Done!

Today I finished my last class before break, so I don't have to go back to school until after Thanksgiving! Yay! Of course I have papers to grade, but that's how it always is :(

Weird, but good

Today I met with my dean to go over her evaluation from me. (This is the one from the disaster of a class that I had last week.) Before the evaluation, I had to fill out several forms, including an evaluation of myself. It was the same evaluation that both my dean and my students filled out as well.

I always have a hard time evaluating myself. I had a hard time giving myself a 5 in most categories because I just don't have that confidence. (There were a few though, where it was easy to do.)

At the meeting today, we went over my dean's scores as well as my students'. Both my dean and my students averaged out to the same number, and it was higher than the grade I gave myself! I couldn't believe it. I read through my dean's comments, and they were all pretty good. The things she said to work on are ones that I have been working on and are a continual struggle for me (such as getting all the papers graded and turned back in a "timely manner"). I've done pretty well the last two quarters though.

It would be interesting to know what her comments/scores would have been had she been there on a better day, one where most of my students were they and participating.

Overall the students' comments were pretty good too. It's funny, but when we went over the one real negative one I told her that I knew who wrote that, and she said the older lady in the front row? Yep, her. (The one who stayed after class last week.)

So the conference I was dreading, turned out to be rather encouraging! What a blessing! I wasn't super worried about my job based on the one evaluation since my dean knows me really well and I stop by to ask her questions/check in on a regular basis, but I was a bit embarrased since I knew that I usually do so much better (and a little concerned because classes are increasingly harder to get).

Thanks to those who prayed! I went into the meeting a lot less stressed than I would have been!

Privacy Request

I've been careful to not give too many identifying details about us on this site, esp. last name. This is especially important to me since we're adopting. I've also set up another blog to help with networking/finding a baby, and that will have even fewer details about us.

However, I've noticed that some of you have links to our blog that give our last name. If you could change those asap, I'd really appreciate it. I'm not doing much with our networking blog until I'm satisfied that we are untraceable, and that would really help me out. Once I start publishing our new blog, I'll give you the address for that so you can check it out.

Thanks for your help with this!

Weekly Wrap

1. Classes went well on Tuesday and Wednesday (figures!). It's hard to believe that we only have three weeks left! The one problem I'm seeing this quarter that I've never seen to this extent before is students' life problems. Just to give you an example of what I mean, I've had two students with lice (one got it from the other), a student with a spider bite that got infected, a student in the hospital (not sure if she's out yet), students with kids or parents in the hospital, death in the family of two of my students (mother/son), unexpected (but very welcome) pregnancy the first week followed by a difficult miscarriage last week, a husband laid off so the wife had to go to work full time to provide for him and their four kids. I could keep going, but you get the idea. I definitely spend a good bit of my time counseling/comforting/reassuring students.

I meet with my dean tomorrow, and I'm pretty nervous about that. If you think of it, pray for me. My meeting is at 3:00.

2. We bought a curtain rod for our dining room. Once those curtains are hung, we will have curtains on all the windows for the first time in a very long time! **UPDATE: Mark just finished hanging them! I'll post a picture sometime.**

3. There are major clearance sales at one of the JC Penney's by us. I got $70 worth of shirts for under $8!! I love sales like that! I also got Mark two shirts from Gap for his birthday, and instead of spending $50-60, they were only $15 total!

4. Our first quote for the psychological evaluations was $175/each for first visit and then $100/hour for any additional stuff needed. Our called the conact that my parents gave us, and he is doing it really cheap! What a blessing!!

5. Our stock dropped this week :( Pray that it goes back up since we have to sell some soon to cover the next adoption payment (last one until placement!).

6. There are always papers to grade. Especially research papers, and they aren't fun or easy to grade. And then they rewrite them and I get to regrade them :( That's what I'm supposed to be doing right now!

7. I got a hair cut this week, and I really like it. I think that I'm letting my hair grow out, so she reshaped so that it looks better in the process.

