T-minus 24 hours until maximum grandchild spoilage begins

Tomorrow night we leave for New York, but tomorrow morning we leave our house. Some genius decided that it would be a good idea to have some of the work we're doing on our house done while we're on vacation. And that IS a good idea, except that they're starting tomorrow. At 8am. And they'll likely be loud and cramp our style and not be particularly interested in having a two year old tornado at their feet. Not will said two year old take kindly to having tarps draped over his precious train table.

So. We leave tomorrow morning for my parents house where I'll probably spend the day crying in anticipation of leaving my baby. I'll also spend much of the day fretting about leaving on time, and making it to the airport, and checking and rechecking to be sure that I haven't forgotten anything.

I'm a real joy to travel with.

Right now I'm desperately searching iTunes for anything that might keep me occupied during the flights. I get bored VERY easily. And yes, Jet Blue has DirecTV but I've found that the pickings are a bit slim on a red eye flight. (Um, duh.) I have my book club book to finish, but I'm feeling kind of meh about it and so I won't be even slightly motivated to crack it open.

And yes, I know I should be sleeping but I'm incapable of falling asleep sitting up without my mouth hanging wide open, and so I spend much of the flight snapping awake with a dry mouth and sore neck and wind up far more tired than if I had just forgone sleep altogether.

*Side note: This will be our third trip to New York. Each time we SWEAR we will never take a red eye flight EVER AGAIN and yet, here we are. I'm hoping that the hotel has our rooms available at 7am, and I would think that the odds are good, because Hello? New York in July? Who would be crazy enough to think that's a good idea?

It's now 10:30pm and I haven't even begun to pack yet. I have, however, written very detailed substitute plans for the teacher who will be taking my classes for the rest of the week and made long lists of all of the things I need to remember to pack. I also made my husband retrieve the largest suitcase we own for maximum overpacking possibilities. I'm very prepared to start preparing.

And with that, I leave you for the week. Be ready for many, many pictures upon my return, along with my review of My Sister's Keeper (Spoiler alert! I cried!.) Or maybe just the pictures.

Happy week, all.

I spoke too soon

I may have given my students a bit too much credit for their maturity.

During our most recent grammar lesson, we were talking about verb tenses and verb forms. I'll let you imagine the scene in my classroom when they were called on to use the verb "to come" in the present, past and future tense.

I didn't even see that one coming.

Things I don't need to hear

From the girl at the beauty supply: "You'll LOVE this. It's great for those annoying chin breakouts. Or, erm, dry skin. Or whatever."

Really? You couldn't pick just one of my skin faults and run with it?

From anyone who hears that we're headed for New York next week: "Yeesh. New York in July? It's going to be miserably hot there."

It's July. It's miserably hot EVERYWHERE. However, the forecast calls for the weather to be nicer on the East coast than it is here, so maybe we'll get lucky. Whatever. We did not book this trip to beat the heat so don't rain on my parade.

From other parents in regards to us leaving our son behind with his grandparents while we're on vacation: "You're so brave. I just wouldn't be able to leave Junior and go on vacation without him."

Look, I get that you're judging me. Would it make you feel any better if I promise that he'll be loved within an inch of his life while we're gone and will likely receive BETTER care and MORE attention than he does on any given day with us? It's four days. Four days that will make us a better married couple and better parents. Four days where he'll have an endless supply of cookies and walks and trips to the beach.

Huh. Maybe I'm judging me.

Yanni One Liners

Disclosure: I was given free tickets to this concert in exchange for writing about it. Note that the exchange was for writing, not for selling my soul by promising to love the show for two concert tickets plus backstage passes. I can assure you, anything I ever write here will be my straight-from-the-heart opinion.

Last week I was given tickets to Yanni Voices from the One2One Network. I fully admit to not knowing what to expect, but I called my most easy-going friend and headed to LA for a night out.

Probably the best way to understand our experience would be from the priceless little gems my friend kept dropping throughout the night.

Upon entering the PACKED theater: Wow, people love themselves some Yanni, huh?

Upon seeing Yanni himself: Where's the long hair and open shirt? Or is that Raffi? (No, that's Yanni, but the hair has long since been updated, or so a quick Google Images search tells me.)

Upon seeing Nathan Pacheco take the stage: Well, he's throw your panties on the stage cute, isn't he?

After hearing a duet by Ender Thomas and Chloe: I was wrong to be worried that the caramel corn would be the best thing about tonight.

After a particularly intense dueling violins piece: I think this entire theater needs a cigarette. (Seriously. Violins. Who knew?)

Upon hearing the security guard at the meet and greet stop us and say, "We've been waiting for you," and then directing us to the private elevator where we were taken away from the room of two hundred to a room of EIGHT people: What exactly did you have to DO to get these tickets, friend?

