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I was home sick today (Wednesday) with laryngitis. This makes it extremely hard to teach, although, as I noted elsewhere, extremely creative. Fortunately most of my students were quite kind. Only a few kept muttering to their classmates, "Dude, I can't hear her." NO KIDDING. I also love, "Hey, Mrs. Frau, 'd you lose your voice?" No, I'm just mixing it up a bit. For fun. Fortunately I could glare and whistle, and those skills helped a great deal. Hot tea also helps. And frozen yogurt.

So as I lay in bed not talking and watching a bit of TV, I saw an ad and now will compile a list I call

Conversations Topics Women NEVER EVER Discuss in Real Life*:

- detailed birth control methods and their side effects
- the effectiveness of yogurt in digestive health
- women's vitamins
- anything where the phrase "just call your doctor" and "side effects" are used together
- how great chatting on a 1-900 number for singles was

That is all.

*All right, someone, somewhere may discuss them. But it's rare.

Summer Wrap-Up

Hi. Hi! How are you? I know I meant to post all the time during the summer and then...summer happened. And I didn't want to go upstairs to my hot computer and post. I'm sorry. Plus my laptop was broken, so I couldn't go somewhere cool to blog. I blame the laptop. Bad, bad laptop.

So I'll give you all a quick re-cap:

• Once a week, I taught Alternative Ed to about five students. These kids for the most part are more academic delinquents than juvenile; they just didn't fit the mold for normal school hours. I found them both trying and endearing. The one kid who didn't do anything now has me for 1st period English. Keep your fingers crossed for him. And me.
• Because I have an entirely new class this semester, I tried to spend 2 hours a day preparing for fall. A lot of this included reading new novels. I did pretty well--it also helps that I have no kids to take care of and that I live three hundred yards away from school, so I did a lot of photocopying over the summer.
  
• On that note, with the help of a lovely doctor-lady, I found out that I do NOT have ADHD but do have deficits in organization and time-management. Case in point: I missed our last appointment because I forgot to put it on my calendar. That, kids, defines irony. Fortunately we did the appointment over the phone. So I've tried very hard to make my Google Calendar my end-all, be-all, updating it and color-coding it and using the Task list like crazy. It's helped tremendously. As a result, for the first time EVER I started the school year today totally ready and not mildly panicked because I had everything labeled, in its proper color folder, and ready to go. I still have a lot to work on, but at least I'm getting tools in place.
• I worked out faithfully and lost no weight, nor do my clothes fit more loosely. So I went on Weight Watchers with T and got my trainer friend A to kick my butt. So far, so good.
  
• This August T and I went to Denver, CO to watch our dear friends get married on the side of a mountain--just a lucky handful of us got to see them perform their own vows (legal only in CO and PA to do that!) and all of us wept at the beauty of the moment, the couple, the scenery, the love. Plus Denver's a cool town to visit AND, as I type this, the newlyweds are headed back to Buffalo to live, so we get them back because, as I told the bride last summer, WE HAVE DIBS. I'm sorry, Bostonian and Tennesseean friends. I CALL 'EM.
• Got into the Stieg Larsson trilogy and cannot stop reading them. I just love Lisbeth Salander. LOVE her.
• Also got into Mad Men. Don Draper is the man you love to despise. He's such a terrific flawed anti-hero. I also pledge here and now to stay far, far away from the Betty Draper Method of Parenting.
• Speaking of parenting, my sister M and her husband C expect a baby in January! Plus they moved back to the B-lo as well, so it's happiness all around.
• I decided to call people and get in touch more, take my own advice and make the effort. So far, it's worked quite well. I plan to keep it that way.
• I finally found and began compiling our wedding pictures. Whoops. Looking through them and remembering the joy of the day, captured so well on film, has brought such joy. I'll try to put together an album soonish.
• OH! T got a new job and loves it. It's at a similar company to his old one but gives him the opportunity to spread his wings a little. I am so, so proud of him.

That's it, really. I never got my garden started, but we have some fun and necessary house projects coming up. T and I decided to become more organized, together, for a lot of reasons, least of which includes less stress for us. Friendships waxed and waned, small decisions we made will have good ripple effects later....really, it's just life that happened. More to come.

T and me in Colorado