Not lost, just vacationing

Heather's hounding me, and, even though she may be the only one who's realized that I've been missing, I'm posting now to let y'all know I'm still alive.

After much hemming and hawing, I decided to take a personal day today and head down to my parents' place on the Gulf in Destin. It's funny: I drove down here SO MUCH last year to visit Cal, and I never thought a thing of it. Last night, though? I thought the 5 hours in the car would never end.

I've got a stressful class this year, and I needed to get away. My plan of sleeping and reading and doing a whole lot of nothing, though, has been somewhat thwarted by my mother's ambitious attempt to fully and completely redecorate the condo in two weeks time. She warned me of this before I came, so no hard feelings. And she's been great about leaving me alone to do my own thing.

This week, they're painting the whole place (upstairs and down), putting in a chair rail, and measuring for new tiles. Next week is carpeting.

In the meantime, while workers are everywhere, Mom is painting trashcans/lamps/sculptures, cleaning artwork/frames, and applying Scotchguard to anything and everything she can find. It's okay, though; the only thing I've been recruited for so far has been to paint a little orange crab that no longer matched the red, yellow, and turquoise decor of the family room. Now he's orange and red and yellow.

The weather here is not optimal for beaching, but that's okay, too. There's been a report of a tornado touchdown in Panama City, a mere 30 miles east of here. The waves, usually nonexistent in the calm Gulf waters, are ripe for surfing, except for the occasional lightning, of course.

Another interesting facet of this whole vacation is that --after our first year of living 320 miles apart-- it's mine and Cal's first weekend without each other since he moved to Macon in early July. Scratch that, it's our first DAY without each other since he moved to Macon. As nice as it's been having him around, I think it was time (if not well past time) for both of us to reassert our independence for a few days. I told him not to enjoy my absence too much, but the gleam in his eye as he said he'd miss me told me that he was looking forward to my vacation as much as I was. And as long as he at least pretends like he was miserable during my time away, I couldn't care less!

So here I am, and here I'll stay until Sunday. I might go eat sushi tonight. I might go to the outlet mall tomorrow. I might go see some of Cal's old friends in Ft. Walton. Then again? I might do absolutely nothing, and enjoy every minute of it.

!!!

Elizabeth is in Hawaii during all this stuff!! She's visiting a friend who's working near Honolulu temporarily as a traveling nurse. I just spoke with Elizabeth's mom, and she said that they've talked to her and she's fine; they're out of power and have no food and all the stores are closed, though. How crazy!

She's at the beginning of her week-long vacation, so maybe things will calm down soon and she'll be able to enjoy it. What luck, huh?

The school-year's first milestone:

Having the "You might want to get your mamas to buy you deodorant" talk after the Homecoming pep rally. My room smells RANK.

The Latest 6th Grade Drama (and the last of three posts today)

I might be about to lose my job.

Yesterday, with 15 minutes left in 7th period, a parent walked into my Bible class in order to have an impromptu meeting about her son's English grade. Despite my best efforts to get her to come back at a more appropriate time, she stays throughout the rest of the period, taking my attention away from my class.

By the end of that 15 minutes, two of my students had managed to stick a paper clip into an electrical outlet, shocking themselves and leaving a black stain on the wall from the sparks that flew. My outlets are all blown. I have no clock, no overhead, no lamp to warm up my stark, sterile classroom.

5 minutes later I was telling my principal about it when the Dean of Discipline walks by and says, "Hey, I hear you had a fire in your room this afternoon." 20 minutes later, as I walk in Cal's classroom, a high school student that I've never even seen before asks if I'm Miss Terry, then says that he heard about the fire during 7th period.

My room has become a museum of sorts, with students of all ages stopping by at the door throughout the day to see the scene of the crime. "Which outlet was it?" a particular student will whisper to another, who promptly and gravely points to the black one across the room. They then leave, only to be replaced by another set of curious sightseers.

Ahh, the joys of teaching in a private school. I'm waiting for the parent phone calls to start.

Photo update

I realized the other day that I haven't updated any pictures since May. I know y'all have missed it, haha. Anyway, just thought I'd share a few, mostly of the newest addition to the Terry family:

My adorable neice Anna Claire... Go Dawgs!
The Vikings' newest baseball coach and me
Sweet Dad and his granddaughter
On the floor at Cal's house for Beth's Macon Birthday Weekend

Amy and Matt's dog, Indy, Anna Claire, and me.
Anna Claire tries to bite Cal

I'm obsessed with the map.

