November 2019 Thankfulness List - Day 7

As a Literacy teacher, we have to teach all things related to reading and writing... grammar, reading strategies, writing strategies, discussion techniques, presentation techniques, vocabulary... the list goes on and on and luckily I have 100 minutes a day to do it. The seventh and eighth grade teachers only get 50 minutes! Their units are also staggered differently than ours, but that's not what I'm thankful for at the moment.

I've always done writing conferences and I've practiced and tried and restructured and whatever reading conferences. Book groups are so hard to do. Don't let anyone sell you on it being easy. IT takes a well-structured classroom to get those kinds of things going. And this year... I finally did it! I have been structuring time in reading to get things done and it has been great sitting there and talking to my kids. Some of them are CRAZY excited about their books. Others have questions. It... it has just been wonderful, when I can get them done. I leave feeling good about things, because I took the time to have those moments.

Same thing with writing conferences. I now have a little chair next to my desk. I get to talk to the students and we discuss their story. They tell me things... they share their vision... I try to give them advice, but by the end of things I feel good about myself. But what they do once they leave my presence is a whole other story and I'm not going to go into that, because I want to bask in the glow of really putting my all into conferencing this year and how it has made me feel great, despite being a ton of work! Now that it's going... we're in a groove.

So no matter how much I complain or get frustrated, I just have to remember that it was worth it... at least for the first week. Ha!

November 2019 Thankfulness List - Day 6

Billy on the Street is on Netflix now and I have taken to watching it. I've always known about the show and caught little segments now and again, but now I get to watch it in full. The reason I'm thankful for the show is that it is helping to get my mind off of all the stressful things that are really keeping me down. I can't believe how much I literally Laugh Out Loud at so many of the things that go on. I know Billy Eichner from Parks and Recreations where he was the loud, easily offended douchebag and then I've seen him on other things, like American Horror Story, but his loud crassness really sends my worries out the window.

November 2019 Thankfulness List - Day 5

It's a rough school year for me. I mean... seriously everywhere it feels like we're being smothered with so much, let alone my Literacy Coach leaving and then all the personal stuff going on outside of school. The last thing I want is to think about bringing a student teacher into my classroom for a whole semester.

And yesterday I received an e-mail from my principal. Apparently I was being requested to be someone's cooperating teacher. Like... someone had heard about me and had specifically asked for me. I don't know if others can realize how big of an honor that is... but something I'm doing is right. For someone like me who is so self-conscious about everything, this blew my mind.

Now the interesting thing is... I don't know who this guy is. Never heard of him... no social media overlapping contacts... my friends haven't heard of him. But in his bio, he coincidentally listed board games. Did he hear about me through the board gaming community? Was it just, really, a coincidence? Did an advisor at the university recommend me?

All these questions just constantly run through my head. The long and short of it, though, is that something I'm doing is right. Something I'm doing is spreading my name around in a positive way. What an honor... really... an honor... to have someone want me as their "teacher."

November 2019 Thankfulness List - Day 4

When my husband and I started doing Keto, we were taken by the idea of that bulletproof coffee. We tried the butter and we tried the MC oil and all that. I'm not a big coffee drinker. Never have... never really will be. I like my Sugar Free RockStar that I'm sure is eating away at some part of my soul. As an alternative, so that I wasn't always drinking RockStar, I started to experiment with coffee.

For 2 servings (one for me, one for my husband) I use:

• 5 TBSP Archer Farm's Creme Brulee (or S'mores)
• 5 cups of water
• 2 TBSP Hershey's Cocoa Powder
• 4 pumps (literal pumps) Torani Sugar-Free S'mores Syrup
• 1/4 cup of Torani Sugar-Free Vanilla or French Vanilla
• Dashes of Liquid Stevia (to taste)
• 1  5.4oz can of Native Forest Organic Premium Coconut Cream, Unsweetened

Yep... that makes my morning rock. Well... when we remember to wash the shaking thing and my travel mug is properly prepared. Oh... and if I remember to prep the coffee maker the night before.  Somewhere around Thursday I tapper off and restart my RockStar.

But I still love my go-to recipe. Sometimes I play with flavors, like peppermint, but the above is my go-to.

November 2019 Thankfulness List - Day 3

Daylight Savings Time is such a pain in the butt. Not having one time that just runs throughout the year. So many places don't change their clocks, but we do. I always worry which way the clock with go. Will I lose sleep or will I gain sleep? Spring Ahead and Fall Back don't work for me. I need to know if my current 5:30AM is going to be 4:30AM or 6:30AM. In the Fall it becomes 4:30AM and in the Spring my 5:30AM will then be 6:30AM. Seriously... it's way too complicated... but you either gain an hour of sleep or lose an hour of sleep. It'd be so much simpler if my 5:30AM was always the same 5:30AM.

But my thankfulness for "falling back" falls into the category of "I just gained an hour of sleep, because my 5:30AM is now 4:30AM and I get to sleep for an extra hour."  So even though my body is all "GET UP!" it's only 4:30 and I get to try to convince it to go back to sleep for at least another hour. I will, without guilt, get another hour of sleep.

And that is what I am thankful for.

November 2019 Thankfulness List - Day 2

Last year my passion for the holidays was non-existent. I wasn't caring at all about anything. It was a horrible feeling. This year, though, I was bitten by the holiday bug. I have a feeling it has something to do with my daughter's desire to start decorating for the holidays. It started with Halloween and now I want very badly to decorate for Thanksgiving.

