How much is that doggy in the window?

Today my mom and I went to buy me some new glasses. They are nice glasses too. It's going to sound weird, but they have green Austrian Crystal in them. I was thinkin kind of like bling bling when I heard it, but it really doesn't stick out too much, and they give my face some personality.
When we were finished with the eye glass place, we went to the pet shop across the street. We had first gone in there on Friday night, we fell in love with this cute little beagle puppy who was the runt of the litter. We managed to leave on Friday, but today when we went in there, my mom really wanted to buy the dog. I thought the dog was cute too, but I was very reluctant to get another dog because I feel like we don't have room sometimes for the animals we have. My mom called my dad and he said that it was okay if we got it. So my mom paid for it today, and maybe by Tuesday or Wednesday we can take him home. We would have gotten him today, but he hasn't been eating hard food very much, and they want to see him gain a little more weight before they send him home with us. Right now, my brother and I have been arguing back and forth about who gets to name him. Except I want to have a name that everyone will like, and Jimmy doesn't name animals normal names. He named our cat, (who my mom and I call gus) Obi One Kanobi (spelling, who cares) and he named our dog Bud Light. He was stoned when he came up with that one. Now that I think of it, his friend told me that they got the dog stoned too. It could be why she sometimes appears retarded. She wasn't that smart to begin with. Those names are ridiculous, and I would never want to go for a walk with a dog named Bud Light. This is why our dogs name is Sandy. My sister picked the name, and I think it is lame. Tons of dogs are named Sandy. I was thinking of naming our name Benny, or Lucky. My mom was thinking about Buster or Buddy. I kind of like Buster. We'll see what my brother comes up with. Hopefully its not Michelob.
I'll have pictures soon. As soon as we get to take it home. I'm kind of excited. I'm not excited for the dog to poop in the house. Gross.

So Hungry

For the last few days, I have been trying to change the way I eat. So far I have been mildly successful. I have noticed a few things though. I am emotionally attached to food. When I don't get to eat what I want, I get moody. I also get depressed. I guess I never realized how much I depend on food to make me happy. I keep waiting for this "diet" to be over, so I can go back to eating food that I enjoy. Then I realize that it's only the 3rd day, and this is the way it needs to be for a long time. I won't say forever, because once I lose some weight, I can bring things back into my diet. Right now I need to focus on looking at food as a necessity to live. Not as a form of entertainment or enjoyment. When I was watching TV today, I saw advertisements for different restaurants, and the food looked so good, and I realized that I couldn't have any of it. It made me mad. I'm sure that I will indulge here and there, but for the most part, I need to concentrate on being strong. I can't tell you how many times I have gone to the kitchen and started looking for something to eat. There are Hershey Kisses on the kitchen table, and they are driving me crazy. I get hungry about every three hours, and I have to find things to eat that aren't going to hinder my weightloss.

Today we had a bad thunderstorm. I woke up in the afternoon to a tornado warning. I got to work and everyone was in the designated tornado area. The power was gone, and it didn't return for 2 hours. It was a hard day. I had to feed the babies, and there was only cold or room temperature milk, and a few of the babies refused to drink it, but continued to cry. At one time we had five out of eight babies crying. This job is quite a reality check for me when I think about having children. I know that right now I am not ready. I have no husband first of all, and I have no money.

My school was closed for tomorrow because of the storms. There is no electricity. I am so relieved. One less day to teach before summer vacation. I am looking forward to it so much.

This weekend I went to a wedding. I did not catch the bouquet. I always secretly hope that I will, but I don't try very hard for fear of appearing too desperate. I've caught two in my life. Both were a few years ago. It doesn't mean anything really. I just like the posibility of being the next person to get married. That however, will not happen soon. My younger brother informed me today that he would probably have children before me. I asked him why he thought that, hoping to catch him in the middle of an insult. And he only said, "Because I have sex more than you." That would definitely be true, because I don't have sex at all. He once told me that he could picture me getting pregnant from a toilet seat. I took that as a major insult, but now it is just an inside joke.
This weekend was also my niece Piper's birthday. She turned one. She is such a sweetheart and I love her to pieces. But when all of my nieces and nephews are yelling and screaming, I know that I'm not ready for kids quite yet. I think that working at a childcare center also cures me from wanting kids right now. Especially when four babies are all crying at once, and you are the only one in the room. Maybe someday.

