Some kind of record

Tune in next week for the full detailed report of where we went and what we did on our Central European Road Trip, but I had to share yesterday's highlights with you:

We ate breakfast in Poland.
We ate lunch in the Czech Republic.
We booked our hotel in Slovakia.
We ate dinner in Hungary.
We had ice cream for dessert in Austria.

Life is good!

It's in my blood

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. We've just been driving around central Europe... For a more detailed description of where we've been and where we're going, see here.

We've spent the last few days driving through Poland. We're at our third and final city in this country: Wroclaw. And one thing has been consistent in all three Polish cities (well, you know, besides all the Polish people): ice cream, which is called "lody" here. Every where you go, people are milling around with waffle cones or soft serve cones piled high. You can't pass ten people without at least one person eating ice cream. There are lody vendors every few yards, and the going rate is pretty cheap!

So needless to say I'm in ice cream heaven here. And it's totally justified that I pig out on lody everyday because I'm part Polish and this is apparently what Polish people do!

I knew there was a good reason I'm addicted to ice cream...

Finally in Europe

... and we'll be here for about three weeks to visit with my parents. Ordinarily, we would have just gone to their house, but this time, Mom and Dad picked us up at the Frankfurt airport and we are going on a European road trip for two weeks!

First stop? Berlin. It was quite an adventure getting there. After twelve hours of transatlantic flying, we got in the car for what was supposed to be about a six hour drive. The drive ended up taking TWELVE hours. Yes, 12! We got stuck in a four hour traffic jam (called "Stau" here in Germany). We were inching. We drove one mile in two hours. People were getting out of their cars and socializing. Others were walking along the median (and making much better progress than the cars!). After the traffic jam was over, it took us about an hour and a half to detour around the accident that caused it all--thank you, GPS!

We finally made it to Berlin after 24 hours of travel. It was good to pull up to the apartment and meet my parents' friends that we were staying with.

The next day, we set out to See Berlin In One Day. We took the underground train into the city and then we walked around to see the sights. We saw the Holocaust Memorial (new in the city since 2005), the Brandenburg Gate, the top of the Reichstag (parliament building) overlooking the city, and Checkpoint Charlie. I so wish I had pictures to show you the sights, but I haven't uploaded them yet...

The Holocaust Memorial (especially the museum underneath) was definitely very heartbreaking and haunting. But a must if you are visiting the city. The Brandenburg gate was a very cool structure. And it was at the Starbucks right across the street that we ran into some old missionary friends of ours that are now living in Sweden! There was much excited screaming when we recognized each other. They were in Berlin with the family for the U2 concert! Then later we stood in line for about an hour to get to the top of the Reichstag (long lines for free stuff!) to get a great view of the city. And Checkpoint Charlie was definitely worth it--especially to see parts of the wall that were still hanging around. We ate dinner at a little Persian place in former East Berlin with excellent prices and very yummy food!

But maybe the highlight of Berlin (for my dad anyway) were the Dunkin' Donuts locations that we saw. Donuts!!! In Europe!! This trip rocks...

Later this morning, we are heading to Rostock on the Baltic Sea. Let's hope that there are no more massive traffic jams!

Small preview of a 20 hour horror film

Well, we've finally moved out of our apartment and into our in-laws. You'd think that moving in stages over a period of weeks would be a smart thing to do, but you'd be wrong. It was a terribly drawn out business... Glad it's finally over!

When it was finally over and we had thrown out the last bag of trash, we captured the cats and brought them out to the car. They were not pleased. In fact, Mrs. Hufflepuff was so upset, she left a permanent claw mark in the fabric ceiling of our car! We set out for our in-laws' (a 90 minute drive) to the tune of three angry cats yeowling in three part harmony. We stopped briefly at Burger King for dinner, and while Max ran out to get our food, I took some footage of the cats' indignation (you'll note that Gizmo, our calico, is suffering in silence here):



And this was them relatively calmed down! When we were about thirty minutes away, Mowgli decided she had had enough and barfed in the little plastic basket she was sitting in. (Max: "Hey what's that smell??"). Then, as she had barf on the end of her tail and on her paw, she decided it wasn't very comfortable to sit there anymore, so she moved to a different plastic basket and sat down. I thought she sat down, anyway, but it turns out she was just squatting to poop. Poop! In our car!! With no litter on it!! Do you have any idea of the stink we went through for the next thirty minutes?!?

On top off all the hoopla, Max's allergies decided that three cats shedding hair in such a small confined space was not acceptable and so he spent most of the trip sneezing violently and trying to breathe.

If this is going to be a preview of the twenty hour trip it will take to drive down south in August, we're in BIG trouble...

