So....

My mom sends me an email, and it says: "Your last entry is May 20. Today is June 30. Did I miss the invitation to your funeral?"

Well, no, and if I were going to be pedantic (which of course I am not) I would wonder if it were reasonable to expect a dead person to reply to an email asking if they were dead...

To be perfectly honest I don't even have the busy excuse (for the last week anyway) of why I haven't posted a blog. Since I can't really give you an excuse, I can tell you what I have done since that last post.

Since May 30 I have:

*Written and turned in 2 papers, 4000 words each
*Created a final presentation which consisted of a movie and a live action play with 2 other people (though I did the movie by myself)
*Taken 3 tests to test my ability to teach
*Given 3 presentations: 1 a lecture on schools in the United States, and the other 2 of my final project (1 to be marked and then 1 in front of the entire 3rd year)
*Finished my undergraduate degree
*Found a job teaching a year 4/5 class for next year
*Rented a vehicle 10 times (for transportation to said school)
*Found out my marks and turned in final paperwork (I had 2 marks that were 2-1 level, and all the rest were 1sts, including 2 90's, 2 85's, and 3 papers that I have been told that I should publish. At this point I think it is safe to say that I have a first in my Bachelors degree.)
*Cat-sat (for Moses the cat, who is here now and makes me really miss my cats)
*Worked every day that I have not been studying, at University, or at the school
*Found out about Visa situations and in the process of dealing with them
*Planned Ashley's trip to the United States for the summer
*Rearranged the living room
*Planted a new garden box for my miniature rosebush to live outside
*Evaluated plans, decided to wait on a doctorate just a little bit, and applied for entry into Grad School starting in September
-and-
*TRIED to maintain a fairly tidy house and kind of keep up with the laundry and cook dinner and pack lunches and make sure that someone washes the dishes though it is often not me that actually does so.


Truth be told, the past week I have had time to sit down and write in the blog. I thought about doing it, but I have no motivation. I'm tired, and it seemed like yet one more thing that had to be done. Funny how with nothing going on I still feel a lot of pressure to get things done. I have been feeling the same way about making phone calls to people. I know that I should call my mom, my sisters, my best friend... but the thought of actually picking up the phone and holding it against my ear for that long is overwhelming. The past few weeks I have been feeling it emotionally too, what with being really run down and sad and weepyand moody and grumpy and hard on myself. I am taking steps to get myself out of the funk (I love St. John's Wort...) but that is where I have been: in Funkville.

I want to think that the summer will give me an opportunity to slow down, but I actually don't think it will. Getting ready for next year, working as much as I possibly can, applying for and absorbing the tremendous cost of the next set of Visas, having to buy a car (and praying someone will give me financing,) Ashley being gone, missing Tristan's birthday, missing my family... there are some days that I am not just an ostrich sticking my head in the sand trying to hide, but I actively wonder if I should just give up, abandon the life I am trying to build here and the education that I am pursuing, and go live at moms house and work at a fast food joint. I don't actually think about that seriously, and I know that it is my just wanting to run away.

I am trying to do things that will help me have time for me, and things that I like to do (like gaming) but I laugh at myself because right now I even resent the planning, time and effort that creating a character to play in a game requires. My poor family... they must be walking on eggshells. I don't even understand myself.

Anyway, Mom, that is what I have been doing in the last month. Thank you for making me post, thank you for calling me on my stuff, and thank you for being patient. No, I have not died and have no plans to do so in the immediate future, and no there is no funeral for you to come to. Other than that, I make no promises.

Ecstasy in the Pit of Despair

Things are very weird around here.

Stephen is ill again, and I have had this terrible headache that beats in time to my heart and feels like I am wearing a cap of pain for the last two weeks. My mother is not improving, and is, in fact, getting worse. I am stressed to the max, what with papers due and all sorts of other stressors, both ordinary and extraordinary. I'm in the midst of my final teaching placement, in a year group that I am not comfortable nor familiar with. (The only age children that I haven't worked with IN MY LIFE.) I am not sleeping well. Not nightmares, thank goodness, but toss and turn and doze but not sleep, and fall asleep just in time to wake up exhausted. This is the pit of despair.

And in the midst of all of this... my life is tremendously good. I love me. I love being alive and being in my life. I feel young and (most of the time) strong and healthy. Stephen may well be the most wonderful adult male alive (sorry Daddy and Dan - you can come in an extremely close second.) My daughter is the awesomest, as is my son. The world is a beautiful place to live, I am in the midst of extraordinary times, and the sunshine makes me bask in it.

