My Name is Julie and I am a Softy

Brandon frequently calls me a softy because I apparently care more about people in general than he does. That diagnosis was confirmed today in the front office. We had this girl who was SPED turned in for eight tardies. When we called her in, she wouldn't make eye contact with us or even tell us why she had been late. She seemed so scared. We put her out in the hallway and talked and I found out that she had only been in trouble for tardies and that for the last set of tardies, she'd been given 4 days of after school detention. I was like 'holy cow! 4 days for tardies!' and I felt really bad for her since I could tell she probably didn't fully understand everything. So my mentor was like 'do you want to call her mom?' and I shrugged and said 'sure.' Mom was pissed. She thought we shouldn't punish her daughter for being late since it was her fault because she overslept. I explained to her as best I could that we had to enforce the rules, but that we thought four days of detention was a bit excessive, so we knocked it down to two. After we sent the girl on her way, my mentor asked if I was nervous and I was like 'yeah, at the beginning'. I felt complimented when he said he couldn't tell in my voice.

Internship

I have been using the USDA food pyramid lately to eat better. I've not been using the menu planner religiously, but it seems keeping the principals in mind have worked well and I lost two pounds! Yay!

So, I have been interning in the front office this past week. It's very eye-opening. I realized that students do exceedingly stupid things (like refusing to give up their mp3 players even in the face of suspension) and also that teachers contribute to some discipline issues as much as the students. I have come to realize that I am a big proponent of natural consequences. If a student decides not to do his work, but is not disrupting others, then it's their choice and the natural consequence is you get a zero on the assignment and your grade lowers. If this becomes a chronic problem, you talk to the student privately, you call parents and talk to case managers and guidance counselors. Some teachers in my school, however, think that refusing to do work is something to actually punish a student for with lunch detention, SRC or suspension. Now disrupting class and others while not doing your work is definately a discipline issues, but just not doing your work? Not a discipline issue. Two students tied up my mentor for most of a class period with this issue.

I also learned that special education is huge. I went to a meeting for a SPED student who had been in a fight and then helped problems solve for another student who is soon to be labeled SPED. Special Education is no joke - principals lose their jobs over not handling it correctly so I'm trying to learn as much as I can so when I become a principal, I don't end up as a casualty of SPED law.

Master Degree by December?

Do you know what I realized today?! That I can be done with my masters degree by the end of this coming fall! Heck yeah! I feel a little stupid, but I just noticed that they offer 13 classes, but I only need 12! Yay me!

However I'm sure my advisor is sick of hearing from me. This problem is this - I can't finish my masters unless I take out some financial aid and I can't take out financial aid unless I'm taking 6 credit hours. My second problem is this - this semester I'm technically taking 4 credit hours of internship (plus a 3 hour class), but I'm really doing 2 hours this semester and 2 over the summer, so that works fine for financial aid this semester as on paper I'm taking 7 credit hours. However, that means that on paper I'm not taking any classes this summer. This means I have to take two extra classes to stay at 6 credit hours to avoid repaying my loan so soon. Whew...it's complicated. It's made even more complicated because my degree program doesn't offer a lot of classes each semester which is why I have to keep calling my advisor and changing things. I think I settled what I'm going to do...but I need him to sign me up for a class this summer! I think I'll wait a few weeks before I ask for that one!

Long Weekend!

I realized today that nobody can make your blood boil like your own kids. Getting Colby to pick up his toys today was like a battle. I got so frustrated that he had to go to timeout because he wouldn't listen. After that he came back and helped clean up, but I didn't miss the sharp spike of anger in me. I'm unwilling to clean up after Colby, however, so I guess it was worth it in the end.

Overall he was pretty good over the long weekend. He did well at dinner on Saturday with all of Brandon's family. It's sort of funny that he always wants to sit with other people. I joke and say that everyone is cooler than mommy and daddy. He did throw a fit yesterday when we were playing wii with Brandon's parents. He wanted to be part of it, so we found him a "remote" to play with and I let him play baseball with me. I didn't know it, but daycare was open today. I thought it would be close for MLKJr. Day, but I got a call asking if he was coming in. I think I would have taken him just to have some time to veg out and not have to watch hours of cartoons, but we had a good day.

I started watching this new show called "The Cape". Pretty corny, but for some reason I keep watching it. I mean, some criminal just killed four people with playing cards...ha!

New Journey

So, lots of times we make New Year's Resolutions to lose weight. Well I didn't do that (see my post about New Year's resolutions). However, I did get inspired to eat healthier. I frequent an online magazine calles Slate (www.slate.com). It has a variety of articles from politics to the environment, from electronics to parenting. Slate also has an interesting array of blogs. One blog I started reading is about one woman's quest to eat healthier. She is using the USDA food pyramid to do this. Suprisingly, the USDA has a TON of great resources like a menu planner to help you stick to their recommendations. Best part - they're free!

So I started using the menu planner (type in mypyramid on your google search to find it). My recommendations based on my height and weight are: 6 oz. of grains (half of which are supposed to be whole grain), 3 cups of veggies, 3 cups of fruit, 3 cups of dairy, and 5 1/2 oz of meat. The menu planner's goal is to get you to eat between 2000 and 2500 calories a day which is the daily recommendation. So far, the hardest part has been fitting in grains and veggies. I realized I don't like a lot of raw veggies and that sometimes I don't eat a lot of grains (I'm not sure if my grain problem is a really a problem or not). I feel pretty good about it since it's NOT a diet, though if I lose weight I will NOT complain. I'm on day three and I'm not hungry and I actually have plenty of energy, though maybe that has to do with not having school for the last two days. We'll see how my energy holds up when I go back to school.