8. I stopped by my doctor's office and was able to load up on prescription samples--probably $2,000 retail/$200 in copays. I am so thankful for free samples!

9. I went to three different malls looking for an Afterthoughts. I thought that they were everywhere, but apparently not (Claire's, yes, but that's not what I'm looking for!). I need a new nose ring/stud--mine is having problems, and I haven't been able to go get it fixed. Frustrating!

10. If I don't get off and start grading papers, I'll be up all night!

Homestudy

Our homestudy went exceptionally well. The questions were variations of the ones we answered for our self studies, but this time we were able to go into a bit more detail since we didn't have to write them all out :) Mark and I caught ourselves adding to each other's questions (they pretty much all focused on family); that's what happens when you've known each other for half your lives!

We then gave the three-minute tour of our house (if you turn this way, you're in the living room), including the messy basement. The rest of the house looked great thanks to all the cleaning we did. If only it would always stay like that--I swear, the dust all came back as soon as she left!

We also had our individual interviews. Mark's last only 3 minutes, but mine was a bit longer since we went over medical issues. They both seemed to go well.

We have our next homestudy visit (this time at our social worker's house) the week of Thanksgiving. We'll have 3-5 visits, depending on how much we get done each visit. I'm hoping that we can do it in three, esp. since they are in the morning and Mark has to take off work for them.

Thanks for your prayers. We really appreciate them!

Mark's Birthday

Friday was Mark's 28th birthday, and it was quite an interesting day.

1:15--picked up Katie from work
1:16--we to the gas station, praying that we wouldn't run out of gas on the way :)
1:20--go to dealership to get headlight replaced so we can take my car to the game that night
2:00--go to the mall to find a few more things for Mark's birthday (very successful--found a few things one clearance for us too!)
3:15--got to leave the mall to rush home and make Mark's cake before he gets home
3:16--car won't start--doesn't even try to start
3:17--car still won't start
3:18--try one more time to start car and then call Mark (happy birthday!)
3:19--call AAA (VERY glad we renewed our membership last month! my grandma always bought it for us, and I didn't know that Mark had decided to renew it)
4:00--AAA comes and successfully jump starts car (says battery looks really bad, not really a surprise since it's almost 6 years old)
4:01--drive back to dealership
4:25--explain problem to dealership
4:26--they test the battery. it comes back as better than new???
4:30--car starts as if nothing had happened!
4:35--get home, right after Mark (so no cake)
5:15ish--went to game
11:00ish--get home, exhausted

At the Pistons/Clippers game

Our seats were the 7th row of the upper level, but this makes it look really high up there!

It was a complete blow out. We left halfway through the 4th, and we were up by 30.

On Saturday we went to my parents' house to watch part of the OSU game :( and have birthday cake. I used my new silicon round cake pans and learned that you need to spray them before using them (I wasn't sure so I didn't). His boston cream pie cake became a truffle.

28 candles make a lot of heat! It took him 5 tries to blow them all out, and by then, the chocolate was starting to melt!

Overall, I think he'd say it was a pretty good birthday!

A much better day today!

I definitely needed a better day today, and God certainly knew it. This morning my amazing mother came over and helped me clean my house before our homestudy visit. She also finished the curtains that I was making for our office and helped me hang them. Our house looks really good right now!

I then went to work, and when I checked my e-mail I found out that I won 4 Pistons/Knicks tickets for the day before Thanksgiving (Mark's first choice)! Every year they raffle off a set of tickets for most of the home games, and I've never won before. I was so excited!

Then after tutoring in the Writing Center, I was in the faculty office eating and grading papers as fast as I could before my night class. Someone else was talking about how she won and how excited she was. She's been around longer than I have and hadn't won before either. I told her that I had won too, and then went back to my work.

A few minutes later, she asked me for my name and phone number, and once I figured out that she was talking to me, I asked her why. She said that if she didn't find two others to go to the game with her, she would give me two of her tickets (they're for Friday, Mark's birthday). During class she came in and gave them to me!! So we are going to TWO games in the next three weeks. All for free. And the seats are decent ones, not the nosebleeds.

