself if I thought it was going to settle down any in the weeks to come.

chelle's guide to buying, selling and moving in less than a month

Part 2 : Selling

So I arrived home from winter camp, exhausted, disgusting, and pretty much dying to know all the details of what boyfriend, his realtor uncle and his lawyer aunt had done while I was away playing in the snow.  Turns out there weren't all too many more details than were communicated via text messages - all I'd missed was returning to the house and the stressful offer, counter, re-offer, and the waiting game played between those things.  I may have gotten off pretty easy by not being around...  So, having only one week to remove conditions, selling my condo became top priority.

1. Agree to let realtor uncle sell my condo.  Bonus, he already had a couple in mind.
2. Try to make a bank appointment.  Realize your banker no longer deals with personal banking stuff.  Find out that all bankers at your branch are booked solid for a week.  Spend a lot of time calling the bank.  Have an acquaintance's mom agree to meet with you at the end of her day to help you out.
3. Get approved (with flying colours) if and only if condo sells.
4. Have a couple try to come look at the condo.  Due to their work and needing to go to the mosque this proves to be difficult.
5. Couple sees the condo, loves it.  Feel much relief.
6. Couple can't seem to get their financing in order, they are banking through the states and an old student loan is giving them grief.  Wait.  Stressfully.  
7. Get extremely stressed that your condo is still not listed and now you have 5 days to sell.  Question realtor uncle's master plan silently and not so silently.
8. Try to be patient with realtor uncle as he assures you things will be fine.  Sit on your hands as not to harass him with endless phone calls as you would someone who was not related.  He's helping you out, he's family, surely he has a plan?
9. Consider calling to put your foot down and demand the condo be listed.
10. Out of nowhere, receive an offer!
11. Offer is a good one, uncle was indeed working some kind of silent non communicated magic with a different couple.  
12. Accept offer without countering.
13. Remove conditions!  Realise you are now actually buying a house.
14. Decide you can probably tell you family now.  This proves to only require one phone call - in some weird alignment of the planets your entire family sees one another that day, passes on the news and then calls you to confirm.

wow

Turns out I might not be quite as at odds with the universe as it feels some days.  Remember my wants post from not too far back?  Well a month and a half later here's the update.

I want my arm to stop hurting.

My shingles cleared up in what could likely be considered record time if family history is any indicator to how much you should suffer.  The rash is still visible, but I don't think there will be any scarring.  Yay!

I want my Pom girls to do okay tomorrow in their first performance.

They did okay.  The season is now over, and it was an okay one.  I'm not willing to give it more than okay, cause, well, I re experienced what being a teenage girl is all about (and it's not pretty...).  I'm pretty happy to be finished for the year, but am going back for round two next year.

I want Buns to get the job at my school cause she'd be awesome and a perfect fit.

She did get the job, and she is a perfect fit.  I love working with her (we co-teach a class) and know that she is doing a super job everywhere else she works.  I'm also pretty pumped I've got another person on staff to back my crazy proposals.  

I want you all to put yourselves on the Bone Marrow registry.

I don't know, did you do this?  Canada has just switched to the super easy cheek swab method so if you just couldn't make time to go in and give a tiny vial of blood now you have no excuse.  They send you the kit, you swab and send it back.  Do it.

Most importantly I want Erica to be well, to know we're thinking of her, to find a donor - life is so f'ing unfair to the most amazing people.

SHE'S FOUND A MATCH!  An imperfect one, but a viable donor.  I won't lie, I cried with happiness when I found out while watching this.  Now there's quite a few things that need to happen before the transplant and let's all really really really hope it all goes perfectly.

I also got a few wonderful things that weren't on my wants list, but more on that soon.

much easier than typing myself...

Wondering what I've been up to? My boyfriend was nice enough to blog about a piece of it for me! Unfortunately he didn't also blog about all the other things I've been doing lately, so maybe you'll have to call me or something to find that out since I'm a wee bit behind...

