I was planning to type a post but first I logged onto Facebook and was innocently reading a friend's post that had a list of things I didn't know about her... I didn't read to the end and hit "like"... Next thing I know I got a message telling me my # is 15... Huh... Turns out I now needed to tell everyone 15 things you may not know about me... Tricky since my life is an open book... Since it took me so long to type this I decided to copy it and paste it here for you guys too... 

Here goes:

1. I was born in Germany (dad in military) but left at 18 mos. old and have not been back... I have both a German and American birth cert.

2. As I child my mother picked the nick name Becky for me but I HATED it for as long as I can remember and switched to being called Rebecca as soon as I could pull it off! (Becky just never suited me...)

3. Paul and I got engaged after knowing each other only a week... We eloped... I was 18, he was 24... I have been married over 22 years to him!

4. We have lived in six different states, Tennessee, California, New Jersey, Montana, Maine & Vermont... Maine & Tennessee twice!

5. I was Saved (Born Again) at 18 and my life has never been the same... I was a crazy, party girl and over night my heart was changed. I shudder to think what my life would be like without the Lord in it!

6. I developed a shellfish allergy by eating too much of it over my 40th birthday week... In the year since it developed it has only gotten worse and I can't even touch it! (I live in Maine... So Unfair!)

7. I am happiest when I am busy, but I frequently allow myself to become too busy and get overwhelmed and want to just hide at home in my jammies!

8. My favorite thing to do besides taking care of and loving on my family is throwing parties and entertaining.

9. My second favorite thing to do is give gifts... This could explain my all out crazy love of all things Christmas!

10. I have no fear of public speaking and even though I am extremely self conscience about how I look, as soon as I start speaking I forget all of that. 

11. People either find me hilarious or not funny at all... There is little in between and I frequently become friends with the former and am very cautious of everything I say around the latter because as soon as I let my guard down around them is when I get misunderstood and in trouble.

12. Even though I am creative, I am not at all artistic and have a difficult time understanding artistic people... In fact I tend to be an extreme realist, and this complicates things... On the same thought, when people beat around the bush and don't just come to the point is my BIGGEST pet peeve. 

13. I started getting headaches from squinting on sunny days as a teen and as a result I am RARELY without sunglasses... Even at night or on cloudy days... They are ALWAYS on my head just in case I might need them. It has kinda become my signature look and even my girlies have given up trying to get me to leave them at home. 

14. At 24 I got EXTREMELY sick and almost died from a severe lung disease. As a result I was in bed for a year and on the heart/lung transplant list, but miraculously I got better... So much healthier in fact I got dropped from the list. There is no medical explanation for me to be alive, let alone healthy. Although I do have some long term side effects I have very little trace of it.

15. I am extremely loyal and once my friend, always my friend... I have friends all over the country that every time we talk it's as if no time has passed and who I would do almost anything for... I am extremely stymied by disloyal people and don't know how to deal with them and am always blindsided by them.

I promise my next post will be about what I'm up to now... 


Thanks for listening,

I don't know where to start...

It seems obvious... Start at the beginning... But so much has happened, and because so much of it has to do with the school and I don't know how much I can/should say about what went on there last year I am having a hard time knowing where to start...

I don't even know if I can give you the cliff notes version of the second semester of our time at the school last year... Let's just say, neither my husband or I are in any way associated with the school anymore. After three years there Paul had a harder time saying goodbye then I did, but it is for the best. I may feel I can or even want to say more to you all in the future, but for now I feel the need to not say too much. For now all I want to say is the last quarter of last year made the following Bible passage very real for me:

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand." Ephesians 6: 10-13

So glossing over that part of the story let's hit on another aspect of my silence... In January while we were dealing with the beginning of the mess at the school it became obvious that my parent's were struggling to be home all day alone... We hired somebody to sit with them full-time and less then a week later my mom woke up not feeling well... Within less then 24 hours it became obvious she had more then a cold... She became lethargic and feverish and was so bad we couldn't get her out of her chair and on her feet. We ended up calling an ambulance and the hospital confirmed our fear... FLU! She was admitted immediately, about 48 hours later my step-father joined her in the hospital also with the flu! (It is very dangerous for people in their physical condition) I was not able to visit them because, yes, I had it too! My mother did not have the flu shot as she has an egg allergy but the rest of us did! Anyhow the next couple weeks we a blur but they both ended up in the hospital for over a week and then at a rehab (nursing) home to get their strength back...

