It has been a long time since I've been this depressed.  I guess that feeling like you have no control over your life and that almost everybody you know doesn't REALLY give a damn about you and is only using you to get what they want will do that to a person.
I would give anything right now to be able to find a job that I would love, that pays fairly well, and has decent benefits.  I know I probably can't find one that pays what I am making now, but a drop in pay would be worth it if I could feel like anybody at that job cared at all about me and would give me just a bit of respect. I guess that if Iived in a large city, there might be a small hope of being able to  find  something, but here in this hellishly hot, tiny place full of people with tiny brains and a hugely inflated sense of their value on this earth, where they think that you are worthless if you weren't born in freaking Holtville, there is very little chance.  I just pray that Roger really will be able to retire in a couple of years and that we van move away.  Even if I still had to teach in the new place, at least I would be away from here.  But, let's be frank, even if he does retire, we will never be able to move. We would have to get both of our houses cleaned up and sold and there is no way that that will EVER happen.   So I am at the mercy of these stupid farm people who have no reason to think they are God's gift to the earth, but do so anyway.and who delight in  seeing how rude and unfair and bitchy they can be to me! The hatred I feel for them right now is alarming.

Ugliness is Always Ugly

When I was a young girl, I was molested.  Not just once, but many times.  My grandmother never knew.  My father only found out when I told him years and years after the fact.  There is really nothing more to say.  It happened.  I cannot take it back.  But I HAVE been able to move forward in my life, in spite of those events.

When I was in my 30's, I was at the Eagle Rock Plaza, standing in the center court of the mall.  For some reason, my eyes were drawn to a man standing on the other side of the court.  I looked at him and my heart almost stopped.  Could it really be him?  He had to have been in his 50's all those years ago.  I figured he must be dead by now.  But, no.  It was really him.  The man who had caused me so much pain, shame, and hatred was standing there, in the flesh.  He was very old,  I would guess in his 80's.  What hair he had left was completely white.  He looked frail.  I was a grown woman.  I could have walked over there and beat him to a bloody pulp.  But, the moment I realized for sure that it was him, I was taken back.  I was a little girl, unable to wrest myself from his grip, unable to make him stop.  I literally ran from the mall to my car, crying and shaking and scared.  I struggled to calm myself down and, as soon as I could, I drove out of there and went home.  At home, I cried some more.  At the same time, I was filled with amazement.  After all of the years that had passed, after the years of therapy, after all of that, just the sight of him could turn me back into a crying, terrified little girl.  His victim.  It was a shock. 

I have had one of the best summers of my life this year.  I have spent a lot of time with Roger.  We have spent time with friends and traveled a bit and have had a wonderful time.  The icing on the cake was being able to attend the Barbershop Harmony Society Convention with my dad.   I know that I would have enjoyed it quite a bit if just Roger and I had gone.  But, having my dad there to share the experience meant the world to me.  Seeing his excitement and being able to talk about all of the details and nuances of the music and the performances --- it was just so awesome! 

During the summer, I have also had the opportunity to meet a couple of times with our new school superintendent and our new principal.  I have been very impressed with their positive attitudes and their determination to put the past behind us and go forward to make our school a great school.  At every meeting the new superintendent has said, "Please know that when I talk about making something better, that is NOT to be taken as a criticism of any past administrators."  If anybody has tried to bring up the events of the past year or so, he has politely, but emphatically, shut them down.  He does not allow gossip or negativity to enter the conversation.  I have a HUGE amount of respect for him, for that alone.  Both he and the new principal have been very kind and respectful of me and made me feel valued as a teacher and a staff member.  I KNOW they have heard all kinds of vile lies about me, but they have not given me any indication that any of that matters.  I have truly been feeling positive and excited about starting the new school year.  I have felt safe and valued.  It has felt good to feel those things, and good to see and feel that the other members of the staff have been feeling the same way. 

Today was the annual "Welcome Back" luncheon for the staff.  As usual, all the retired staff was invited to attend the luncheon and many of them did come, including the 5 retired teachers who caused such hell and division and strife and hatred in our school for the past 2 years.  Now, for some reason, I had not even given a thought to the fact that they would most likely be at the luncheon today.  I have not given those witches a thought for months.  I have been relishing the peace and unity that the entire staff seems to be sharing.  I have been visualizing the new school year as a time when a caterpillar who has been all alone in a very dark place is now able to break free and fly into the light as a beautiful butterfly, leaving behind the shell of that black prison to flit from one fragrant flower to another.  Today, however, a thick, dark cloud descended upon me as I saw the hateful women of last year.  When the first one walked by me, I said, "Good morning."  I did not smile or run to embrace her, but I DID try to be civil.  She gave me the dirtiest look and walked right by me without a word.  If I had to guess, I would imagine that a surgeon cutting open her body cavity would find it full of black coal and spiders and cockroaches, swimming in bubbling, foul-smelling sewer muck.  She is one of the most truly evil, hateful people I have ever known. 