We don't typically decorate, because we don't really have people over. The most we have is maybe my mom. We decorate for Christmas, because it's my husband's favorite holiday, but usually everything else we skip. Today, though, I was excited to prepare for the fall holiday.

First, I found my mom's homemade stuffed turkey and put it out. Then I went to Wal-Mart and saw that not only were the Halloween decorations 50% off, but so were all the fall decorations! Scarecrows and patchwork pumpkins and fall wreaths... I was so excited and my husband was so horrified!

When I got home, I immediately put it all up and I just felt so good. It felt like a holiday was coming. My daughter loved the turkey and the scarecrows. Without that discount, there was no way I was going to be able to get these items, especially the wreath. So I am thankful for discounts. They're always good, but even better when they help you find happiness in a dark time.

November 2019 Thankfulness List - Day 1

I think sometimes we underestimate the importance of the general things in life. As a teacher, we become used to certain parts of the day, one them being The Bell! It signals the start of things and it signals the end of things. When a schedule changes, the bells can get a bit awkward and sometimes it turns into clock-watching and constant worrying that you are going to let the kids out too late or they're going to get class too early.

Today was one of those days. We had a shortened class schedule, because at the end of the day our school was having a whole school activity hour (or so) to celebrate great school behavior. A behavioral incentive celebration of sorts. I am always asked to run a game room in the media center and then other staff volunteer to come in and help supervisor. I usually get them to play games... or the students get them to play games.

Typically I wander around and assist in quick-teaches or I might even get sucked into a game briefly. This year, though, I thought I'd run a Werewolf game. So we went into the Literacy Lounge, which is attached to the Media Center (Library) and started playing. Well... I was counting on a bell to tell us the day had ended. We didn't notice people leaving the larger media center and I had not looked at the clock for 4 minutes and realized we were 3 minutes over the bell.

No big deal, right? Nope! Some of the buses leave REALLY early and one of my students ended up missing her bus. Oh my goodness my heart was broken... We were able to fix the situation, but I realized how much I relied on the bell to help remind me of things.

So at the end of a week full of just, absolutely horrendous things... one thing I can say I am very thankful for are the bells to help mark the passing of the day.

October Movie Binge 2019 - Day 31: The Sixth Sense (1999)

What I love about ending with this movie is that I think it feels so outside of the other spirit films. It, in essence, changed or disrupted the typical view of a haunting movie. Not only does it have the twist (which would become Shyamalan's trademark), but it ended up creating a whole new scare style and character development.

It has the element of a haunting as a dramatic plot device, but the haunting is also at the root of the scares. As I mentioned in previous entries, there is the fine line of there being a deeper moving only using the skin of a haunting, possession, or malicious spirit and the movies that are more about the actual supernatural activity and the story is driven directly by the haunting. Here is where that fine line is danced upon and then broken.

Sadly, though, once you've seen the twist, it takes a little bit away from the movie when watching it again. The nice thing is that you start to see all the little hints and signs of the twist throughout the movie.

1999 was clearly a high point in the release and reinvention of the spirit/possession genre and this one continued the tradition of breaking the mold and upping the ante on this style of filmmaking.

October Movie Binge 2019 - Day 24: The Haunting (1999)

For being in 1999, The Haunting has some interesting special effects. I was thinking back to when I originally watched it, and it just wasn't as dated then.

When I was doing some digging around about the movie, I learned that Stephen King and Steven Spielberg were working on developing this movie together. The interesting part of it is that Steven Spielberg wanted it to be a heroic story and Stephen King wanted it to be a scary movie. The parted ways on the project and Spielberg gave us The Haunting and King gave us Rose Red, which I'll be watching later, but am very familiar with.

What is interesting, though, and that I'm really noticing is at the heart of these stories with the houses or mostly any ghost story is the emphasis on the backstory and the history. Sometimes it has someone who knows all the details and brings others along. Then there are the ones where the people discover it through research or history. Then there's the twist kind where someone who knows everything tricked the people involved and it's typically because they want to get something out of it. I think I need to revisit this idea in the wrap-up piece.

The Haunting utilizes the one character who knows everything and is exploiting the people he's drawn in under false pretenses. He has an ulterior motive that goes away pretty quickly after things take a turn. The history of the house and the "reality" behind the haunting is discovered through research and intuition by the leading lady.

I don't think it stands the test of time, but the story is an interesting one, as part of the Winchester Mystery House tradition. The unique use of connections to the haunted house and the history that surrounds the house, coupled with the main character's own history makes it stand apart. It is slow and isn't really about the spook and scare, so be prepared for something a bit more akin to a drama, but set in a haunted house.

The Haunting also pays homage to The Haunting of Hill House (1959) with the blood writing on the wall, which was a great surprise.

Finally, tying it into this long list of films... we have Lili Taylor as the lead role... and she's Carolyn Perron from The Conjuring.

October Movie Binge 2019 - Day 23: House on Haunted Hill (1959)

I'm sure at the time of it's release, it was riveting. Now it has its nostalgia factors, one of which is Vincent Price. For the time, the visual effects were really interesting. The twist at the end, though, is what makes this a great inspiration for so many other haunted house movies that make it more about just people being harassed by ghosts. A great addition to a dated film.

***After watching The Haunting, there is a bit of homage to The House on Haunted Hill with the painting of information on the wall.***