A Terrible Awful No Good Very Bad Day

Alexander and I had a pretty similar day today.

No, I did not wake up with gum in my hair nor eat lima beans for dinner and my best friend didn't desert me....but like Alex, I did have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  

It all started Sunday to be honest.  I woke up with that God Awful feeling that you know strep is coming around the corner, ready to attack.  My throat was on fire and by the end of the day, that early sick feeling was coming.  So, like Dr. Jill requested, I gargled my hot salt water, took an Advil PM (that was my own prescription) and passed out by 8:00.  I woke up this morning feeling a little better, but when I got to school, I noticed my throat was scratchy.  ( I didn't notice until school, because I have no other Human contact before 7:00 usually, so of course I don't talk aloud).   Awesome, I get to spend all day with a scratchy throat.  Good thing my kids were doing a reading and doing a group activity and I didn't have to speak all day.  Well, group activities normally go great with my kids, since they have the attention span of a 3 year old and they can't focus on a 45 min. lecture.  But today was different.  They couldn't focus at all.  All they had to do was sit down, read and answer 14 questions.  14!!!!!!!!!!!! Not a whole lot.  I even told them that they would see all 14 of these questions in some way, shape or form on the test they have on Wednesday.  WEDNESDAY.  14 TEST QUESTIONS!  No, they wouldn't focus for long enough to do their darn work.  (Side note: I do have some awesome, hard workers who I definitely take notice and appreciate) That frustrated the BAJEEZES out of me.  So, tomorrow we are going over all of the information, old school powerpoint style.  At least I have pretty pictures to show them.  Anywho, after lunch I was so side tracked with trying to get kids to focus and getting other students their make-up work from last week, that I forgot to lock my phone back up.  BIG MISTAKE.  After the final bell rang, I finally made it back to my desk only to notice that my phone had disappeared into the sticky hands of a little darling.  I was PISSED.  I checked EVERYWHERE and it was nowhere to be seen.  I even went back into other teacher's rooms, the bathroom, the work room, the AP's office in our wing, NADDA.  So I cancelled my old man of an I-Phone, cried my way to my mom's house to pick up my 5 year old Ghetto-fabulous Samsung and drove to the AT&T store.  When I got there I was excited to hear that my contract was up and I was actually due for an upgrade.  So, I thought about it and decided it was time anyway to upgrade my 3G to a 4S.  That is a HUGE leap in software.  I just went from an Oldsmobile to a Mercedes in phones.  At the end of the day, I was excited to have a new phone, but very disappointed with my students.  I have no idea how to motivate them, and I'm frustrated because I care so much, put so much effort into teaching them and they don't even care.  I say they, but really only mean a small percentage.  I hate how a small number of kids can be so exhausting.


I definitely had a case of the Mondays.

 Please God I pray that this week will go more smoothly.

32 Truths of Life

My co-worker sent this out  and I think I have read it before somewhere else, but I want to share the 32 Truths of Life with you. 

32 truths of life……

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

3. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

5. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

6. Was learning cursive really necessary? (my MeMe and I had this conversation on Christmas Day and we decided......It totally is)

7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on #5. I'm pretty sure I knowhow to get out of my neighborhood.

8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blu Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.



13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

14. "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this - ever.

15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello?), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voice mail. What did you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?

16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

17. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

18. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.


19. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin

 with Miller Lite than Kay.

20. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.

21. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the heck was going on when I first saw it.

22. I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.   (I owe this to living in the dorm for 3 years)

23. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I'm trying to finish a text.

24. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

25. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?

26. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

27. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

28. Is it just me or do high school kids get dumber & dumber every year?

29. There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

30. As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists. (This one I don't agree with)

31. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

32. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time!   

Self Esteem

So My dad decided that he is going to have a cameo position on my blog.  I said, "Let's do it!" because he is one wise man and we think a lot alike.  Ok, lets be real, we read each other's minds.  So, here is Dave Roberson................

