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Saturday, May 17, 2008

The nature of happiness

I was reflecting, as I walked to work yesterday, on the nature of happiness. I'm a pretty happy person "by nature". I had started the day off taking some simple pleasures in interactions with my kids and daily tasks. My mom and I often talk about our general happy natures and the fact that, although our lives are not always just like we wish they would be, we choose to look on the sunny side of things. Well, most of the time anyway. It's not possible to always be up and happy. I also reflected on the fact that some days the bickering and drama of the morning get to me and I don't walk to work with a happy lilt in my step (although most days, being outside and walking the short distance to school puts me in a pretty good mood, even if I started out grumpy). Anyway, my day started out so happy because of a series of events that are kind of silly, but made me happy. First, Emma checked to see if I was ok when a bunch of things fell off the side of the tub when I was in the shower. Because most of my first morning interactions with her are to wake her up (when she doesn't really want to get up) it's not always so pleasant. But she was checking to see if I was ok and it was very sweet. Then I enjoyed shaving my legs, which seems pretty silly, but . . . I had new shaving cream which smelled really good (someone kidnapped my old shaving cream and I'm not naming names but the man of the house likes using my raspberry shaving cream and has been known to rip the label off and put on his own "He man shaving cream" label), I didn't cut my legs at all (which I never do anymore, thanks to shaving cream for women), and we all got off to school without bickering. The bickering did start as we walked into the school but I walked with the kids in front of us and ignored my own daughter's bickering :)

Tonight my mom and I went to the Crown Uptown for the dinner theater "Church Basement Ladies". It was so funny and such a fun evening with mom. It was my mother's day present to her. I think we'll do it again, maybe with the whole family. But it was fun for just the two of us to have a night out too.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Testing, testing, 1 . . . 2 . . .3

Testing. This post is about the testing I have been having lately. First and foremost are the tests I took a week ago to prove that I have all the book-learnin' I need to be an art teacher. Some of the massive amounts of information I tried to re-learn was what I needed and other parts were not. I hope I had enough of the right things in my brain to get a high enough score. Time will tell. I felt fairly positive about them right afterwards, but time makes my assuredness wane. I should know in about 3 weeks.

Other testing in my life would involve crashed computers, mouthy teenagers, and dramatic 8 year olds. Oh, and sometimes other family members of the adult variety too. The computer has been crashed for 3 weeks exactly. I woke up 3 weeks ago to a blue screen. It told me to restart in safe mode and it wouldn't even do that. The good news is two-fold. First, the computer folks want to barter computer work for bicycle work (hubby) so that is very good. Second, the computer guru is saving all my files (doc/pub/jpeg) and I have vowed that I will now backup my files weekly. The only rub is that they will now have numeric names and I'll have to go through them all to rename them. At least I have them so I'm looking on the sunny side. I'm hoping to have my own computer back this week. We are also lucky that the kids didn't lose any due schoolwork and that my mom has a computer we can use.

I'm counting down the days til school is out -- 14 school days!!! I really like my work but I also really like having time off in the summer! Having only experienced it for 1 summer so far I am really looking forward to it again! Since I'm a secretary this year I do have to work 2-3 weeks into the summer and start back 2-3 weeks before school starts but it's still a nice break. Nice to have SOME income for part of the summer too. This is, of course, if no art job appears. I'd really like to stay at the school I'm at now (since it's across the street -- can't beat the commute!) so I probably won't actively look for a job unless one opens up there. And I don't think it will, and I'm ok with that for now. The additional money would be nice but I really like what I'm doing right now and wouldn't mind doing it another year or two.

I'm outta here!