angela's blog

It's true. I'm posting this because I'm stroking my husband's ego. But he deserves it. So why not? The last couple of weeks have been a big adjustment for us. As a graduate student it wasn't that I didn't work hard, but the timeline was completely different. As a teacher, if your kids show up and you're not ready, 18 little faces are going to hold you accountable (not to mention your administrators) for slacking off. Right now, even though I'm not light years ahead as far as my lesson plans go, I'm far enough ahead that I'm prepared every day. But to be prepared every day requires a lot of time and effort on the days leading up and as a result of that I've been working a lot of hours. Like 12 hours a day hours. Being a first year teacher doesn't help anything either. My fellow teachers are great, as is my principal, so I'm just plodding along. Eventually I hope the plod will become a skip. We'll see. With this new time schedule I'm not around as much as I used to be. I'm still here when JJ gets home but I'm tired and not really up for much other than finishing what I'm working on (lesson 1: lesson plans are not crystallized - they are fluid). It also means that my I-don't-wanna-talk-because-I'm-tired side comes out. JJ likes to talk. I don't. Actually, a more accurate way of putting that might be "I like to talk. JJ LOVES to talk." Either way what it means is that I'm busy, not readily available at any given time, and am tired when I am available. There exist a number of ways that JJ could have dealt with the sudden change. 1) Sulk. 2) Get angry that I'm not around enough and I'm working too hard (It's true, I confess, this is often the route I take when he's working a lot). 3) Pretend that nothing changed. 4) Do his very best to make sure that the housework is done, so I don't have to worry about it, and do everything I needed to do around the house so that when I'm home I'm spending time with him instead of doing chores. Which one do you think my husband picked? Number 4 of course. Our apartment is vaccuumed, he cleared off the desk in the bedroom (which used to be a catch-all) so I could use it to work, the couch has been Febreze-d (no thanks to Roxy), the dishes are done, the laundry isn't piling up and our clothes are all folded and put away. Not to mention he's still doing all the stuff he used to do like wash the dishes after dinner and walk the dog in the morning. I don't know if it's that he's still trying to impress me but whatever it is, I want him to know I appreciate it a LOT. And yes, I told him all this already - it's not like I'm using my blog as an excuse to not actually talk to him.

Posted by Mrs. Cooper on 8.22.2006 at 8/22/2006 05:16:00 AM | Permalink