We had a chance to meet "The Voices" afterwards and they could not have been nicer or more gracious. We took a picture that I had planned to post and joke about me being the Miley Cyrus look-alike on the left in the Louboutins, but the picture is not one I even wanted to share with my husband, let alone the three people who read this blog the world.

It really was that bad. Due to the flash you could see my belly button through my shirt. Let me be the first to tell you that no one ever tells you the injustices that pregnancy wreaks on that particular part of your anatomy. Also, in a picture with six people, the absolute WORST place to be is in the middle where you're forced to stand facing straight ahead, rather than being on the ends where you can turn and use strategic angles to your advantage.

Picture FAIL aside, it was a great night out. I love live music in all forms and there's something pretty incredible about watching people perform who truly love what they do.

And the caramel corn wasn't bad either.

Blogcentennial

Hey, look at that, I let a post about thinking my husband and dog had been abducted by aliens sit for a week. High quality stuff around here.

I have so much to say, all of it incredibly earth shattering, so stick around.

*Teaching is going well. My students are remarkably well behaved, especially the middle school ones. I'm always shocked every time I say, "Hey, look a TEST!" and they don't say anything but, "Okay," and "Do we need to use a pen or pencil?" and I'm left standing there waiting for the whining that never comes.

*They are also far more mature than I am. Today when talking about the difference between subjects and objects I kept repeating the question, "Is that noun DOING the action or RECEIVING the action?" And no one ever giggled. Not once.

*We leave for New York a week from tomorrow. Flights and hotels are booked, tickets for shows, games and tours purchased, preliminary outfits planned. Nearly every minute of every day is accounted with nearly zero down time and yet, in my mind, the trip seems incredibly relaxing. We're traveling with friends and I'm more excited about this than I am about In the Heights. Which is to say, VERY excited.

*My husband got his job back! Almost. Somehow, after it all shook out, they discovered that they were able to rehire some of the 187 teachers they had let go. And somehow, he ended up back at the same school after hundreds of teachers were reassigned. It's a temporary contract so we could go through all of this again next year, but we'll cross that bridge NEXT YEAR. Can I get a woohoo?!

*This is my 100th post. I've been trying to come up with a list of 100 things for my 100th post but that's much more difficult than it might seem. I accidentally published it a while back so you have seen my list of 32 things about me riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. I've actually held back on posting so that I can keep from hitting 100 posts before I could come up with 100 things, but that's not working out so well for me.

*Six months. 100 posts. Cue fireworks.

Run Wild

This afternoon I woke up from a nap brought on by a stomach ache, brought on by last night's bad food decisions chased by this morning's bad food decisions.

Anyway.

When I fell asleep, the husband was on the couch beside me. When I woke up, he was gone. I called out for him and when I got no answer I rolled myself off the couch. I peeked into the garage and the office. No husband. Into our room, the front and backyard. No husband. Into the closet, under the covers, Bub's bathroom. Still, no husband.

I was running out of places to look and started to get a bit (irrationally) panicky. Had he been kidnapped for ransom? At what point could I call someone? Was it the rapture?

At this point I started to notice an obvious lack of canine following at my heels. A quick sweep of his usual napping places confirmed that the dog was also "missing."

The husband and the dog both missing.

Not the rapture.

A walk.

Catching up, by the bullets

• I started working yesterday. I've taken a summer job due to our lack of employed family members around these parts. I whined and cried a bit about having to take the job, but it wasn't exactly about the working part, per se, but more about the suddenness of the NEED to work and the change in the stay at home lifestyle to which I have grown accustomed.
• I'm teaching a class of 4th graders and a class of 6-8th graders. In case you're wondering, there's a VAST difference between teeny tiny sixth graders who still speak with their three year old voices and pubescent 8th graders who have to shave and pile on the deodorant before coming to school. There are a few academic differences, too.
• I found myself wildly under prepared for my first class and over-prepared for my second. This meant that I was winging it for about 30 minutes on my first day.
• If this makes you worried about the state of education today and want to consider homeschooling to protect your children from teachers like me, you should know that I winged my ass off. Some of my best work, I must say.
• Bub started swimming lessons yesterday. We opted for the, erm, affordable lessons offered through the city held at a local high school pool rather than the Swim Academy for Over Achieving Parents and Future Olympic Hopefuls. There are no less than eight classes being held in the pool at once and the class next to us was the next level up from the parent/child class. At least half of those children were expressing their displeasure at being dumped into the pool and they were expressing it with the loudness.
• Bub's not particularly impressed with the lessons either.
• I discovered that there are two Sonic's close(ish) to my house. Not close enough to go for lunch but close enough that I could, in theory, be in the vicinity of one someday. Yesterday, I discovered that one of them is directly in my path on my way home from work
• Tomorrow? Cherry limeade, here I come.