For the duration of the day -- through the luncheon and the insurance meetings and all of it -- I was stunned to realize how just seeing those vile women was affecting me.  The butterfly was gone.  I was taken back to the teacher of the last two years: angry, afraid, worried, emotional, and filled with hatred.  The other teachers, who used to be friends with the coven, seemed different to me too.  I felt afraid to talk to them, afraid of what they might be saying to the witches, afraid of what they were being told about me.  Instead of flying, I was walking on eggshells again.  I did not feel safe. I felt panic and terror.  Just as I did those years ago in the Eagle Rock Plaza, I left school as soon as I legally could and came home, hoping to escape the darkness.  But some of it, at least, has lingered with me.  How could this happen?  I was feeling so incredibly good, but now?  I know that I have to let this go, to get back to the butterfly that I was just a day ago, but even here at home, I find myself crying and distraught.  What if the other teachers all revert back to their caterpillars of last year?  How can I face another year of fear and suspicion and worry?  I am going to work to get myself out of the blackness that those women brought with them today and return to the light where I, and all of the people at Meadows, should be and deserve to be.  I cannot abide the thought that those vile, evil women can still control the school or control me.  I do NOT want to dig up the ugly, rotting flesh that was last year.  We buried that at the end of the school year.  We have had the entire summer to let the grass grow over the plot and start to look as if that grave had never been dug.  All of that needs to stay right where it is: in the past, in the ground, outside of our view.  I pray that it can be so.

Another New Beginning

In a few more weeks, school will begin again. Two years ago, we began again with a new superintendent/principal named Mrs. Theis. After two years of a certain segment of the teaching staff putting Mrs. Theis -- as well as those of us who supported her -- through total hell, she is gone.   Five of the horrible, evil teachers who caused so much discord, dishonesty, and divisiveness on our campus retired last June, thank heavens!  There are still 3 or so left, but I do not think that they can do as much harm without their other five cohorts.  (At least I hope they cannot.)
So we are starting new AGAIN.  This time, we have a new superintendent and a new principal.  Many of the teachers have changed grade levels and we even have one new teacher as well as one who has come back after not teaching at Meadows last year.  As I think about this year, I am envisioning a caterpillar that has been in a very dark, lonely chrysalis and who is now finally ready to emerge and be a beautiful butterfly and flit and float on the air without a care.  I am PRAYING that this will be the case. 
I have met the new superintendent, Mr. Phillips.  So far, I am feeling good about him.  He seems to have some good ideas on discipline and grading that I am anxious to know more about.  He seems to be fair and willing to listen to teachers and work with them. 
I have also met the new principal, Mrs. Heraz.  I am not feeling as positive about her, although I am obviously going to need to give myself more time to really get to know her before I form an opinion.  She is very young, has never been a principal or even a vice-principal, and reminds me of several other teachers I know who are tall, thin, beautiful, rich, and cannot imagine a life where everyone is not the same way. 
I am staying in 6th grade.  I really had such a good year last year and am hoping that this year will be even better.  I learned a lot after teaching 6th grade for one year and think that I can do even better the second time around.  This year, I will be teaching language arts and history.  Mrs. Griffith, my partner, will be teaching science and math.  We will both teach PE and ELD to our own classes.  I really enjoyed teaching history last year and am grateful to still have that subject.  I have never taught 6th grade language arts, but hopefully, it will go well.
I remember the first official staff meeting with Mrs. Theis two years ago.  I was SO excited by her enthusiasm and her plans for our school.  But the majority of the teachers had made up their mind to hate her before she even stepped foot into her office.  I do NOT want to be like them and have a bad attitude about Mr. Phillips and Mrs. Heraz before they even have a chance to show us what they can do.  But I have to be honest and say that I miss Mrs. Theis.  She was so encouraging and supportive of me.  She was always there to give me ideas, listen to me, and cheer me on.  I hope that I can do it without her.
I am trying to come up with a theme for my classroom this year.  I am considering pirates, but am not totally sure.  But I think it would be good to have a theme to use as a focus for goal-setting and activities.

