If you haven’t yet hopped over to my husband’s poetry blog, “The Starcrossed Writer”, you should really check it out.

He updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

(Plus, they’re short and easy to read and you can totally brag about it to your friends and coworkers. “Yeah, I read poetry. You don’t?”)

By the way, this post is stuck to my front page, so for the latest post, just scroll down a little.

**This post was written Tuesday afternoon, but since I knew I probably wouldn’t get a chance to write one today, it was scheduled for Wednesday so that you would have something to read. Aren’t I nice! :)

I love days like today. There were so many times that I couldn’t help but step out into the sun and let the feeling of warmth on my face mix with the chill in the air. Delicious. That little bite of cold in your nostrils and lungs after you’ve been in a warm room. I can’t resist it!

It feels like Georgia in the fall. It feels like home.

I can look out at the bare trees around our campus and almost see the pecan trees around my grandparent’s place. That lingering scent of woodsmoke takes me back to those wonderful days tromping through the pastures and running around with the dogs and jumping on the trampoline. Trying to climb the old cedar outside the kitchen window and having to get help up. (I was never a good climber.) Feeding the horses, the dogs and Dolly (Grandma’s old white cat) in her old chicken coop. Target practice and forts made of sticks and pine needles and Thanksgivings.

It all comes back to me. It makes me happy to have lived those days and while it’s hard not to look back with sadness at how time has changed everything and how I haven’t been home in almost ten years, I choose to remember the good and the happy and the safe. I’ll remember eating at the kids’ table and playing under the pool table and Grandpa’s hot wheels that he let us play with sometimes and the basket of plastic animals and fake legos and Disney movies and elephants. Hot over-cooked oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon and plump raisins. Grandma in her chair, crocheting. Grandpa snoring on the day bed while we watched TV or played with the ancient toys in the toy box.

I’m sorry for this melancholy walk down the memories of my childhood. I can’t help it. This chill breeze brings back so much and fills me with a contentment that doesn’t come from my current circumstances. A happy, simple childhood filled with complexities that I’m only now starting to grasp. My innocent eyes missed so much but I think I am much the better for it. I was untouched by the bitterness and anger that swirled around me. I was lost in a wonderland of my own making.

On days like today, sunny and chill, I get to feel a bit of that reckless, fearless joy and abandon. I get to be that little girl in a dress and rubber boots with a braid down her back. I get to go home.

The one thing that I really don’t like about long weekends is that I tend to spend them (as I mentioned yesterday) cooped up in the apartment, either working on whatever chores I assigned myself (yeah, like that actually happens!) or loafing and leveling my new Tauren warrior (How I’ve missed you horde. Roll your elf already, Tara!) Yes, I play World of Warcraft. :P But all this being in the house, away from crazy people and thier antics, I rarely get much blog fodder. Which, of course, is why my holiday blogging is so lacking. (Sorry!!)

I did manage to get a few things done, though and I watched Hudson Hawk on Netflix. I remember it from when I was a kid, but I must have watched it on TV, because I did NOT remember there being so much cussing. The clearest part in my head has always been Bruce Willis singing “Swingin’ on a Star”. Which then reminds me of the obscure sitcom “Out of this World” which then reminds me of “My Stepmother is an Alien” (which had a part that scared me when I was a kid even though I don’t remember it) because of the similar premises. All of which, whenever I mention them, get me funny looks like they’re things I’ve pulled out of my butt, but with the glory of the internet, I am validated! Take that Aaron!

I did manage to get the experimental cat box set up, though. So, score one for that! We’re using one of those rubbermaid storage containers (not the huge one, but not the smallest one, either) without the top on it, with litter in the bottom and they just hop in and use it. I only replaced on of the regular boxes so far, but they seem to like it. It gives them a little privacy without the outhouse effect of a covered catbox, it’s a little bigger that their old boxes, so they can move around a little better AND it keeps the litter in. When I first read about using rubbermaid containers I was a little sceptical, but if the cats can jump onto the table (which they can and do), a little hop into a tote isn’t a problem. (For those of you that don’t have cats, it’s really hard to keep them from tracking litter everywhere or even tossing some out of the box when they dig around. And for those of you that have cats and have this problem too, I’ll let you know how it goes.) Here’s hoping! :D

And finally, for your viewing pleasure (and so you can get the darn song stuck in your head too!):

(I didn’t actually watch this video fully, so if there’s anything wrong with it, sorry! And please let me know. Thanks.)

It seems strange to me to be using our only bad weather day in February. I don’t know why, but I would think it would make sense to wait until later in the year, just in case. But that’s just me being cautious.