Oh and #4 on my New Years Resolutions will apparently need to wait until next month.

Also, since I stopped playing Frontierville (one New , my computer is much more reliable. Apparently those Facebook games are kryptonite for the computer.

Wishing it Were Spring

I am looking forward to spring. Yeah, I know it's a little early for spring, but I want to see flowers and veggies growing. I can't wait to make some changes to the garden and hopefully rock our world with lots of awesome veggies. I want to work on the flowers in the front yard and enjoy the weather outside. This year we may be getting a share of a local fruit co-op, which I find exciting because I got several canning books overy christmas and would like to put them to good use! So here's to spring! That supid groundhog better not see his shadow!

Top Books of 2010

If you're looking for a list of books like you might find on Amazon, you're in the wrong place. As a working mom of an energetic two and half year old, I don't have time to read a LOT of books, but here's some I read this year and enjoyed.

1. The Hunger Games - a young adult book, but still very entertaining for myself and Brandon. This book follows Katniss Everdeen to the Hunger Games in the captitol where she must fight other teens to the death including Peeta, a boy from her own community.

2. Catching Fire - this is the follow-up book to The Hunger Games. Katniss and Peeta find themselves fighting again in the Hunger Games against other Hunger Games winners from years past, but things are much more politically charged in these games.

3. Mockingjay - Katniss is free of the Hunger Games, but now she must free the rest fo the country. I cried through the whole last quarter of the book. The Hunger Games is by far my favorite of the trilogy, but I liked the others as well.

4. Dies the Fire - Electrity and gunpowder stop working sending the world into the apocolypse. This book follows the creation of Juniper Mackenzie's Makenzies, Mike Havel's Bearkillers and Norman Armingers Portland Protective Associaction. Juniper and Mike become allies against Arminger, but how will they all survive? I have to say I loved this book. I picked it up on a whim from Barnes and Noble, but it's become one of my go-to recommendations. This book is followed by two other books, The Protectors War and Meeting at Corvallis. This is an excellent trilogy that will have you shedding tears at the end of Meeting in Corvallis.

5. Island in the Sea of Time - By the same author as Dies the Fire, S.M. Stirling. Nantucket goes thousands of years back in time, which is presumably why electricty and gunpowder stop working in the present day. This book is very interesting and the characters are great. This book is followed by two others, but for some reason I don't like it as much as the Dies the Fire trilogy. If you have some free time, it's a decent read.

6. The Sunrise Lands - This is the first book in the Rudi Mackenzie series. Rudi has grown up in a land without electricity and gunpowder, but now he must quest to get a magical sword to fight a rising menace known as CUT. This is also the first book in a trilogy. I enjoyed this trilogy, but it's much more fantasy than science fiction so it may not appeal to everyone.

7. Shiver - This is a young adult book about werewolves, but it's much different than you would expect. I definately doesn't have as much teenage angst as Twilight, though as with most teen books there is a Romeo and Juliet type quality about the characters. I enjoyed it, but not the sequal, which I didn't even finish reading - a rarity for me.

Happy New Years!!

Happy New Year's everyone! I hope your 2010 was fabulous and that your 2011 is off to an equally fabulous start. Christmas 2010 was wonderful for the Gill family. Brandon had to work, but I put on my big girl panties and made it work for Colby. He got his presents from Santa on Christmas and we opened family present the day after. So far Colby has really enjoyed his carpet with the roads on it, the new matchbox cars to add to his collection, and he alternates between Chuck, the John Deere truck and Mr. Potato head the rest of the time.

We've been fairly low key since Christmas, mostly spending our time hanging out. Finally got to see the movie "Easy A", which I thoroughly enjoyed. Even got a chuckle out of Brandon from time to time. I've been getting the itch to organize things in the house - so far I've cleaned up the entertainment center, the laundry shelf in the laundry room, and I'm attempting to clean out the rest of the laundry room. My goal for the rest of today after typing this is to take down the Christmas tree so I won't have to worry about it this coming week.

So New Years resolutions? Hmm...this is hard because I always resolve to do something, but I don't even remember what those somethings are. Eat better? Work out? Get my finances strait? We can obviously see how well those things have worked out. So I'm picking a couple small things and I'm just going to see how far I make it.

1. I'm putting that dog in obedience class - he's currently outside barking at the wind. (Easy enough I think)

2. I'm giving up Frontierville - this a harmless little game you can play on Facebook, but it's eating up my time when I could be doing other things like crocheting, writing stories, or simply playing with Colby.

3. I'm giving up soft drinks - this is the one I think I'm least likely to accomplish as I have a long love affair with Diet Dr. Pepper. But I'd like to give it an honest try. I had lemonade at Chick-fil-a yesterday so I'm off to a good start.

I'll let you know how it goes.

4. Get pregnant - many of you know that this was one of my goals for last year, but obviously my timing is not God's timing. Maybe God and I can come up with some sort of compromise.