Lover of ALL Things "Office"

I can trace my love of office supplies -- notebooks, pens, pencils, colored paper, markers, and the like -- back to the earliest days of my childhood.  The man who lived across the street from us offered Grandma boxes and boxes of computer printer paper.  This was the kind with the holes down both sides of the paper and the pages that were all connected together.  The paper had wide green and white lines on it.  Grandma did not care about that, though;  free was free and she gladly accepted the paper.  The paper was legal sized, so she cut the pages in half, tore off the side with the perforated holes, and used the other side of holes (which were not perforated and not as easy to remove) to sew together a book with yarn.  She made TONS of books like this for me and for my two cousins who spent lots of time at our house during the summer.   The oldest of the two cousins, Kellie, was a die hard Osmond fan like I was.  We spent many hours, writing stories about the Osmonds in our books, then reading them aloud to each other and to anyone else who would listen.  We laughed and laughed at our own jokes.   We tried our hands at illustrating.  In short, we had a blast. 

Of course, our notebooks we also used for other drawings, writing notes and letters.  We used markers, crayons, different colors of ball point pens, colored pencils, and anything else we had on hand, to create some beautiful work in those pages.   I read the book Harriet, The Spy and was further inspired to put my every thought down on paper.  I never felt like my writing was as good or as exciting as Harriet's though.   Those boxes of computer paper lasted a long time -- several years, if I am not mistaken -- and I remember those books with fondness.

After the computer paper notebooks were gone, I moved on to spiral-bound notebooks, like the kind I got for school.  I used these as journals.  Now, rather than write stories about the Osmonds, I wrote about myself.  The drama of life when you are 15, 16, or 17-years old is perfect for filling many tomes.  There was gossip about people at school, boys I liked, girls I didn't like, math I didn't understand, cats that died, dresses I wore to different activities......Sadly, all of these childhood and high school journals were destroyed when my brother took a bride, moved into my old bedroom, and deposited my belongings in a shed in the backyard that had no floor (it sat directly on the dirt) and was not at all waterproof.  I still feel pain when I think of it!

As a college student and, later, an adult, I have continued to write in journals.  At this point, it is more like an addiction.  Sometimes, I do not even really know what to say, only that I have a need to write.  I also use my journals as sort-of scrapbooks.  I have TONS of real scrapbooks, but my journals hold the smaller pieces of my life: ticket stubs from movies, fortunes from Chinese dinners, clippings from magazines I liked, post cards and letters sent from loved ones, and, most importantly, a LOT of glitter, sparkle, and bling.  (I never met a shiny thing I didn't like! lol!) 

About ten years ago, I started making my own journals out of composition notebooks.  It was fun to decorate them any way I wanted, in any color I wanted -- usually pink.  I could put as many embellishments in as I wanted and glue pages together to create pockets.  I still love using those journals and love making them as well.  One year, I made 40 of them to give as Christmas presents to ladies at my church.  But despite loving those journals, I still have purchased notebooks that I used for other purposes.  I have notebooks to take notes in at church, a notebook with thick, wonderful watercolor paper pages that I use strictly as an art journal, a series of notebooks I use at my job as a school teacher, all neatly labelled: "Staff Meetings", "Grade-Level Meetings", "Anecdotal Notes on Students", "Meetings with Superintendent", "Notes on Technology", etc. 

Right now, my favorite notebooks to purchase are Rhodia books because the paper is just such a nice thickness and smoothness -- my pens glide over the pages.  I totally think that the ease with which I can write on Rhodia pages makes my handwriting look even prettier.  I also like Leuchturm notebooks, but I get the plain pages rather than the ruled because my writing is rather large and does not fit the lines in their books.   In either case, I buy the 6X81/2 in models because they are easy to write in while sitting on your lap and they fit in my bag easier than larger models. 

Here are three examples of composition notebooks I've made into journals.  As I mentioned before, I love pink and bling.

 

Here are a couple of my journals that I purchased, rather than made. 

 

 

Cross One Off The Old Bucket List!

This weekend, I found the latest issue of Green Crafts magazine at COSTCO.  I'd made a submission to them, hoping to have it published in this issue.  I had not heard anything back with regards to my submission, but I bought the magazine because I usually do, and started looking through it.  To my great surprise and joy, there I am on page 132!   I had submitted an idea for an embellishment for note cards, scrapbooks, etc.  made out of security envelope paper.  The pictures they showed are not that great, especially considering that I mailed them the actual cards, not just photos I'd taken.  However, it is still a huge thrill for me to see my name there! 

 

The Magazine cover

The article and the picture of my notecards 

 

 

 

My name and e-mail at the bottom.  The picture came out blurry, but you can tell it's me!

 

 

Just Let Me Do It!