While there (about a week after I recovered from what I swore was my four day battle with it but Paul says I was sick in bed at least a full week!) my mother had an episode that led them to believe she might be having a heart attack... They sent her to the ER where she had a series of seizures. We almost lost her several times, but after the longest four weeks of my life they discovered she has an undiagnosed neurological disorder (there are several names that partially fit her symptoms but none that sum it up, so the closest we can get is a form of MS).

During those four weeks my step father came home from rehab and he had gone down hill A LOT with his Alzheimer's and was not the same person he was before the flu. He now required 24/7 care and had his days and nights confused... We spent many. many sleepless nights while working full time and visiting my mom in the hospital. We had to pay somebody to sit with him when ever we were not home. and ended up taking shifts... Even as much as we tried we could not keep him safe... He would get up and wander at night and even though we put alarms on the exterior doors he would wander in the house, in socks, without his walker (which he almost always forget he needed) and would fall quite frequently. We ended finding out my mother had not put him on any waiting lists for nursing homes so we did that, but now we were in a full on crisis and he was at the bottom of every list! He was suffering from all the worst symptoms that come with that terrible disease and while my mother was finally stable and back at rehab, we were overwhelmed with his care. This brings us to the first week of April and we found a bed for him at a really nice memory care home and were in the process of getting him admitted when he once again was wandering in the night (like most every night) and fell (like he did about once a week) but this time he was in the bathroom. He fell against the door and since it (like most doors) opens in we could not get in so we had to all (once again) an ambulance. This time he broke his hip! It was touch and go for about a week but he pulled through and now because of his condition he shot to the top of the lists. The private nursing home we were trying to get him into would no longer take him because of the level of care he needed but we found one that would and got him admitted there.

While he was in the hospital I awoke one night in immense pain in my back... Pain like I have never had before so Paul took me to the emergency room. (My turn, I guess!) It turns out I was having a gall bladder attack and according to the ultrasound it was completely blocked. Twelve hours later I was talking to a surgeon and less the 24 hours later I was having it removed. Thankfully spring break happens in the third week of April here and my attack was the Sunday before it... I had about a week to recuperate and was able to return to school the following week.

Now with my step dad in a nursing home there were a bunch of improvements/changes we needed to do to the house before I could bring my mother home from rehab... I will go through those in detail in a later post, but for now lets just end on a happy note... We were able to finally bring her home two days before Allison's graduation at the end of May, and she was able to attend her youngest granddaughter's graduation!

 

Here she is giving her speech as Salutatorian! But that is part of her update and I'll save that for another day...

Thanks for listening,

Ok... It's just me...

Have you ever gotten super busy doing things you felt you had to, to commitments you made, and all the things you enjoyed doing had to take a back seat?

Ever let those things completely take over your life and not be able to see a way out?

Ever get so overwhelmed by your commitments you lost track of the things that give you joy?

Ever be going through all of that and find yourself in your darkest hour?

Ever feel like your whole life is just crashing around you and you wish you could reach out, but wouldn't know where to start?

Ever find your self in that moment and all you can cling to is the Lord and your loved ones?

Ever come out of that valley and start to find your joy again?

Ever see the clouds start to clear and have blessing pile up one upon the other?

Ever want to reach out and share that with your bloggy friends but fear too much time has passed?

No... I guess it's just me...

Thanks for listening,

One Post To (Mostly) Catch You Up...

So you know it's going to be a long one!

First of all, sorry I disappeared... I know I said I wouldn't, then right on cue I did. I have to admit I have had some trouble figuring out how to incorporate all the new aspects (teaching, etc.) into my already busy life, but that hasn't been the biggest challenge... Believe it or not it has been my sweet hubs Paul. You see we share a computer, and this has never been an issue before. He would only use it for short bursts of time but mostly it was mine. It was agreed by both of us, not even an unspoken agreement, but a spoken one that if we invested in one really good laptop instead of two ok laptops that it would primarily be mine... His argument was that he rarely used the computer anyhow, so it made sense to just get one good one.
This worked out pretty good for nearly two years now... Until this fall... You see when Katy and Jed got married they opted not to get cable TV and get Netflix instead... He had a Wii system and they are too busy to be chained to network programing so it just made sense to them. We had Netflix years ago when it was just a video rental program, but I like my local RedBox so I turned my nose up to the "New" Netflix...
Recently though every time Katy or Jed needed a house-sitter (or cat sitter as the case may be), even for a day Paul and Allison would battle it out to see who would do it... All because of the Netflix... This went on all summer so this fall I reluctantly agreed to a "trial month" of it to see if we would really use it... "Hello Netflix... Goodbye Laptop!" You see, we do not have a Wii system so if there is something on Netflix you want to watch you have to use a computer... It turns out there is a lot Paul wants to watch... This is shocking, because he rarely watches TV... If one of us is watching it and leave the room for a moment he turns it off! That was before Netflix... Now he is on the laptop whenever he has a few minutes and I always feel guilty asking for it... So here we are.
We have recently discussed this situation and Paul has decided that the time has come that we get a new laptop... He even decided that the new one can be for me (yay) and I am looking at them. I will probably wait until after Christmas though since I know I will choose to spend any extra of gifts, so bear with me for a few more weeks then I will be posting much more regularly.