Okay. Dying of curiosity over here. Why in the world am I a hit in the South Pacific? It's looking like not only Malaysia/Indonesia/Singapore? now, but also the Philippines, nearest I can tell. Not to mention my American/Canadian(?) friends.

Any of you lurkers wanna speak up?

Attention grabber

This was my sophomore-year college roommate. Her fiance (now husband), Erik, lived with the guy that I was dating, and they were the couple with whom we always double-dated.

Seemingly-senseless things like this come as a shock to us when we are so young and feel so invincible. They remind us of life's brevity, and how, even in sadness, we can look forward to a perfect eternity where death and mourning will be no more.

Please pray for her husband, and that he will be able to trust in God's sovereignty even in this! He is left now with a 1-year-old daughter to raise by himself. Last I heard, he was working as a youth minister at a church in Dacula.

Oodles and Oodles of Noodles

Cal sent me an email this morning with a link to the middle school kids' latest obsession. They apparently howled with laughter when he played it after giving in to their incessant begging during 1st period. Strange little brains with weird little senses of humor they have. I think he's a bit worried about what he's gotten himself into with this new teaching gig, where hippopotamuses with noodles on their backs are the norm.

Enjoy! And good luck getting the song out of your head afterwards.

A childhood identity revisited

No longer am I known as "Lefty" at my tennis clinic. My coach realized last night that I am related to Amy Casper, former tennis coach at our school.

Now, I'm simply "Amy's sister".

If not Lance, then maybe Maria Sharapova*?

... or maybe not.

Against my better judgment, and in yet another attempt to find physical activity that I actually enjoy, I've signed up for a 4-week intensive beginner tennis clinic at the local tennis center.

The one perk? A free tennis racquet. How have I already used that perk to show my incompetence? I left it at the courts after practicing the other day.

Oh yes. I'm not lying. I didn't discover my embarrassing mistake until I pulled up to the parking lot of the tennis center the other day, five minutes before my class started. I had to borrow one from the front desk. I also had to explain very publicly to my coach (and director of the entire center) why I didn't have the one he gave me.

"Lefty**!" he shouts from across the net. "Why aren't you playing with the racquet I gave you?"
"Um, because I've lost it," I have to yell, sheepishly, back.
"Lost it? I just gave it to you last week!"
"I left it on the courts at my school after playing yesterday."
(accompanied by a look of disbelief) "Seriously?"
(accompanied by profuse blushing/blotchiness) "Well, um, at least you have proof that I was out practicing."

Right. Off to a great start.

*I didn't even know the name of the hot blonde that all the guys love. I had to ask Cal. He, of course, had to think about it a while before remembering her name. Right, Cal? RIGHT?????
**I have, for the duration of this four weeks, been stripped of my identity as "Miriam". I am nothing more than the only lefty on the courts.

Another one bites the dust. Sigh.

Take a look at Janet's latest news.

(Note to Janet: the "sigh" in the title of this post was just for effect. You know how I root for the Singleton, right? Well, I have to keep up pretenses. For Bridget's sake, of course. I really am happy for you.)

(Note to everyone else: Great. Another Smug Married.)

HURRAH!!!

Bridget!

Okay, owning these would be kinda gross and stalker-like, but it is pretty funny. I'm reminded of my hours spent in the American Embassy in London with nothing to entertain a distraught Rebecca and me but the adventures of our lurvely Ms. Jones.

Long live Bridget!

A National Hit (see map to the right)

OOoooooh!! Who's reading my blog in So. Cal? My friend Jacey, perhaps? She's the only one I know there, assuming Carrie's back from LA. And up in the Northeast? And Texas? And other spots that my red dots only so vaguely pinpoint? Apparently, I have some silent lurkers.

So fun!! Now, if only I can get Jenny to check my blog way over in Germany, I'll be world-famous!

(Thanks, Reba, for the map idea.)

Validation

Hip hip hurrah! Hip hip hurrah!

Parental Guidance Suggested

The following couple of informational pieces may not be suited for young children (or men of any age or my Very Southern Mother, who would not appreciate the immodesty). Beth, however, will probably love it:

There is, for some reason, a life-sized cardboard cutout of Michael W. Smith standing in the ladies' (single unit) bathroom in the teachers' lounge at school. I strongly feel the need to cover myself up the entire time that I'm, um, taking care of business. I also blush furiously. I mean, friends may be friends forever, Michael, but even my closest ones don't watch me pee. And the only time I've ever even seen you was at Atlanta Fest when I was in junior high. This bathroom coziness might be a little much, don't you think?

