Busy, busy, busy

There are so many other things that I need to be doing right now, but if I don't take just a second to write some of it down, I might go crazy!!!

My goal two years ago was to become an active participant in the TWT's Slice of Life Challenge.  I fell behind in March and gave up.  Last year I gave it another try, and SUCCESS!!! I wrote every day in March, posted, and commented!  What a feeling!  I was so excited and so pleased, I decided I'd expand my goal and become a regular contributor year-round.  And then the summer happened.

What Happened This Summer
-Strength and Conditioning camp
-We moved
-That involves packing
-And cleaning the old house
-And cleaning the new house
-And unpacking
-My grandmother was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor
-My mom and I went to Ireland for a week
-I went to Coaching School for a week
-My grandmother died while I was gone
-Funeral for grandmother
-Volleyball camp
-Two-a-days
-Practice, games, and tournaments
-Professional development
-School started

I feel like my whole life is happening at a full sprint all the time.  Even on my day off there is too much to be done.  The house needs cleaning, the pets need attention, lessons need planning, groceries need buying.  I don't even have kids! How do people do this?!

This Sunday I just stopped.  I woke up feeling sick and decided to take the day off.  Bad choice.  I ended up still vacuuming and doing dishes, tried to lesson plan a bit, but I did mostly nothing and now feel like I'm right back to drowning again.  I just need a break!!!!!

Whew.  Back to work.

The Peacemaker

We are out there: the peacemakers.  We avoid confrontation when possible, we look for compromise when not.  It's not that we don't have a side.  It's not that we don't have opinions or feel strongly about things... we just like people to take a breath, settle down, and cut out all the ruckus.  Or I do, anyway.

But what do we peacemakers do when we are asked to break our peace?  When we are cornered, pressed, dragged into the conflict?  What do you do when no one is interested in peace, but stand stubbornly on one side of the wall or the other?

My grandmother is sick -- brain tumor, big, angry, inoperable.  My dad has died -- multiple system atrophy (aka parkinsons on steroids), accelerated deterioration, no cure.  My mom has survived the deaths of her grandparents, her father, her mother, and now her husband.  During the five years of my dad's illness, my uncles (his brothers) and my grandmother (his mom) did not spend a lot of time visiting.  They all have their own different reasons.  But he didn't ever ask for much, just some company.  His brothers never came, though, except for maybe an hour when my grandmother called her sons and said, "This is it.  Come see him before he dies."

Eight months pass.

Saturday, my brother is getting married.  My uncles were not invited, as they weren't here when my family felt they needed them.  There were no visits, no asking if we needed anything.  Despite driving through town on their way to camp, fish, visit my grandmother, or (in one uncle's case) visit kids at college, they never stopped to even say hello.  Pretty crappy, really.  As the peacemaker, I acknowledge that this is bad, was bad, but it's done.  What can I do to change it?
Now that they aren't invited, it has started this whole thing between my grandmother and my mom.  The boys should be allowed to come, if they can't come my grandmother won't come, etc.  My mom and brother are furious.  They don't back down, they don't compromise, even with each other usually, hence my evolution into the peace keeping member of the family.

We come to the part that is happening now, today.  We have reached an impasse.  My grandmother has declared she will not apologize to my mom, she does not like or respect her, and the only reason she has been nice in the past was because of my dad's happiness.  My mom does not like, or respect my grandmother or her kids.  Both seem to demand that I choose a side and I choose now.  My grandmother changed her will to "blood-line only" for recipients, and I am to be the representative for my dad's side.  What do I do?  Continue to play nice and I will upset both parties I think... Choose my mom and brother (really, they're kind of right...) and we get written out of the will and probably disowned.  Choose my grandmother and deeply hurt my mom, who has done everything, given everything for me.

Here's the thing though... She's DYING.  Her life expectancy is weeks.  We couldn't have made it WEEKS without this going on?  WEEKS, PEOPLE!!! What in the world could it possibly hurt to play nice for  few measly weeks in the face of a death?  I know my mom feels hurt and wronged.  I know my brother feels the same.  And I know they can't stand my uncles.  But really!  Weeks!  And then we never have to see the again if you don't want to.
       ...At least..., that's how I felt until today when, to my face, my grandmother blamed all of this on my mom.  That was how I felt until she called my mom stupid, and hostile.  You just don't say that to a kid, no matter how old they are.  That was before she called me out, drew a line and told me to pick a side, before she asked me if Kind is really what I wanted to be.  If being a Nice Person and being a Peacemaker is enough; if it's wise.  Before telling me my choices, my lifestyle, my beliefs are wrong.  That choosing my mother over her is stupid; that because I'm nice, I'm weak.