Yes, I'm going to be a Grandma... Or a "Gigi" as I guess my daughters have decided I should be called. When am I going to be a Gigi? In July... One month after Allison's wedding... Yes, Katy will be eight months pregnant in Allison's wedding. It should be interesting! Katy and I went to a fundraising auction recently and they had baby quilts up for bid. A friend reminded me I'm about to be a grandma so I should bid. We got a really cute one that could go for either a boy or girl! It was so much fun buying for my future grandchild I have had to use extreme self-control to not get carried away. I will let you guys know the details as I learn them and am told they can go public.

In other "big changes" news, Allison has transferred from public school to our school. Why would she do this you ask? Well, when we first moved here we gave her the option of attending either school, but the school we now teach at was much smaller a few years back and didn't offer what she needed academically. The public school in the town we live in is one of the best in the state although it is extremely liberal. To her going to a liberal school that could meet her academic needs was the priority. Truth be told, at the time she was also looking for the more "traditional high school experience" too... Fast forward a few years and she is no longer on the path to journalism she believed she was on in her freshman year. She is engaged to be married, plans to go to cosmetology school and seek higher education through less traditional sources. She no longer desires to be a journalist, but a writer so her area of study has shifted some, and since she plans to probably do her college education online and a few years down the road, the academic reason for staying in public school seemed weak at best. Then there is the social reason... It too is extremely weak. You see Maine is a liberal state... And the high school she was attending is in a very liberal district in this liberal state... You blend all of this together, add a dash of "young engagement" and sprinkle of "out spoken Christian values" and a heaping cup of state wide gay marraige on the ballot and her once happy high school environment had become a hostile, suffocating environment. She was only taking two classes and only needed one to graduate, and was trying to hang in there, but it became clear to all of us that the oppression she was feeling was getting the better of her. She would come home from three hours of school and sleep the rest of the day away... She would use any flimsy excuse to stay home, and even though she was keeping up with her work she was very unhappy. She still had her friends and that was her bright light in her days there. There were other things that happened that she would prefer I don't discuss on here, but at the first quarter end it became clear she needed a change. She transferred to our school and feels like a huge weight has been lifted from her. She still sees her friends but now feels the blessing of being in an environment where she is not oppressed, but just the opposite, encouraged to openly share her beliefs... It has been good for the kids at the school too. Several of them feel like they are missing out on something by being in a small Christian High School... Allison being there and sharing her experiences has helped the overall morale of the kids in the school improve. We also found out last week that one of our students from last year who left for public school (the same one Allison was in) has decided to come back to our school next year, and this has cemented the overall student satisfaction in a very positive way.

