Seeing Clearly

Nope, not a profound statement but one of fact.  It is spring and my allergies are giving me fits.  For several days my eyes felt like they have been rolled in sand and my allergy eye drops were barely helping. In fact the last week it has been difficult to see. 

I put it off as a combination of allergies and it is time for my eye examine.  Finally last week my eyes were not itchy I just couldn't see as well as I was supposed to.  So I threw out that pair of contacts and wore my glasses.  Finally two days ago I decided to try contacts again.  Then I saw it.  Instead of wearing one of each I had been wearing the left contact lens in my eye.

The problem is that my right eye is twice as bad as my left. So I couldn't see that well and had some nasty headaches.  I am sure the eye doctor will find this funny and will probably wonder why it took a week for me to figure out.

Now that I have figured out this problem I can at least see what all is going on around me.

So have you done anything similar?

Guest Blog: From the Purrfect Post

In order to be fair, today also has a guest blogger, Malcolm, the cat.  Malcolm is Sarah the dog’s sister.  He is a rescue found at the Humane Society. He is a poet and writer.  His speciality is the Catku form of poetry.

The author hard at work

Why Things Fall

I look pause swing foot

I make it bounce and fall down

Its fun and mom comes

My Dish

My bowl should be full

If it is not I might starve

I demand food now

Tuna

The best of all food

It appears from the cabinet

Tasty yummy good

Sleep

Sunny spot in bed

Under the covers warm now

Sleep my favorite thing

My favorite thing.

Guest Blog: From the Bark Side - the Introduction

I have to admit I have a sweet life now.  My mom loves me and I have a great place to live.  My life didn’t start out like this. My mom decided that she needed a dog and had the really old one call his friends and ask.  Then I appeared I was furless and terrified. She even gave me a great name Sarah, I have a people name not a silly name like Spot which would so not fit my greatness. Now I am content, except when the evil air things and the loud scary fur taker away is out.  

My day would be perfect if my mom didn’t leave to do this think that she calls work.  I think that she should never leave me.  I spend my day eating, sleeping, playing with my cats, and guarding the house.  I have my food hidden all over the house in case I get hungry (mom says that it was because I was half starved as a pup).  For some reason my cat keeps on eating it or my mom throws it away.  I do not know why they do this because I will just put more back for me to eat later.

The best present my mom ever got me was a kitten.  I loved it, I carried it around the house, and washed it, and took care of it.  I protect my cat, no one but my mom can play with my cat except if he jumps on them.  I even growled at my Nana, whom I love, when I thought she was taking my cat away.  

Me adding my beautiful fur to the house.

I try to defend my house from the great evils.  The three most evil things that I deal with are birds, the big loud box, and the moving whirring death machine.  Birds are evil they don’t walk on the ground they are in the air and they don’t move like I do.  So far I have caught three while my mom was walking me on the leash.  I am great.  Almost every day this huge brown thing whirls past my house.  I must defend. Brroow.  Die.  Then it spits out a man who brings a little box to the house.  When mom brings the box into the house I try to protect it from her but she opens it up and takes things out.  She tells me the brown thing is ok but I know better it is evil and I will catch it someday and destroy it.  Finally the whirring death machine.  I mean I work hard to put out my fur everywhere.  I have my dirt which smells good and my fur which is important because it is mine.  Then my mom takes the evil thing out of the small room and turns it on.  I run barking through the house.  I am afraid that it might catch me and remove my beautiful fur.  So as soon as she put it up I roll and scrub myself on the floor to spread my fur all over the house.

So that is a little about me.  So from Sarah, on the bark side, I think that all of you people should get a dog and then get your dog a pet.  I like cats or guinea pigs but no birds unless they are cooked.  I know that no dog can have as great a mom as I do but there are some pretty good people out there.  So go rescue a puppy or a dog (like I was).  

Love, 

Sarah 

It was hard work writing.

Helping a friend in difficult times

Recently I have had to deal with my mothers hospitalization.  She is continuing to gain strength daily. I wanted to say that overall the health care workers that I have dealt with in several hospitals were wonderful and caring people.  I know that there are always exceptions to this but many of the people went above and beyond what was necessary to reassure me and help my family with this process.  

