Blessings

Recently, I've been extremely frustrated with several aspects of my job. So much so that when my husband asks me how my day is, my answer is often on the continuum of yuckiness rather than good and bad...i.e. was today more or less yucky than yesterday, rather than was it good or bad. I've decided that an attitude adjustment might be in order in the form of counting my blessings. So, here are a few (in no particular order):

• As unworthy as I am, I've been saved by the blood of my loving Savior.
• I have a caring mother who loves me just the way I am and ALWAYS has time to listen.
• I have amazing siblings I admire (and maybe even idolize just a little.)
• Without naming them all, let's just say I have wonderful family.
• I have an amazing husband I love more each day...I could do a whole blog on all of the ways he blesses me.
• I'm about to take an awesome vacation.
• We can afford to take a vacation.
• Even though we are currently without a church home, we have the freedom to choose one.
• There are many people in my life I call "friend".
• I am forgiven daily.
• I have several extra special friends who are also such blessings I could make a whole list just for them.
• I have a good job.
• I respect most of the people I work with.
• I have a home, car, and pretty much all the physical things I need.
• I make a difference to kids daily.
• I helped several kids just today.
• I had the benefit of an outstanding father for 15 years, way more than many people, including some of my kids.
• I have a great dog who meets me at the gate for a kiss when I get home every day.
• I have some new tennis shoes that make me feel like I'm walking on clouds.
• They are so good, I bought them in two colors with my husband's blessing!
• Grace.
• Nieces and nephews.
• Good health.

The list could go forever. The point is I have way more to be thankful for than to gripe about. I'm going to try to count my blessings more often.

Getting Ready

In celebration of our 10th wedding anniversary, which was in August, my husband and I are getting ready to go on a week long vacation to Vegas . Yes, that's right...an entire week. I'm taking an unprecedented six days off of work. At the beginning of the year, I felt some guilt about that. Now, well, I wouldn't want the place to burn down or anything while I'm gone, but...there will be no looking back.

But before we go, here are some things that have to get done:
1. Laundry
2. Ironing...yes I know it will get wrinkled in the suitcase.
3. Clean the house...my husband does not really understand my compulsion to clean like a
maniac before leaving, but he has come to accept it as normal.
4. Grocery shopping...light on the groceries, heavy on travel necessities.
5. Arrange a dog sitter.
6. Leave notes for the other counselor.
7. Pack.
8. Arrange transportation to the airport.
9. Finish travel notebook complete with itinerary, lodging reservation, maps, show/ticket
info., race car driving school reservation, spa reservation, etc. (My friends are a little
frightened by my travel notebook. I think they are just jealous.)
10. Call in "sick".

Needless to say, it's going to be a hectic week. But all will be worth it when we head to the airport. Even the wait in the airport will be vacation as I crack open a fresh new book to read. I can hardly wait!

Grocery Shopping

As a general rule, I really dislike grocery shopping. Because it isn't just shopping. First, you have to plan your meals for the week, then check on ingredient availability, and finally make time to battle the crowds and do the actual shopping.

I have several techniques I use in order to make the experience as painless as possible, but it is still just one of those things that has to be done. For example, I usually write my grocery list in the order that I walk through the store. This helps to cut down on backtracking. Until recently, I always went to the store on Monday afternoons on my way home from school. Because once I get home, I make a beeline for the pajamas and have no plans of going back out.

The last several weeks have been off because my husband has offered to go with me on Sunday afternoon. Well, when the husband offers to help with grocery shopping, I for one do not turn him down. It just makes the whole experience more pleasant. He typically keeps me laughing for most of the trip with his silly antics.

On one of our recent shopping excursions, he pointed out that the path I take through Wal-Mart is not really the most efficient. After giving it some thought, I realized he was right. So today, as I planned my grocery list, I wrote it with the new path in mind. And lo, it was a complete success. I must have shaved ten minutes off my shopping time. OK, it may not have been that many, but it definitely felt faster.

Occasionally the monotony of shopping is broken by some weird random thing that happens. Today was one of those days. A very disturbing thing happened as I was loading my groceries into my car.

Another car pulls in to the parking place behind mine with music blasting. All I could hear of the lyrics was one word over and over, "Suicide, suicide, suicide." I think it was the chorus of the song.

Just as I was thinking about what a terrible statement the song is about our society, the unthinkable happened. A grown woman and a little girl, about 3 or 4 years old, get out of the car, and I hear the little girl singing, "suicide, suicide, suicide." The woman asks her, "Do you like that song sweety?" What? Did I hear her right?

What in the world is that lady thinking? It made me want to call CPS. Isn't that abuse or neglect or something? Maybe I missed something in the song. Maybe the words just before were, "Don't commit..."? Yeah, maybe that's it. Because surely no one would expose a little girl to that kind of disturbing, destructive, and distinctly adult lyric. Right?

