My last post was just before the start of school. I was signing my teaching contract. I remember it like it was just last year...
(this is the part where, if I were on a sitcom, the screen would go all fuzzy and we would have a series of pertinent flashbacks)
August, September, and October were a whirlwind. I was thrown into the deep end of the pool as a high school choir teacher, hired the week before teacher development. I *promise* you will get another post about my first year teaching, but there just isn't room in my confession to do it justice. Suffice it to say that while navigating the bog of teaching in a Title I school (economically disadvantaged), I was also navigating the steep precipice of alternative teacher certification; which is an unfortunate collection of paperwork, classes, online reading modules, and virtually pointless meetings.
**Let's also keep in mind that I was due to deliver baby #6 at the end of October**
So My oldest daughter started early-morning scripture study which starts at the ironically un-godly hour of 5:50 am. So my day started at 5:30, I would pick up 2 carpool kids and head to the church and race back home just in time to shower at 6am. Then I would wake the other kids and get them ready and do breakfast. Family scriptures start at 7 am, followed by herding all the cats out the door. Finally the bus route would start: drop offs at the middle school, elementary school, high school, then preschool before fighting my way onto the freeway for my own drive to school. After teaching all day, I would stop for early dinner before heading to my certification class, which ended at 9pm. I would come home exhausted, put up my swollen feet and do the reading assignment or work on the crazy craft project our certification teacher burdened us with. Thank goodness for a supportive husband who would take off work early to pick up kids from school, make them start homework, and feed them before I got home. My Saturdays were usually full of class again; or, on the rare occasion that I didn't have class, I was judging a choir competition. I was serious when I said that I couldn't wait until maternity leave so I could get some rest.
On my birthday I had the mind-numbing trifecta of choices between my kid's open house, certification class, or the open house at MY school.
I tried to get out of class, but they said I would just have to make it up, which would delay my certification. I tried to get out of the open house, but according to my principal, the only acceptable excuse was a job-related one, so I had to pull the class card. I finally gave up trying to clear the evening, because I knew that if I weren't someplace else, my kids would try to coax me to their open house "Just for a little while, mommy!". I chose certification class. At least there, I got some candy, a song, and free passes to Freebirds *one of my favorite places*. It wasn't birthday dinner with my husband, but of the available choices, not bad.
I worked right up to my due date and was finally induced the last Thursday of the month of October. This is significant, because it meant that I only had to take two days off before starting(unpaid) maternity leave. What do we know about unpaid leave? We know that it's always shorter than paid leave, no matter the situation. I took off the first three weeks in November, and my school district gives the whole week of Thanksgiving off, so that was my doctor's requisite recovery time and I was back in school December 1st.
After the holidays things slowed down a bit. Well, except for the fact that I had a newborn baby at home and a full time job. But there was no class after school and most of my Saturdays were free from work obligations. So, I didn't really have time to blog.
I don't really have time to blog now either. I have food to prepare, laundry to fold, my son's birthday to plan... the list is never ending. And when the mundane household chores are done and all of my kids have been taxied to their activities, I still have scrapbooks to catch up on (only one kid has a baby book and I'm only up to 2003), reading assignments for my Sunday School teaching, and, oh, somewhere in there I need to spend some time with my husband.
I recently heard someone say: "I don't really need to talk to my friends, because I read their blogs and I know what they're up to and I know they're all ok." So, you don't need to talk to me. I haven't fallen off the planet. I'm still ok. I'm still a mother of 6 with a million things on my agenda. I would blog about them, but it would take too long.
