Goodbye 2012

Stole this from J.S.C. on FB. I don't know where she got it. 

You weren't a bad year. There were some really good times, some great trips and fun with family and friends. Looking back I didn't share as much of you with the blog as I did with 2011 and 2010. Sorry about that, but it felt as if I was really busy, but I didn't have much to say. I shared more with my scrapbook albums instead.

Looking ahead to 2013 (which begins in less than 90 minutes on the West Coast) I can hope for health and wisdom. Beginning the year with a broken foot seems to negate that first wish, but I look forward to ditching the crutches by the end of January. Wisdom takes many different forms. I have some tentative plans which, God willing, will come to fruition. If they don't, then....we'll see what 2014 brings.

Christmas

Here's a few photos from our holiday.

Christmas on Crutches

Yep. One last outing for a few last-minute things, trip over a curb and spend 3 hours in Urgent care yesterday. The final verdict after peering at the x-rays: a small fracture in my left foot. That means crutches for the next 4-6 weeks. It's not painful, but it's really, really inconvenient. I hated crutches 20 years ago, and I hate them now!

What I know to be true.....

Tonight I was blog surfing, and one link led me to another, and another and finally I found this:



Sarah Kay performed her spoken word poetry at the 2011 TED Conference. It's well worth the 18 minutes of watching time. But for those who don't wish to/or don't have time to watch, Sarah is a poet and a teacher. She assigns lists to her students, and those lists become poems.

So....This is what I know to be true right now:

Teaching middle school is hard.
I don't think I'm very good at it.
I'd go back to teaching high school in a heart beat.
Winter Break will be too short
January is a crappy month
I don't want to have a birthday in February.
I don't want to be "that" old.
Life has not gone according to plan
That makes me sad.
I'm working on acceptance.
Maybe someday I'll get there.

Tree 2012

It's a little bigger than last year. Okay...a lot bigger than last year.

Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving is the official holiday season kick-off for our family. From here until New Year's it pretty much full throttle with plans activities.

Mom and I spent Wednesday making desserts. I found a recipe for pumpkin cheesecake, which turned out really well. Then we had the traditional pumpkin pie, apple pie and cocoanut cream pie.

Thanksgiving dinner was at my sister's again this year. We had a great afternoon: family, food and football. It's always nice to catch up and not worry too much about what comes next.

Black Friday actually began on Thursday. We were coming back from dropping my aunt and uncle at their home, and since some of the stores were open, we stopped and picked up a few things. We then caught a couple hours of sleep and were back at it by 4:30 am. Some of my shopping is done! And since we didn't want left overs for dinner, we had Chinese.

Saturday the weather was crummy. It rained, so we stayed home and watched football. The Civil War game was disappointing, but enough about that.

Sunday, we bought our Christmas trees! It's the third year we've bought them from my 8th grade math teacher. His prices are very reasonable. And somehow, I ended up with a much larger tree than I anticiapted.  I really had to rearrange the furniture in my living room to make it fit.

Election Beef

I hate the media coverage of election returns. In my opinion it's really stupid to speculate if someone has won an election when only 2% of the precincts have reported. Seriously?!

In addition, I think the electoral collage is out dated and useless. Maybe I would feel different if the electoral votes weren't cast until after a state's popular vote is reported. That would at least make sense. But if the electoral college is going to be the deciding factor of the presidential election, why do the people bother to vote? Maybe 223 years ago this was a great idea, but realistically most voters in 2012 are well informed and are perfectly capable of letting their vote speak for themselves.