playing catch up. again. . . and again.

I have not been doing too hot with blogging lately. (As is obvious by the consistent drop in the number of posts per week and/or months.) But let's be honest, no matter how happy I am with my life right now, it just ain't that exciting on a day to day basis. Except maybe to me, but that's mostly because I get a big thrill out of trying to figure out how the baby is positioned from one moment to the next and feel pretty cool if I can almost "catch" her foot as it juts out of my stomach.

However, I have decided to start writing about the mundane-- and if you decide to read it and are bored, well I guess that is just your own fault.

First of all, Jeff started student teaching last week. This is pretty awesome because he is getting paid to do his student teaching where he was already working. The place sucks, to be honest. He is stressing out right now because he is supposed to teach a unit on basketball and there are only 7 basketballs for units (classes) of 21+ kids. And he is at a "youth treatment facility" but really it is just a warehouse for teens who have gotten in trouble and their parents and/or the state can't deal with it anymore. The majority are from california, were adopted, have gotten in trouble, their adoptive parents are sick of it, so they or the state pays $6,ooo per kid per month for them to be warehoused there until they turn 18 or graduate from the program (aka, turn 18). It's challenging teaching P.E. when there are kids in the classes who aren't allowed shoes because they are a "flight risk." So they are wearing slippers or slide ons. Real safe. Also, there are a couple of basketball hoops, but Jeff has already gone out and bought nets for them because they didn't have any and so far every attempt on his and the previous teachers part to get more equipment or current equipment fixed has been denied.
The ridiculous thing is that his University student teaching supervisor said that he would try and find some old equipment from one of the high schools in the area for them to use. How much sense does that make?! His work is bringing in $150,000 per month per class and they can't afford to buy a couple of basketballs?! So ridiculous. And there isn't any grass. Anywhere. Or a legitimate gymnasium.
But, on the positive side, it is a place that is making it possible for Jeff to get his student teaching done this summer, and he is getting paid to do it. So I am very thankful for that. But Jeff is a perfectionist-- so just doing the bare minimum is not an option and he is not okay with lazy teaching so he's spending a lot of time and energy worrying about how he is going to pull it off the next 55 teaching days. I'm just praying that his University supervisor will grade him within the context of the "school" he is teaching at and not expect him to pull some crazy rabbit tricks in his classes.
The other good news is that since Jeff will be used to working with classes made up solely of troubled kids who don't even have the motivation to do enough not to fail because most don't even need the credit-- teaching at a regular high school with only a few troublemakers and students who need the credit to graduate will probably be much easier for him.
One of the points I was going to make before I started ranting about Jeff's work was that his new schedule is fantastic. He leaves at 7:45-ish in the morning, I meet him with lunch from noon-1 and he is home by 3:30- 4 pm everyday. So cool. It's been a good adjustment to make because I was used to him being gone by 7 everyday and most days not home until 11 and then we was also working every other weekend-- 14 hour shifts. So now he is just gone for about 8 hours, M-F. I also realized that besides coaching games, he will never have to work a weekend ever again. Knock on wood.

So what have I been doing? Besides a whole lot of nothing . . .

I have started making tutus for little girls to sell on-line. I finally got a shop on etsy.com set up. It's http://tutusbytina.etsy.com . For those of you who have never looked at etsy.com, you should. It's one of the coolest sites on-line, I think. It's kind of like ebay, but instead of auctions, it's just stuff for sale. So every seller has a little "shop." AND it's all homemade stuff or supplies to make homemade stuff. There are some pretty crazy random things on there- I love it. You can also put up an ad saying what you want made and how much money you are willing to pay for it and people will bid to be the one you hire to make whatever it is that you're wanting.
Once we are in our house and settled in a bit, I plan to use Etsy purchases to decorate my house. Maybe some random artist selling their artwork on Etsy will be famous someday and then my grandkid will get to go on Antique Roadshow and find out that a painting I bought for $25 bucks is worth $25,000 fifty years later.
My goal is to start making all sorts of little girly froo-froo things to sell . . . but for now I am sticking with just tutus, if for no other reason than I just don't have any space to keep and/or make anything else. I'll probably start sewing and selling shoulder bags, etc. too, but that is more time and cost intensive so it gets to wait until we are moved into our house and the baby is born and a little older too.

Seriously, I am sitting here trying to think about other stuff to write about. One of the weird things that has happened lately is I am unable to sleep in. I recognize that "sleeping in" is relative. To me, anything before 8 am is waking up early. And for the past couple of weeks, I have been unable to sleep in past 8. Hence the reason I am blogging at 7:30 am on a Sunday when church doesn't start until 1. To put this in perspective: before this little biological sleeping clock upheaval-- Church at 1 pm on Sunday meant sleeping in until 11 am. If I was feeling full of "get up and go" then I would be up by maybe 9:30 am.
To be honest, I am feeling sort of ripped off by this wide-awakeness-as-the-sun-comes-up because I recognize that my nights (and days) of sleeping when I want, however long I want, are coming to a sure and speedy end in less than 10 weeks!

Jeff has an interview the first weekend in June with Mesa School District. It's just a preliminary screening interview with a randomly assigned principal in the district so we aren't expecting a job offer after the interview or anything because he'll need to interview with the specific principal with the job opening after he gets through that interview. Mesa school district doesn't post specific openings for positions. So for all we know, there could be zero openings or 15 openinngs. If that makes sense. He also has the Arizona licensure tests that weekend so we're going to go down to get a crib while we're there. I'm crossing my fingers that we'll be able to find a good one on craigslist that weekend! (Jeff isn't a big fan of the craigslist idea, but I'm hoping to convince him and save ourselves some $$). I'll be 35 weeks pregnant by then so Jeff is sort of nervous about me flying-- but really, the drive down is pretty crappy and I'll probably swell up like a balloon after 8 hours in the car-- so I think flying is a better idea.

Anyway, my stomach is growling so I'm gonna go eat some cereal.

Jeff just woke up and told me "Happy Mother's Day", I am sort of in pre-mom mode but it is still getting me out of helping cook and/or clean up Sunday dinner today so that is pretty fantastic. This will be the first non-awkward Mother's Day at church since we've been married. Yay for that. So HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY if you're a mom.