my pink life, mi vida rosada

This is about a week, or maybe even more, late. Perhaps it has even been alluded to in the past, I'm not even sure anymore. I'm at a funny point where I want to make my priorities match. Which priorities? The ones inside my head and the ones that show up in my actions. It's strange to me how disparate they seem, most of the time. For example, I might say that being an active leader at church is important to me. But then I will decide to go out of town every weekend for three months in a row, and not actually go to church or fulfill any leadership responsibilities during that time. Yet to anyone I visit while I am out of town, I will still tell them that being a leader at my church is important to me. These two things don't quite match -- I say one thing, yet do another. The same thing happens frequently to sweet hubby. I tell him that spending time with him is important to me, but when I have the chance to spend time with him, we both sit on our computers with the ...

In my life, there are a few things that are decidedly *not* pink. In fact, they are downright blue. So I'm going to get them off my chest here, and then move forward, hopefully. 1. One of my best friends is suffering from a deep depression. She is finally on medication, which is helping her face suicidal thoughts, or avoid them, and she is in counseling. However, the medication she is on is freeing her mind to think about and remember lots of details of sexual abuse that she suffered as a child, giving her horrible nightmares, and might be having that side-effect oft mentioned, "may cause an increase in suicidal thoughts," which is not so great, when that's what she is taking it to combat. I'm very glad that my friend is loved and supported by those of us around us, and feels comfortable talking to us about what she is experiencing, and leaning on us for support. I'm not glad to know the exact details of what she has experienced and the demons that are ha...

Oh, how I love me a weekend. This one is great, so far. I had an all day meeting at school on Friday, and a productive all day meeting, and it was great. I like those kinds of meetings, where a small group of us are given a task and a specific job to do and then left on our own to get it done. And we did. This was the last of a series of 5 or 6 meetings where we were working on this task, and we finished out work. It was nice. And it is so refreshing to work in a setting where each person's opinion was valued, counted, and used. And in a relaxing setting, where it is OK to leave the room to go to the bathroom and lunch can be ordered in and not eaten in 10 minutes while reminding lovely little children that they need to eat instead of mixing their foods, slinging their food across the cafeteria, or trying to play "gotcha" under the table. If you are a mother, I'm sure you do plenty of this at your own house, but on a much, much smaller scale and on a much loo...

And I am *not* at the Valentine's celebration at school. That's ok, though. I'm in bed, with the flu, STILL. That sweet kitty of mine is snuggled under the covers with me, too, and I don't care who thinks that is gross -- it is the warmest thing on the planet, and soft as could be....And she's an indoor cat, so not that dirty either. I admit, I'm kind of freaking out about whether my kids learned anything at all today, whether my sub was able to use the computer and projector, whether my kids behaved (and that is a BIG concern, since they typically have trouble with that).... And how much of a mess I left on Friday afternoon for my sub to walk into this morning....Hopefully that will teach me a lesson about leaving the room nicer, just in case in the future. If I weren't so daggum sleepy and sore from so much coughing, I might try to go back tomorrow.... But instead, I'll have one more day of rest before returning to the fast pace of 3rd grade.

The flu has graced my body with its presence. Thank you, flu. Thank you for making me feel like crap. Thank you for making me drop out of the race this morning, less than halfway through, in tears and hacking up a lung, because apparently this isn't just a little first-thing-in-the-morning phlegm. (Sorry, I'm sure you wanted to read that.) Thank you for making me miss the free 7 habits workshop that sweet hubby and I were supposed to attend together. Thank you for sweet hubby driving me to the doctor's care, filling out paperwork, trying to eat lunch, then trading it for a rest at home for 15 min. before driving me back to doctor's care and sitting with me in the little room for about an hour while they eliminated strep from the diagnosis (I've been on amoxycilan (sp.) for 5 days, so it was very unlikely that would be the diagnosis in any case.), then stuck a q-tip up my nose for a flu test, and took chest x-rays. Thank you for sweet hubby stopping at walgreens to...

We start yelling, and then crying. And it is ugly, and hurtful, and really only makes things worse. Sweet hubby walked in the door and surprised me with the news that he had been mattress-testing. This after I got the news via facebook that he had bought plane tickets for this summer's trip to Scotland (wahoo! We are really going to Scotland! But did I need to get the news by facebook, rather than when I was sitting in the same room with you? You would have had to wait a few hours more, but we could have celebrated together....) And I'm already freaking out about the budget. Our budget is bad news. I can pull it together enough to make this trip to Scotland work, but beyond that, I feel like anything else we do needs to be the bare minimum. It through me for a loop that he had A. bought the tickets, B. been mattress shopping, and C. announced to me, as I was now in a state of shock, that I never try to make the things that are important to him happen. What? Where the h...

Sometimes I wonder if all this planning is a good thing, or just getting my hopes up higher than they need to be.... Sweet hubby and I want to take a trip to Scotland this summer. I have a couple of friends from when I lived there in 2003/4 that we would like to visit. This would be our first international trip together since married that isn't a trip to visit sweet hubby's family in Chile. The thing is....I'm excited about the idea, but nervous about the actuality. It has been 7 years since I lived in Scotland (and boy, does that make me feel old). We are not the best at managing our finances....wait...I think that has come up here before, that we are on a spending freeze and trying to cut some of our bills back, and all of those sorts of things.... So we are making contacts with old friends, scouting plane ticket prices, and dreaming our way into a little bit of anxiety. It feels so premature -- we wouldn't be traveling until mid-late summer, and here we are onl...

I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to say yes and what it means to say no. and I wish people would just say no, instead of saying yes when really they mean no. This week was a busy week for me. I had committed myself to a variety of different things, which all sort of piled up on top of themselves to happen this week. But somehow I managed to only say yes to the things that I could actually work into my schedule, not overlapping, and move from one commitment to the next, fulfilling my yeses. I didn't turn my yeses into nos. I hate it when people turn their yeses into nos, especially at the last minute. And it has been happening a lot lately, that other people's yeses turn into last minute nos, and I'm tired of it. I wish that people would take the time to think about what they are saying yes to before they say yes. If I asked you to sign up for a free dinner on a night that you have no other obligations, and you say Thursday, and then I ask you aga...

100 days of school, celebrated today.... This means 80 more to go. And very few days off in between now and those 80....One of them the date is still to be determined. But that's ok, I don't need to know in order to make spring break plans, or anything.... This has been one long week. Meetings on Monday, followed by a run immediately after arriving home, then straight to lead bible study, and home for supper then bed. Tuesday, after school, got a few things done, then headed home to sit out the fever and aches....Low enough fever to still go to work the next day, but high enough to notice it....Wednesday, collaborative planning craziness with a wacky schedule and bored kids in the special activities (that weren't exactly like what had been planned, after all, and were much less entertaining than originally planned), then a meeting about immersion that could have been lots more organized, followed by getting lessons ready, straight to circle at church, where I got to wed...