Denied Three Times

Today, I feel a little like Jesus. Not in the divine way, or the male way, or the dining with sinners way (although I guess I probably do dine with sinners sometimes), but because today I was denied for the third time by the American Red Cross. They don't want my blood because I don't have enough iron. The first time I tried to give, two months ago, I was actually in the anemic range, which was weird and a little scary. Now, I'm back up into normal range, but still not good enough to give blood and walk away unscathed -- or so they claim.

The denial hurt. Giving blood is my own little form of helping others. The good news today was that this denial gave me some time to wander around Burlington, and I was inspired to take some pictures. So I did.

Tomatoes

We have neighbors who grow tomatoes. They have a farm at this place called the Intervale, which is a giant floodplain that Burlington rents out to local citizens who grow organic (only) food.

One weekend, our neighbors had a surplus of tomatoes, and put up a nice sign in the building saying, "Take as many as you want." I did. I made tomato sauce and a beautiful tomato and cucumber salad, seen below. I even documented it for posterity, because I thought the colors of the tomatoes were so beautiful. I called it Traffic Light Tomato Salad, for obvious reasons.

Taking Work Home

One of the attractions of this new job is that during the interview process, I was told that they try to encourage employees to leave their work at work, and not take it home with them. While I haven't found this to be true yet, I have started to see the glimmer of light at the end of the busy beginning-of-trimester tunnel. Unit plans are due this week (we don't have weekly lesson plans due, thank goodness, just a rough outline of the trimester due in the first few weeks of school), and after that, it's mostly just sailing through and working on longer-term projects. Not that there won't be SOME planning involved...just not an exorbitant amount.

However, work continues to go really well. It's bizarre how positive my co-workers seem about the kids we work with. Not bizarre in a bad way at all -- it's really awesome to see a group of people who hold these kids who might be considered "troubled" with "unconditional positive regard." The language at the school is really positive; we call fits, tantrums, or behavioral issues "challenges." We "process" at the end of a day rather than venting. I'm not quite used to working in an environment that's so un-jaded; it's a little bizarre to my poor sarcastic nature, but I'm trying to re-train myself, because everyone here seems to have a great attitude and good mental health as far as the job is concerned.

On another note, I went contra dancing last night here in Burlington. It was way fun, and I continue to adore the old men who frequent such events. They're so cute.

Wedding invitations are mostly complete! My awesome designer Jason (God bless him) sent samples to us that arrived today, and they are beautiful. I'm getting excited to send them out! We're down to four months, which is weird considering how long we've been engaged! We've made some progress on getting a rehearsal dinner location nailed down, and we've booked a bed and breakfast for our honeymoon. I'm way excited because we booked a room that is beautiful and big and has a bed that looks like a ship. You can see it here.

So all in all, life is good. Busier than it was this summer (and the past year for that matter), but good. We have also now begun to get paid, which is a huge relief!

The First Week

Although I am thisclose to falling into the teacher's weekend sleep coma (teachers know what I am talking about), I wanted to post a bit about my first week with students and how things are going here in Vermont.

This kids came on Tuesday, and although I was somewhat nervous, there is a great deal of difference between the specter of 20 kids depending on you to teach them and 1 kid depending on you to teach them. As I told everyone at work after the day was over on Tuesday, it's so nice to be able to put out the fires that occur and deal with problem behavior (or "challenges" as we call them) without having to also simultaneously distract and entertain 19 other children who may or may not be aware that that the problem is occurring and I am on the verge of tearing on my hair and/or bursting into tears. No, in my new job, a kid misbehaves, and I can give them my full attention, which is something of a gift.

There are a couple of other awesome aspects to my job as well. The first is the fact that stress is at a minimum as far as pushing academics is concerned. Our jobs are partly to provide schooling for the kids, but also to help them deal with their other issues, too, so if we spend a class processing feelings instead of doing our lesson plan, that's ok (at least in theory. It's still kind of frustrating to me, but I'm getting used to it). The other awesome thing is that the curriculum is totally open-ended. This semester, I am teaching units on Japan, terrorism, forensics, and web design. It spans the gammit, and it's awesome.

On a totally unrelated note, I'm really excited about the prospect of making muffins for next week.

And now, that comasleep.