Mulling It Over

Don't forget that I'm posting at Wordpress now. If you aren't reading you should be. Leave comments.

cdb3527.wordpress.com

I've enjoyed my time with Blogger, but alas it is too confining. I've decided to move over to Wordpress. I'll miss the orange and blue, but I just love features. Follow me over.

http://cdb3527.wordpress.com

Thankfully, I have today off. Having the day off is nice. The parts I love the most about having the day off are sleeping in and knowing that when I start work tomorrow it will be a four-day week. I have to get up so early for my job. I have to leave by six, which means I should get up at 5. Usually however, I get up between 5:15 and 5:30. I have learned to condense drastically the things I "need" to do in the morning. I've been trying to eat a good breakfast in the mornings. After one week, I have done well. I hope I can keep it up. The one morning I didn't eat breakfast I was famished and ready to keel over by 9.

I have some things to get done today: finish a baby gift, tidy up a bit, look over lesson plans and grocery shopping.

When it comes to grocery shopping, I don't know how other people do it, but I try to do one big shopping trip every two weeks and then grab other things (eggs, milk, veggies) as needed. I always start by making a meal list for the next two weeks. I list 10 – 12 different meals with sides. When I don't make a meal list we never had the ingredients we need to make dinners and lunches. After the meal list, I make a list of grocery items. I have a master list saved in my Microsoft One Note and I add and delete from that as needed.

Here is the meal plan for the next few weeks:

1. Baked chicken nuggets, salad, corn on the cob
   
2. Pasta & Veggies Dish
   
3. Omelets
   
4. Roast Chicken & Potatoes
   
5. Chicken Pot Pies
   
6. Chicken Tortilla Soup
   
7. Veggie Quesadillas
   
8. Blueberry Waffles
   
9. Beef & Veggie Stir Fry
   
10. Fish, Rice & Veggies
    
11. Homemade hummus and Turkey sandwiches
    
12. WYCF (Whatever You Can Find)
    

 
Some people may think this is over planning, but I think it is absolutely necessary. On top of making eating at home easier, it definitely saves money. For example, I will use the leftovers from the roast chicken for either Chicken Tortilla soup or Chicken Pot Pies. We try to eat at home as much as possible to save money and calories. Not that we don't love going out to eat, because we do. Also, it's not that you can't eat healthy in a restaurant, you can. Nevertheless, it is just so much easier to save money and eat healthfully at home.


 
So, I am overly type A or do you think this a good way to do things?

This weekend we went camping. It was such a good time. Even though we were gone to Europe for almost three weeks less than a month ago, I was ready to get out of town. I love the town where we live, but I am almost always up for a trip. Friday after work, I came home and did a few running around things and waited for Jeremy to get back, then we hit the road. It's about a two hour drive to the White Mountains. There was so much traffic and construction that it took us closer to three hours ,which means we had to set up camp in close to darkness. We got everything set up and started a fire. For the first time we camped in the White Mountain National Forest (ie no bathrooms) but it was so great not to see other people. Jeremy did his sit quietly and stare at the fire thing, while I read my book Catching Fire. Saturday we got up and made a great breakfast on an open fire. I love the way food tastes when it's cooked over a fire. We had bacon, sausage, toast and oatmeal. After that, we did a short hike up Mt. Pemigewasset.
The hike was a total of three miles, which is short for us, but it was just right. The weather was perfect sunny and mid 70's. At the top of the mountain we had lunch pb&j and Cheeze its. Then we hiked down and went to see The Basin. The Basin is a waterfall that has created a huge granite pot hole. All the rock around was so smooth; it made it difficult to remember we looking at very, hard stone. We came back and just chilled. It was nice. We made dinner, and I read. Saturday night was really, really cold. I would say low 40's. My nose was cold all night. We really need to purchase better sleeping bags.

The most exciting part was on the way home. As we were driving out, I saw what I thought was a stuffed bear leaning against a Jeep. My first thought was what a funny joke someone has leaned a giant stuffed bear on their car.  Seconds later, I come to my senses and realize where I am and that it is certainly a REAL black bear. Before I got a picture, it lumbered off into the woods.

*Edit - We did this trip as green as possible. Of course there is always room for improvement. We used no paper towels and brought home all of our recycling.  

