Writers itch

A lot has changed since I last wrote anything for my humble little blog. Oh, I've made plenty of entries in my mind. You would be amazed at my wit and my cleverly turned phrases that never quite made it out of my brain and onto this blog, or paper or even Facebook. I've lived a whole slough of life experiences that will go unchronicled. And I think I'm fine with that. Because the point of life, after all, is to live it and not just to chronicle it all for someone else. I'm sure I'll rant about that at a later date.
Anyway, after many moves, a pet's passing, a new dog, a baby, a job quitting for me and a new job in a new state for my husband.. almost everything in my life has changed. I spent most of that time just riding the current. But now that I finally feel established again and like the world has stopped spinning (in a good way, not in an apocalyptic way), I've been feeling that itch to write again. We'll see how long it lasts.

Ok, fine

Alright, I guess it has been long enough for me to have kept you all guessing. I just started a new private blog for this little baking club that we started at my school and it has made me fall in love again with blogging.
Just in time for Thanksgiving, too! So here is what I am thankful for this year:

1> My little Kitty, who had a very close scrape with death this year and is still on 4 different medicines. Actually, make that 5, if you count the vitamins!

2> My new apartment! It's huge and bright, has a washer and dryer, and is in just the coolest place ever. Come visit asap.

3> A BREAK!!!! It's been a long time coming.

4> A great boss. I decided to change pretty much everything about the way I teach this year. One of my boss's mottos is: If it isn't broken, break it. So I did. And it's been a great success so far.

5> My parents. Almost every time I talk with them they remind me that they pray for me every day. There aren't many people in the world with that kind of prayer support and I feel blessed beyond measure.

6> My husband, who entertains me and encourages me, challenges me and loves me.

Bed and Breakfast

Something that I have wanted to do for the longest time is run a bed and breakfast. Ok, I'd like to OWN the bed and breakfast and also run it. I know I probably have a very glorified idea of what would be involved in this particular business venture, but I honestly think I would enjoy it a lot. I would love answering the phone and booking the rooms, putting clean bedding on the beds, checking people in and out, coming up with new and exciting breakfast recipes, shopping for little spa baskets and special soaps for the bathrooms. Shoot, even the laundry sounds fun.

I have only stayed in one bed and breakfast in my life. It was a little place in Shipshewana, Indiana: Amish country. The part we stayed in was a converted barn and they had pretty little quilts on all the beds. I fell in love.

I love the idea because it's so much smaller and more personal than a hotel. You'd get to meet so many people and hear so many interesting life stories. And I would have some super well-behaved dogs like Kitty is becoming (fingers crossed!) that would lie around the place and everyone would love.

So again, rich benefactors, if you would like to invest in a bed and breakfast, I'm your girl to run it.. at least until I make enough money to buy my own place! Here is a little something to get you started: http://www.bamboogroupsa.com/?section=detail&code=AH001

Moving stuff around

Ok, so this is going to be a weird one. My husband was telling me about this department in his company that is in charge of moving stuff around. Here's the idea- his company is always moving, closing, opening and merging smaller branches of offices all over the city and suburbs. So there is an entire department that solely exists to keep track of all of their furniture- desks, chairs, lamps, etc- move them to and from their warehouse, make sure that everything gets to the right place at the right time and make sure that each office has what it needs. They have crews of guys that do the actual, physical moving of the office equipment.

Even weirder, this job sounds fascinating to me. I love minutiae. (sp?) I love making sure I have enough of everything and thinking ahead, prioritizing, planning. Which is hilarious, because I am the most disorganized person ever. But as I thought about it some more, I realized that it would really only be fun for maybe a month. And then I would start having these nagging questions in the back of my mind- Does what I do matter? Am I contributing anything remotely valuable to the world?

I already have these questions about teaching school, which is supposed to be the most fulfilling job in the world. So I don't think I would come up with any more fulfilling feelings from making sure that there are enough desks in the Main Street office.

