N-A-V-Y you ain't got no alibi!

The big, bad Navy has taken my husband away.  They also pay the bills and keep my country free.  

You can see the dilemma here, right?  

So here is my weekend sans husband.  

G came over!

My roses look great!

LP came!  :)  We watched "The City of Ember" which was pretty good if I may say so myself.  It's also a children's novel.  I suggest you read it and then view the movie.  The movie was almost better than the novel, and I hardly ever feel that way.  Bill Murray was the mayor.  Keep in mind I hang out with 8 yr olds so that may be one reason I like kids movies or novels.  Or maybe my soul is pure and childlike.  Your call.  

And so with a promise not to blog as a victim I say only this: I miss my husband, I miss him every day.

Love, 

Kaley

More Flowers!

Since my last flower delivery was a little lame with a card in espanol and browning blooms, my hubby emailed the flower company to tell them of our lame experience.  I hadn't gotten new flowers so I was going to make Tara call!  She was very ready, let me assure you, but when I arrived at school I had something waiting for me.  

These!

Flowers two weeks in a row!  It really does do a lot to disperse the sweaty, farty, b.o., type smell that permeates throughout the room (Especially since there is NO A.C. in there right now!)  Smells like roses if you're in a two foot radius of my desk.  

FTD, I forgive you.

Love, Kaley

Thoughts. Mostly inconsequential.

A few thoughts.

1. I am obsessed with this couch.  Mostly because it's pretty cheap.  And slip covered.  And if I ever live with the husband again, I am going to make him buy it for me. 
2. Baby squirrels make me nervous.  One ran straight for the car today.  I hate road kill- To quote my first grade teacher "Oh the CARNAGE"
3. I am not fat, I'm retaining water.  Seriously.
4. School is out in 10 days.  
5. My husband has no idea as to when he might come home- or back to the USA at least
6. Children's voices are angelic.  Even if they are very bad.  I very much enjoyed the Chorus Concert this morning.  A lot.  But the patriotic songs made me miss Nick.  
7. One of my favorite students came over to give me a hug at said concert.  
8. I haven't learned anything else about beavers, but I did learn that scientists don't believe there are any cougars left on the East Coast.  Rest easy tonight folks. 

That's it.

You're welcome.  

Kaley

Words of Wisdom

And whom do you think I would quote some wise words from?  

C.S. Lewis?  No.

The Bible? Tempting, but no.

Sean Watkins?  Yes.

So these lyrics have been stuck in my brain waves for... ever since I have been listening to them.  Let's just say S.W. is a kindred spirit i.e. from the race that knows Joseph (Anne of Green Gables allusion)

"History flies all around me

An angry swarm of mistakes

I ran away, but not far enough.  

I thought they were gone, 

I didn't realize

I kept them alive

in the back of my mind

If I could forget, it would starve them to death"

Oh how wise!  Does something ever get dredged up in your memory and you feel the same as the aforementioned verse?  It just resonates with me man.  I'm telling you.  

After that little nugget I'll bet you're thinking "Thank you sir, I'll have another"

So, here you are.  

"Your words they never go

They've made my head their own

Though I often scold

I try to shoe them away

But they always stay 

and it's getting old.

If there's nothing there

Then why do I spend all the day

Entertaining them

Rewind and play it again"

Once again, perhaps this harkens to my need for rhythm and rhyme, but I love this.  Some people's words just get stuck in my noggin.  Like, this insult someone delivered to me in high school.  Still knockin' around in there.  

But, as Eleanor Roosevelt said "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent"  

And so, I will mercifully end this post.  With a quote.

Quote the raven nevermore

Kaley

Blog worthy

The only thing I have to blog about is that I miss my husband.  Big time.  It comes and goes in waves, but on this miraculous day off, it's kind of staring me in the face.  

So there you have it.  

Love, Kaley

Roots

Today we had a "Recipe Retreat" at school.  It's a time where the girls get together, share recipes that they've cooked, and talk.  Well, I obviously didn't cook anything-to save face- and just picked up a pre made salad from the deli.  All the teachers were talking about this kid, and "Oh, I had him in kindergarden" and "Were you here when so and so was principal?"

Then it struck me there on the couch, all of a sudden.  

I will never be able to set down roots with a school, with a group of children, with a neighborhood.  My children aren't going to have friends they've known since they entered Kindergarden to when they graduate.  It kind of made me a little sad.  No roots.  BUT I do know you have trade offs in life.  My children will go on amazing field trips, have friend making skills unequal to mine, Nick and I will be able to live in a million different places, have so many new experiences-and there is something to be said for that.  

