And some panic

Well, I've made it around to the last part of my blog title, the panic. I had my semi-monthly panic attack last night. Not so much a panic attack actually, more of just a massive sobbing break down. What frustrates me the most about these episodes is that I'm smart enough to understand that I am being a completely moronic, but I just can't help it. I know it's totally silly, but I just get so overwhelmed by life at times. My job is insane and sucks. I mean, I love parts of it. I really do love to teach, but I hate the grading, the administrative work, the therapy and counseling of parents, the district nonsense... it's just exhausting. I feel like I can't keep my house together. I mean, I know that I don't need to be June Cleaver, and I don't want to be, but I would like to have a semi-clean house: finished laundry, clean bathroom... all of those wonderful things. i just never feel like I have enough time to do anything. I haven't written in weeks. I haven't read much lately. I've been applying for tons of jobs and haven't heard anything back at all. I just start to get really down on myself for not knowing what the hell it is that I'm going with myself and not being able to deal with all of the pressures of life. Then I just feel lame too because there are so many other people with such worse lives. I have relatively decent health, a great husband, a semi-normal* family, a job, a house, a car and four adorable fish**. I have such a dichotomy in my life. I suppose that what I really need it to focus on the good in my life. I just find it extremely hard sometimes. Well... enough with my twenty-something rant for now. I do feel however that the quarter-life*** crisis is alive and well within me. Someday I might have my life more figured out.
As a side note... more conferences today. They again went pretty well. I think I should maybe be a Middle-East peace negotiator. I am master of customer service. People don't often think about this, but teachers have to be excellent customer service reps. I mean, how to you delicately tell a parent that their child is a moron, or is a superb pain in the ass? I really am an excellent customer service rep. I can turn the charm and charisma on like nobody's business.
I also had my writing class tonight. My profess again gave me great remarks on my interview from last week. It gives me a little bit of confidence. I might actually be a good writer. I may not just be telling myself that I'm good. We'll see. I will need to finish a manuscript and work on gettin git published at some point in the near future, but I have a bit more faith in my idea of being a writer now. You never know, I may get brave enough to post some of my writing up here. We'll have to see.
I will try to post pictures of my knitting tomorrow. I have the day off from school! Yay! I'm so excited to sleep in. That is my current plan to help decrease the panic in my life. More sleep and more exercise... we shall see how that plan goes. I'm trying to stay positive about it. Eight hours of sleep and at least a half an hour of working out every day. I can do it!****



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*well as normal as families get
** I know... I'd like to get furrier pets, but I have to admit our fish are so excited when I come home, and they don't shed.
*** Stupid NBC stole my idea for a show, which, the bit of it that I watched, looked pretty lame
**** :-/ Hopefully....

Conferences

Oy... well, I have a bit of a break in conferences, so rather than actually do something productive, like grading tests, I've decided to blog. :) So far, so good on conferences. No insane parents yet; decent food brought by our wonderful PTA. Overall, it's been okay as conferences go*. Which is good, my day started off a lot worse. I couldn't sleep last night, woke up late and was afraid that I'd be late to work. Then was writing things on the board, I managed to trip on my pant hem and bite it into my desk. Totally bruised my hip. **
The most exciting part of the day thus far though, was another wonderful new website from Tasha at Kidslit. *** Lookybook looks like SO much fun! I haven't had the time to really explore it yet, but it's a beta website that has tons of picture books just waiting to be clicked through. I am such a fan of picture books and especially the picture part. I love children's lit illustrators. It seems, on some of the books, that the text is going to be too small to read, but I'll still love looking though all of the pictures. I hope to be able to really look at it soon. A little known fact, or maybe not so little known now, is that I'm working on a few manuscripts **** but one of them that's actually near completion is a picture book and I am so inspired by all of the artwork in other books. I only wish that I could draw or paint or do anything artistic (at least well) to illustrate my own book. But, until I develop my talents, I'm just going to dream about what spectacular artists will illustrate my book when published.
Anyway.... I've got parents coming in, so I should probably do my job. :)


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*no...no really. They haven't been too bad.
** yes... I am that wickedly coordinated.
*** That girl really knows how to distract me.
****aren't all English teachers?

All kinds of fun

Well, I've managed to put off blogging today for long enough. And as a result, I did get through about half of my grading. Only two milk crates left to go! Hopefully I can get it all done tonight in preparation for my favorite time of year tomorrow* Parent/Teacher Conferences. Ugh. Nothing like a 14 work day. However, on the bright side, I did purchase some new yarn today! Yay! And on sale too! After my eye appointment (the 6th in about 8 weeks**) I decided to reward myself with a trip to Hobby Lobby. Yarn Bee Icelandic Jewels yarn was on sale for 99 cents. Can't beat that! I bought six skeins of Sapphire and Dark Citrine. Not that I really need more yarn, I have an entire room full, but this isn't for me. That makes it better right? Right? Actually both of these yarns will soon become Prayer Shawls. I'm in charge of the Knitting Ministry at my church, so I'm always on the look out for cheap, soft and easily washable yarn. Though I wasn't a huge fan of my last shawls with Yarn Bee, I'm hopeful that this yarn will be better. I made two shawls with Yarn Been Mosiac Twist, and it was just okay. It didn't wash up as nicely as I would have liked and one of the color ways looked like a calico cat barfed on it. I'll have to post picture later.
I hope to get my grading done early enough in the night to be able to get back to work on my (or one of my) current projects. Among other things, I'm working on a baby blanket for my friend who is due in June. I'm making the Great America Aran Afghan. So far, so good on that one. I'll post pictures of my finished squares later.
So, it's been a relatively productive day. I also ordered some books from Amazon: Knitting for Peace and The Secret. Now all I need to do is get some writing in and I'll have really gotten a lot accomplished today!


*dripping with sarcasm
** I have pellucid marginal degeneration- which in real terms means I can't see for crap and am exceptionally hard to fit with contacts- special

Instead

Well, instead of grading the 50+ pounds of papers that are currently sitting in my hallway I've been updating my Goodreads page. I had seen a post about this website on my Google Reader * feed a few days ago and had to investigate. It's quite addictive. While I'm not as ambitious as those members who have written fantastic reviews for every book they have ever read, I still enjoy the satisfaction of seeing that list of books on my read shelf grow.** I have a link to my profile here on the blog, so if you're a goodreads member add me as a friend! At some point I'll figure out how to display my 'currently reading' shelf. I'll warn you now though, it won't update nearly as quickly as I'd like. If anyone has the job of just reading all day long, please fill me in on how I could have that as a career. How nice would that be?
Well-- the grading isn't getting any lighter, so I'm off to do some not fun reading all day.

* Thanks Tasha from Kidslit for contributing to the ways in which I can procrastinate. :)
** I think it's the same part of my brain that derives great satisfaction from crossing things off of my To Do list, even if it's just "shower".

I've done it...

Well... I've done it. I finally have a blog. I'm not sure what makes me think that people will actually want to read about the trivialities of my life, but who knows. I suppose that everyone needs a good laugh now and then. I'm currently navigating my quarter-life crisis, trying ti determine what it is that I really should be doing with my life and multiple degrees. I love to read. Almost to a fault. I'm an aspiring writer. (Isn't everyone anymore?) I also knit... again to a fault. Hopefully my corner of the web will help me to negotiate my life, and maybe provide people with some ideas for their own future. I cannot promise that I will update this often. It will depend largely on how much other work I have to do. I am a master procrastinator.