My night class also went well despite some high drama during break. It was too much to hope for 10 straight weeks without high drama :)

Yay for a good day!

Not a good day!

Ever have one of those days where it seems like nothing goes right? That was my day today. In all honesty, a lot of things went fine. I got to work on time, and I didn't hit any major traffic on the way home. The students I tutored in the Writing Center were kind and receptive. And they have nice new coffee cup lids in the faculty lounge!

So what did not go well? My class. A third of my regular students (8!) didn't show up. Out of those that came, another 4-5 did not have their essays with them, and today was a work on our writing day. I didn't get to hand out their papers at the beginning of class for them to see how well they did because I was off trying to find a dry erase marker since someone had taken the one in the classroom. Them my students all clammed up and just stared at me or at their desks. It was painful.

Oh yeah, and today was the day my dean was sitting in and evaluating me. We get evaluated every other year, and today was the day. I knew she was coming, and I thought that I had a good lesson plan for the day, but that didn't really work out. I can't tell you how frustrated and discouraged I was.

On top of it, my students got worked up over the fact that they weren't getting Essay #2 back today. This was as they were getting ready to do the evaluations, so I already know (my dean gave me a heads up) that some of my scores will be really low.

Then, just in case I didn't feel bad enough already, one of my students stayed after class and made me feel like crap. She has been negative since the first day, but it's typically been directed elsewhere, and I've stopped asking her how her day is. Today, all the negativity toward me came out. I'm sorry, but student-teacher chemistry does not really play a factor when you have only turned in 3-5 (out of 30+) assignments this quarter. I know that she's the one who has a problem and that she does this to other teachers (based on what she's told me in the past), and on a better day, I would have brushed it off pretty quickly, but on a day like today, it's a lot harder.

All of this made me think back over Psalm 126 and how the Israelites were discouraged and how they looked at what God has done in the past. I can't let myself just ruminate on this all night/all week until I meet with my dean next Monday. Instead, I am working on focusing on what went well. It's amazing how quickly that changes things.

God Things

This morning in church we studied Psalm 126. We were looking at joy and how to have it. So often we feel down and discouraged and anything but joyful or happy. In this psalm, they are feeling down, and they look back to what God has done in the past (released them from their captivity) and know that God will do it again. However, we have a role in that--we are to be active participants.

Things we need to do include realizing that joy is not dependent upon circumstances (this is soo hard sometimes!), realizing that joy is something we work on and not something that just happens, going to the source of joy, God, being a person of praise and giving witness to God's work (which gets our eyes off ourselves and onto God) and never giving up.

This week God has done several specific things for me, things I call "God things."

1. Each quarter people from all the English deparments meet together for a system meeting on our main campus. It is always on a Friday, and since I had been teaching Thursday nights, the last thing I wanted to do was get up early on Friday, drive an hour, and go to meeting. However, like all other meetings at my school, they are paid.

This quarter I don't teach on Thursdays, so I signed up to go. However, when I got an e-mail about it from my dean I noticed that the pay was $10 less PER HOUR than it had been in the past. I was frustrated, but I still wanted to go to see what it was all about and to still make some money. When I was there, I asked my dean about time sheets, and she said to get them from our campus and to fill them out for X amout/hour. The amount she said was the previous pay, and when I asked her about it, she said that they changed it back!! I'm sure they got a lot of complaints. We finished an hour earlier than scheduled, but I still came out ahead with the better pay rate.

2. God has provided me with several really good friends who have been a huge source of encouragement in my life right now, and on Saturday I was able to reconnect with another old friend. God is using these friends in to help me through some very difficult times right now. I am so thankful for them!

3. Our cat likes to eat things--I don't know what her deal is, but she's ruined at least 3 pairs of shoes, scrapbooks, picture frames, and who knows what else. On Friday I discovered that she had chewed up our expensive (very expensive to us!) leather scrapbook that we are using for our adoption book that birthparents look at and decide if they want us to have their baby. Obviously, I couldn't use it like that. I felt sick to my stomach and was very discouraged.