So, no roots.  Another military adjustment.  

Love, Kaley

Paging Kaley-This is Jesus

A few things have happened as of late to make me think that Jesus is speaking to me.  I get daily emails from Christ Notes that send one Bible verse a day to my inbox.  I highly recommend them.  I periodically post a particularly poignant verse onto my computer or the surrounding chalkboard.  (Did you notice the alliteration in that sentence?)  Recent events caused me to stare at and digest all the verses -while sitting in my teacher cocoon- and meditate on some meaning:  Here are my thoughts.  

¹⁵Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. ¹⁷The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

1 John 2:15-17

This was a shout out to my compulsive "Husband Gone Depression" shopping habit.  I do lust after clothes on sale, I can't imagine a world in which I do not have those hot pink capris on sale for 20 dollars.  So, I put this verse on a card and stuck it in my wallet.  So far it has only served to thin out the stream of purchases rather than quell them completely, but I'm a work in progress.  

²Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. ⁴Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

James 1:2-4

Face it Kaley-you're in a trial.  (A trial so deep it has you talking to yourself in third person on your blog-lame!)  This really hit home with me especially the part where it mentions that it has work to do.  Instead of revolting against my trial I can embrace it and learn what Jesus is aching for me to pull from it.  To come out of the tunnel with a stronger faith than you went into it with.  Obvious, but a bit of an "Oh!" moment when I reread it.  

Ah working in a secular environment sure does tempt me to gossip and pick up some smarmy language.  And I fail.  Again and Again.  They might even put me on the fail blog with a giant FAIL across my face for "Resisting temptation to repeat smarmy work vocabulary".  I can blame it on work all I want, but a large part of it is my heart and it's craptastic attitude.  "The joy of the Lord is my strength, my song.  It has become my salvation"

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:18

In a secular world how far do you go when defending your beliefs?  I always state how I feel, most times with a disruption.  The Gospel is urgent, but when does it become rude especially if the "greatest of these is love".  I want to live in truth.  I want my actions to speak of my faith.  I feel like I'm on trial everyday.  And to be honest, I'm looking forward to working at a Christian Camp with Christ lovers all summer, a little respite from the world I live in.  

Jesus is definitely working in people's hearts who are around me.  

Love, Kaley

PS  I'm really not looking for a book deal.  So if you read this and think : Her theological insights remind me a lot of C.S. Lewis- listen, I'm not in it for the fame. (The above was completely facetious)

Flowers. From the Pacific.

Friends, 

My husband sent me flowers from the middle of the ocean.  These are the times when I sing the praise of technology.  One of my coworkers brought a box of flowers to me.  I open it to find a bouquet of sweetheart roses-and this note(sorry for the mirror image and poor quality):

That's right, it's a Mother's Day note in espanol.  I had my bilingual student translate it.  It's actually pretty nice (You are the queen of my heart:mi corazon mi reyna), however it's not from my husband.  I had just assumed they were from him.  FTD customer service assured me that my message-though a sappy message being read to you by a customer service rep is my idea of awkward- was from my husband.  They are sending it to me in the mail.  The flowers were the right ones.  They had inserted the order number before mine into my message spot.  

What a husband!  I love that man!

Love, Kaley

Man do I miss my husband.  I want my best friend to be home.  I want to eat popcorn on the couch with him.  Or go to Home Depot.  Or the Grocery store.  Or go nowhere at all.  Just be with him.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.  

Places I would go with Nick (just to be with him)

• Italy
• The Arctic circle
• The Bermuda triangle
• Arkansas
• Guam
• Narnia

Places I would still go to see Nick, but wouldn't want to 

• The Serengeti
• The moon (I hate outer space)
• North and or South Dakota
• Mexico
• The gates of Mordor
• Communist China

And I quote this line from Mindy Smith

Okay WAIT stop the presses.  I was about to quote what I thought was an endearing lyric, when my Google search revealed to me she did not indeed say "Ship", but a rhyming word one letter off.  Talk about a bubble burst.  

Love, Kaley

Postcards

I just got a postcard.  From Guam.  Pictured above.  I love when I get a friendly reminder that I am married and my husband is really nice.  However, I think Nick owes Guam 17 cents since he only put a 27 cent mango stamp on the back.  This postcard also gives me a purpose for my life-figuring out how to scrapbook or otherwise keepsake a postcard.  I have to be able to see both sides!  See my dilemma?  And so, this postcard will most likely end up in some sort of shoe box labeled with a sharpie.  