And everything's wrinkly

We've been living out of a suitcase since the middle of June, first with our trip down south, and now splitting our time between the in-laws and our nearly empty apartment. When we're at my in-laws, it's all fun and food and new barn kittens and reading and crafts. When we're at the apartment it's all cleaning and scrubbing and packing and apologizing to our cats for being gone!

In early August it will be Go Time with all of the unpacking and setting up and getting comfortable. We will also be hunting for the best deals on our shopping list: refrigerator, washer/dryer, dining room table, dishes, TV stand, and guest room furnishings. Oh yeah, and it will be time to go back to school and start my job.

But let's not think about all of that right now... too much fun to be had first!

Overheard

What happens when a frugal man has to sift through hundreds of dollars worth of groceries to throw away/give away before a big move? A lot of gut-wrenching emotion, that's what.

Today I cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom, while Max cleaned out the cupboards and fridge in the kitchen down the hall. In between my trips to the kitchen faucet and back (refilling my soapy bucket), I witnessed his progress as he systematically put all the food we owned (opened and unopened) onto our counters. Our kitchen looked like this (but with all the counters filled):


And as I scrubbed down the bathroom, I would hear these comments every so often coming from the kitchen (imagine a gut-wrenching-whiney tone of voice):

"Aargh!! So. Much. Food."
"EIGHT CANS OF GREEN BEANS?!?"
"We have FIVE whole jars of spaghetti sauce. FIIIIIIIVE!"
"What are we going to do with all of this food?"
"OOOHHH! My bread flour!! That stuff is EXPENSIVE!!"
"Hey, how long have we had these croutons?"
"We have so much uneaten food, this is making me sick. SICK!"
"Did you know these two boxes of cereal aren't even OPEN?"
"Seriously, this is making me want to vomit..."
"I think I just vomited."


Here he is, choking back the tears. Note to self for future moves: stop stocking the pantry months ahead of time, not just weeks....

On a related note, Hannah, do you need any food?

You're welcome

If you are a teacher, then you know that dissing the No Child Left Behind legislation is part of the territory. If you don't like something about your job as a teacher, it most likely has something to do with NCLB. In fact, lots of things can be blamed on NCLB... it's a perfect scapegoat in so many ways.

If you're a teacher and you love dissing NCLB (who doesn't?). Or if you're not a teacher and are wondering why we all constantly whine about NCLB, then this hilarious comparison is for you!

But mostly I just want the house, please

It's too bad that buying a house isn't like buying a shirt. With a shirt, you just pick out the one you like best, bring it to the cash register, and voila! Pay for it and go. With a house, it's more like: pick the one you like best, hold your breath till the offer is accepted, spend the next week knee-deep in paperwork, run up your cell phone minutes talking to the realtor and the mortgage lender, pack pack pack, clean clean clean, pray pray pray. And in the end, it might fall through anyway.

Of course, it doesn't help matters when the seller is being a jerk. Not only is she in the midst of what I can only assume to be a nasty divorce (aren't they all though?), she has actually sold the house twice before in the last month and both sales have fallen through. So she's been fighting her ex, she's been burned by two previous buyers, and she's making us pay for the sins of them all by rushing us along (and trying to rush the 75 other people involved in buying/selling a house).

I alternate between wanting to give her a hug and wanting to kick her in the pants.

Found and Lost and Found

We found The Awesome One yesterday. We promised ourselves that we wouldn't fall in love with a house but OOPS, it happened. In a way, that's a good thing because the first day we were having issues with Max loving one and me hating it or me loving one but Max hating it.

The Awesome house has many wonderful features: all hardwood floors, super energy efficient because of the top of the line AC unit and the double paned windows, 3 bedrooms/2 bath/2 car garage, FANTASTIC neighborhood, beautiful landscaping and fenced backyard just to name a few.

That evening we put in an offer. When we got home, we looked up the address on zillow and it told us that the house was already pending sale. Max and I were crushed, to put it mildly. We emailed our realtor but had little hope. We had a back up house that was almost perfect, but it wasn't The Awesome One, you know?

The next morning, our realtor called us and said, yep, come on over this afternoon and we'll look at more houses because this one is taken. So basically any hope we may have had was gone. Max was very upset (it's a money-saving house....he was in love!) and we both were quite sad. We went about our day's errands (fingerprinting for my new job and visiting Max's new school) feeling quite subdued. I was praying the whole time that Max especially would have peace about this unfortunate situation.

We were in the truck, and I asked Max how he was feeling. He quite calmly said that he was starting to feel okay about this whole situation, feeling like it was all going to be alright anyway. No sooner had the words left his mouth when our agent called!

She told us the house was still available. [Excuse me, can you repeat that? I'm not quite sure I heard you correctly over the traffic!] Apparently the buyer had committed loan fraud! So the seller was kind of back at square one.

To say we were shocked and overjoyed is a bit of an understatement. I believe Max cheerfully cried: "God's MESSING with us!!"