Acquisitions editor

Well it's a good thing that I postponed my post about being an editor because I have narrowed down my editorial aspirations. I don't just want to be an editor, I want to be an acquisitions editor. I want to be an editor because all I ever want to do is read books. Imagine reading for a living! The reason I want to work in acquisitions is because you get to read all the new manuscripts and decide which ones to publish. If I do say so myself, I think I have pretty decent taste in books. At this point in my life, I also think it would be fun to work with words, and maybe a few people. One of the things that is wearing on me about teaching is all the people I see all the time. Having 140+ kids marching in and out of my classroom is getting a little rough for my introverted soul.

Editor

This has been one of the craziest weeks ever. It always is. It is... Homecoming Week, a.k.a. the week where kids won't pay attention to anything, regardless of how much time you put into planning the class. First of all, the kids are all encouraged to wear different themed outfits each day of the week.

Monday was Pajama Day. Who, in their right mind, would choose to encourage TEENAGERS to wear PAJAMAS on a MONDAY?! Let's just say we didn't get much done that day. While we're being honest, let's also just say that I happily partook in the pajama wearing.

Tuesday was ugly sweater day. The rule was that the kids could wear jeans only if they had on an ugly sweater. Otherwise, they had to be in full dress code.Now I know that people say our educational system is getting a little lax and that families are breaking down and kids don't know as much as they used to. I have seen brief glimpses of the truth in that here and there but never more so than on Tuesday. It never occurred to me that kids would have any question about the definition of a sweater. No, a sweatshirt is not a sweater. No, a long sleeve t-shirt is not a sweater. No, a big T-shirt with the arms cut off is not a sweater. I decided to not even get into the argument of what would constitute ugliness or not. As long as the kid had on a SWEATER, I let them squeak by. But can I get any amens out there that a solid navy blue American Eagle sweater is probably not an ugly sweater? Come on.

Wednesday was decades day. I was trying to decide what I should wear for decades day and wasn't coming up with much. Somebody suggested to me that I wear a poodle skirt. 2 questions- 1> Why would anyone assume that I would just have a poodle skirt lying around my house? 2> Since I do, however, have a real poodle, could I somehow attach my real poodle onto a skirt and wear that? I settled on dressing as a hippie.

Thursday was tie-dye day. I had no incident with this day. Neither did I have any tie-dyed items to wear. I did, however, overhear a kid trying to explain to another teacher that their shirt used to be tie-dyed, but it had washed out.

Friday, today, was a spirit day. So Freshmen and Seniors wore blue, Sophomores and Juniors wore white. It was a pretty good day. We had shortened classes, a pep assembly and then they fed us all hot dogs, chips, cookies and soda. And then we all got to leave early. Amen.

I never even got to the editor part of my post. Apparently I need an editor to keep me on track. I will leave the title, however, to entice you to read all about how I want to be an editor whenever I should happen to blog again. It could be tomorrow, it could be never.

Chocolatier

Before I jump into my next vocational venture, I must start with this side-note. I got into a cooking frenzy today (it's called avoiding schoolwork) and now I have chocolate chip pumpkin bread and chipotle lentil soup going at the same time. My house smells.. interesting. It's kind of disgusting, to be honest. I firmly believe that they will both turn out superbly. I also firmly believe that I will not serve them together.

My dream job of today is to be a chocolatier. The movie in my head has me tromping around the rainforests of south america, finding the perfect cocoa bean suppliers and improving peoples' lives dramatically by discovering their cocoa crops and helping these small farmers succeed. Then I see myself in my spotless, Spanish colonial chocolate kitchen crafting artistic masterpieces that critics will rave as 'sinfully divine'- wrap your head around that one! Aaahhh. What a great life.

I tried my hand at chocolatiering last summer (2009). It was an interesting, inspiring, and frustrating journey. And by journey, I mean that I made maybe 2 different batches chocolates. I made lemon ganache truffles and chocolate covered caramels. Yes I made the ganache and caramels by hand, thank you very much. Both chocolates TASTED good but chocolate is tremendously fussy and it never quite set up like I wanted it to. Oh, add expensive to the list of adjectives that describe my chocolatiering journey. Once you start buying things like candy thermometers, dipping forks, vanilla beans and Scharffen Berger chocolate, it really starts to add up. So if anyone has loads of money and would like to send me to culinary school to learn what the heck I'm doing, buy all of my equipment and ingredients, and fund my expeditions to South America, please respond in the comments section. :)