To give you an idea of how overwhelmed that I was, well it is now after Easter and my Christmas tree is still up. I normally have it down sometime the first week of January but that is when my mom was hospitalized.  It is at least an artificial tree and I have managed to undecorate it.  The decorations are boxed up in the middle of my dining room.  A friend suggested that I just keep it up and switch the decorations.  

Many friends and family members called, messaged, or contacted our family wanting information on her condition or asking what they could do to help.  For the most part my brother and I didn’t know what to ask or answer. We both went to work, took care of things at her house, and visited her.  We were continuously asked “What can I do to help?”  The answer for the most part is pray.  Many things we had to do for ourselves, other people just couldn’t do them.  So, I have thought about what we dealt with and discussions with other friends as to how people could help.

 Don’t continually ask for information - By the time I had taught school, ran home to walk my dog, drove the half hour to the hospital, visited for a few hours, and then drove home I was exhausted.  I didn’t want to talk to people much less answer numerous questions about her condition.  I also didn’t want to give daily detailed medical information on social networking sites.  Instead my brother and I split stuff - we would either message or call a few people who relayed information to others.  It is not that we don’t like you or didn’t want to talk to you but by the end of the day we were doing good to remember our names by that point. We would get easily frustrated and impatient and did not want to take it out on people that were genuinely concerned. It is also deeply emotional which was also tiring. I still haven’t went through all of my messages, but that isn’t that unusual for me, and I will eventually delete them.

Mail cards or send messages -  Not just to the patient but to the family as well.  My mother appreciated all of the cards that she was sent.  While she was in ICU she really couldn’t have a lot of things so she didn’t need gifts.  But more importantly my brother and I appreciated the cards and messages to us because we needed the prayers and good thoughts as well.

Don’t expect to be asked for help - Really the offers were great but I doubt my dog would let anyone in my house so that they could walk her.  My mom wouldn’t want people going through her papers trying to locate information for the insurance or doctors.  Also I had no idea what to ask for - it would have been great for someone to clean my house but again the dog wouldn’t let you in and I am embarrassed about how many things slid while I was rushing back and forth.

Give food - One of my co-workers brought extra to lunch so that she could share with me.  After my mom was released from the hospital, friends worked out a meal schedule so that we didn’t have to cook for the first week.  

Be a friend - To my friends who listened to me vent about those that drove us crazy asking for details or just let me talk about nothing without asking for details, thank you.  A simple “How is everything?” or “How are you doing?” is all that is needed.  Also thanks for the funny pictures and stories that you sent. It helped to get my mind off of things.

How to Survive the First Day of School - a survival guide for teachers

The start of a new school year is traumatic, not just for students but for teachers, especially the new ones.  Not only are they in a new situation with new responsibilites but sometimes they are just a few years older than the students that they teach.  They also have the same teaching responsibilities as experienced teachers. So I give you a few pieces of advice before I head off to the first student day tomorrow.

1. Be Polite 

This is to all school staff.  You are not the most important person at school.   Be especially nice to the secretaries, janitors, cafeteria workers, and bus drivers.  They deal with many of the same issues that classroom teachers do and they clean up many of the messes that occur. They can also provide a great deal of help.

2. Wear Comfortable Shoes 

I cannot stress how uncomfortable school floors are and as a teacher you are on your feet most of the day.  The first few years you probably can wear really cute shoes (hey I am a girl, that is important) but after a few years of teaching you really need the comfortable shoes.  It is amazing how much your mood can be tied to how your feet feel.

3. Emergency Bag 

Have a small bag in your desk.  In it have your own emergency supplies.  For example I have a nail file, some make-up, deodorant, pony-tail holder, band-aids (Scooby-Doo is my choice it is much better than the boring school ones that are for students) and some change.  As a teacher you would be surprised the number of times that you can get stuck at school and need these items.  Emergency drink machine money comes in handy.

4. Emergency Food 

The first day the cafeteria will be insane and no one will have enough time to eat their lunch.  There will be other days when things will happen and your lunch will be cut short or you could just be really hungry.  Some ideas to keep on hand granola bars, soup, shelf stable meals, and crackers. These keep for weeks if not months and if you are like me they come in handy on the days you are running late and leave your lunch packed on the counter at home.