I can tell you one thing we Peacemakers aren't.  We are not weak.  I have been brought to the very edge, to the moment between thinking and acting.  I have been told all the things I'm not, all the things I'll never be, I've told myself all of those things, and I chose.  I chose life, over death,  Suffering and fighting, over a quick slip of a knife. And I did not choose this life to be called weak for my trying to help people, and I am not weak for being giving when possible.  Weakness is giving into your personal issues when you could choose to rise above.   I can tell you I will not be sorry when I can look back and say that I did my best to do more good than harm, to give more than take, to love more than hate.

So what do you choose?  What do you do?  Do you understand that looking an inevitable death in the face is scary, that you can't really understand it until you've been there, take a deep breath, and let it go?  Do you tell your mom and brother to stand down, it'll all be over soon?  Do you step up to the Brain Tumor Grandmother and say shut up about my family, shut up about me, good luck with your cancer.  We won't be here to find out how it ended.  Do you just keep dancing along the line, skip from edge to edge, teeter cautiously along it until it settles itself?  What can you do when peace isn't an option?  When you're told to choose a side?

Reading Challenge 2015

A friend of mine sent me this challenge and I think I'm going to go for it!! I know it's already May (almost June) but I'm going to count a few of the books I already read, and I have a TON of books on my summer reading list.  I'm so excited!!

Here is the check list.  You can also go to the original pin, or the original website for a more printable version. Since I am posting at school, I can't attach the original site just yet.  Our firewall doesn't like PopSugar posts.

Who's with me?!  I already have A Classic Romance: Jane Eyre, A Book Set Somewhere I've Always Wanted To Visit: All The Light We Cannot See, A book with a love triangle: Twilight Saga, A book set in high school: Before I Fall, A book by an author I've never read: The Book Thief.  I've read more, but I can't remember if I read them before or after January.

Coming Soon: Wuthering Heights, Darth Plagueis, Not That Kind of Girl, Delirium, and Sand Man.

Don't forget!!! Free AudioBooks all summer at http://www.audiobooksync.com/!!!!!

A Difficult Day

"It's the left over humans.
The survivors.
...I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise.  They have punctured hearts.  They have beaten lungs."

-The Book Thief

Today I found out my grandmother was diagnosed with a rapidly growing tumor in her brain.  She has maybe 3 options of treatment.  

1) Don't treat it.  Survival time: 3-5 weeks. 

2) Chemo. Survival: questionable.  A few months?  A couple of years?  Depending how her body handles it.  This will not be a great quality of life and it will not result in surviving.  Just delaying. 

3) Surgery.  They won't know if this is an actual option yet.  She will find out Thursday if they can go in at all.

For those of you just tuning in here, my dad died this past September from a neurological thing.  Meanwhile, my great aunt was just diagnosed with breast cancer.  She is supposed to have surgery to remove a lump in hopes of getting it all out in early June.  My granddad also is not doing very well.  He's had heart problems for a while, but since my dad passed, he has been doing worse.  My whole family is falling apart, it seems.  

School is winding down, which means the kids are acting like wild animals, my car is in the shop and the worst part about getting it back will be paying for it, we are trying to pack and move, I'm trying to schedule a 20 hour driving course and some technology PD over my summer athletics schedule, and my brother's wedding is the week after graduation, his birthday is tomorrow.  I don't know what to get him for either of these events, nor where the money to buy those things will come from.  

I could just use a break. 

TGIF!!!

 Good Friday Morning to you!
On this Friday, after the longest testing week ever, I just wanted to share some things that make me smile.  Like this soft, fuzzy, kitty belly.  I've never met a cat with softer fur than little Nuka.

 The most beautiful porch that isn't on pinterest. This is a real porch.  I know the real people that own this porch.  It's like a little fairy tale in the middle of a city.  I adore this porch, and its owners.

Riding bikes on the Trinity with my Brother and FIANCÉ

I can't always grow things.  In fact, most things I try to grow have a tendency to peter out and die within a week.  I've had a little more success the more I try to garden.  I just love flowers.  Their delicate, silky petals, the beautiful colors... I just love them.  This particular little beauty, who is still alive after a month (victory!) reminds me of Fantasia. Either The Seasons or the Nutcracker, I can't remember which song. I just imagine them dancing and swirling together in the wind.

Angry

I think I'd really like to write about something... new.  I was going to write about a slice of my day, but it's been a tough day.  Doesn't really fall into my positive plan.  I was going to write about some things that make me happy and something to help me cheer up, but then I felt like it was just so selfish.. and selfishness has been one of my major peeves lately.  So I decided I would start something new.  Maybe write some fiction... or some non-fiction cleverly disguised as fiction... but it turns out that's quite difficult. 

How do people just WRITE?! 

