Spinning

For months I was telling myself that I really needed to get to the gym to start working out again. The reason I had a hard time before was teaching and finishing my Masters. Now that I am on summer break and finished with my Masters I really have no excuse. There is this great workout facility 5 minutes from my house and I have been looking at their group fitness classes and there is an introductory spinning class on Tuesdays at 12:00 and the class is thirty minutes long. I figured it would be a great beginner class for me and it is only $2 per class. Then I can decide if this is what I want to do and then I can find the money to buy the package deals. So the plan is to drop in on this class today and Jay said he wanted to go but I doubt that he will because his back has been hurting him since Saturday when I made him move the entertainment stand to paint behind. We will see though!

Keeping my options open

I have a job for the following school year. It is the same job that I have been at for the last 5 years. I have been driving to Plymouth for 5 years back and forth a countless number of times. Sometimes I wish I was just home instead of the 30 minute commute everyday. This was one of the main reasons for applying to other school districts close to home among other reasons. I am just suprised that nobody has called from these other school districts. I finally emailed the person in charge of applications at the SBCSC office. She emailed back asking what my certification was in and I haven't heard anything back yet. If I were given an interview I would go because as countless number of people have told me I have to do what is right for me because nobody else will. I would also go as far to break my contract with my current school and sign with a new one. Sure it would suck but again I have to do what is right for me and the money would be better and we could actually move out of our small house and into a bigger one because yes we would like a family here in the future and the two bedroom one bath house isn't going to cut it in the future! Oh well I guess I can wish for a school district to call. I just hope it isn't two days before school starts like it was five years ago when I had already been teaching for two weeks at my current school. Grrrrrrrrrr....

Health Conference

So I admit it, when the principal asked me to attend a Health workshop in Indy a month ago I was hesitant. The description of the conference sounded really dumb and nothing that I wanted to attend. However I said yes anyway because (one) it would give me a change of scenery in the middle of June and (two) it was completely free--all $725 of it. So all month I dreaded going to this conference because I just didn't want to make the drive. Tuesday morning rolled around and just as I was beginning to leave the rain (something that we desperately needed) started pouring down in buckets. The walk to my garage (all six feet of it) was horrible I got into my car soaking wet. As I am making the trek to Indy it was pouring cats and dogs and my windshield wipers were on hyperspeed and I still couldn't see two feet in front of me for about 40 minutes. Gee I thought to myself that this had better be a good conference. Because lets face it as teachers we get stuck going to some pretty boring conferences that are not worthwhile.

As I arrive in Indy on 86th street at the Marten House Hotel next to St. Vincent's Hospital the sun was starting to poke its head out. As I walk into our conference room, I am given a huge binder and hospital permission slips to fill out. I fill out the permission slips and start to look through my binder. Huh I thought to myself this is going to be somewhat a semi-descent conference....I have health lesson plans. We were given an introduction and then started to make our way over to St. Vincent Hospital...we were going to an OR to view a mock sugery. This is when I realized this was a conference that was nothing like before!

When we arrived at St. Vincent Hospital we were greated by a nurse who took us up to the second floor of the hospital and had us get into bunny suits (aka the white jumpsuits) complete with head and shoe coverings. Gee we looked so cute! As we made our way into the OR the nurse had her students play different roles in sugery. We started from beginning to end of what happens during a sugery. I have now realized that the person that does most of the work is the sugery technician because they are the ones preparing everything for the doctor and the patient. The doctor is just there to cut you open and do what he or she has to do and then leaves. The nurses and the tech are the ones that really deserve the credit.

On our way leaving the hospital we went by the storage room and looked at the entire wall of stiches that can be used during surgery. The largest one was huge and thread attached to it felt like a small rope and the smallest one was not even the size of a tip of a pencil and the thread was thinner then a piece of human hair! I didn't know that all of these existed!

When we returned back to our conference center we were greated with lunch. This was a fantastic lunch we had fruit salad, regular salad, garlic bread, two different kinds of noodles and sauces, veggies, and dessert! All of this for lunch....usually at a conference we have sandwiches put together in a box waiting for us! After lunch we returned back to the conference room and took part in lessons that we can adapt to our grade level about germs. I won the prize of squid soap. When a child presses down on the soap an ink mark appears on the child's palm and the only way that ink will come off is with proper length of time of handwashing! How cool is that!

We were also given a toolkit. Inside of this toolkit is various free goodies (and lets face it as teachers we LOVE free things!) We had another binder full of lessons, a knee hammer, a stethoscope, a blood pressure cuff, scrubs, mug, eyecharts, post-it notes, pens, stress ball, and various other little things!

Then we had time in between the last activity and dinner to check-in and rest until dinner rolled around. I ended up finding this cute discount bookstore that I wished we had in South Bend because it was just awesome and had great deals on books!

When dinner rolled around we were able to look inside of a peds ambulence that transports sick kids from all over the state back to St. Vincent's to receive the care that they need. They even make runs to Illinois and Ohio. This was really cool!

Dinner was awesome as well. They served us three different types of salad, veggies, mac and cheese, scalloped potatoes, barbeque chicken breast, sliced roast beef, and peach cobbler for dessert. Then came time for teacher relaxation. These beauty people came in and gave us all chair massages, hand massages, facials, pedicures all with relaxing music. So I went off to bed totally relaxed and full!

Wednesday rolled around and we were given a breakfast buffet (more food!). Then we were going back at St. Vincent's to meet with the radiologist students. We were broken into groups of five and rotated around to different parts of the radiology part of the building. I saw the MRI machine, CAT Scan, X-ray, ultrasound, nuclear medicine. All of which was fasinating! My sister Laura should of joined me because this is what she is going into! We left with a student-friendly powerpoint presenetation and loads of x-rays on CD that we can show our students!

