Whining and Winning

“Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.”

- Susan B. Anthony

Friday was odd.

It would be my last day, just my kids and me for the summer. School would begin again on 09/07. I asked if they’d like to eat at The Kebab Factory for lunch, since we love their Indian lunch buffet. They enthusiastically agreed. I posted the plan on Facebook, which I should now realize (after the telephone interview I blabbed about, and then didn’t get the job) means it ain’t. gonna. happen.

My husband called and asked what we were doing. When I told him, there was a pause.

“Want to come with us?” I asked.

“Sure.”

Soon after, phone rang again. My son’s friend invited him over. I told my son to make it for after lunch. After he hung up, I realized he had piano in the late afternoon. Then my daughter came over with a piece of paper where she’d written he friend’s phone number, and asked if she could call her friend. Her friend invited her to go swimming. I looked outside at the dreary day courtesy of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Earl somewhere south of us, and said, “Sure.” But I really didn’t mean it. What happened to our plans?

I told my son to call back his friend and change to an earlier time. We couldn’t reach him. I decided to stop by the house, but he wasn’t home. I called my husband to cancel lunch because at this point it would be too late to eat at a decent time. My daughter nibbled on peanut crackers on the way to her friend’s place.

It began to drizzle.

After dropping off my daughter, my son and I returned home to eat a late lunch. Afterwards, I dropped off my son. And I called the piano place to change the lesson to the next day.

It began to rain.

Now I had an hour before I had to pick up my daughter. I decided to go to Porter Square Books . I dodged drops on the way into the store, and then headed straight to the YA section. There was a big display of Suzanne Collins’s books. I took a Mockingjay temporary tattoo for the lucky winner of the book.

The people who work in this store know their books. One man in particular is an expert in the children’s book section. I asked him when Paranormalcy (by Kiersten White) was coming out, thinking maybe I’d preorder it.

He walked to a shelf, pulled an ARC down and said, “Here. You can have it.”

I gushed. “Really? Are you sure? Thank you. I’ve been so excited to read this!”

Did I mention how much I love this store?

Then I asked for a book recommendation. He pulled three for me to consider. I chose The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller, since it reminded me a little of the premise (reincarnation) of Evermore by Alyson Noel, which I had enjoyed. Holly Black’s White Cat: The Curse Workers would wait for a future purchase.

There’s nothing like a bookstore to turn my mood around.

And I needed my mood to turn around. Facing another year of being a daily sub was weighing on me for some strange reason. My stomach kept fluttering and my eye periodically twitched. My mood darkened on Wednesday, when I attended a MANDATORY session on the new on-line sub system. Nearly 50 of us listened as we were told how this new system would benefit classroom teachers, so they could choose the substitutes they wanted and block the one they didn’t, making me feel like krill.

There would be benefits for me too. 6:30 am calls instead of 5:30 am calls. And if I’m a popular sub, most jobs will be booked the day before, if not days before. There’s a handy calendar so I can block out the days I can’t work. And there’s a checklist of the types of jobs I’ll take. I can scroll through the list of available jobs, so maybe I can actually teach Social Studies more often. Imagine that….

But all of that won’t change the fact I want my own classroom, and this new way of obtaining jobs still doesn’t change me having to go from place to place, classroom to classroom. I’ll still need to look up if a school will have street cleaning, limiting parking. I’ll still be known as “Ms. M” because why bother having students know my name?

Besides the bookstore trip, a couple of other hopeful things happened (including our children being invited for a sleepover, so I went out to dinner with my husband), which I won’t talk about yet. I’ve learned my lesson about posting happenings in advance!

On to things I can talk about. Having the Mockingjay contest + Karen Gowen Jones's BBQ (last day) has increased my follower count, so I’m nearly at 300. Thanks, new followers!

And now on to the winner of the contest.

I wish I had a copy for everyone.

Chosen by: http://textmechanic.com/Random-Line-Picker.html

The winner is:

Lenny from Lenny's World !

The boy has good luck today because he only had 3 entries out of over 100.

CONGRATULATIONS, LENNY!

*** Update 6:40 pm EST *** Lenny just responded to my e-mail. Since he's won two books recently, he's declining the win. So now the randomly chosen winner is Nicole DucLeroir!!! Congratulations, Nicole!

After 244 posts, today begins another year for my blog. Another year of teaching. Another year of writing, editing, editing, editing, editing, editing… and querying. Another year of sharing my world from my perspective. Another year of being a part of your world.

We’ll see what another year brings.