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Wednesday, at the gym, I was talking to one of the guys who runs the place. He teaches my Buttz and Gutz class (yes, they spell them with z's; it's not really a classy establishment, but it's cheap) on Monday nights and does a great job; I attribute a lot of my toning up over the last year to him. Anyway, he offered to show me around the weight room a little in order to give me some more variety in my routine. I took him up on it yesterday.

We were just starting out, and he was showing me how to do the whole bench press thing (which, by the way, is the one thing I told Cal that I didn't want to do, but oh well). I knew I was in trouble when he told me to scoot back on the bench so that my, uh, well, .... they rhyme with 'ripples' ... line up with the bar. If that didn't embarrass me enough, he then proceeded to tell me just exactly how much I needed to scoot. "Keep going, keep going, keep going... there! that's it!" Uh, yeah.

You know a man invented a particular system when it requires using those as a unit of measurement.

A new and more evil locker.

I fully and truly believe one thing: there will be no lockers in heaven.

Remember my first day of school story from three years ago? Remember how exhausted I was after my attempt to teach twenty 6th graders how to open locks? Let's just say that three years' experience hasn't helped any.

No, this year, as part of a building upgrade, we get locks that are built-in on the lockers. In theory, it's a great idea. The middle school bullies can't switch a poor kid's lock with someone else's, thus creating chaos during the four minutes we have between classes. Irresponsible students can't lose their locks and force the school to spend extra money replacing them.

However, the administration forgot to keep us, the four little unimportant 6th grade teachers, in mind when they made this decision. You see, the locks cause the lockers to lock. Automatically. You cannot get into a locker without knowing how to unlock a lock. And 6th graders are severely lacking in that ability.

After the Locker Fiasco of 2003, we decided to leave the locks off of the precious lockers until the kids were absolute experts at opening them. Problem solved. This year, however, not only did we have to teach them how to work the locks on the chaotic first day, but we had to teach them this skill at their lockers rather than in the relatively safe and comfortable confinement of our classrooms. Lockers that stretch, stacked one on top of the other, down a really long hall. A really long hall filled with 70 locker-giddy kids.

Giddy, that is, until they realized that they couldn't open their locks without listening carefully to their teachers.

We finally got it all settled with only a few remaining problems. We'd been given wrong combinations for a couple of the lockers, so those kids were out of luck for the day. Another student's lip trembled violently as I told him that the lock that had been installed upside down on his locker couldn't be fixed in the next 5 minutes. You think I'm kidding.

All of this craziness happened right around noon yesterday. It was a half-day, so I went home an hour later at 1, with the hall still filled with excited kids attempting (and mostly failing) to open their lockers so that they could decorate them with shelves and mirrors and stickers. The parents had shown up by that time, and grown men in business suits (obviously coming from work especially for this event) were breaking out their power tools and installing shelves. Leopard-trimmed mirrors -likely monogrammed, but I can't say for sure- littered the floor.

Janet called me at 3:15 when she left campus to tell me that several of the kids and their parents were still there working happily practicing the locks and decorating the 2-feet tall metal cubicles. THREE HOURS LATER.

Oh, if only I were exaggerating.

Re: Watch out, Lance Armstrong.

Yes, I did it. I bought a bike. It's actually this one, although the image above is the factory picture. But it's this model (a Trek 7.2 FX), color, and everything. Mine's been ordered in my correct size and will be here in a week.

I'm excited about it, even though it was a tough decision and a big purchase. What made me finally bite the bullet was realizing last night that the cost of the bike is, more or less, the amount I pay for a year of gym membership, and that doesn't seem so bad. And I hope this bike will last longer than a year.

Assuming, of course, that I have better luck on a bike than I do in a car. Right.

A thief in our midst

My classroom at school is very dull. I'm not into the whole stereotypical teacher mentality of "Oh, wow, your bulletin board looks GREAT... can you give me tips on mine?" Some folks go all out; you should see our elementary building, for example. It's a Martha Stewart haven, a veritable -and colorful- feast for the eyes of the young children who spend their days there. It's unbelievable.

My room? Gray concrete walls, with the occasional grammar poster that I picked up on clearance at the school supply store three years ago or when a teacher was getting rid of things.