After this week Nick has been at sea for about a month, but we haven't lived together for two or three, I'm not sure which.  He did email me and tell me he saw a sea turtle the size of a small table, though I may have previously blogged to you about this-I told you I'm attributing everything I forget to a fictional B12 deficiency I feel I have, but don't feel strongly enough about to make a doctor's appointment.  

So, Navy wife info aside, I've found out that I like Beavers.  Yeah, that's right.  So, here's why:

• Beaver's can fell 11 tree's in one day (or week, I wasn't listening to Animal Planet that hard)  
• Beaver's chew succulent branches off of trees and then attach them to the mud beneath their dam to eat after the ice freezes: Like a little snack refrigerator!
• Beaver's defend said succulent branches from Moose-by far nature's most cantankerous member of the deer family (Yes Deer Family, I wikipedia'ed it)

That's about all the new things I learned about them.  Oh, and the fact that their pelts had widespread appeal, but I already knew that.  

I went to up to SU town this weekend to visit LP and she made me watch Star Trek.  Besides allusions to quantum physics that soared far above my earthling mind, I did enjoy it.  There was a lot of punching, but mostly it was cool.  And I figured out that the star fleet has ranks very similar to Naval ranks.  There was even an Ensign!  Oh goodness, and in the preview for Transformers they blew up an aircraft carrier-man was that gut wrenching!  

So, that was my super cool, hipster weekend.  Jealous?

Love, Kaley

What the kids are watching.

Okay, so maybe I did steal that title from a segment on "The Soup".  I hope it's not overly copyrighted...

Twilight.  That's what the kids are watching.  And Wolverine, The Dark Knight, Transformers, and the like.  Movies meant for 13 year olds are being watched by 8 year olds.  A little girl has a picture of a red irised Edward Cullen on her binder.  She carries a Twilight fan mag... maybe she's writing some killer fan fiction at writing center-I don't know.  I do know this, she played "Twilight" at recess.  I'm thinking, what did you fall in love and suck someone's blood?  How do you "play" a book about a vampire-werewolf love tryst?  Let's just say I'm creeped out that an 8 year old is crushin' on an eyeliner wearing vampire.  

On a related note I asked "Sally" who her BFF was.  She said Jill.  I'm like, "Really, I thought it was Susan" and she says-now this is priceless- "Susan has been BFF's with Katie for like a week"

Which led to a discussion about BFF meaning Best Friend Forever, so would the term really apply to someone who had just been your best friend a week? (Yes, I did have this convo. with an 8 year old) So I told her you should call her your BFFLAW or B-Flaw.  (Best Friend For Like A Week) And I now officially have an inside joke with a child.  Woot woot!  You might be laughing, but I'll be laughing my way to the bank!  I'm going to copyright "BF-FLAW" just like Paris copyrighted "That's Hot"  

Love your BFF, 

Kaley

LYLAS, TTYL, W/B, WWJD, LOL, BRB

Will we ever get anything done again?

iChat hits Mayo.  

Why hang out when you can iChat and be on a roller coaster and in France simultaneously?  

Things discussed in tonight's iChat:

• Whether plum lip gloss goes with bronze blush
• How to capture a screen shot of your desktop.  Two brains are better than one.  
• Photo ISO
• Having better posture
• Why iPhoto thinks I'm LP and Nick is Sean Watkins
• Whether or not we should have stayed up this late just to iChat

I missed this kind of mundane dorm room talk, but now it's back!  And what a relief, we can once again surf the net while making idle off hand comments.  Perfect.  

Another iChat Fav from Christmas Past...excuse the offhand allusion, it's late. LP and I often chat about how many cats we'll have when we're lonely and whether or  not to watch Lord of the Rings with or without DVD commentary.

Love, Kaley

PS  LP do not kill me with your laser cyborg eye

Work Schmerk

I do not want to work on or type my formal lesson plan.  I don't want to think about school.  I am mad that I have to do work on the weekend.  I. don't. want. to.

Oh and landforms are natural features on the earth's surface i.e. hills, mesas, plateaus, plains, mountains, prairies, and the like.  AHHH.

The end.

Kaley

This is my working title.

