i really meant to post before this. it's just been a busy week and a half. (okay, so it's just shy of 2 weeks, but we'll not mention that, okay?)

my last day in the science class was pretty cool. the kids were generally pretty good, most had passed their re-test, and there were lots of giftees and hugs. i get to look at this beautiful dolphin snow globe one young lady brought for me every day because it's next to my monitor. she also gave me a couple of small beanie babies that are real cute. i also have a stuffed puppy from another child. and lots of hand made pictures. and all of this stuff will go into my new classroom with if/when i get one of my own. we covered the test, i read my story "in the blood" (published in worlds of wonder last year), and we played a game. as they left me for the last time, many of them came up and gave me hugs. all in all it was a very nice day, with few problems. even my "problem" kids behaved pretty much.

i spent the weekend resting and relaxing and being with my family. and i took monday off as planned, but was called in tuesday. i considered turning it down, but we need as much as i can get on my checks so i went in. it was actually a 3/4 day - i didn't really need to be there until 11:30, but with one car and two jobs in the house, i was there at my usual 8 am. i spent the morning calling my other schools and letting them know i was available again. got another half dozen bookings in the process. at this point, i'm booked for the rest of this week, 2 days the first week of october, a day the following week, 2 days the week after that, another 2 the week after that, and a day or two in november. i've told the schools that i like to be at that they can call me in the evening the day before if they want just because the pre-booking is getting crazy.

the nice thing about being back to a regular sub job right now, though, is that i have time to write and crit again. for the last 5 weeks, i haven't been able to do much at all, so it was very nice to start to dive back in again. my counts were pretty low last week, but at least i was able to do something since the counts the weeks before that were like 0. the not so nice thing is that i get paid a little less - the extra $10/day you get on a long term position adds up! my check come the 29th will be the largest i've ever received as a sub. and this is a good thing - we have a month and a half worth of rent to pay plus a couple of utilities and i need a new cd-rom. so big check = good for us right now, but the regular room with the minimal work = good for me personally. better for everyone = me getting my own class. hopefully this january, right? *sighs*

the other nice thing this last week was being able to watch premiers without passing out. threshold sucked, the jury's still out on surface, e.r. flopped. the one i really liked was invasion - it really rocked! succeeded at the tensions that both threshold and surface aimed for but that threshold missed entirely and that was inconsistent in surface. and the whole e.r. failure was very disappointing. i've enjoyed e.r. since it started, and now none of the new characters truly interest me. just sad. and, honestly, there's not a whole lot i'm interested in this season. on the one hand, tv watching is the way saxy likes to spend our time together; on the other, i'm glad there's not much i want to watch since it'll give me more writing time.

we've had a few family things going on, the biggest news being, of course, that kitten has graduated and is now at fort gordon here in georgia! i'm very proud of her since she wasn't sure if she'd have to start over or not. i am also, however, very worried about her since she still has this nasty cough she's had since summer. she actually got herself a cell phone and calls quite a bit now, so i can harass her about going to the doctor every time she calls. it's hard to step back from being a mama. anyway, she doesn't have a driver's license yet, so she can't come and see us (and we're about 100 miles too far away anyway), and we still don't have insurance on our vehicle, so we can't go see her yet. but we've got some time to get that sorted out. i think she'll be out here for a couple of months anyway, and we'll find a way to see her during that time. and she's already planning on spending her christmas vacation time with us.

we've been having issues with froggy though. first, the girl is going in this week to get glasses. they have a program out here that helps kids get glasses for free and we're going to take advantage of it. of course, it's not quite free since saxy will have to go in to work later than usual, if he makes it in at all. but we're starting to have serious, serious behavior issues. she's taking things that don't belong to her, and one of those things was a pocket knife of saxy's that she took to school. she never showed it, but we found it in her backpack here at home and boy did she get in trouble. it would have been worse if they'd found it at schools - she could have gotten suspended or expelled.

however, this is just one incident in a string of impulsivity problems that are really starting to crop up. so we're thinking we need to get her in to a doctor to discuss her meds and see what we need to do to try to get this back under control. it's gotten so bad with her sister that we finally moved jewel into our room to separate them and get her away from jewel's stuff. it isn't a 100% fix - we've told her she's to stay out of that room because even if jewel is using it, it's still our room, but i've already caught her trying to sneak in. i really do hope her behavior recently is related to the adhd and a need for an adjustment in her meds and not anything more serious we'll need to deal with.

jewel, as you can imagine, is thrilled to have her "own" room, even if she has to put up with parents walking through to their bathroom or in to get clothes and whatnot.

this past friday was spent in a busy run around of paying bills, getting cat flea stuff ($114!!!! i seriously would go with something cheaper if something cheaper actually worked, but so far we haven't found anything), and taking care of other business. of course, we did all this after i got off work, so i was already tired and by the time we got home, i was ready to sleep. almost didn't make it through my stargate atlantis season finale! most days have been like this - working, then running off to do something, and coming home to crash. and even if we didn't have to run off to do something, there's always been something to take care of here at home. it's like i got my space over the 17th-19th, then things geared up again. makes me a little worried as to what will happen once this enforced vacation is over.

so it may only have been 10 days since the last update, but they've been full days. days of work and family and writing and good-byes and over due bills and long needed sleep. and so far the one really down side of my job is that it's finally killing my usual sleeping schedule. last year i was going to bed at 2 am because any earlier had me awake forever. now days i'm lucky to make it to midnight, much less 2 am. a lot less night time ps2 playing going on right now. at least i hope the sudden reduction of my awake hours has to do with the job. otherwise it's because of age and that would be even more depressing.

and now that i'm all caught up here, off to finish my catch up elsewhere - dii, my fl's, and my writing. one thing about working - everything gets ignored in the rush of life.