To the Audrey of the future. Well 2011 Audrey.
Dear Audrey,
I am really proud of you. You have successfully proven that you can live completely on your own. I have to admit that there have been times when I thought you wouldn’t be strong enough to do it, but once again you have proven…,well, me I guess, wrong. I have no doubt in my mind that your long distance relationship will work out. I know that this will make you two even stronger than before.
I also want to say how impressed I am that you have made it to your last year of college. After this semester (spring 2011) you will be student teaching. (Have you decided if you are doing your student teaching in England yet?) You have grown into a strong and confident young teacher, and I am so happy to be you. I never thought this day would come, but here it is, and here you are. So close to being finished.
This school and move to a new city was the best choice you could have made. Change has never been something you have handled well, and I think this profession has really taught you a lot about that as well. I’m even starting to relate every life change to education, this is a quality I’m sure you’ve become very used to.
I am so in awe of the fact that you know that where you are is exactly where you are supposed to be. I have trouble getting outside my bubble of fear. I can’t help but worry if I’m making the right choices, and I think about you and how confident and assured you are that it gives me solace. Thank you.
With all of the self love I can give,
Audrey
I am becoming a fan of affirmations. I usually feel at my worst because I want to, and I know now that it doesn’t have to be like that. I wrote this letter as a sort of if I write it she will come thing. I am seriously going to love Audrey a year from now. I have a feeling everyone else will too.
a year in pictures
I thought instead of talking about what I have done or accomplished this year I would just show you. Enjoy!
January brought forth
New Years Day:
and lots of adventures while Sean and I were on break like trips to the art museum and Discovery World:
February brought Valentines day and my surprise gift a trip to the Jelly Belly Factory:
March brought mind numbingly cold days:
With april came spring and love in the form of my beautiful friends Becca and Dan’s wedding:
May brought massive amounts of studying:
Kari’s, my friend since second grade, wedding reception:
A St. Louis Cardinals vs Milwaukee Brewers baseball game with family:
June brought our new apartment (sorry no pictures until december)
Reading on the beach by our new apartment:
Picnics by the lake:
July brought beautiful fireworks:
My bestest friends visit to the new place and the zoo!:
August was the time of when the bath tub tried to eat me:
Ryan and Natalie’s beautiful wedding:
With September came a trip to the apple orchard:
October ate up all of my time, there are no pictures in october. So here is some one else’s picture of my school in the fall because this is where I was 95% of the time:
November brought Sean’s gross mustache and the Bruce Springsteen Concert:
More schoolwork in the form of my first bulletin board:
December meant the end of the semester and the end of me not being able to hear out of my left ear for 2+ years thanks to this guy:
We also had our first party:
And Sean’s and my last picture of 2009:
I hope you enjoyed me journey through 2009! Here’s hoping you and I both have an amazing 2010!
The next chapter is looming…
I will have graced this planet for 25 years on monday. I can’t tell if it is because it’s on a monday (my most dreaded day of classes) or if it’s because this year marks the 25th year why I’m not really looking forward to it.
I’m stressed. Anxious. Fat. The holy trinity of all things to make you fee less than special for your special day. I feel totally lost and jaded and all I want to do is crawl into bed and never make any plans to get out of it.
I really should be doing homework right now instead of blogging, and because I am not I am getting increasingly more anxious. This is what a school without a grading system does to you. I almost long for anonymity in the classroom and knowing that what I wrote for a paper was A worthy, not full of writing on how to improve my work, or what interesting insights I have made on the subject.
Okay. Now I really must start that homework. Hooray for 25.
New week, new post.
So an update. Okay.
First full week of classes started this week. I am COMPLETELY overwhelmed. My field experience which should be fun and exciting (I’m going to be in a kindergarten class room) will completely eat up my time. Not only do we have to have 25 hours, of those 25 hours we have to spend an entire day in the classroom. And also attend something that parents attend. PTO meeting, parent teacher conference. I’m sorry but I do have other things in my life to do. Oh well what can you do?