Guess what?  My husband utilized McDonald's wifi to iChat me from the middle of the pacific ocean yesterday.  Adding just one more reason I love Mickey D's and I might even rank this reason over some McNuggets w/ sweet and sour sauce.  And he called me today!  Which probably cost me about 100 bucks.  "Money can't buy me love", but I guess in this case it did.  I'm sure you're all tired of these  iChat pictures, but unfortunately this is the reality that is my naval marriage.  Nick went snorkeling and bought me a magnet.  Apparently he had to buy a sleeping bag b/c the Navy gives them cheap wool blankets.  Who knew? Bonus:  I found out there are super cheap all military resorts that are very cheap.  There is one in Hawaii.  I want to go there.  I actually could imagine living there, though the flight home would be rough.  Truth be told it would be chummy just to live with my husband, even if it was in crappyville USA.  

Speaking belatedly of geography, I have to WORK this weekend.  I actually am forcing myself to plan this weekend to work on my formal lesson plan.  Right, this lesson is on landforms on the ocean floor, so that is the geography of which I speak. This blows.  I hate being observed.  Every time anyone comes in to watch me teach I sweat like I'm in the Amazonian Rain Forest.  It's gross.  I get drenched and I nervously shake.  I'll be fine because it's my last one for the whole year, but I still hate it.  

Today I made up a silly poem as an example for my class.  I am going to share it with you because after all, I'm hoping to earn a fortune as a children's poet so I don't have to schleep around a classroom anymore.  

Working Title

I'm using my rope

To climb up this slope

I'm using the help 

Of my handy pet Woap*

I hope I won't mope

If I slip off my rope

And fall down this slope

Children's Poet Laureate- Here I come!!

*This is a made up word.  I thought it was pretty Seuss-tastic of me.

Love, Kaley

My Heart is Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean

What they should teach you in college.

What do you do when faced with this situation:

"Mrs. P, Timmy is telling everyone that you farted"

I reply trying to keep a straight face "Thank you for telling me"

Now the eternal dilemma.  I mean, this is kind of funny.  Just a little.  Do I crush him underneath my autocratic fist?  No, I decide to ignore it.  "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"

Then the rumor insinuating student asks me to work with his computer program.  Hmmm.  Ignoring is one thing, but doing the kid who is telling everyone I'm gassy a favor?  Yeah, I think not.  So I tell him:

"I hear your spreading nasty rumors.  About me farting.  So you can go ahead and write me an apology letter if you want to get on that computer"

Apology letter as follows:

Teacher, 

I'm sorry I said you farted.  I'm sorry you were angry and I made you yell.  I'm sorry.

Well, that's one day I'll never forget.  However, my favorite quote of the year comes from my number one eight year old arch nemesis.  He says 

"I don't believe in rainbows" 

I say too bad because they are pretty much a scientific fact.  

But then another student told me leprechauns were scientific fact so I gave up.

Oh, while talking about states I give one kid a clue:

 "If this is West Virginia than this is..."

Student- "South Virginia?"

See you later, I'm off to S.Va for a nice little get a way.  

Love, Kaley

Boy Meets World

So, Whatever happened to Corey Matthews (aka Ben Savage)?  Growing up I used to watch Boy Meets World on TGIF then after school on the Disney channel everyday.  Because lets face it, what other after school activities was I doing?...None!  When I Googled Corey Matthews I found this rumor that he was dead!  Luckily a thorough search of IMDB told me that he was not and had starred in one "Chuck" episode last year.  I loved Boy Meets World.  It gave me complete confidence that Nick and I could work out even though we started dating in High School.  I mean, if Corey and Topanga could do it...  So, here are a few of my favorite BMW moments:

• When Corey is trying to win Topanga back at Disney World by swimming in the fish tank in the restaurant
• When Eric hid as the couch cushions to get Topanga
• When Sean joined a cult
• Corey and Topanga's honeymoon when they choose to stay in paradise and Corey carves celebrity coconut heads

And that is all I have to say.  I wish Corey would act again, but maybe he is happy collecting royalties from BMW reruns.  At least Topanga is back on "The Dish".

Kaley

Some disheartening news.

I read an article today that was put into everyone's mailbox by the Nurse assistant at our school.  It says people who have more friends over a nine year period will live longer!  Years longer.  Well, if that is not just adding injury to insult to we who have few friends.  Bummer.  When I told my co worker this news she immediately invited me out for the weekend.  Which was very heartening and probably added a few months to my life.  :)

Okay, I need to be giving my room a deep cleaning.  The occasion?  My father's 50th birthday party.  I can't explain my deep physical aversion to cleaning.  It's like trying to put opposite ends of a magnet together.  Right, so instead of clean I decided to blog.  

This might be my #1 most boring blog post ever.  But I bet you still read it!  Suckers. 

Kaley