Enthusiasm Socks

Several have asked about “Enthusiasm Socks.” The following is a copy of my notes for a presentation I made at my school at the beginning of this school year. It is the true story of the enthusiasm socks and the challenge of wearing them. (And you are getting the school version because it was easier than rewriting the whole thing...pretend you're a teacher.)

My dad was a pretty amazing man. Growing up I thought he hung the moon. As an adult, I discovered that he wasn’t perfect after all, but rather than diminishing my appreciation of him, it caused me to respect him all the more. I’d like to share with you one of my “dad stories” that has become a particularly powerful legacy in my family.

Dad was a math teacher and a basketball coach for years. He loved his players and was concerned with their attitude and performance both on and off the court. Of course he preached “Attitude is everything!” at home too. I remember comments like, “If you’ve got a job to do, do it right the first time,” and during his battle with Leukemia his motto was “PMA – Positive Mental Attitude.”

One year, in an effort to promote the right attitude with his basketball players, he started wearing these bright, obnoxious red socks on game days. He called them his “enthusiasm socks”. It didn’t matter what else he might be wearing or whether or not they matched. On game days, he wore his red enthusiasm socks.

The idea caught on, and soon his players were dressing up and wearing bright red enthusiasm socks on game days too. It was a small way to get pumped up for the big games and a reminder to approach the game with enthusiasm, hard work, and a great attitude. And it worked.

It was such a small thing to do, but it obviously made an impression on his players. One group of his girl’s varsity players even presented him with a teddy bear complete with enthusiasm socks at the end of the school year.

When my dad lost his battle with cancer, I was fifteen. My mom wanted my three brothers and I to have something of Dad’s that had special meaning to each of us, and the two things I really, really wanted were his teddy bear and enthusiasm socks.
But that is not the end of the enthusiasm sock story.

One of the first things I had to work out in my mind after Dad died was who would walk me down the aisle when I got married. The week after he died that was really on my mind. I might have only been fifteen, but it was important for me to get that worked out. Actually, I had always wanted my dad to do two important things, baptize me and marry me. He did baptize me, but he wasn’t going to be able to marry me or even walk me down the aisle. So, I had to have a plan.

Because I had two older brothers whom I idolized, it was a pretty difficult decision. But sometime during that week I decided that the solution was to have them both walk with me, one on either side. I even decided that when the preacher asked who would be giving the bride away, my oldest brother should say, “her mother and we do.”

On the day of my wedding, as planned, many years earlier, my two older brothers waited with me in the back of the church. While the bridesmaids were walking in, my brothers pulled me to the side for a little last second chat. They began to tell me how proud of me they were and how happy they were for Newton and me. They new it was an extremely special day for me and they were very enthusiastic to be a part of it. In fact, they said, they were so enthusiastic about it that they couldn’t keep it inside and just had to show it in some way. At that point, they each lifted their tuxedo pants leg and revealed their bright, obnoxious red enthusiasm socks. It was pretty precious.

Last year, on Wednesday, April 18, I got an email from my second oldest brother, Richard. Some of you may not recognize the significance of that date, but it was a pretty big day for me. It was the biggest day of testing on our campus. We were giving the 6th grade reading test, 5th grade reading retest, and all of SDAA reading. It also happened to be the day that we had a minor, but very frustrating, incident. Needless to say, it was not a particularly good day, nor one that I was terribly enthusiastic about.

This is what my brother had written:

I have been working a lot of hours over the last couple of weeks. I worked last night until midnight, didn’t get to sleep until after 1am, and then was called this morning for a production support issue @ 6:30.

I got up, and got ready.

As I was considering what socks to where, I pulled a particular sock out of my drawer. It had been separated from its match, so I began a search for its mate.

I got to thinking, I don’t remember how many times I have worn this pair of socks…maybe only a handful. I began to think about the inspiration for the socks, and thought, in spite of everything going on at work, I was going to wear them, and have a great day!

If you don’t know by now, I will tell you. I chose a red pair of socks today.

Have a great, enthusiastic day!

Love you all,
Richard

The weight of his words hit me like a ton of bricks, for several reasons. One, I was absolutely blown away by the timing of his letter. He doesn’t write very often, and for it to come on that day of all days, just when I really needed it the most, was a pretty awesome work of God in my opinion.

But even more than that, I think it was the first time I fully understood the lesson of the enthusiasm socks. It wasn’t just about wearing some goofy socks to get ready for a big game or day. It was about making a choice. Every time Dad put those ridiculous socks on, he was choosing to approach his day with enthusiasm and with joy. Richard got it.

We face a lot of challenges this year. We’ve lost important positions, we have lots of new people, all of our kids will take TAKS, and that doesn’t even cover all of the things that may be going on in your life outside of here. Over the course of this next year, we are going to have a lot of difficult days. In Max Lucado’s book titled Every Day Deserves A Chance, he talks about those days.