When we got back to the conference center we did more health lesson plans this time about the skeleton system and organs. Then had lunch (again wow!). While we were eating lunch we were given a presentation about this new website that will be launching in August about the different health and biomedical careers that are being offered. It will be a 4th grade thru 12th grade friendly website. Very nice!

When we returned back to our room to do more activities (this time about nutrition) we also had nursing students show up and we got to play around with needles and draw fake blood from a fake arm, give a shot, look in each other's ears, look at slides, and learn how to check blood pressure. Also very awesome.

Then sadly it was time to fill out evaluations about the conference because it is only the second year for this type of conference that was all put on by four teachers from the Intermediate Center School in Westfield, Indiana and funded by St. Vincent Hospital.

This was an extremely great conference and I am grateful to Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center for sponsoring me to take part in this conference.

On the way home I stopped by my cousin Annie's house and visited with her family and my aunt was there (Annie's mom) and made dinner. Also very yummy! Then I was back on the road by 8:45 pm and made it home around 11. It was a very long day, but also very rewarding!

Day Trip

Saturday was a nice day trip into Chicago to see the musical Wicked. I went with my sister, Laura, and my mom. We found out the the theatre was three blocks away from the South Shore train. So it was a quick and somewhat painless ride (the seats were really hard!) into Chicago. I really enjoyed the musical and cannot wait to read the book. I know that I should have read the book first but Rosie has the book and is not yet finished. I figured it will be a good read when I go to Germany in less than a month! Yippee!

Now I am doing laundry and packing for a health conference for teachers in Indianapolis on Tuesday and Wednesday. I really have no idea what the conference is about, but I know that we are spending the majority of Tuesday at St. Vincent Hospital and I get to see an MRI machine and get to spend time in a sugery room. I still am trying to figure out how this connects to teaching. Guess I will know more when I arrive in Indy tomorrow!

Got Stuff?

The garage sale that I had last Saturday was somewhat of a success. What didn't sell went directly to Goodwill. Jay and I packed up the car and took a whole car load to drop off. So that was a good thing to get all of that "stuff" out of the house. However I had all of these CDs of Laura's and mine that we just don't listen to anymore. Instead of donating them to Goodwill, I went through the 20+ cds and to see if I could sell them on Amazon. It turned out that just four of them are even worth to sell. Then I had to decide what to do with the rest of the 20 something cds. Then I remembered I could freecycle them. Freecycle is an online community group (the Michiana area) where you post things that you do not want anymore but do not want to throw them away. Well it was a success, about two minutes after I posted the cds I had numerous responses. I went with the first response and if I do not hear back from her I will proceed down the list. The best part is that the person will come pick them up! I highly recommend this site. Ihave gotten rid of some things before and it is much better than throwing things away! Here is the site http://groups.yahoo.com/group/southbendmishawakafreecycle/ Enjoy!!

Strawberry Thief

I have such beautiful strawberry plants in my garden. As I was going to the basement to grab more garage sale items, I look out my window and realize why I have half eaten strawberries in my garden. I guess Mr. Squirrel needs to eat also. I just wish it was somebody else’s garden.

Whirlwind

There has been a whirlwind of activity for the past two weeks. Last week was the end of school on Wednesday followed by the teacher’s meeting on Thursday where it was announced that I will be teaching 3rd grade next year. Then on Friday and Saturday I worked ND Reunion assisting with the seminars that took place on campus. This was a far better job then the one I worked last year that consisted of babysitting reunion people’s children for 15 hours a day. Never again will I partake in that job.

Then Monday and Tuesday of this week I had to find my way back to school to complete the moving of my classroom and empty out my 6th grade room. My new room is on the first floor back in a corner. I tell people that I should lose weight this coming school year because I am farther away from the teachers lounge! I moved a lot of stuff back home. Sometimes I wonder why in the heck did I spend my money on these extra teacher books….they looked cute and interesting at the time. This is another reason why I need to stay away from the teacher’s store. So my porch is overflowing with teacher stuff that I really need to go through and separate for the yard sale I am having on Saturday.

First I was having my yard sale over the Memorial Day weekend but things became too chaotic and plus is rained the entire weekend so I pushed it up to this Saturday. Well at first the weather predicted rain and as of last night there is no rain in sight. So it looks like my yard sale is on again. So I need to finish cleaning my room at my parent’s house (yes I never really cleaned out the room when I got married) and then I need to go through and price the stuff. So over the next three days this is what I will be doing. Then I can finally have a clean porch and start some improvements on the porch to make it look more relaxing.

Now believe it or not I decided Sunday night that the dining room and living room both needed to be painted because I was tired of looking at white walls plus we just got this cute light installed in the dining room and the room needed something else. So I went to Lowe’s on Monday and picked up some paint samples. Jay approved which one he liked then I went back to Lowe’s and got the necessary supplies to paint the dining room. So Monday night I was painting my dining room. Then last night I was painting my living room. Now I just need to paint the long wall that runs the length of both the living and dining room. That will hopefully be done this weekend because I cannot move the entertainment center by myself. Here are some pictures of before and after of both of the rooms (with my new digital camera!!):

Dining Room~Before and After

Living Room~Before and After





So I also now need to find some different curtains for the living room because the old gold ones will not go so well. I am leaning towards a creamy color in maybe a roman shade. So needless to say I am keeping myself busy maybe just too busy!