After our offer, her counter offer, our counter counter offer, and her counter counter counter offer, we accepted. Then she accepted our acceptance. Then there were rainbows in the skies, it rained down candy, and unicorns frolicked in the fields.

So barring any other catastrophe, we are going to be PROUD homeowners! We cloae in mid-August so keep praying and keep your fingers crossed! Pics are up on Facebook for family :)

We'll take The Awesome One

The last three days have been the longest and sweatiest of my life. Day 1, we drove over thirteen hours to a hotel in Arkansas in the hillbilly-pickup-with-no-air. By the time we got out of truck, I could have wrung out my underwear and created a nice salty pond on the side of the road. Day 2, we drove about 7 or 8 more hours until we found our storage unit, at which point we spent three hours unloading 90% of our earthly belongings from the truck. In the middle of the day. In the sweltering heat. There was a short moment of panic when we were wondering whether the couch would fit into the storage unit, but we made it work!

Today we spent all afternoon looking at houses with our very nice realtor in her very nice air conditioned car. We saw twenty houses. I would say about eight to ten of them, we walked in and then walked right back out. A piece of crap is a piece of crap; it's that easy to tell. Many of the homes we looked at were between 20 and 40 years old, 3 bedroom, 2 bath. We saw so many houses, took so many notes, that it started to all blur together. We started dubbing houses by their characteristics: The Smoky One, The Eighties One, The Moldy One, The Wheelchair Accessible One, The Wood Paneled One, The Busy Corner One .... the list goes on!

Tonight, we are going over some paperwork and thinking about our top three choices. Tomorrow we'll meet with the realtor again to go revisit our top three, and then she'll show us the next set of houses. I don't know if there will be twenty houses in this set (I imagine not), but she's been great in working with us to maximize our time here!

Despite the heat, this is definitely shaping up to be an exciting time for us!!

It is WAY past my bedtime

The pickup truck is packed to the hilt (and not everything fit!). We've nailed down the tarp as best we could. Now, all that's left is a very short night's sleep before we attempt to drive at least 12 hours down South (we'll still have about 8 more to go on Day 2) driving a contraption that looks suspiciously like the Beverly Hillbillies!! No air and no cruise control either. Should be fun.

But hey, at least we get to do some serious house shopping when we get there and after we unload all of our stuff in a storage unit! So that will definitely make up for the trip :)

Sometimes I wish I was a cat

Because cats don't have to pack. In fact, cats don't have to do anything except eat, drink, sleep, and poop. Max and I, however, have been very busy with putting things in boxes. And then putting more things in more boxes. It never seems to end!

Here is how Mrs. Hufflepuff has been helping out:


And if you're really a cat lover, you'll enjoy this one too:


I can hear you go "Awwwww..." all the way over here!

Moving On

I've been mildly enjoying my summer vacation. I say mildly because Responsibility sneaked up on me outta nowhere and bit me on the butt. I have a final paper due this Saturday for my grad class. I have to go back to school and hold another meeting to finish up an IEP on Thursday for this girl. That has great potential to be World War 3, but I'll keep you posted. On top of that, we are attempting to pack up about 87% of our stuff so we can bring it down to Texas next week when we go house hunting (we'll be dropping it off in a storage unit). Nothing stresses me out more than seeing this:

Packing up and moving is a tiring, back-hurting process! And I shudder to think how many times my dear mom packed up a family of five to move us across the country, and across the Atlantic.

But I do have some fun things to look forward to. Lunch out with friends! House hunting! Visiting with family! A trip to Europe! I guess it's all about perspective...

Stick a fork in me...

.... I'm DONE!

And to celebrate, I went to a local park with lots of my colleagues and ate pizza and ice cream and cake. Then we all went mini-golfing (I even made a hole-in-one! By bouncing the ball off of three different sides! So totally planned!).

For round two of celebrations (have I mentioned I like to milk celebrations??), Max and I went to see "Star Trek" at the movie theaters because I had won free tickets from a radio contest a few months ago. Max was very annoyed with me when I couldn't seem to say "trek" and always said "track" ("It's 'treeeek', 'trEk'!!!) After that, we went to the Melting Pot for some very yummy cheese fondue. And the grand finale? Ice cream at Cold Stone!!!

I wish every day was the last day of school!

Can I Crash a Bonfire Somewhere?

All week, I've been stalking the lunch ladies. Not because I'm hungry all the time (that is completely unrelated), but because they are the ones with the steady supply of boxes. And I'm in desperate need of cardboard boxes as I am packing up my classroom AND the apartment. So I've been lurking in the hallways, and snatching up box after box before any other teacher can take them. I'd created a literal TOWER of boxes in the corner of my office, waiting to topple over at the slightest sneeze.