On other school news our administrator has resigned. She was allergic to something in the building and her health was in a steady decline. She is feeling much better after being out of the building for a couple weeks but that leaves us without an administrator. This is a common condition at our school. They typically go through at least one a year and at least in the last three years they have never had the same one back to back for a second year. I have always asked Paul why he didn't apply for the position and he had multiple reasons but mostly because there were aspects of the job he'd feel very comfortable with but others he wouldn't. When the last administrator resigned he proposed we both apply... As co-administrators... We'd actually split the job more 60/40 then 50/50 with Paul taking the lead but we would prefer the title "Co-Administrators" so the kids wouldn't think one of us has less authority then the other.
We are currently working as interim administrators. There was a lot of stress and confusion getting to that point though. he former administrator told us she was going to recommend us for the job but in fact only recommended we fill in in the interim, and the school secretary told us first we had the job, permanently but had to share it with a third party, then she told us we did not have the job, then she told us we had the job in interim but had no authority and the person who was the third party had all the decision making authority especially when it came to what hours we'd work, and that the board would not be considering us for the job permanently. This was all in about a 12 hour period of time. Now, let me just say, I love, love, love our secretary but she is in her 70's and a retired public school secretary. We trusted everything she was telling us as right from the board because she often works directly for them. (Mostly because of the revolving door on the administrator position.) That being said, she confessed to us that she is often getting confused these days and would like to spend fewer hours working at the school because of that nd other health reasons... But as you can imagine at the end of that 12 hour period I was emotionally spend... I couldn't believe they wouldn't even allow us to apply... I was so hurt (for me) and insulted (for Paul) and by the time we got home that day I ended up calling the board chair and basically telling him I was so fed up if Allison hadn't just enrolled in the school, I'd be resigning. He was shocked... It turns out the secretary was extremely confused and nobody had ever told them we were interested in the job! I felt like such a fool... Long story short, we are applying for the position and filling it in interim (which is starting to feel like a really long job interview) and we have recently found out that the art teacher at the school also intends to apply for the position. We approach education and discipline from opposite direction... We believe that clearly spelled out rules and consequences that are applied fairly and with grace and mercy allow young people to clearly know their boundaries and make for peaceful environment where everyone knows where they stand. She is more of the school of thought that teens generally want to do the right thing and make the right choices and don't need as many rules so much as loving guidance to make the right choices. To sum it up, she seems to believe in nurture first then boundaries and we believe in boundaries first then nurture...
Who the board chooses will definatly let us know what direction they want the school to go in. Please pray for this whole situation. We definatly want the job but there is tension between us and the art teacher (and her husband who teaches Bible and Phys Ed.) They are friends of ours and we are perplexed by all of this. We have all always gotten along great, they are like family to us, so we hate this tension. Our greater fear then the decrease in friendship (which hopefully is temporary) is that the board will decide to hire from outside the school in order to avoid choosing between staff. That would be worse, since every new administrator they hire comes in with their own vision and expectations and the whole tone of the school shifts year after year. So please pray!

As for teaching... I still love it and enjoy my classes so much. That is the good thing about Paul and I sharing the administrator job, we will both be able to keep teaching our classes and that will actually be good for the school since the administrator job is only 20 hours a week but if you combine it with our teaching schedule that would mean there would be an administrator up there full time. (This would make a huge difference for the school.)

Well, that's  bit of an update... I need to go... Our students have a float in tonight's "Festival of Lights Parade" in Rockland, so I need to get going! I do hope each of you had a great Thanksgiving! (We did!)

Thanks for listening,

So Much To Say...

So little time to post...

Everyday I think of things I want to tell you guys, but then the day ends and I have yet to post anything... Agghhh... I am starting to figure out how to manage my new job (teaching) with my old jobs (mom, wife, care taker of elderly parents, wedding planner to daughter, blogger, and neglectful friend), but I have to admit it is taking some time to work out the kinks. I decided I will catch you up on some of the happs in my neck of the woods and try to post one other time this week... That's my goal anyhow.

Teaching is going good... Better then good actually, I love it! I love our students and being even a small part of their lives is a honor. Here is a peek at one of my science classes about a week ago...

This one is candid...

Here is how they look when they know I am taking pictures!

I can't remember why we were all gathered around my desk to do this lab. They usually do them at their tables, but lately if there is a new skill they need to learn I will start them out up front... This is my biology class and I was showing them how to take a culture and make a slide, so I must have decided to start off as a group. The boy in the purple gloves is actually one of our seniors who helps out with the labs in this class.

Here are a couple shots from our stay at our family's camp on Islesboro over Columbus Weekend...

These were taken at the "town beach" on the southern tip of the island... If it looks cold, that's because it was! The first couple days we were there it was in the 60's and nice but by the end of our stay it was in the low 50's to high 40's and chilly. Cold but very, very pretty...

I have been working on this post for several days and just need to end it, so I can post it already...

I just wrap this up with a not so subtle hint as to what has been my biggest distraction this week...

1 + 1 = 3

Thanks for listening,

Summer Love...

So, I don't usually do this, but I am going to talk about a TV show I am enjoying...

 I love Gilmore Girls... It is a virtual addiction Allison and I share... It is our favorite guilty pleasure. If you don't know was about a mother and daghter who have a really cool relationship, live in a quirky small New England town, and are highly verbal in a rapid-fire, funny, scarcastic way... (I just can't figure why Allison and I like it so much...) We own all seven seasons on DVD and rarely a week goes by that we don't pop in a disc...