He says, “There are days when traffic snarls, airports close, friends forget, and spouses complain. Days full of deadlines, long lines, receding hairlines, luggage-losing airlines, nauseating pickup lines, wrinkle lines, unemployment lines, and those ever-elusive bottom lines. And let’s not forget divorce days, final exam days, surgery days, tax days, and days when the cemetery dirt is still fresh.” But “this is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

This day. Not just wedding days, super-sale Saturdays, vacation days, or first days of hunting season. But, back to school days, observation days, staff development days, he’s coming back from DAEP days, and even TAKS days.

Every day, we have the opportunity to decide on our attitude. Your administrative team has decided that we are going to commit to approaching all of our days with enthusiasm. And on those particularly daunting days, we are going to wear our enthusiasm socks as a symbol of our attitude choice. We may not all wear our enthusiasm socks on the same days because each day is different to each person. But on days when we need a little extra help getting motivated and being joyful we are going to wear our enthusiasm socks. And I personally have taken Dad’s socks out of the drawer in order to continue his legacy of enthusiasm.


So that’s what I said. Then I gave them all some obnoxiously red socks. And I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see them wearing them at school. I think the world would be a much better place if we all wore enthusiasm like socks. I’m going to give it a shot.

A Bright Spot

Today was just one of those days. First of all, as my school's testing coordinater, I had to coordinate (thus the title) our field testing for the newest version of state testing torture. And since it is a new test, I decided that I should be one of the test administrators so that I would understand better how this one will work and therefore be able to train future test administrators more knowledgably. Since only two small groups needed to take the test, there were only two test administrators. Simple. Right?

So we gather the kids, give them the talk about how they "get" to help the state decide if this is a good test or not, and then move on to our testing rooms where we try to further persuade them that they should do their best even though it doesn't count for anything. Well, I'm not allowed to discuss anything about the test, unless I want to lose my license and therefore my livelihood, I can only say that it was a disturbing experience on many levels. (And I feel sure that my constant hacking and coughing was not a disruption to the environment.)

Thirty minutes into the test, my principal walks in with a stack of tests and a terrified look on his face. (In case big brother is reading, he has been duly trained with oath signed, so it was ok for him to come in.) He informs me that the other test administrator has had to ride in an ambulance to the hospital with one of our other students (not one of the testers). Good grief. Testing coordinator's nightmare come true. I'm happy to report that I was able to get that situation resolved and get my kids tested and get ready for tomorrow's test, but wow. Insanity.

As I'm heading out of the building (with all tests locked up and secure), I decide that those twenty-seven people who told me that I should go to the doctor might be on to something. So I head to the after hours clinic...you know, the one where you wait for five hours with a roomful of hacking, coughing, snorting, spewing, sick people. I sign in and find a place to sit that is near a kleenex box and facing the television.

And a miracle happens. In less than thirty minutes, I'm diagnosed, paying my $20 co-pay (not some trumped up after hours price), and heading out the door with perscription in hand. But wait...there's more...I drop my perscription off and have it filled and paid for in only two minutes, sixteen seconds. Well, that may be exagerated a little, but really...it was super fast. In less than ninety minutes from when I left work, I was doctored, dosed, and drowsing in my recliner.

And some people say miracles have ceased.

The Cough

Ahem.

Sometimes surprising
Out of the clear blue
An explosive bark

Sometimes sneaky
First a tickle
Then WHAM

Sometimes soggy
Chest crackling
An expectorant hack

Sometimes savage
Head throbbing
Rib cracking croup

Always aggravating
Never neat.

Peer Pressure

What can I say? I've given in to peer/cousin pressure and joined the bloggers. I must admit though that I have some conflicting thoughts about blogging that have made me hesitate to jump in the blogging pool.

First, I think that the very nature of blogging suggests some level of arrogance on the blogger's part. Why? Well, because bloggers must think that they are smart enough or clever enough or funny enough or something that others would want to read what they have to say. I know some people whose emails are really more like blog postings, and I wonder if they really think I care about all of the things they shared.

It's not that I don't like email, but come on, sometimes I just don't need that information.

On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoy reading the cousin blogs as the unique qualities of their personalities that I enjoy in person come through in their day to day musings. So, if there is some level of arrogance there, it's justified because people like me are reading them...and enjoying them.

Hmmm...maybe it's just that I don't want to admit my own level of arrogance. And I know it's there, because frankly, I know I have worthwhile thoughts to share. It's assuming that the rest of the world might want to know them that is arrogant I guess. But I suppose, as Mitch pointed out, if the reader gets bored or annoyed or grossed out or whatever, he/she can just close the browser and move on.

Oh well, after pondering the possibility of the blog for several weeks, I decided to go ahead and take the plunge, embrace my own arrogance, and start writing.