Sean celebrated his birthday on monday as well. I was broke, but my parents are amazing and bought him Bruce Springsteen tickets for when he comes to milwaukee in november. So excited! And he was thrilled!
The day care is well… the day care. I am in the same room as last semester which is now the running joke with all of the teachers. I am the only T.A. that hasn’t worked in a different room in 3 semesters. Crazy 2-3 year olds. All of which are the cutest kids ever. But they are a serious handful this semester. I just sit there sometimes and just stare, because it really is chaos.
One of my “favorites” is this little boy who cracks me up. He is so intense it’s cute. His eyes are always the size of half dollars when he has something to tell me. One day I walked into class and he just yells at me, “LOOK AT MY FACE!!” I told him I didn’t see anything. He then responds, “IT HAS CRUMBS ON IT!!” I told him to get a paper towel to wipe his face and that was a good enough answer for him.
Or my favorite story of him is, one day a little girl was telling me that she was a little girl, and that I was a girl, and so when I asked her what the little boy was she said that he was a boy. Well this answer displeased my little friend because he responded, “I’m NOT a boy. I am a FIREMAN!”
Seriously, I love this age group. I’m really excited to be an early childhood educator. I just worry that the time will either go by too quickly or much too slowly for my liking.
Is school still annoying without bells to answer to?
The answer is yes. School starts officially tomorrow. I fortunately don’t have any classes on wednesdays so I just get to work all day at the daycare tomorrow. I have REALLY missed my kids, and I will be so sad to have so many of them moved up to the “big kid” rooms. But, this will mean new kids from room 4 moving to room 2 that I can play with and read stories too. The more I think about it the more excited I get.
Today has been a day of relaxing in between frantic errand running. I have been approved to work out at the school’s fitness center (something I must do because I fear pretty soon I will just turn into a very spherical shape and NO ONE wants that), finished some final paperwork to become employed for the school’s ambassador program. I am going to be a spiffy tour guide! Which means I will probably have to invest in some more school merch. Yikes.
I am going to try to update more frequently, especially as I get into my field experiments and stuff. I think it would be really neat to see how that goes and update on it.
Other than that life has been pretty sweet. Sean and I have been hanging out the past couple of weeks which has been nice and much needed. Especially because it looks like this semester we aren’t going to be seeing much of each other. Especially as he works on his capstone project and tutors. *sigh*
As for the future that is completely up in the air. And it freaking scares me to death. I have no idea where I am going to be a year from now depending on his schooling. I mean I’ll be in milwaukee, but I may have to go and live in the dorms, which yikes. We’ll see though I’m not going to stress about it. Okay must go now. I’ll update again soon. Promise.
Apartment living.
Sometimes I absolutely can’t stand living in an apartment. Getting the opportunity to smell what everyone is having for dinner, noisy people in the halls, and having no power over the amount of water pressure that is dripping from my shower head is enough to drive me insane.
Then there are nights like these when I sit in my living room after Sean has gone to bed, and hear the steps of my upstairs neighbor and see the lights on in the apartment building next door and I know that I’m not alone. As isolated as I feel in my bubble, there are people out there right now living out their days in close proximity. Who knows, maybe someone is hearing my footsteps, or seeing my light on and taking some comfort in it as well.
So. An update of sorts.
Not much has changed. Here I sit in the apartment. Reading. Wandering this space until I’m sure I’m going to leave a worn path on the floor. The days seem to go by quickly and slowly at the same time, and some days I think I might have lost it from the monotony. Some days I venture outside and wander the neighborhood for a bit. You know, to switch things up a bit.
Some days it’s hard to hide my stir craziness. I start new projects and never finish them because my mind flits from thought to thought like a hummingbird to a flower. I don’t rest because my body and mind don’t allow me to very often. Which is fine, I am a creature of habit anyway.