During the Holiday Season, which now seems to run from the weekend before Thanksgiving until the weekend after New Years Day, you seem have more down time than the rest of the year.  You find yourself with family and friends and have time to wander into topics that you may not during the rest of the year.  It was during one of these days of having some down time that I got into a discussion about people in general and self esteem in particular.  It caused me to think, when did self esteem become such a big deal?  Or better yet, why was it invented?  When I was young, that was during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, I never remember anyone worrying about my self esteem.  When I did something wrong I got whacked and was told not to do that again.  Seemed like a simple choice for me going forward, change my behavior or get whacked again.  During the holidays I spent some time with the next older generation.  I asked some of those who grew up during the FDR Administration if anyone ever remembered someone being concerned about their self esteem.  The answer again was no.  So, when did self esteem enter the culture?  Seems I now had a quest.

Let’s start with a definition.  I opened my 1976 American Heritage Dictionary to page 1176 and found one of the shortest definitions in the dictionary, self-esteem n. Pride in oneself.  Well now that is interesting.  With pride being number one among the seven deadly sins, does this sound like something we want to heap upon our children?  But maybe back in the primitive years of the Ford Administration we really did not have a full understanding of self esteem.  I mean, man was just learning how to stand upright and starting to venture outside of the cave.  So I took a look at what modern pop culture says about self esteem.  I keyed it into Wikipedia on Al Gore’s great invention and wow! 35 years makes a world of difference.  It now takes several pages to say “pride in oneself”.  But just like your favorite infomercial on cable television there’s more.  It adds a belief system, an evaluation process, and on and on.  There is however one little piece of information that Wikipedia puts in its Introduction that I find very informative.  “It is not the “facts” about one-self but rather what one believes to be true about one-self (Sarah Mercer, p. 14). Early researchers used self-concept as a descriptive construct, such as ‘I am an athlete’ (Rosenberg 1979).”  So it is comforting to know that when you are evaluating yourself facts do not matter.  If you are 40 pounds overweight you should not immediately jump to the conclusion that you are fat, but rather, if you want to preserve your self esteem, you could say that you occupy a greater presence on this earth than those who are not 40 pounds overweight.  It is also instructive as to why the 1976 definition was so short.  Early research did not even start until 1979.

What does this mean?  To me it means that self esteem is a luxury of a very pampered, “me focused” culture.  When you fight for survival each and every day you have no time nor desire to evaluate yourself; you just want to make it to tomorrow.  But when you have plenty of food in your belly (especially if someone else provides it), a warm bed to sleep in at night, and plenty of time on your hands, you can sit around and worry about your self esteem.  And it is my guess that  the more you focus on yourself, the less you are worried about those around you.  When parents raise their children with a focus on their self esteem, the world starts to revolve around the child.  When the child grows to adulthood, what kind of value system will that child have?  My guess is not a very healthy one.  You might invent financial schemes that greatly enrich yourself to the detriment of others.  You might vote for leaders that promise goodies that other people have to pay for.  And when you have an entire nation of people worried first and foremost what is in it for them, you have a nation that is probably headed for the history book.

To summarize.  From the beginning of humankind (whenever that was) until the end of World War II, no one seems to have worried about self esteem.  In our part of the world we were too busy building a country, re-building it again after the Civil War, climbing out of a Depression and saving the world from facism.  In fact, one could say self esteem was not even a favorable attribute.  When people encountered problems, they faced it.  Popular phrases were “may the best man win” and “he was the last man standing”.  And as I recall, our country was considered by most as the greatest the planet had ever seen.  Then a new normal began to take over the mainstream culture.  Excellence and winning were replaced by attending and trying.  We created games with no winners or losers in which everyone gets a trophy, taught to the lowest performing students, and spoke no critism of anyone or anything.  The result is that we are not raising the next “Greatest Generation”, but rather we birthed the “Occupy Movement”.  Do you hear anybody talk about personal accountability?  I do not.  But let’s hope the Chinese, who do excel and try to win and who also own most of our nation’s debt, will be sensitive to our self esteem.

Self Esteem – Who invented it and why did it become such a big deal?

By Dave Roberson