no, no, no, not money, so don't get your hopes up for us, but it's almost as good . . . sorta.

school starts august 14 and now we're trying to turn around sleep schedules. miss thang, in particular, needs to get herself back on track. staying up till 3 am will not help her get up at 4:30 or 5 am in 3 weeks. heck, she could barely manage getting up when she had to stay up until 11 or 11:30 pm to get homework done. the younger kids have less work to do. taz always wakes up early, which is somewhat problematic since no one else may be awake and he tends to get into things he's not supposed to when not watched. froggy has a little more work to do, but we'll get her started next week since she doesn't have to be up at 5 am except on the rare occasion i go to a high school, and, even then, closer to 6 will do.

still, we've all fallen into lazy habits -- up after 10, to bed after 10 (okay, so, with me that's normal). the only one who's stayed on any kind of normal schedule is hubby -- and he's been working all summer! taz is the only one who tries to get in bed by 8 (and i'm working on changing that to 8:30), but then he stays up half the night anyway and still gets up at god awful hours in the morning. the kid needs next to no sleep. the good news is going back to school should help with some of the belligerence we've been experiencing, as well as make him sleepier earlier at night. granted, quite a bit of his issues right now could be the damn heat and the fact that our a/c sucketh mightily.

course, the bad news is that i'm still a sub. no calls for work at all, not even long term work. and i really wish someone, anyone would tell me why. is it because they don't want to lose a good sub? is it because they have plenty of people with their certificates already? am i great as a sub but somehow, because of personality or whatever, not full time teacher material? is god keeping me free until one of the schools actually starts a writing job? what the hell is it? the sad thing is i'll probably never find out, and that just sucks. and i really wish i could just up and take a different job, but there are issues with that too -- particularly when the kids are off for holidays and whatnot.

really, i think we're going to have to make an effort to turn that around on our own. granted, i can see myself getting my certificate and then the district not needing teachers nearly as badly as they do now (would be my luck, anyway), but sitting here waiting for one of the schools to hire me so i can get the provisional certificate isn't doing me any more good than going to school and getting a renewable on my own, especially since the gtapp program costs a hell of a lot more than i thought it would.

and in a step in that direction, i received my packet for approving the consolidation of our school loans. being able to go back to school, now that will be a real turn around.

word of the moment: creativity imaginative ability: the ability to use the imagination to develop new and original ideas or things, especially in an artistic context