I found out my classes don’t start up again until September. Which leaves me with two thoughts, why do I have to wait that long to go back and should I even bother. The latter I can usually shoo away pretty quickly because I know that this degree is a stepping stone to where I REALLY want to be. I’ve decided the path I’m on is to help kids. It may not be teaching, but I definitely want it to be an aspect of what I do. I’m hoping to get into the educational psychology grad program at UWM to study to be a counselor for elementary-high school aged children. I have always loved psychology, but to just get a bachelors in that seems as silly as getting a bachelors in philosophy. Looks and sounds great but what are you going to do with it? This way I think I will be way more employable. Ah well.
I have rambled and jumped from thought to thought too much. Take care.
I’m baaaaaack.
Yes, it’s true. Despite the gossip you might have read on Perez Hilton, I am indeed alive and well.
I have survived my first year away at college at the ripe young age of 24. I received straight S’s if you were wondering. (Not a hard feat. I know.)
Sean and I are moved into our new apartment, and now comes the tedious task of moving things from one end of the apartment to the other. I’m finding I’m having a much harder time becoming used to this apartment than I did with the studio. It really weirds me out knowing that the footsteps above me are from people I don’t know. They are also really really heavy footed.
Other than that this apartment is amazing! We have actual walls and closets. You wouldn’t think that these are things to adjust yourself to, but they really are. I have had to learn that talking in my regular volume from the bedroom is really difficult for Sean to decipher from the kitchen. Things that I will just have to learn in time I suppose.
I really do love it here though. You hear birds instead of motorcycles, children’s bicycles instead of drunk girls. And we are within walking distance to a beautiful park with benches that are on a bluff overlooking lake michigan. Yes, you have my permission to be jealous.
Now that our internet is set up (a drawback from not living above a coffee shop is you lose your free wireless) I will be around a lot more, and thankfully much less stressed out.
Good fortune
Now that I am nearing the scary age of 25 I find myself looking back on my childhood. While I have a horrible time remembering things that happened yesterday or hell two hours ago, I have a strange ability to recall childhood memories down to the smallest possible detail. This talent always amazes my parents when I correct them about a certain event that has happened in our family timeline because I remember a really specific detail about that day and am usually 98% accurate when they think about it.
One of my fondest memories of child hood was of the candy Cherry Clans. Growing up I lived down the street from a convenience store that sold candy, and other things most convenience stores sell. The only thing that drew me to the store was their wide array of sour candies. Particularly cherry clans. I would devour these things whenever I was given the opportunity. Then one day, they just dissapeared. Whenever in a store that carried lemonheads, or boston beans, I would look hopefully for a package of my beloved Cherry Clans
. 
Looking back on it now, I have never seen a more racist box of candy. What was the point of having them look like crudely drawn up Asian cherries? I have absolutely no clue. Turns out, this is why they were taken off the market. It isn’t surprising. I mean this was the late 80’s to early 90’s we are talking about here. I then found out that they were remarketed and given a new name and packaging.
This was the best news I had ever heard! THEY STILL EXISTED! Somewhere my beloved Cherry Clans were out there under a new name just waiting for me to find them! So I would go to Walgreens, Target, Walmart anywhere I knew that sold lemonheads. Only to be dissapointed. Where were they? They were far superior to the Lemonheads so why weren’t they were I could get them. So I decided to go to the internet and see if I could get my hands on them. And there they were! For a mere $13 I could get a whole case!! This was it! Then came shipping, it cost just as much to ship it. My dreams were dashed. I gave up trying to find them. I felt like Charlie from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory finding out the last Golden ticket had been found. It was devastating.
This weekend Sean and I went to the Titatnic Exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum. The exhibit was wonderful and haunting and I loved all 1 and a half hours of it. The other goal of the trip was to get my hands on some rock candy from the old timey candy store in the Streets of Milwaukee exhibit. I look in the window of the shop and there they are. Just sitting there. People walking by them like they were nothing. I couldn’t believe it! How could people not be snatching them up?! These were CHERRY CLANS people! Not just any old candy! I literally ran into the store knocking Sean out of the way. I picked up one box and seeing that they were only $.25 I picked up 5 more. Naturally. I walked proudly to the cashier and gave her my card for my purchase. It was the BEST three dollars I ever spent.
I love you Cherry Clans.
