Updates

Sorry I haven't been a very good blogger lately; sometimes it's hard when it seems like there's so much going on, but at the same time it's like I have nothing to write about!

Last week was Fall Break, and it couldn't have come at a better time. I'm feeling burnt out much earlier than what's normal for me this year... so I was ready to have a little time away from students. For the most part, we just relaxed and did work around the house and yard. We managed to make a day trip to Connersville to see Chris' family. It was a lot of fun, especially since Chris hadn't seen his grandparents for a couple months. We got to see Claire as well, and she's REALLY excited about Halloween. She's such a girly girl, and she loves dressing up and playing with makeup... so Halloween is right up her alley. She's going to be "a pretty pink princess in a poofy dress". Hopefully Sheri will take pictures of her for me!

On Monday night Brian and Sarah came down for dinner and to watch the Colts game. Brian is Chris' good friend from high school, and he and Sarah have a 13 month old daughter named Brooklyn. Brooklyn is adorable; she's at the stage where she's trying really hard to talk and she's just starting to walk. We had a lot of fun, excluding the absolute horrible service we had a Cracker Barrel. I swear that waitress had to have been smoking crack or something... she forgot our orders, never refilled anything, and finally brought us a bottle of ketchup after asking her 3 times (and waiting 25 minutes for it). We're both glad that Brian and Sarah just moved to Greenfield from Indianapolis.

I've had a lot going on at work in addition to the regular stuff, so that's been a little overwhelming. I've also had a lot of students come down with the flu, so I've been trying extra hard to make sure everything in my classroom is super clean. That actually hasn't been too hard, since our corporation nurse gave me some heavy duty disinfectant cleaner because of the student with intestinal worms... I have to spray down everything she touched after she leaves daily until her doctor gives her a clean bill of health. The cleaner is actually what they use to clean surgery rooms in hospitals, so I'm confident it will kill any yucky things my students bring in with them.

Right now I'm looking forward to Halloween; we always get lots of trick or treaters, and having grown up in the country I get such a kick out of that!

Prepare to be disgusted...

One of my students came in this morning and told me that her mother was going to text her during class to let her know what time she was scheduled for a doctor appointment. Since she didn't look or sound sick, I asked her if she was feeling okay. She then informed me that she learned over the weekend that she has intestinal worms! And I'll spare you the gory details that I got, but suffice it to say that she learned about the worms because they started exiting....

I swear I've never been so revolted in all my life. Like Heidi said when I told her, I didn't think people got worms unless they lived in a third world country! Sick, sick, sick!!! I don't think I'll ever be able to look at that girl the same way ever again. They definitely didn't prepare me for stuff like this in any of my undergraduate or master's classes!!! As a side note, my hands are absolutely chapped from the zillion times I've washed them.....

Behold!

Behold the glory of our new TV! Did we need it? Absolutely not. Was it an unnecessary expense? Yup! Do we love it? OF COURSE! It's a 67 incher, which makes the 51 inch TV we had in the living room seem small (as you can see below).



See how much bigger the new TV is?

Look how happy Chris is! Plus, it's good for scale, since you can see that the TV comes about to his shoulders and he's 6 feet tall! We also bought a wireless surround sound system, which is supposed to get installed today. In all actuality, we decided this would be our Christmas present to each other even though we bought it in October. So Merry Christmas to us! And we decided that Chris' check for coaching tennis would be completely devoted to this. It's definitely more than we need, but I know we'll really enjoy it!

What a Week!

Well, it was a rough week around the Lakes household. A select number of my students were acting like absolute morons and in general caused me trouble left and right... I suppose that goes with the territory when you're talking about alternative students. Regardless, it was frustrating and mentally exhausting, especially when you take into consideration the extended phone calls with those students parents that I got to enjoy. Then on Wednesday, I learned that a former student of mine overdosed on heroin over the previous weekend and passed away. It's just such a waste of life; she was a very pretty and nice girl that came from an extremely bad home, and obviously made some really poor choices.

Thursday was the first round of tennis sectionals, and we drew Triton. We ended up losing 2-3, but Chris' one singles player will likely advance to the regionals at Center Grove next week. It was a difficult loss, especially since Triton was extremely obnoxious and poorly behaved. Rude comments and questionable behavior (such as trowing rackets across the court) abounded from their players throughout the match. However, since SW still almost managed a win with a team composed of almost all sophomores and freshmen, it looks as though we should do extremely well for at least the next few years.

The week wasn't all bad, though. Saturday night Chris took me out on a nice date, in part to celebrate the end of tennis and in part to thank me for taking over with mowing the yard while he was coaching. We went to the Cheesecake Factory, which was excellent. Neither of us had been there before, and we were surprised at how nice it was. It was a lot of fun and a nice change of pace for us. Hopefully this week will be a lot better!