A quick trip to Jasper

happier

I survived shingles.  Technically I still have them, but I am done with the anti-viral medication and things are generally looking much better.  The shingles themselves have scabbed over, and have returned to a much less aggressive shade of pale pink.  For awhile I thought I was dealing with some severe blood poisoning/infection issues - pretty!  This process was hella itchy.  Itchy pain is an interesting combination - on one hand, it's itchy!  and painful!  but on the other hand, you don't scratch and make things bleed because of the hurting.  I'm crossing my fingers this has prevented pretty scars from forming.

I decided to today was the day I was considering myself better not just because most of the icky is gone, but because it is the first day in over a week and a half I have been able to bear wearing a real bra.  This is what I measure progress by!

I still have at least a week of nerve medication to take, I'm going to decrease dosage then and see if life is grand of if there is that lovely residual stabbiness following me around.  For right now, ignorance is bliss!

2007 resolutions in review

All of a sudden it's 2008!  Happy New Year everyone.  I thought it might be fun to see how I fared with last year's resolutions before I even consider making new ones.

1. Consume less and consume more intelligently.
I think I did pretty well here.  Honestly, I really kept purchases to a minimum last year.  What I did purchase was clothes and shoes, and most recently my macbook (but it was becoming very needed).  One success!

2. Moisturize more often.
If we look at the year as a whole, I failed.  If we look at November/December, I'm rocking this one.  As the new assessment practices are teaching me, it's only most current behaviour that should be assessed however, and that means I get to say I succeeded with this one.  2 down!

3. Drink more wine.
I said this was going to be my attainable resolution and it most certainly was.  2007 saw the arrival of a wine drinking Chelle.  I now drink wine because I enjoy it, not because I'm trying to make myself like it.  The arrival of Invisible Roommate and her extensive knowledge of good, reasonably priced wine has not hurt my cause any.  3/6!

4. See Nelly Furtado.
I failed.  Miserably.  But not because I didn't try, because I somehow slept in and missed my flight.  A big shout out to Westjet who managed to get me to Montreal on April 5th anyway.  A big boo on me for being in transit during the show.  Sigh.

5. Revamp the way I teach Math 10.
I am happy to say I have more love for Math 10.  I met some fabulous resources and was given some pretty fantastic opportunities this last year in the means of professional development.  I have definitely changed the way I approach the course in a much more concrete way - an I anticipate doing a much better job of marrying my new knowledge and my teaching style when repeat the course next year.  I think it means good things that my grade 11s have been a little jealous that they didn't get to do some of the things this year's 10s are doing.

6. Get out more often.
Just a meh here.  I did alright, but there is certainly room for improvement.  I do have more friends in the city now, and that was a year long project in itself, so I suppose there are small successes here.  I'm looking forward to my new semester (no core french!) and the return of Rach and Jeff to be sure.  JJ and her boy are also moving to the queen city, so I anticipate monthly visits in at least one direction to be sure.

All in all, I'd say 2007 was pretty successful and 2008 is shaping up to be even better.

already?

Seriously, how is it already November? The good news about this must be that Christmas will be here before I've really registered that's it's November.

Things are still just as crazy as previously mentioned. Last week, while running late, I even managed to have a shower and not wash my hair. For those of you who don't know about my self-cleaning policies, on most days this is the only purpose of even having a shower. So by 7:45am, I'd already failed in one of my more important daily goals. Of course, there was no real way to rectify this situation until 6:30pm. Gross.

This is also the time of year when I leave the house in the dark and don't get home until it is dark. If my classroom didn't have windows I could viably look into becoming a vampire and have it not affect my daily routine in the least. This would simplify the difficulty I seem to have finding quick protein sources for one.

Have I mentioned most of my students are grade 10s? Typically lame at the best of times, entering into these thankless weeks before Christmas really brings out the best in them. I mean, currently I'm expecting them to breath AND stay awake at the same time. I know, my expectations, they are too much.

How many days til Christmas?