Ramblings of a Thirty-Something

 You know, my very first "list" post was from October of last year. It seems only appropriate to do one this October. We're halfway through the month. We've made it through the first quarter of this new way of teaching. I've survived the first eight weeks of my current grad school class {barely, but there's still time...this class might defeat me}. Harvest is finished. The weather has turned crisp.  Yep, a perfect time to craft a new list. My Current Books I am not reading them all at once. Two of them I have checked out from the library and really need to get around to reading them. Our October "Wines & Spines" {aka, my book club} pick was Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I'd read it years and years ago, and it was a delight to re-read. If you haven't read it yet, do yourself a favor and pick it up. I have November's book in my stack, but I haven't started it yet:  Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. I'm just getting enou

October is the perfect time to read a good ghost story. I don’t mean a horror story, with homicidal maniacs or killer clowns {looking at you, Stephen King}. I’m talking about a ghost story—ancient houses, lonely spirits, unsuspecting guests. Perhaps, to be more accurate, I mean a good Gothic ghost story. I know what you’re thinking, and no, a Gothic tale does not have anything to do with those kids from high school who wore all black {although their look was originally inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s work}. It does have to do with Gothic architecture, as many of the stories from the height of the Gothic fiction period took place in homes built in the Gothic style. There is a very rich history of Gothic fiction, and it came to spawn some of the most prolific “spooky” authors of all time:  Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and of course, Edgar Allen Poe. And my girl, Jane Austen, wrote one of the most famous parodies of Gothic fiction ever:  Northanger Abbey . Her heroine, Catherine Morela

 Happy Fall, everybody!  The best season of the year has started. I was more  than ready for it this year {I mean, I'm ALWAYS  ready for fall, but this year, it has been greatly anticipated}.  Whether you also share my love of autumn or not {and if that's the case, how are we friends? 😉}, I don't think it is possible to get on any kind of social media site, whether it be Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram, and not  see at least one cutesy fall bucket list. I love looking at them, but my issue is usually they include things I don't much care about--or, in the case of 2020, things that aren't happening this year.  Since I love a good list, I've decide to create my own feasible fall bucket list. Some of these things are Halloween-centric, and some are just autumnal in nature.  Enjoy a fall-ish beverage!   Hot apple cider, pumpkin flavored coffee, spicy tea, mulled wine - any and all will be happening! When I was at Barnes and Noble the last time, I got a cranberry

 Well, we are nearly to midterm. Like it's next Wednesday... This school year has both flown by and also dragged on and on and on...which I guess is just typical for 2020. I know I am not alone when I say that I'm putting in way more hours than are in my contract and expending pretty much all of my energy every day, to the point that unless I make a list of things to do when I get home from work, I'm doing nothing.  And y'all know I'm making a list...because that's what I do.  In the spirit of listing things and in the spirit of just getting by , I have compiled a list of things that are helping me get by. So let's be done with all this intro nonsense and get into this list. THINGS THAT ARE KEEPING ME SANE In no particular order... Yoga I just finished a yoga course I had purchased way back at New Year time. It was through my favorite virtual yoga instructor, Erin Motz, aka The Bad Yogi. It is called the Perfect Body Yoga Program, and it is an 8 week course

 This has been a hard week. Ask any teacher. For some of us, it has been the worst week we've had in education ever. No one has any answers to any questions. No one knows if what we are doing is right or wrong. No one is getting even close to the amount of support they need. I didn't even know what my students looked like  until we took an outdoor mask break. All I had seen were their eyes.  My post last week is still valid. I'm still excited that we are starting school in person. I'm still excited to meet my new students and get to know them. I'm still excited to see last year's kiddos in the hallway and get back to collaborating with my amazing teacher team and support staff. But damn, it's been a hard week. I could go on and on about the heartbreaking aspects of this week, but I don't know that I can emotionally afford to do that. So I'm going to use something that did happen in my classroom as a jumping off point.  My students were filling in the

 I'll let you in on a little secret:  I'm excited to go back to school. Now, I know what you're thinking. Surely this is a typo and she meant to say "terrified" or "depressed" or "frustrated."  And I'll tell you another secret:  I am also all of those things.  But I am  excited! Do I have a million questions? Yes, of course I do. Do I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat after having a work-related nightmare? Yes. Does it worry me that I don't actually know what this is going to look like? Absolutely! But no one knows what this is going to look like . We can plan {and we're teachers, so we loooove planning}, we can strategize, we can educate ourselves, we can try to foresee the issues so we can be ready at the drop of a hat when something changes, as it absolutely will--more than once. If you really think about it, we never really know what the school year is going to look like. Sure, we have a bit of a templ

One of my favorite things in the world is when a book I love is turned into a film or series. It's also one of my least favorite things. I'm sure every book lover has the exact same Jekyll-Hyde thing going on in their own minds. You get excited that someone else loves the text as much as you and possesses the resources to bring it to the screen. You cannot wait to see the costumes, hear the score, experience the sets as more than just an abstract concept in your mind.  But sometimes they cast an actor who, in your humble opinion, just does not do the character justice. Or they skip parts of the book {for the sake of time, usually} that are actually really important. Or {horror of horrors!} they change things! Names and backstories and pivotal scenes are re-imagined {Yara Greyjoy, for example, doesn't exist in the books. Her name is Asha. Still don't know why they felt the need to change it}.  Sometimes, when the author is a part of the process, I find it easier to swa

As I write this post, we are in the last days of July. August is almost upon us, and the dawn of that month brings a lot of questions to which no one--and I mean no one-- has satisfactory answers.  I have a general-ish, vague idea of what my job as a teacher is going to look like in a few weeks. I have a thousand questions, some of which I cannot even articulate yet.  So I'm not going to talk about teaching in this post. {Side note, that was always the plan for this post...it was never going to be about teaching, but I was currently feeling the introduction, so I went with it.} I'm going to talk about my other job. My new summer job. The job I am viewing as a stepping stone toward an eventual dream job. That's right:  my job as a library clerk. Libraries have been impacted by the pandemic and the shut-down just like every other business. We are just now getting ready to transition back to open doors. The closing of libraries has been unfortunate for many people across the c

We are 2/3 of the way through July. That means August is almost here. That means that school will be starting in less than a month. What that looks like for sure is still uncertain, as are most things right now, but hopefully we see some positive changes soon.  Since I did not post a list for June, I have decided to just post one list for the whole summer! It will be longer than usual, of course, because I have watched a lot of shows, read a lot of books, listened to a lot of podcasts...you get the idea. And because this will be a bit long, I'm not going to waste a lot of time on the introduction. My Current Books If you didn't know, I started working at the Onarga Public Library this summer. This has been both a blessing and a curse {don't worry, I have an entire post planned on just that topic}, but suffice it to say, I have been reading a lot more than normal. And I normally  read a whole-stinking-lot, so I'm going to highlight a couple of my favorites and then just