It has been a busy 96-plus hours, getting ready for the new school year. Now, at 10:47 p.m., I believe I can say that I am about as ready as I could be.

Well, except for ironing my clothes, collating my syllabi, copying two other documents that I didn’t have to print out, and then about a gazillion more things on my to-do list that sits in volumes to my left.

But there comes a time, you know, when you just have to say you’ve done the best you can, so there’s nothing to do now but let the minutes tick by as you wait for that inevitable first bell at 7:25 a.m.

I’ll take pictures tomorrow morning of my room and get them posted, I hope, tomorrow night. I plan on writing daily in the evenings as a sort of reflective run of posts as the new year begins…

To everybody out there who begins school tomorrow (or who has already begun school), Good luck to you, to your children, and may we all be blessed with a safe a healthy school year filled with wonderment and delight.

It’s official. The meetings are now in full swing, and the big hand is zooming around the clock faster than I can ever remember. I am in the midst of the week before school begins, and I am feeling the ever-increasing pressure to get everything ready before Monday, the first day of school.

I could not be happier. :)

I’m one of those lucky ones who has been able to follow the Do What You Love, Love What You Do mantras in my line of “work.” I wish there were more hours in the day to simply be a teacher.

So, if my posts are coming in a little more slowly, I’ll get back into that groove of posting (nearly) daily. And I’ll try to not make them all about teaching (glow, glow)… :)

I’m going to take pictures today of my classroom (if I can get it cleaned up enough) or, at the very latest, take the pics and post them on Friday (Maybe I’ll try to wrap my T13 around that notion tomorrow…).

So…In the interims of my posts (and perhaps my less than frequent stop-bys at your wonderful sites), know that I am happy and busy and loving every minute of what I am doing…

As Jerry would sing, I’m feeling crazy in the sunlight, yes indeed!

Michelle, over at Smoochdog, unknowingly sent me some serendipitous karma over the weekend, and it’s been swirling in me ever since. She posted some resolutions that she’s planning on tackling before the end of the year, and they are all good goals she’s set for herself.

It got me thinking about just how bad and dangerous my health situation has become.

I really don’t need much more evidence than I’ve received this summer. I tried a full-blown diet plan with an exercise regimen that, even 10 years ago, would have dropped 25 pounds off of me without a problem. Now, on the eve of returning to school officially for meetings and planning sessions before the students return to the classroom, I find myself no thinner than I was the last day of school. In fact, I feel less healthy now than I did in June.

I’ve emailed a nutritionist at my university where I’m an alum and where I teach as an adjunct. I believe they may offer me free or reduced-fee services to help me overcome this weight problem. It’s no longer an issue of wanting to make the change; it’s an issue of having to make the change. Clearly, I cannot do it on my own. If I could, I would have done it this summer.

I’m 41 and 100 pounds overweight. I love life, I love my job as a teacher, I love my family and my dear, dear friends, and I love all that surrounds me. I am too young to lose any aspect of my life, and I am so desperate to do whatever it takes to save my life and bring me back to a more healthy place.

The Seagull Century that I wanted to ride in is now a bust, but there’s a walk-marathon in Orlando in January, and Team-In-Training for that event begins in September. I plan on joining that program to walk for my sister and for my mother, as well as for myself. It’s one part of the puzzle that may help the other parts fall more easily into place.

I don’t know. All I do know is that being this way, feeling this way, is a killer on my self-esteem, and I am so distressed to be returning to the classroom in worse health than when I left it two months ago.

I’ll let y’all know how the meetings go with the nutritionist, if they work out. I’m planning on taking Michelle’s lead and keeping all of this out in the open. It may help me, and it may help others out there who are facing a similar situation.

So…Thanks, Michelle. Here’s to everyone finding their path tomorrow with fewer pebbles and a few more rose petals…

as always……………….rvw :)

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This week’s theme: YOUTH

Where in the world did Thursday go?

First, thanks to all for your kind words about the site’s new look. I wish I could take credit for the pic, but alas, I cannot. This is from a template in the WordPress directory (info is at the bottom of this page).

Second, thanks also for your heartfelt words about my sister. Both she and my mother are models of what it means to fight this ugly disease with a positive and determined manner. They have both triumphed in the past, and I have no doubt that my sister will pull through once again.

Ok. One of my things to do before school begins is create my opening week playlist. Here’s the final list of songs that made the cut from an original 24. I’ll list the songs that didn’t make it farther below.

1. The Music Never Stopped (Grateful Dead, 4/30/77, Palladium, NYC)
2. Sweet Emotion (Aerosmith)
3. The Times They Are A-Changin’ (Bob Dylan)
4. Ain’t That A Shame (Cheap Trick, Live at Budokan)
5. Kashmir (Led Zeppelin)
6. Compared To What (Les McCann & Eddie Harris)
7. While My Guitar Gently Weeps (The Beatles, White Album)
8. Nights in White Satin (The Moody Blues, long version)
9. Black Rock (O.A.R., Live, Any Time Now)
10. Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)
11. Magic Bus (The Who, Live At Leeds)
12. Sugar Magnolia (Grateful Dead, 6/9/77, Winterland Arena, San Francisco)

There’s been much thought put behind the order of these songs. I would call all of these driving, motivating songs in one way or another, and the significance of each is very strong. At this point in my life, I’ve got to keep the music driving me through some emotional times and keep my mind and my heart focused on exactly what I need to do: Teach and Write.
And…Here are the ones that didn’t make the cut (but would make it a great 2-cd set, I think):

1. Champagne Supernova (Oasis)
2. Tomorrow Never Comes (Beatles, Revolver)
3. Unbelievable (EMF)
4. Zoo Station (U2)
5. You Can’t Always Get What You Want (Rolling Stones)
6. Melting (Tristan Prettyman)
7. Positively 4th Street (Merl Saunders, Jerry Garcia, John Kahn, and Bill Vitt)
8. Dear Prudence (Jerry Garcia, After Midnight bonus cd, 2/28/80, Kean College)
9. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (Bachman-Turner Overdrive)
10. Born To Run (Bruce Springsteen)
11. Make Me Smile (Chicago, lp version)
12. Walkin’ Blues (Eric Clapton, Unplugged)

If you are interested in me burning a cd for you, just let me know. I’ll be glad to send one in the mail to the first 13 requests….