Today was a school assembly to congratulate the students on the improved state test scores last year.  Our theme for last year had been "Rising Up" and for this year it is "To Infinity and Beyond!"  As usual, I wrote new words to a song (The song was "Greased Lightning" from the movie/musical "Grease") for the teachers to perform at the assembly.  As usual, I was pleased with the song and had visions of how wonderful and fun it was going to be to perform.  Well, to put it mildly, it was horrible!  Although I tried to drum up some excitement among the teachers, we only had two rehearsals where anyone actually came to learn and practice the song.  At the first rehearsal, a teacher whom I shall call Diane came and said, "Oh, I can't sing and do the dance at the same time!"  She proceeded to leave.  She did not come to the second rehearsal, so I figured she was not going to participate.  Another teacher, whom I shall call Rita, came to the second rehearsal.  Rita irritates the heck out of me on a good day, but her propensity to make up her own choreography instead of sticking to what I have taught the rest of the group to do, always makes me mad.  Rita is, in a word, a Diva.  She LOVES to steal the show. 
So after just two rehearsals, I went to school this morning, still hoping for a good performance.  When I got there, I found that the music we'd used for our rehearsals was not available to download and play at the assembly.  A different instrumental version of the same song had been found and was to be used.  I figured it would not matter that much.  After all, it was the same song.  However, the instrumentation and the cues to begin the verses were just different enough to be confusing.  Of course, not having time to preview the music, I only found this out during the performance itself. 
The time for the performance came.  I went up to the front with the other teachers.  The music began and I began to sing the song as best I could.  Apparently Diane thought I wasn't doing well enough because she grabbed the second microphone and began to sing along with me.  Sadly, she did not know the tune at all and was basically just singing in a monotone.  This not only rattled me but angered me.  What the heck is she doing?!?!?, I thought.  I messed up on some of the lyrics because, rather than pay attention to the words, I was upset listening to the flat, unpleasant sounds coming from Diane's mic.  I glanced around to the other teachers and noted, with displeasure, that Rita was just dancing away and making a spectacle of herself.  She was NOT, however, doing the choreography that we'd rehearsed.  To me, one of the best things about a group number is seeing all the members of the group dancing TOGETHER.  Think of the scene in "Dirty Dancing" when Patrick Swayze leads the entire ensemble as they dance up to the stage where "Baby" is waiting.  Think of Janet Jackson's "Rythym Nation" video.  Having one oddball just off doing her own thing just takes away from the whole thing. 
I had asked one of the other teachers, who was not singing and dancing with us, to videotape the number for me.  "Maybe," I thought, "It wasn't as awful as I thought." One viewing of the video, however, confirmed that it was not only as awful as I thought, but was even WORSE.  I was depressed and angry about it all day.
When I do something, I want to do it right.  I want it to be impressive and successful.  I just HATE that I was up there this morning, looking like a total idiot while these other women felt the need to just take over my number.  I WANT to say I will never do anything for that school again; that I will never sing or dance or write a song for them or participate in any programs.  I wish I could say that and stick to it, but I know I won't.  I keep getting too many ideas of songs and musical numbers that would be so great and so fun to do!  And, the truth is, they really WOULD be fun if people would just let me do it and not try to change things right in the middle of a performance.  I do NOT like to be humiliated like that. 
Roger said, "Well, you could have just put down your mic and walked off when Diane started singing but then you would have looked like you were sulking."  I probably WOULD have looked like I was sulking but I wish SO MUCH that I'd thought of that and done it.  At least now I know what to do next time. 

6th Graders are Pretty Cool!

Well, I am really enjoying my mornings teaching 6th grade.  I have two periods of science and two periods of history -- all with the 6th grade students.  They are quite chatty and noisy, which I am really trying to get under control, but I really do enjoy them.  I really have such love in my heart for them, particularly the ones I know well from having taught them in previous years. I feel like I can really make a difference in many of their lives and like I can really talk to them honestly about things.  So my mornings are essentially good. 
After lunch is when things fall apart for me.  I have ELD (Although I am not supposed to call it ELD because of some compliance issue, so I am now calling it Oral Language), Speech and Debate, and Study Hall.  These three are all classes with 6th, 7th, and 8th graders combined.  I know quite a few of the 7th and 8th grade students because I had them in previous years as well, but I am not loving them as much as the 6th graders.  The 7th and 8th graders are so rude and defiant and obnoxious and I just dread the afternoons so much!  I am trying to do all of the things that Mrs. Theis suggests for these three groups, but it just seems like the kids absolutely could not care less about school or anything I try to do, no matter how fun I think it might be.