Last week when I was absent from school, I received a phone call from the same substitute who had gotten me into so much trouble before. She was my substitute again, and she couldn't find some of the materials I had asked her to use. At the time she had woken me up, and I didn't realize that it was the same woman who was responsible for ending my career. Once I had woken up for the day, I looked at my email, and it turns out that she was the same woman. It really made me mad, that the principal had not taken it upon himself to make sure that she wasn't my substitute ever again. He said that he was going to do everything that he could, to help me get over what had happened. Not only was she my substitute again, but she was a substitute on the same day of the week, so she had all of those kids she showed the inappropriate video too. I was sick about it all day. And it still makes me angry. Just this week when I was teaching my students, the ones who had her last week, I realized that she had taught my fifth graders, the third grade lesson. She is not even competent enough to get basic instructions right.

The whole matter of the video tape is not over. I had been suspended for a week directly after the incident. On my last paycheck I had the money I would have earned that week, deducted from my paycheck. I thought that would be it. But yesterday when I received my paycheck, there was more money taken out. I called the woman from human resources in charge of payroll, and she said that she was instructed to take money out for the 8 days I was suspended. The time span I was gone was 8 days, but the amount of days I was supposed to work during that time, was only 4. So they took out twice as much money as they were supposed to. I emailed the director of human resources, but she has not emailed me back. I have this feeling that I will be screwed with this. To make matters a little worse, I was really county on that paycheck, and now I have $32 to my name, and I have over $200 worth of bills to pay. I won't get paid for another 2 weeks.
If I could rewind my life a few years, I just might. I would like to go back to when it was time to choose a major, or further back, to the time where it was my chance to start playing on a sports team in grade school. I wish I would have felt more self confident back then. I want to blame my parents, but what is the use, everyone blames their parents. You can't rewind time. My major may have also been chosen because of a lack of self confidence as well. I didn't think I was smart enough, and I knew I wasn't bad at art. Who knows what I could have accomplished. I talk like my life if over. At the moment, its hard to think two weeks in advance, let alone two months in advance, let alone two years in advance. I feel really lost right now. I feel like I am standing still and everyone is racing off in front of me. This weekend I will be attending my niece's first birthday party, and my friends wedding. Two examples of lives changing. My best friend had a baby two weeks ago. She seems happy, and tired at the same time. I don't even know when a baby is going to fit into my life. I want one, I do, but having one right now would be an unfortunate event. I am scared that I'm going to turn 30 and not be any closer to having a family.

There are a few good things in life right now. One of them is the meal group I have been attending. I signed up for a co-ed meal group. What's the harm in meeting a few men my age. But when I got to the first meeting, I realized that almost every 23 year old girl wanted a co-ed meal group. Therefore, my meal group consisted of 13 girls. All of whom were around 23 years old. By the end of the meal group, we were down to 5 girls, all of them single. These girls turned out to be just what I needed. I enjoy seeing them every Tuesday. As a part of being in a meal group, we also volunteered at a nursing home once a month. My favorite parr of that was when we went there on my birthday, and the volunteer coordinator gave me a bunch of balloons and a plate of hard chocolate chip cookies. It is a floor of alzheimer patients who were mostly women. When it was time for them to sing Happy Birthday to me, a woman named Sylvia said, "Who's birthday is it?" And they said,"April's" pointing to me. Sylvia says, "Who's April". And they point to me again. Sylvia yells, "Oh HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!" The funnier part is that she repeated the conversation again two minutes later because she had already forgotten who I was. Then there is a woman named Jane who always calls me a "Killjoy". I'm not making this stuff up.

