The leaning tower of updates

Wow... so it's been approximately forever since I've updated this thing. Not that I need to justify my absence, but it was a combination of a) the craziness of the end of the school year, b) the irritating slowness of our home internet connection, and c) my two-week period of forgetting my Blogger password. But here I am.

We now have wireless internet at home! Woohoo!!

Okay, so let's think here. I managed to finish out my substitute position without disemboweling an 8th grader. I'm not sure how, but I did. The last week of school was worthless because we couldn't make the kids do anything. The middle school teachers had this attitude of, "Well, they want to do less and less as we get closer to the end of the year, so we might as well just give them free days," plus the administration planned all these awards ceremonies and field trips and other things for the last couple days. The result was that I seemed to be the only one who actually wanted to use class time, but I got no support. Garrrr.

The last two days were field days, a.k.a. babysitting middle schoolers running around outside, a.k.a. reading a book and pretending not to see whenever someone fell down. I did have some fun throwing water balloons at students and shoving handfuls of ice down one particularly obnoxious boy's shirt. He got me back though. It was actually quite hilarious.

I had a bunch of interviews towards the end of the school year, including one second round interview that looked promising but went nowhere. I was ready to have a mental breakdown because the wedding was quickly approaching, and neither Bryan nor I had a job for the fall, but then I did get a call back offering me a permanent, contracted position. I am so damn thrilled. I'll be teaching 10th, 11th, and 12th grade English starting at the end of August. I couldn't be happier. It's my preferred age group, it's a good district, and it's got a contract! Woohoo! Things are starting to come together.

I'm still at the bakery, but only on weekends, and only for one more week. I got a job teaching summer school back in the district where I did my student teaching. I teach 16 kids in grades 10-12, and they all need to pass the class to advance to the next grade level. So far, it's been great. They're interesting, funny, and friendly; they're just lazy and failed last year's course. I was happily surprised to find that most of them want to participate and readily ask questions. I was afraid I'd be faced with five weeks of blank stares. There are a few who are perpetually late or who fall asleep in class, but they know that if they're asked to leave my class, that's it. If they get kicked out of class, they get kicked out of the program and don't get a refund. It's tough.

Last weekend was my shower, and I had a TON of fun. I admit I was really freaking nervous beforehand (not so into being the center of attention), but as soon as I got to the house and saw how many people were there whom I love, I felt totally happy and relaxed. I got soooo many amazing kitchen gadgets!! It was like sensory overload. I've been trying to concoct a recipe that would allow me to use every single one of them at once, but I think that would just cause the world to implode.

So it just hit me that next month is the wedding already. Bryan and I have most of the big stuff taken care of. We still just have a bunch of little time-consuming tasks like picking music and designing the ceremony program and such. GoogleDocs has been unbelievably helpful in the past few weeks!

So overall, things are good. We both now have jobs for the fall, we're looking for an apartment, and we haven't totally lost our minds over the wedding planning yet. I guess there' still time for insanity though, haha.

I guess that's about it for now! Lily's doing fine (she just got spayed this week) and the rest of the family is good. I can't believe it's July already!!