Anyway, am I the only one that whenever I get an extra day off that sets aside a bunch of stuff to get done? This is not the problem, though. The problem is that on these wonderful days off, I usually plan for entirely too many things AND I don’t factor in the time I intend to spend loafing. I mean, it is a day off, isn’t it? So, needless to say, all the stuff I intend to do doesn’t get done. :P

All of yesterday was spent with staff development. Funnily enough, though, it was one of the first trainings I’ve been to that wasn’t a complete and utter waste of time. And thankfully we have an unused bad weather day on Monday, so no work! :D

I just got done with an observation by our representative for the program that I teach and he asked me to conduct two lessons at the training we’re having tomorrow. I’m flabbergasted and a little nervous but thrilled nonetheless. :)

I cannot describe how frustrating and heartrending it is to have a student that needs your help and says that they want it, but their actions tell you a completely different story. Working with young adults has its advantages but they also come with their share of problems and a whole slew of excuses. I’m sick of it. Most of my students are in similar financial and familial situations. They have families to support and most need to work. The students I’m talking about, however, are the ones that think that they are completely unique in this regard and should be given special treatment. What I fail to see is how this special treatment and all these excusses are going to be of any benefit to these students in passing the TAKS and getting the diplomma that they are here for.

This program is voluntary. If a student isn’t willing to put in the time and effort it takes to get the help that they need, I can’t see how we can help them. It’s not like we can take the test for them.

Again I find myself wishing for some kind of subvocalization or telepathic transcription program as I pace this wretched computer lab for 2 and a half hours. I feel like there is so much I could accompish if I could put this time to good use. >:(

Speaking of which, I should really get around to reading the book. I mean Ray Bradbury is all kinds of awesome! Is it any wonder I have a tendency toward darker fiction. Bradbury and Neil Gaiman being among my favorite authors. (Speaking of which, I just started The Graveyard Book. Wow… It takes real talent to start a children’s book with a murder and pull it off.) I wonder if Something Wicked This Way Comes on Project Gutenburg… Probably not. It’s not that old.

Anyway. Sorry. Total rabbit trail there. Back to what I intended to write about.*

It is a little known fact that I am crazy insecure about certain things. (I know! I was shocked too!) I’m not going to sit here and air all my dirty laundry (Ya’ll don’t need more ammunition than you already have.) but I’m feeling generous and in a sharing kind of mood that is rare for me. Those of you that know me (and now those of you that don’t.) are well aware that I could talk your ear off about just about any topic that I have the smallest bit of knowledge about, but when the topic turns to me, I clam up. I don’t like to be at the center of attention in most any situation, just near it. I can do the get up in front of a crowd and hold forth, but I get the shakes like crazy once I’m done. If I can be, I dunno, the best friend or adviser or anything like that, to the person in the middle I’m pleased as punch. Just don’t shine that light to close to me. I’m the one over there in the back, on the left.

That being said, I have decided to let a little bit of the real me show. It’s a conversation that I’ve had with my wonderfully supportive husband countless times. (Thanks, babe.) One of the things that I keep dwelling on and that has, in the past, affected how willing I am to open up and really allow people to get close is that I’m convinced that people see me as an insufferable bore. Every time I feel myself dominating too much of a conversation or going all Hermione and rattling off idiotic and meaningless factoids that no one asked for, a part of me bludgeons me about the head and shoulders, berating me for boring people. Even now, as I am writing this longer-than-usual post, that little voice is shaking its head and assuring me that no one wants to hear what I have to say and shame on me for unloading my problems on you. Yet I soldier on. If nothing else, writing here isn’t much different than the journals I kept all through high school and it’s good practice for my writing.

But, I have decided that I need to be more open and honest with people and, let’s face it, a blog is a pretty non-confrontational way to do that since I don’t have to face unreadable or blank expressions as I crack away at a bit of my personal wall.

So, my loyal and forgiving reader, there you have it. A little bit of my personal crazy as if you haven’t seen plenty of that already… But, I guess the difference is that this was hard for me to say.  That publish button (or rather “schedule” since I wrote this in advance) was hard to push, but no harder than sharing my creative writing with you and maybe even a little less personal.

*side note: I started this post intending to write about my obsessive checking of my blog stats, but it morphed into this… But in reality, they’re kind of the same thing. Page views are like crack to someone seeking validation! And don’t get me started about comments! See what I just did there? ;-)

Okay, this had totally happened before and last time I just chalked it up to me being tired or overworked or something, but this time I KNOW that I clicked “publish”. I wrote a post this morning around 11 something and it’s gone… And I don’t mean gone like it’s saved as a draft or anything. I mean gone… No draft, no nothing! Weird.

Ah well, it was just something about work, so perhaps it was providence that it mysteriously vanished.

Okay, so I think I’ve finally settled on a theme and header. It usually takes me a while when I decide to make a change, so I’m not surprised that I wasn’t happy with any of the ones that came before.

What do you think? The header is our (female) cat Elliot. Out of the two she’s the most photogenic since she spends much of her time sitting still and staring at stuff. Not like Molly. If you point a camera at her she automatically knows that you’re looking at her and comes over, insisting that you pick her up and love her. AT ONCE!

Note: First short story, “Exhaustion” has been posted. It’s kind of depressing, but I’d still appreciate it if you gave it a read. Any comments, questions or anything would be much appreciated. :)