Tomorrow is the last day of school, and all week I've been procrastinating on filling those boxes. Today I finally forced myself to pack up... and it was surprisingly easy! I didn't realize how little of my stuff I had actually brought to the job as this particular resource room had a lot of resources already there! So I ended up filling seven boxes, then cramming most of the rest of the empty ones into our car. I made sure I could see out the windshield and the rear-view mirror, but other than that, my long drive home was PACKED! Haha.....

On a related note, now that I am leaving this job behind me for good, what's a girl to do with 997 business cards??!?

Say It Like It Is

I have a little first grade boy with autism on my caseload. Let's call him Tommy (I know I've written about him before, but I can't remember what fake name I gave him!). Tommy has a full time aide to help him successfully mainstream in his general education classroom. You should also know that Tommy has a very powerful imagination and he will frequently make up stories or exaggerate what is going on.

 

Yesterday, Tommy came to school with mosquito bite on his forehead. This, of course (as anyone who works with kids on the autism spectrum might know), was devastating. It completely paralyzed him from getting any of his morning work done. Miss W (his aide) decided that some quiet time in his bean bag chair with an ice pack on his head may be just the cool down time he needed in order to start his day. So there he was, holding a blue bean-bag-type of ice pack on his head, calming down. Miss W was sitting off to the side with her back to him as she completed some paperwork.

 

Suddenly, Tommy says: "The ooze monster is here! The ooze monster is here!!"

 

Miss W responds (without turning around): "We're not telling stories today, Tommy. Please sit quietly while your classmates are working"

 

One minute later, Tommy pipes up again: "No, Miss W, I'm SERIOUS! The OOZE MONSTER IS HERE TO GET ME!"

 

Miss W finally turned around, and when she did, she saw that the ice pack had exploded and there was indeed OOZE all over the poor kid's face and shirt!

 

And that is why SOMETIMES we should take kids seriously....

Five more days until pee-pee freedom!

It's the beginning of the end.

 

And I've come to realize that I am very thankful that I'm in the type of job that has a clear beginning and ending. Our occupational therapist, who works part time in the hospital setting when she's not at school with us, said how lovely it is to have a job that ENDS. At the hospital, it's constant; sure, there may be patients that are discharged, but there are always other patients waiting to take their place. There is no automatic vacation. Nothing depends on the seasons.

 

Gosh, it must suck to have a "real" job....

 

Then again, when you are doing the potty dance in front of all your students, you start to envy all those other people in those other jobs who have the luxury of peeing whenever the thought occurs to them.

Hoarse as a Horse

Today was Field Day. Why we don't save Field Day for the last days of school, I will never understand, but there you have it. All the teachers are now wondering what they are going to do with their students for the next six days of school...

 

I was recruited to be in charge of the 4-square station. Remember 4-square? It was huge when I was a sixth grader. Anyways, we had K-2 rotating through all the stations this morning, and grades 3-5 rotating this afternoon. Each station lasted between 9 and 15 minutes. This means that I yelled out directions (you know, to be heard over all of the other field day events) TWENTY-ONE times to twenty-one different classes. So you can imagine I'm pretty hoarse.

 

It was pretty amazing to see the progression of physical coordination that each grade/age was capable of. For the Kindergarteners, the directions were simply to "bounce the ball to your friend"... but even that proved to be too difficult when I realized that some groups weren't playing because LOOK I SAW A CATERPILLAR or LOOK I HEAR AN AIRPLANE!! The first and second graders weren't that much better--they even had trouble running after a ball when it was hit out of bounds to go pick it up. It was almost like watching a cartoon: a child would run to get it, but just as they were picking it up, they would inadvertently kick it further, until they were halfway across the field!

 

As soon as I got the third through fifth grade groups, there was a big jump in physical ability. But then it I had to shout out complicated directions about what constituted an "out" because they were SO COMPETITIVE. The fifth graders were downright cutthroat--they had NO mercy!

 

After a full day of standing and walking around, sun exposure, and yelling out directions, I am BEAT!

Almost Summer

Is anyone else out there having trouble focusing on the tasks at hand instead of anticipating all the glorious things you'll do once summer break is here!?

Kids Gone Wild

Only two weeks (nine more days) until the end.

 

It's that time of year where the kids forget every rule and procedure you've taught them since September. No one can sit still or keep quiet. Kids are jumping up from their seats like popcorn and blurting out more often than bidders at an auction. Teachers are walking around looking tired from the strain of staying patient. Teachers are scrambling for any activities that would pass the time and at least are semi-educational. Administrators are strongly encouraging us to "stay strong until the end" and cram all the learning we can in these last few days (ha!).

 

This final whirlwind of activity with field trips, field day, and packing up the students' work and projects, and boxing up the classrooms will all end on June 12th with one collective sigh of relief from teachers and students alike (not parents though... let's face it, some of them may be mourning that day!). 

 

I, for one, CANNOT WAIT !!!!!!!!!!