I knew that I just had to go out an buy another one, but the only place to get one that met our standards/requirements was an independant scrapbooking store (aka expensive and no sales or coupons). I went to get it, and as I walked in, I saw that they were having a sale. Seriously, I can only think of two other sales that I have seen there, and they weren't all that great. This time you drew a discount coupon for either 20%, 30%, or 40% off. That was huge.

I then found the scrapbook, but in chocolate, not black. It was cheaper than I remembered, so I was further encouraged. They said that they would order me a black one whenever they put in their next order to that company, but I still wanted to get the chocolate one since I might need it before the other one comes in and so I could get the discount. As I checked out, the person said that you automatically get 40% off the first item you buy and then draw for the discount for the rest of the sale. (I hadn't read the whole sign.) This put it at a very affordable price! I called two people on the way home to tell them about this God thing.

It's amazing that He cares about something as small as a scrapbook.

4. I also decided to try getting the cat some toys so that she might stop eating my stuff. I went to PetCo to see what they had, but of course they don't really make chew toys for cats. (I was tempted to get her something from the hamster section!) However, they did have some interesting Halloween toys on clearance. I got her three different toys (and one for the pup so she didn't feel left out) for not too much money and brought them home. She actually plays with two of them! She had toys in the past, but she never played with them and eventually the dog ate them, so we never bothered with them too much after that. It is completely a God thing that she is now playing with the toys, and we are praying that it is the end of her chewing everything else.

5. We talked with another couple in our church this morning who adopted through Bethany last year to find out what to expect at our homestudy visit this week. They were so helpful, and it was especially encouraging to find out that they had the same social worker as we do. We had a very negative first impression of her, so it was really good to find out that they loved her. That makes me feel a lot better about the situation.

We also were able to talk with someone else whose father is a psychologist with a Ph.D. and might be able to do our psychological evaluations. He already talked to his father about us, and I am calling to find out more information tomorrow. Again, another huge relief!

It is so encouraging to look at what God has been doing. What are some things He's been doing in your lives?

"Weekly" Wrap

It's hard to believe another week is gone. October just flew by! Here are some highlights from this week:

1. Jo is keeping warm by claiming all the blankets in our house. I curled up on the couch under this blanket, and she was sitting on my feet. When I had to get up, I folded/pushed away the blanket with her in it. At some point, I opened it enough to see her head; she stayed like this for several HOURS! What a life!




2. We went on a road rally with our friends on Friday night. We do it with an older Sunday school class, and last year we placed in the top 5 (out of 17). This year, we did not do as well. We placed 13th (out of 13)! I'm still now exactly sure how that happened. We were two minutes late, so that really affected us, but still! This means that we won the "Just glad we finished" prize (a man in an outhouse). Lovely. Hopefully we only have it for one year! It is one of the items that you bring back for the following year.

3. Yesterday was gorgeous, so we worked outside all day. Mark cleaned up after the dog (who has decided to go to the bathroom along all the stepping stones in the backyard which means that I have to zigzag my way to the garage when I have my rolling briefcase with me!). He also put away the patio furniture and thoroughly washed the patio.

I worked on stripping some items that may have lead-based paint. I was also going to finish the highchair, but you can only do so much in one day. Here is an old rocking chair that I got this spring at a garage sale in Indiana. In one of the pictures, you can see an old cradle that I got at a garage sale around the corner a couple years ago. As I worked on them, I realized that they were both made by the same company: N.D. Cass. The fabric on the chair has several copyright dates, and the most recent one is 1929! I'm definitely going to be researching this some more.

I didn't get them finished, but I got a lot done. Then it's on to sanding and painting. I haven't decided exactly what I want to do with them, but at the rate I'm going, I have some time to think about it.

I post more pictures when I have it finished. (Hopefully before next summer!!)