Enjoy the Friday, everyone!

Do you like the change?

I decided to go with a cleaner look that was easier to read and a tad more professional as I delve more deeply into making this a marketable place for my own writing and reputation as a writer.

Not to mention, I’m obsessed with autumn, and the header pic is more me than anything I’ve used before…

I keep saying it’s time for me to make the great plunge into writing as a full-time gig, and I’ve made many baby steps to get to this point. Consider this another step in that direction. . . .

I wanted to finish my healing piece tonight/this early morn (it’s 1:57 a.m. and I am still up with this nasty cold), but it’s on my laptop, and my laptop’s at school, and school’s 33 miles away, and that’s just too far to drive this early in the morning.

Speaking of colds…I was supposed to leave tomorrow to head to my sister’s place in Florida to be with her before she goes into the hospital for another round of chemo. I am devastated that I can’t be with her b/c of this cold, but if she gets sick b/c of me, then she doesn’t get the treatment, and then she misses her surgery to have the tumor removed.

It absolutely stinks. :(

One more thing before I attempt to return to bed: I was doing some freewriting in my daybook this evening, pushing myself to write even when I thought I had nothing else to say, when suddenly, this great line came out of nowhere:

Stop writing from your illnesses and begin writing from your passions.

So simple, so true.

In the writing heals piece that I am doing, it is still, STILL about my illnesses and not about my passions. I’m going to preserve that draft, but I may do a discovery draft writing from my passions instead….If it doesn’t work, then I’ve done nothing but write more for a good 30 minutes or so–writing that I may use at another time. If it does work, then I think I may be on to something here.

I think that I want to write a romantic thriller….I’m not even sure what that genre includes. Would it be Frankenstein? Dracula? Wuthering Heights? And of Anne Rice’s books?

How would you define the genre of romantic thrillers?

Ah, yes. The best of plans often lead to tough decisions. We were faced with such an opportunity this weekend when we traveled north for our annual blueberry-picking ritual. The temps were nearly 20 degrees lower than they were when we went picking last year, so we were all excited at the prospect of spending hours in the blueberry fields, picking the juicy blues as long as the kids held up.

That was, of course, before we pulled into the orchard to learn that they were closed on Sundays. So, to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, We had never heard of a farm closed on a sunday, a day of givin’, and so we drove off into the mid-day sun, lookin’ for another place to pick the blueberries. We didn’t find one….

Till we came to a welcome center and happened upon a big book of farms in the entire state, what they offered, when, and whether you could go a’ pickin’. We decided on a place called Brown’s Orchard, and boy were we surprised by the outcome of the day.

When we got there, we were immediately drawn into the Orchard Retreat area, where a large pavillion filled with families reading, playing Sorry!, and eating ice cream were relaxing and enjoying the acoustic sounds of Me and Some Guy (that’s the actual name of the duo, and boy were they good). When I walked into the covered pavillion, they were playing Norwegian Wood, and it felt like it was a very good thing indeed that the other orchard had snubbed their nose at us (closed on Sunday, puh-lease). But Brown’s had everything we could have asked for, except…..

That’s right. No blueberry pickin’. It seems as if we missed the season by a good two weeks, and there wasn’t going to be any more picking blueberries till next summer.

The kids were disappointed, as were we, and so we took a little adventurous walk down an old dirt road that led us to the apple orchards. Now, we were nearly sure that this was not a featured attraction to Brown’s Orchards, as we didn’t see another soul around us the entire time we meandered through the apple trees, each picking a single favorite fruit from the trees and eating it along the way. We got to the end of the orchard when we figured it was time to head back, and we felt as if we were in an apple labyrinth, where the trees would come alive at any moment just like in the Wizard of Oz….The kids’ imaginations, not to mention our own, were fully engaged midway through our return, and we were certain that snakes and bees and wild animals (oh, my!) were going to decend upon us at any moment.

They didn’t, of course, but what we did get was a nice adventure out of what could have been a disappointing day.

Turn around and go home? Never! The fun is in the journey, my friends, not always reaching the intended destination!

New routines, new demands, new opportunities, new everything…Today signifies my first day back to the classroom in preparation for the upcoming school year.
I’m one of those geeky teachers that gets a little too excited about all of this….I absolutely love teaching, and this, to me, is one of the greatest times of the year.
My classroom’s a mess, my files all need to be reorganized, and there’s a list of things that need to happen in the next two weeks that will require every moment possible to accomplish.
And I’m loving every one of those moments.
More soon….I have wonderful pics from this weekend’s adventure searching for the perfect place to pick blueberries. I stumbled across a folk duo that I’ll look for again, and you are sure to hear more about them in my next post.
But that’s a picture kind-of post, and the camera’s at home while I’m here at school, so look for that later tonight.
So happy to be back at school!

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This week’s theme: Funny