Sunday, December 10, 2006

The Hallway is Green

My first week of work went well overall. I feel caught up on most things in my classroom (only a few papers to grade tonight!), and I'm pretty sure I've gotten all of the first names of my students down cold. I hope I don't meet them outside of my room anytime soon, but in the room, in their seats, I'm good.

After the Jesup tree-lighting on Friday evening (if you didn't hear Kile tell Santa over the loudspeaker that he wants Lighting McQueen for Christmas, you're one of very few who did not) my energy level took a little dip when I put Cavanaugh to bed. She kept squeaking in her typical diva-like "how dare you leave me alone" way, so I put my jams on with her and lay down on our bed...next thing I knew it was 3 am and I'd already had nearly seven hours of sleep. Clearly the energy came back, however, since Saturday was a flurry of Christmas shopping, cleaning, laundry (in fairness, Mom did the laundry and I watched), organizing, and yes, I painted the hallway green, something Eric noticed when he came home from Des Moines at about 2am. Fortunately he didn't touch it because he would have found it still a bit tacky since I finished at a bit before 1.

I'm feeling good again today, enjoying reading on my new porch (which starts my brain on another tangent... that's below), catching up with my parents, and only experiencing minor tingling in my toes (a side effect of my chemo). Hopefully next week will go as well and the tingling won't progress much more!

Ok, tangent -- I can't keep calling my new porch "the new porch." It's totally enclosed, has heat, lots of windows and is approximately 4 feet wide by 25 feet long. I'm taking suggestions for new names. I've already rejected sunroom because, face it, it's a glorified hallway, glorious though it is (it was 85 in there this afternoon with the sun!). Currently it is also housing our Christmas tree and my book which I'm now going to get back to...

Carpe diem. - Trela