5. Ask For Help 

This should be easy but as a teacher we often feel that we should know everything and we forget to ask.  When you don’t understand a procedure please ask your neighbor, the teacher down the hall, the secretary, but ask someone.  It is ok not to know all of the answers. But you should know where to find the answer.

6. Arrive Early 

For those that know me, they are all laughing, I am rarely early to anything.  But traffic on the first day of school is new levels of horrible.  You have to leave at least ten minutes earlier than normal to get there on time.  Why?  Becuase almost every parent wants to drive their child to school and half of them have no clue how school drop offs work.  Traffic will be backed up onto the road in front of almost every school.  

What other words of advice would you give to new teachers to help them start the year?

The Horck of Death or The Hairball

Having a cat means one very disgusting thing, hairballs.  Well, if you have a hairless cat (or as I call them, nakkid cats) maybe you don’t have a hairball issue.  I have short haired cats so I didn’t think that hairballs would be that big an issue but I was wrong.  I have, well the cats have frequent hairball issues.

One cat, Cordelia, almost always has hers on the tile floor.  It is easy to clean up and remove.  OK, I admit to making both gagging and eewwy noises if I clean hers up and it is still warm.  But the other cat, Malcolm, inevitably has his on the rug, the couch, or bed.  They are hard to clean up.

I know that he does that because one night, he was asleep on my legs when the horcking noise combined with the jingling of his collar, woke me up.  Imagine, just awaking from sleep, rising to a sitting position, just in time to see your cat horcking up a hairball on your feet.  Then what does he do, he blinks, rolls over away from the mess, and goes back to sleep.  So I do the same and clean up the mess when I get up in the morning.  I agree with Malcolm on this, never ruin your sleep no matter how slimy the problem.

So I decide to deal with the hairball issue.  I call the vet and get the recommended hairball medicine.  The hairball stuff comes in two cat approved flavors, malt or tuna.  He loves tuna, so I get that flavor.  They recommended that if he won’t eat it from the tube to smear some on his face.  It didn’t work.  Imagine, the seventeen pound tubby tabby running through the house shaking his head making his collar jingle.  Then the dog decides to get into the action. She chases the cat down to wash his face. I give up for the night.

The next day I call the vet and explain what happened.  I was then told to put some on his foot.  He would wash his foot.  Yeah, that worked.  What did he do? He ran through the house shaking his front foot and crashing into things.  So again, the dog washes the medicine off of him.  

I go to bed wondering how I can get the medicine in him?  When I get up the next morning I see the tube of hairball medicine in the living room. It is chewed up and empty.  So, the cat that gets lost in the house and forgets that his claws retract figured out how to get into the upper cabinet and only knock out the hairball medicine which the dog eats.  Just in case you were wondering hairball medicine works on dogs.  But eating the tube and its contents causes a truly disgusting issue that required yet another call to the vet.

So what was the new recommendation. Hairball formula cat food which according to one review, “Got rid of all hairballs”.  Ha, that so did not happen in my house but the other recommendation was mixing a dab of vaseline in a small amount of canned cat food.  The hairballs have decreased but every once in a while in the dead of night or when I am in the bathroom I hear the eerie sounds of the horck of death and I know that I will have to deal with the disgusting remains.

Why the title?

Why did I pick living with chaos?  All of us experience chaos in our lives, some of us more than others.    Some choose to live in the chaos and others live with it.

So what is the difference between the two?  Simple it is about control.

For me, living in chaos means that things happen.  I have no control over all of the stuff that goes on around me.  I only experience things as they happen and accept what occurs.  Whatever happens I deal with only if and when it happens.

Living with the chaos means that not only do I deal with things as they happen I try to influence and change things.  I do not merely stumble through life, I continue to make big decisions, for example going back to grad school as well as being a full-time teacher or getting my dog a pet cat.  I don't blindly leap into new activities I always research before I make a decision and then I normally go with something new.

So in short I have embraced the chaos of being a high school teacher, full time graduate student, pet parent, and a writer.  Deadlines and strange things are my frequent companions but I have embraced them because if nothing else I will get a story out of it.  Granted, the story will be almost unbelievable but my friends and family have experienced these stories so they know that they are real.

So make a jump into the chaos with me.