Update

I have been REALLY busy!


The re-cap:
1. I took a leap of faith and told my building principal that I'd like to become a long-term sub for the Moderate/Severe mentally Handicapped room at my school. Within 2 weeks I traded assistant positions and began to learn the ropes.

2. I was sent to another middle school to observe the program there and get inspired to make the program at my school as similar to it as possible. Wow! I was truly inspired.

3. The teacher retired, leaving me in charge for 2 months. I have made parent calls, instituted a discipline plan, and experimented with science labs, schedule changes, and tried to hold down the fort while allowing everyone to keep their sanity!

4. I fought with the state over my license, but in the end, it was renewed.

5. I am ending the year with praise, hope, and ready for summer break. Boy am I ever ready!


I want to get back to writing.
I want to clean my whole house.
I want to play with my kids.


Most of all, I want to sleep in!

Food and Art

I totally want to eat a white chocolate starfish.

Seriously, check this out.. Andie's

Making candy like that looks like so much fun. I'd be so fat, though! I'd eat the scraps and broken ones..

Food can be a comfort. I'm noticing more and more as I grow up how food has taken a more comforting role in my life. Not that I'm sad all the time, but I feel better when my pantry is stocked.

My diet has been pretty good, overall. It's the dinner that gets me. I want to carb up and go to sleep after work. I haven't slept well this past week, which makes me more tired, and becomes a vicious circle of lethargy that is not allowing me to write, blog, or think.

Plus, I want to eat something sweet for dessert to feel like the meal is over. I've been trying these awesome and healthy cookies, but they are expensive. For cookies.

Food should be fun and energizing! I remember shredding baby carrots for my brother because he'd eat them in a new shape. We'd have a picnic on the floor, or make faces on our plate with food. It was good food too, veggies, fruits, sandwiches.

Some people give up a certain food for Lent. That started last week. I have a 'beef' with this, because the practice is about sacrifice and replacing something with God to get back in the habit of daily worship or prayer, not a competition or dieting strategy, but I digress. If I were to give up something that I eat a lot of, it would have to be fried foods. That same food can be baked or grilled. I'd still enjoy it. In fact, I received a George Foreman grill for Christmas, and I haven't even used it. Sad.

So let's look at something happy and artful..

There! That's better!


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Who We Are

So many answers, responses, and takes on this topic! After my blog post, a slew of people began commenting on this topic all over various sites I visit. It started popping up everywhere!


A Scientist's point of view:

As individuals in a culture we are forever re-inventing, this collaboration of investigation with the universe is the very essence of a meaningful life. -Adam Frank

(Poorly phrased and with a comma splice, but in essence, we live because we keep questioning things and seeking answers.)

This ties in with my fellow writer's response on my facebook wall:

We are the sum of our experiences. That's who we are. It's an entirely different matter if the question that you're *really* asking is "What kind of person do I wish I were?" -August Rode

Hmmm. Some of my life's choices I choose to forget, therefore, as a sum of my experiences, who I am includes negative numbers!

We always look both back and forward. Therefore we see what we've made of ourselves and what (or who) we want to be. We set goals, we set benchmarks, we pat ourselves on the back when we reach those goals, often bragging, seeking confirmation from others that we are awesome, and we press on. (Hey, I just summarized life!)

On ficly.com, a challenge to include the line: "It's the choices that make us who we are."

Quotes from the entries:

It isn’t what we have that defines us,
It’s the choices that make us who we are. -In Night's Arms

“It’s the choices we make that defines who we are. Without that, we give up our responsibility to ourselves. If we choose to fight for a better world, we do it with open eyes knowing that we will pay a cost.” -Robert Quick

"You’ve got it mixed up. It’s who we are that determines the choices we make, not the other way around." - memento

Ah! So which comes first, the choices or who we are?

We make some choices without thinking, because of who we are,

Ex. running into a burning building instead of away

while we make others because of who we want to be.

Ex. The old me would have told my mother everything, but the new me wanted to keep this secret to build a better bond with my sister.

Some people can change who they are. They can give up old ways and take on new ones. We grow and mature from child to teenager to adult and change, don't we? Since we CAN change, then parts of us can be forgotten, at least mostly. Therefore, there is always hope for a better future.
:D




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.