I am currently at my school. I am supposed to be doing some sort of prep work. But I don't feel the need to do any such thing. I am sitting here, listening to music, and writing. I feel worthless here. I want to get out so fast. I don't want to spend any extra time here, when I am not with my students. I especially have been avoiding my principal, who hasn't been looking at me either. Of course, I do glance at him now and then, but just when I realize that he is around.
I called the school that was in charge of the interview I went to last week. The secretary said that they had started hiring, that if I hadn't heard anything yet, I would find out within the next few weeks. To me that means that I am not going to be hired. In the next few weeks I will receive a call, or a letter in the mail saying that all of the positions would be filled. It made my heart sink to know that they have started hiring. This means that I was not chosen to be one of the 14 new art teachers. I couldn't even land a job when there were 14 openings. How pathetic is that. Sometimes I think that I got extremely lucky when I got hired. Dennis was looking for someone to fill a part-time position, and he knew that it wasn't going to be easy to find someone good to fill a part-time position. So he sat in on another principal's interview sessions. Probably hoping to snatch a sucker who would except anything (me). Someone who had been looking for so long that she would have driven two hours to work everyday if she had to. He met me, and decided I would be that person. He made it sound like he wanted me to be at his school, but I think he didn't want to take the time to set up his own interviews. My impression of him has drastically changed in the last three months, but most importantly in the last month. If Dennis hired me out of convenience, who is going to hire me now?

I have included a picture in this email of two of my students. They look like they are having fun, but does this mean I am not doing my job?

I felt the incredible need to blog today. I have erased all of my previous blogs because there was no purpose to them. I wanted to sound important, like I knew what I was talking about. It turns out I don't. I have no idea what I am doing in my life, and I have no idea why things have taken such a wrong turn.
About a month ago, my life took an unexpected turn. I was let go from my job. And it was because of a mistake I made. Something I would take back in a second. I instructed the subsitute to show a video that I hadn't previewed all the way through. I previewed the first half, and it was fine. But the second half was extremely inappropriate. It included things like heroin use, bare breasts, swearing, etc. The substitute didn't make a good judgement call and proceeded to show the inappropriate footage for not only one class, but two. She wrote down the parts she found inappropriate and turned them in to my principal.

The mistake I made was small, followed by a large mistake made by my substitute. As the teacher, I had to take responsibility for both mistakes. My principal made me feel so awful about it, like I had done it on purpose, and then he decided it wasn't worth it to him, to keep me as a teacher at the school. I am still at the school, but my contract for next year will not be renewed. I asked my principal why I was still being let go, even though the kids are over it, and it seems like the parents are over it as well. My principal gave me some crap about how parents complaints comes in waves, and if I am there at the beginning of the next school year, there will be complaints. Basically he is a coward, and no matter how much the students enjoy having me as a teacher, he is not willing to stick up for me to some wealthy stay at home moms who don't have anything better to do than to complain about their child's education.

At first I was okay with it, I understood that it would be hard to have a teacher that the parents didn't trust. And I thought that I could bounce back. It seemed so easy. I was going to get another job, and leave this school behind me. I wasn't ever going to look back. Now a month later, I am realizing that I have another month to go of this, and I am finding it incredibly hard to finish up my school year. I had a job interview last week, and so I was kind of counting on getting hired. They are hiring 14 new art teachers, and I have a year of experience. My principal told me that there aren't that many art teachers around who are looking for jobs. I haven't gotten a call, and it has been a week. I have been praying and praying that God would give me a second chance, at this new school district.

I have a feeling that if I don't get hired somewhere soon, I am going to realize that I am not as resilient as I feel. I have been recovering quite well. For someone who has a hard time with anxiety and depression, I haven't been feeling that broken. I have had a few experiences in the last few years that I think have helped me be prepared for what happened. I'm scared that things will not look up, and that I will sink, down, down, and down further. I don't really know what I will do if I don't have a teaching job by the end of the summer. I don't really know how I can enjoy my summer, if I don't know where I am going to be in the fall. I am tired of working two jobs, and I am tired of working at the childcare center. I love the babies, but I don't feel like my life is going anywhere. I feel like I am standing still. My life is stagnant. I am stagnant. I haven't even gotten out everything that I want to say. But I needed to get this out, because everything I want to say starts with this. This is what's happening now, it's always on my mind, and I need to get it out. It is done.