mashed potato pants & polka dot hands...

...are the life of a PPCD teacher. I come home covered in paint, glue, marker, food, and miscellaneous other things every day. I deal with dirty diapers, tears, and kids who never stop talking. I get told to "shut the f**k up" and handle temper tantrums that last an hour and involve furniture being thrown, and yet, I absolutely love my job! Yes we have a routine, but every day at work is a completely different day. One day the kids might be angels, the other they may act like wild beasts. But I can promise you this, I never, ever have a boring day at work!

growing pains

Rather than packing, I'm updating. So fitting but funny, since nobody really knows about this thing. In a way I kind of like it; I'm getting it out without really telling anybody (yet).

Moving has become too overwhelming. Probably because it's the first big change I've made in my life in a really long time. I went to college 20 minutes down the road from my parents. I lived with pretty much the same roommates all of college, and kept a lot of the same friends. I went through a lot of jobs, but always had orientation there as a constant. This time around I'm done with grad school, I'm moving to a city where I don't really know anyone, starting a job I don't feel prepared for, Sean's staying in Austin, etc etc. I'm way too organized to have all of this chaos in my life at once, so I feel completely off balance.

And me being off balance isn't pretty. I'm overly moody about everything lately, and I just feel like I'm out of control. My friends are good intentioned and remind me that it's gong to be fine, and that I'm just experiencing "growing pains". And while I know that this is all true, I just can't seem to get it in perspective.

I was going to go to Houston today and meet my principal and take some pictures of my classroom, which I was actually really excited about (probably the first time I've been excited about the move since I got the job offer). Unfortunately, tropical storm (or is it a hurricane now) Edouard has everyone in Houston in a panic, and everything is shut down. I'm pretty bummed because I was hoping to get a lot of questions answered today, before training on Monday. That would've put me a little at ease, at least about the teaching part.

It'll all work out in the end I know, but right now moving is the last thing I want to be doing. What happened to the vacation part of summer?!

i'm not dreaming anymore

If you would've told me a year ago that I would be moving to Houston to be a PPCD teacher in less than a week, I probably would've laughed at you. But here I am, surrounded by boxes in my apartment and working on my teacher website. Funny how things turn out.

I have a masters in special education, so I should be overly prepared to teach. But I'm not. Try terrified. At the rate I'm going I'll be lucky if I make it to my first day! There's so much to do before then and since I don't know where to start, I don't.

I bought a clock for my classroom, and some books, flashcards, some super cute finger puppets. That's about the extent of my planning so far. Boy oh boy..

More later, but for now it's back to packing.