It just struck me today, in the midst of mucking about in the pit of despair, exactly how good my life is, and how much I love it. Yes, I'm tired, I'm worn out, and I'm sad about a lot of things. I feel as though I have this gem, and that I don't deserve it at all. It is like a vein of precious jewels. The dichotomy is stark.

Some examples.

This morning, we overslept. By a lot. I had 30 minutes to get to the bus, which is a 15 minute walk away. My lunch was ready, though not packed. My computer was not packed. I was not going to get it all ready. Stephen offered to help me, and he packed my laptop and my lunch while I got dressed and threw in my contacts. As I was leaving, I moaned about the fact that I wasn't going to have breakfast, in a not serious way, to which he replied that my breakfast was made and in my backpack waiting for me. I love him so much more now than I did when I moved in with him.

Last year this time, we were struggling with Ashley about a myriad of things, including her grades. She had checked out. This year, she keeps up with her studies, works hard, and I am not frightened of going to her parents night next week. I get to let her go out and do things, and trust her. I get to tell her 'yes' to things rather than grounding her. She is doing really well and I am proud of her.

I am a few weeks away from paying off my tuition for the entirety of my bachelor's degree, a few months early. This may not sound that awe-inspiring, but it has been a lot of money and I have been really stressing out about being able to afford it all. I have been ultra-conservative in spending. And it is a huge load off of my back to have it payed off. That means I will be able to graduate, which means I can get a job that will enable me to pay off the rest of the things that I need to. This is a good thing.

There is a position opening up at the school that I am placed at (which I really really love.) I spoke to the administration about it today, and they have given me a timeline, and a really positive response to my inquiry. I had an impromptu pseudo-interview, and was told that Monday I start a "7 week job interview". No pressure there. And I want it. So badly. It is in a reception class (ages 4 to 5, kind of but not really equivalent to kindergarten) and while it is not my dream age group, it is my second choice. I would much rather be in a perfect-for-Amy school. They are inclusive, they work hard to be socially just. And it is in a beautiful tiny town called Reculver. I could easily see us living there, and raising children there. I would be comfortable with my kids going to this school.

I was thinking about how to title this post on the way home. It has been a dark dark time, what with death and illness and stress. I feel as though I am high. Like drugs that make you feel so physically GOOD that you just have to roll in it. Like heroin. It would have been an appropriate title, but I thought that there would be a lot of people who wouldn't understand that. Ecstasy explains it pretty well too, though. My world doesn't have to be perfect to just be that darn good.

Anybody want an update??

So hey everyone!

How've y'all been??

I had school photographs yesterday. It was immensely aggravating. Seriously, the photographers they used were horrible, I could easily do much, much better! In the photographs they have no sense of placement, or the levels the students need to be in, in order for everybody to been seen. In last years photographs most of the students had their heads but out of the photos because these photographers but short people standing in the back and tall people standing in the front. It was so annoying! Not to mention the light placement that they have is absolutely absurd, it makes a large majority of the students are in shadow (again due to the placement of the tall people before the short) it was annoying. Also I decided to dress up for these photos, so I completely dress up, slacks, make-up fancy shoes, the whole nine yards! *Cough* I've never worn those shoes before, and so what ended up happening was that I got blisters the size of quarters in my feet, before I even got to the school! It was too painful to wear those shoes anymore, so I went the entire day barefoot.

If I were doing a poll on the effects that footwear has on the people around you, I think I could be a millionaire. Men for the most part didn't really notice the fact that I was barefoot, unless I mentioned something about it, but women picked up on it immediately. It's part of the woman to woman assessment, Examining what the other woman is wearing. The point is that it was cold, I hate dressing up, I'm very pissed with the photographers that the school idiotically hired, and my feet were killing me! The pain of just standing on them was excruciating! So today, I am wearing flip flops. I can't wear actual shoes yet, and the school told me that I can't go bear foot unless it's unavoidable.

Uh.... Oh yes! I'm doing a new photography assignment, one on ageing. A very common theme but one I can get lots and lots of individual research on. The photos are standard black and white frontal viewed portraits. occasionally some of them have colour in the eyes, but usually it's not a very noticeable thing, just something that I do for myself. A large portion of the photos were taken during my trip back to America, although the range jumps around as the models grow older so I have lots of places that need to be filled in with new photos. My photography teacher saw the beginning of these photos (the first five I printed out) and he loved them, so once I complete the series we're going to choose favourite pieces (There's not enough room for them all) and he's going to frame and hang them in the school entrance. Which is an amazingly big deal!!!

Some of the photos are on my Deviant Art if anyone would like to see them the link is www.redpaperflower.deviantart.com But yup. That's me in a nutshell. Anyone want to know anything else? Love you all!

-Ash