How are these stories made?  How do people come up with these entire worlds and universes, mythologies and lore, languages, families?  I'm sure it takes much more than a day, more than a quick write to get this type of thing done.  But man, how do you even start?!   

So instead, I made a to-do list, got overwhelmed, then frustrated, then deleted it and felt better. 

So here I am.  Stuck again.  And so my dear readers and fellow writers, I give you: a rant, turned belief system. 

People like to talk a big game.  They like to say they believe in something, but when it comes down to it, there's nothing to support it.  Here is something I believe in: Academics.  Academics above all.  You should always seek to better yourself and knowledge is more important than a high school game. I am a coach, and I believe student athletes should be more worried about their school work than their sport.  If you don't pass, you don't play anyway.  

I believe if you have a student who can't pass public high school, especially regular classes (mine in particular), they don't need to be spending so much time practicing their sport.  Perhaps, since a lot of that is muscle memory anyway, they should spend a little more time with their nose in a book, a moment in tutorials... maybe they should ASK SOME QUESTIONS!! There's an idea.  If I have an athlete that hasn't been able to hold up their end of the bargain, guess what: they don't play.  You are held accountable for your actions.  Now, if a teacher is simply being spiteful or unreasonable, sure.  I'll have a chat with that teacher and we will figure something out.  As teachers you know, though, that's rarely the case.  

I believe you hold kids accountable for their work. Someone has to. 

I believe in rewarding kids who work their hearts out.  And I don't believe in gifting kids grades just to push them through the system.  And I definitely don't believe in asking other teachers to bend their system, their beliefs, so that I can win a GAME.  Maybe I'm not a good coach.  I just don't think that's the way you teach a kid character, integrity, hard-work, tenacity, and accountability. 

We are teachers first.  We are educators.  Care takers.  We have kids that can't write a sentence in English.  We have kids that can't read... worse, well, equally bad... we have kids that WON'T read!! Oh, I could go on forever. I am so sorry.  I just don't understand.  

Staying Positive

I started reading some other blogs before I posted and remembered that I am trying to be optimistic and happy.  And grading papers was not making me happy.  So here is attempt number three at a Tuesday Slice.  (One and two were angry and sarcastic/reflective, respectively).

I just finished the book Before I Fall.  It was.... well, it was.  I'm still not sure if I'd recommend it or not.  I spent the first 80 pages furious at the main character.  Almost quit reading it.  Liked the ending though... mostly.  

It really got me looking at my kids in a different light, though.  I have spent the last two days giggling and chuckling to myself as I walked around monitoring my students taking a test.  It is a rare thing to hear from a high school teacher, but my students are so cute.  Walking through the desks and watching their faces taking a test is one of the cutest things I've seen, though I'm sure they don't see it that way.  Some faces are peaceful and sure, others are distressed, pensive, frustrated, day-dreaming.  A boy leaves for lunch with his hair ruffled and fluffed from running his fingers through it so many times while stressing about answers.  The girl next to him has to swap pens because she has chewed the end of this one clean off.  Next thing you know, she'll have ink all over the desk from breaking the stick inside. 

One student I have to tap on the shoulder every 5 minutes and remind him to focus and finish up.  I have no idea what he's thinking about, but it's not Spanish.  Maybe he is hungry, or stayed up too late playing games and can't focus now.  Maybe he's thinking about his parents always pressuring him about classes he cares nothing about... but that can't be it.  He is far away, but not in a bad place.  Maybe he is thinking about his new girlfriend, wishing he could text her about how awful this test is, or where they're sitting at lunch.  What are they doing after school? This weekend?  Maybe he's thinking about the clothes he'll wear on their date, or whether or not he should gel his hair.  There's a an Ag trip coming up, maybe he's thinking about the fun they'll have being out of school, or who his roommate will be.  

It's funny the things they think are important... the things that are important to them... the things I used to think were important.  I can tell you, Spanish is not one of them.  I'd bet very few of their classes are at the top of their lists.  There are so many other things to be worried about: the big game, making playoffs, what their boyfriends and girlfriends are doing, what their friends are doing, what they're having for lunch, for dinner, what's going on after school, what movie/tv/netflix/videogame releases are going on, the latest news about he said that she said that he swears they kissed, even though she's talking to the other guy.  

I watch them: joking on the way to lunch, cringing as they turn in the test they didn't study for, smiling about their plans for the day.  I think about who I was in high school: Who would I have been friends with?  Who would I have liked to have as friends?  Which table would I sit at during lunch?  Who would my friends and I be giggling about as we write our first names with the boys' last names attached in our notes?  Which homework would I be dreading?  Math, obviously.  That hasn't changed.  I laugh to myself thinking of all the things I thought were important, and all of the things that never mattered.  The moments I still remember, the person I thought I would be, compared to the person I am.