Except for two things: in my room, I had two very cool artists' renderings of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Not the movie posters, mind you, but colorful and imaginative artwork. I was so excited when I ordered them off the Internet back when I started teaching. The kids love them and always speculate as to which characters each of the drawings represent.

Upon walking into my classroom this morning for the first time since June, however, I noticed immediately that they were gone. Gone! Everything else is right where I left it, including the thumb tacks that were holding the posters up.

I can't imagine the mindset of the person who would walk into someone's classroom and think, "Huh, those are pretty cool pictures, I think I'll take them." Anyway, I was pretty sad about it. Probably irrationally sad. I sent an all points bulletin for them over the school listserv.

Don't worry, I mentioned in my email that I realize and accept my status as a nerd, revealed in my begging for the return of my Lord of the Rings posters. Oh well. If my colleagues didn't know it already, it's time they learn.

So... if any of you come across some cool LotR posters, send them my way, will ya?

Watch out, Lance Armstrong.

Ever heard the phrase, "Oh, it's just like riding a bike!"? It means something's easy, right? Like once you figure it out, you'll never not know how. When people say it, they're usually dismissing your concerns about whether or not you can do a particular activity.

I beg to differ with those folks.

If someone were to come up to me today and tell me that something was "just like riding a bike," I'd feel a sense of dread in the pit of my stomach. My face might go pale or my knees weak as I started to equate the upcoming event with something difficult, like, oh I don't know... hunting down and killing Osama bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan.

Over the past year, I've been trying to find some form of physical activity that I actually enjoy, something that will help me to look forward to the time of exercise that I currently dread everyday. I have never been an athlete; I'm fairly uncoordinated, and I'm as slow as a turtle. I have nightmares about being lapped by the other kids as we ran around the playground in 3rd grade PE. I was always picked last for kickball teams, and I'm the only one of my sisters who has ever broken a bone. I've broken four.

In other words, finding a sport that I enjoy is gonna take some time.

My latest attempt is riding bikes. The last time I rode a bike I was in the 2nd grade and I fell off and broke a wrist and busted my chin. I can still remember sitting in my Brownies meeting with my chin all bandaged up and a cast on my arm. Not a fond memory.

However, I decided that I should give it another try. I mean, it's a bike, right? Little kids do it. Surely I can ride a bike. It'll be just like, uh, riding a bike. (ha!)

Two weeks later, and I'm just in from my third go 'round. My legs are trembly, my breathing is labored, and my heart is beating a million times per minute. Oh! and I have scrapes on my pinky finger and my forearm where I ran into a stone archway thing as I was trying to turn a sharp corner. Better my arm getting beat up than Cal's bike, right? Right.

I'm not giving up, though. No sir. I will keep at this in the same way that I've (miraculously) stuck with the gym for an entire year. I will press on with tennis, too, and sign up for a beginner's clinic at the local tennis center this Fall so that patient friends won't have to keep putting up with my emotional breakdowns on the courts as they try to teach me the basics. (Yeah, okay, so I cried the first time we went to play. Stop laughing.)

Maybe, one day, I'll buy a bike of my own. For now, I think I'll take a tylenol and a nap. My pinky finger hurts.

My summer, in bullet format.

• Books read: 6
• Best (or at least most thought-provoking) book read: Blue Like Jazz. I've been wanting to read it for some time, and I'm glad I did. Most of y'all probably read it long ago. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
• Best purchase: My lilac vintage dress, found while shopping in Athens with Rebecca, who convinced me (so rightly) to buy it. I love it.
• Most exciting event: Cal moving in down the street.
• Most fear-inducing event: Cal moving in down the street.
• Most convenient coincidence: Rebecca's plans to come to Athens on the same weekend that I wanted to go.
• # of Chick-fil-A Cookies-n-Cream milkshakes consumed: Countless
• # of gym visits: 3
• # of pounds gained: 5
• # of pounds to be lost before Courtney's fun, formal wedding reception on Sept 9: 10 (ha!)
• Strangest and cheesiest weekend: Yearbook Camp in Atlanta. I'm not lying. 3 days of Yearbook hype. Gag me with a spoon.
• Churches attended: 6, five of which were in Macon. The search for a Baptist/Presbyterian compromise continues.
• Trips planned: 7
• Trips taken: 3, not including those back and forth to Florida and Thomasville while the move was going on at the beginning of the summer. One to Athens, one to Atlanta (for the yearbook camp), and one to Sautee in NE Georgia to visit my grandparents.
• Regrets: None! I wouldn't have changed a thing!