Kids

Ok, I’m going to preface this post by stating that my husband and I have no children nor do we plan on having children anytime soon if at all.  That said, I don’t particularly care for young children.  I teach middle school, and from 7th grade on, I adore students, but I really don’t care for children any younger than that.  I will also preface this post by saying all I plan to do in the next few paragraphs is whine about something that is not in any way threatening of the end of my world, just something that is annoying me.

 Now, Husband’s out of town family is here, and this family includes a first grade child and a freshman in high school.  Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoy the freshman.  The first grader, though a phenomenally good first grader, gets on my nerves simply because I don’t like children.  As a Christmas gift to the family, we rented a cabin in the woods and Husband and I, my parents, his parents, and family from out of town all went to this cabin.  Though I had to endure vegetable pie, a puppet show, and numerous kid friendly games, the visit was not all that bad.  However, when the stay was over, I was done being around said child.  After a few days away, we had a family lunch today.  It seemed that everyone was bored over at grandma’s house, so Husband invited people to come over and play with our new Nintendo Wii.  Unfortunately this translated into free babysitting, so the other adults could have free time away from the kids.  So, I am now stuck in my house entertainging two kids I’m not even really related to, and I am VERY annoyed.  I think the worst part in this entire situation is that my mother-in-law knows that I don’t like kids, and she was the instigator in sending them over here.   She was clearly tired of having them around and happy to send them off to the “kids” house so that the other adults could have time without them. 

Now, I know I just sounded like a completely spoiled brat whining about something that isn’t a big deal.  If you have kids, I’m sure they’re lovely.  As I’ve said, this child is lovely.  I just don’t like them.  I’m done whining for now at least.  I have to go keep equally annoyed husband company.

Boredom

Apparently I cannot survive without a healthy dosage of stress and work.  When I have everything going on, I constantly feel like I’m flying by the seat of my pants, but I feel alive and like I have purpose.  Without this structure, I am just floating in the wind taking up space on the earth.  After entertaining family at a cabin in the woods for four days, Husband and I were looking forward to some alone time.  Well, we were alone today and spent some nice time together, but now I’m bored.  Today I watched TV, a movie, read some of The Amber Spyglass, walked the dog, played with the dog, started lesson planning, played video games, stressed about bills, read a teacher’s magazine about student loans scaring people from the profession, realized that I am afraid of my profession because of the amount of debt I now have to start paying back, and worked on some support letters for the upcoming trip to Rwanda.  The only other things I thought of doing were cleaning, working out, and attempt 1,003 at playing the guitar.  All of the latter 3 sounded too much like work, so I didn’t.  Husband and I tried to use some Christmas gifts to go to the movies and have dinner, but the theater we have passes for is only showing The Golden Compass with subtitles, so we aren’t going and now I’m pouting about it. 

Tomorrow’s agenda doesn’t look much better:  Work out with mother-in-law, walk dog, take dog to vet for booster shots, return some Christmas gifts, and possibly dinner and a movie.  Hopefully I won’t feel like I’ve wasted my entire vacation and cry about being tired in January.

Graduation and blogging

Graduation was Friday night, and I have to say, it was a good feeling.  There is closure to my educational experience thus far.  I did notice, however, that graduation is not nearly as fun when you don’t know anyone who is graduating.  I sort of knew the girl next to me and was entertained speaking with her throughout the evening, but it just isn’t the same without a bunch of your good friends celebrating with you.  Oh well.  It’s done, and I feel contented.

On another note:  I know I haven’t been blogging for a while.  I come here to blog at least 2-3 times a week, but I always seem to be empty-handed.  Does anyone else ever feel like they have nothing to say?

Grading

Sometimes I agree with my students.  If I just assigned them less work, I would have less to grade.  But then, what’s the fun in that?  Sigh…off to grading tests.

The Single Life

My best friend at work is my age and very single.  She often complains because she wishes to be married like I am.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love my husband, and the 1.5 years we’ve been married have been wonderful, but I keep trying to get her to enjoy her single life.  We work at a school that is predominantly young, single women.  Tomorrow, one of the girls organized a trip to a wine tasting.  I can’t go because I have awesome married woman responsibilities (read hanging out with mother-in-law).  My husband is in no way overbearing, but I live a very busy life and come home late at least 2 nights out of the week.  More often 3-4, so when he asks me to stay home and spend time with him, I try to honor those requests.  But sometimes, I wish I could pick up and leave without checking with anyone else.