After a first week of school this was a great way to end the week. My classes seem to be going ok, but I think my freshmen are going to be tough. I'm going to be doing some work with the night school this year, which will be interesting. Also, I'm going to be co-teaching with a science teacher two days a week. She is a wonderful experienced teacher, but she has her hands full. Her A period class has 20 students - 17 receive some sort of special education services- which translates to needing lots of one-on-one  help and lots of behavior problems. I haven't been in a science classroom in a long time, but hopefully I will be able to help her.

Today was my first day back to school with all of my students. I always forget, every year, how tiring it is to teach. Talking and walking around all day is tiring. One of the benefits and disadvantages of my job is that I have the same students every year. For today, it was exciting to see all the students and catch up. Some had really good summers and some didn't. So it goes. My classes are capped at 12 students and most of them are almost full. It will be an interesting year.

Like last year, I'm taking my lunch every day, except for Grilled Cheese day. Grilled cheese day happens once a month and this month it's on Thursday. I try to take all my snacks too and avoid the snacks in the resource room and in the vending machines. This not only saves calories, it saves tons of money. It amazes me that people eat the lunch in the cafeteria. It is convenient, but also expensive and 99% of the time really bad for you. A lot of teachers are unfortunately over weight. It sets such a horrible example for our students. I try to encourage my students to bring snacks with them to school and drink out of reusable water bottles. Most of the students I've had for a few years now remind the new students about my recycling policies and that they do not want to throw paper, plastic or cans in the trash. That makes me feel pretty darn good.

One really good thing about this year is that I'm going to get to car pool a few days a week with the counseling intern in my program. This is awesome for so many reasons: 1. It's obviously better for the environment and will reduce two carbon footprints. 2. It will make the 45-minute commute way more enjoyable. 3. On some days I won't have to drive at all, which will give me a much needed break.

So here is to a good year. I'm trying hard to have a positive attitude. I don't always like my job, but I always want my students to think that I do.

 

Today, I went blueberry picking for the first time. It was great. I'm not a huge fan of just eating blueberries, but I love them in cobbler, muffins, or pancakes - Mmm good. Jeremy and I picked almost 3 pounds in about 25 or 30 minutes. It was really hot and humid, but we had a lot of fun. I think I may go back on Monday and get more. For 30 minutes of worked we saved a ton of money. Blueberries at the grocery store are $2 a pint. We paid $2 a pound. It was great; One of the things I love about New Hampshire are all of the ways to get fresh, local food. Tomorrow we'll go to the farmers market. Hopefully, there will be lots of good fruit there.


Most of the berries are in the freezer on pans freezing. After their frozen, I'll transfer them to bags. The rest are waiting, patiently, to be made into blueberry cobbler.



I really will start posting bout Europe soon.

Ughh . . . We're home. It was nice to sleep my own bed last night, but I could have stayed in Paris forever.

I feel like there is so much to do. I need to get everything ready for the school year, do laundry, post all of our pictures etc. All of that regular life stuff. I loved Europe, especially Paris. I was less than happy to come home.

I woke up at 5 (thanks Jet Lag) and started a load of laundry. The laundry is now on the line with a load of whites in the washer. I am so glad we cleaned the house before we left. It was great to come home to everything where it should be. I've managed to post the first two sets of pictures. We'll see how long it takes to get them all up. I'd like to do a post about each of the major places we went to while we were in Europe. So look for that to come. . .

In the real world -
I go back to work officially on the 27th. At first I was kind of looking forward to this year, now I am literally dreading it. 3 of the staff members I worked with for the last two years have moved to different jobs in the school and there are other new people to work with, plus all the regular stress that is my job. *If you don't know, I teach students with Emotional Handicaps. Grades 9-12. Each class has from 8-12 students, but it looks like all of my classes are at 12 this year. The students have anything from Bi-Polar, Anxiety, Depression to School Phobia). I'll be sharing my classroom with someone different this year, as well. I really liked my co-worker who I shared with the last two years. We got along really well. Sharing a classroom can be a dificult thing. It's not like you have even a cubicle like in an office; it's all shared space. So we will see. I want to have a good attitude, but I'm ready for Jeremy to be done with school. I need to find a job that really fits me.

Anyway. . . Here is the happy place I'll be going to this school year.