It's a normal day here, but there's so much going on outside of here

Keely and Josh are sitting in Dulles airport waiting to board a plan to Adis Ababa, Ethiopia where they will be joined with their son, Gabe.

It's cool to have been part of the journey they've gone through that has led them to unite their family. It's also been overwhelming -- even from the outside. This is not really the subject of my blog. Instead, I am thinking about how common it really is to have these extraordinary things going on. Someone's boarding a plane to be united with a child every day -- multiple people every day, actually. Yet, the individual stories involved in it all are unknown. What else goes on every day?

Wonder what this will do?

Facebook told me to cut and paste this, so I am going to.

Mary Scott Gillis

Create Your Badge

Consolidation may make me more productive

This is an entry I found on the old blog that I created and forgot about. I am posting it here and closing the other account. That way I can't keep using the excuse that I can't blog unless I do two. That's stupid. Anyway, this is from July 14th, 2008 at 5:38 am. It's titled "What Else Should I be Doing at 7 a.m.?". Reading it makes me realize that sometimes I crack myself up :-).

I’ve overbooked myself this morning. I am supposed to drive to Waynesville to get new tires on my car and have lunch with me mother (you’re supposed to read that like a pirate). I am also supposed to go for another tennis lesson at 10 a.m. with my good friend and coach, but I am going to have to go to the doctor today because of a sinus and inner ear infection that I’ve been pretending that I didn’t have for long enough now that there’s no denying it. So, I woke up at 4 a.m. thinking of these details of my life instead of getting the sleep that I need to make it through this day.

So I’m going to write about sleep. These days I don’t have any trouble sleeping, but I can remember a time (maybe ten years ago) where I didn’t sleep much at all. I see now that I saw sleep as a sign of weakness. A person who wasted her time sleeping was as weak as a person who never learned the difference between your and you’re or their and there. It’s ridiculous.
Now I’ve wisened. (I can make up words if I want – if a ripe fruit has ripened, then a wise person has wisened — it’s these subtle consistencies that are going to really help English find its place in the world). I sleep well, so when I have a night like this last one, I have to wake up and wonder why on this green earth would I allow such petty thoughts to invade my sleep when I know, even as I lay there, that none of those things matter. I will play tennis, eat lunch, get my tires and make a doctor appointment with much time to spare today. If one of the things happened to prevent the other things from taking place, nobody would care and I’d reschedule what needed to be rescheduled.

Then it dawned on me. I was not awake because of these things. I was awake because my nineteen-year-old son just got home for the night and when he went to his room, he turned on his television and left his door cracked open and the light from the TV shined directly into my room and across my face. I wasn’t a psychotic woman who woke from worry about goofy things. I was taken from my slumber. I only began thinking of those things because I knew I would have trouble falling back asleep after I got up to shut his door (the vertical position is much like coffee), and I began to wonder about what time I would wake up without an alarm if I didn’t go to sleep, so I had to run through my mind what I was going to be doing to make the decision about whether or not I should get up and set an alarm. See? I’m perfectly normal.

Mrs. Gillis

P.S. I got up at 6:50 without an alarm because in my dream I was helping someone pick up a dead turtle from a creek bed and put it in a sack. While holding the sack of dead turtle, something moved. I think it may’ve been a crawfish (eek!)

One more has graduated from high school and is ready to leave home. Dillon is going off into the Marines and will leave on August 11. It's going to be a wild, crazy ride for him and I hope it's everything he expects it to be.

It's a difficult emotion to watch a kid leave home. We'll all be okay, of course, and as the saying goes, "life is like a book, the further you get into it, the more it makes sense." There's a lot that I see now and can't wait (although I hope that I have several years to to wait) to use all I've learned to help my kids give my grandkids an incredible insight on life. I think I know exactly what to do now. :-)

Nonetheless I am proud. Conon is doing exceptional in college working to be a teacher (which I think is the most noble job in the world) and Dillon has chosen his career path and feels happy. I know that he will get a lot of support in his life.

Now there's just one left. Gage. I will enjoy and cherish each day of the next five years because I know how quickly they fly.

Laws of Pessimism

In class today I made a reference to Murphy's Law. To my shock and amazement, kids apparently do not know anything about such laws. Maybe all of this push to "look on the bright side of things" has gotten way out of control (so out of control that we fail to teach basic laws).

So, I'd like to share the Murphy's Law website: http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-laws.html

Indulge your pessimism. Then, push it aside as the hogwash it is and enjoy that half full glass.

MG

How's that for consistancy?

I was browsing around looking at friends' facebook accounts and saw that most people are doing the blog thing and I thought to myself I should blog, so I googled "creating blogs" and ended up at blogspot. The weird thing was that someone using my name and my e-mail address had already created a blog. What? I took a chance and clicked "forgot my password" (because there wasn't a link that said "forgot ever creating a blog" or "can't remember what I did yesterday") and here I am -- two years later -- updated my blog.

Students who have been in more than one of my classes probably don't have a hard time at all imagining that I'd be the kind of person who would create a blog and then forget ever doing it, but other people in my life might find that a bit odd.

I will make a pledge to this precious little box: I will not forget that you exist this time.

MG

On the wagon with just three wheels

I did two stupid things yesterday. First, even though I was feeling fat, I tried on my little black dress. It was too tight. If the dress is too tight the last thing that I should do is what? Yep, I did. I decided to weigh myself. Am I a glutton for punishment? WT...heck? So I decided today to be on a diet (again) and tortured myself with a brisk three mile walk after school. Now I know I will have difficulty walking up the stairs tomorrow (much less standing up to teach at all). This weekend I'm going with my group of girlfriends to St. Louis to celebrate Sonya's 50th birthday. We are going to have a blast. Botanical gardens, lunch on the Hill, PJ party, doing pedicures, swimming, hot tubbing and topping it up by getting all dressed up (feather boas and all) to go to a piano bar. It'll be hard to come back to reality on Sunday afternoon. But we will and I'll be okay with that, since reality is pretty good anyway. So, that is why I need the little black dress this weekend. MG