Row, row, row your boat!

Okay, I'm not entirely sure why I titled my blog post thusly. It certainly has NOTHING to do with precipitation in the state of Colorado! It's been HOT HOT HOT here. Hot with a side of hot. Hot with hot and more hot and not a drop of rain!

And this Fat Grl has been seriously MIA.

Sigh.

Now time for lame excuses.
I have been working on finishing my looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong overdue thesis and sort of working on scraping the house and I even went in to work to set up my classroom (how's that for dedicated!). Thus, no blogging, mostly just floating along. But here I am. Maintaining. Finally realizing that despite my best intentions, summers are NEVER going to be productive periods for my weight loss and fitness regimes and I just have to learn to deal with it! But, I suppose I need to give myself some some credit for just maintaining and knowing myself well enough to keep from gaining despite the hot dog and beer and potato salad minefield that is summer in the U.S. of A.

The big thing on my mind these days is work. I can't seem to get myself to calm down about it. Sounds ridiculous that I get an entire summer off and spend most of it thinking about work. They don't pay me for this...... So at the end of last year, actually after the school year ended (sorry my internal calendar runs on teacher time!) we, to our holy-hell-didn't-see-this-one-coming shock, found out our director was leaving (a fact he still has NEVER told us personally, we just heard through an email from one of the assistant directors). Doesn't sound too bad, right? Change is good! I love change. Most of the time... This is my 4th year in this district, which don't get me wrong, I love or else I would have left long ago for the land of milk and honey. In my 4 years in the district I have had a new director EVERY year (hmmm and yet they only seem to blame teachers for all the problems in education!). With each new director comes the 'do it my way or else' phase, the 'I must make it all mine' phase and the 'you will like it or else' phase. His first act as boss was to move the entire school. Yeah, most of the teachers haven't met him yet and he moved the whole dang school. Not a big deal, right? WRONG! HUGE deal. Annoying and aggravating. Your classroom becomes an extension of your home. Teachers left for the summer thinking they were going to be in one room, only to find out they'd been moved. I promise you this is a traumatic experience for teachers. And to top it all, he put me in a room with 4 other people. Yup, that's right, special ed peeps don't need space or quiet or anything like that.
Honestly, I'm ok with sharing the space now. I've been in, set up my side of the room and I feel a bit better about it (side note: for all you people who think teachers have it easy and get the summers off, I laugh at you. I've spent hours tutoring, rearranging and planning this summer for free, on my own personal time! Sure, I get a paycheck all summer, but that's just because they take our 182 days of pay and divide it over the year. How many of you give hours and hours of your time unpaid to make your office a better place?) So things are starting in an uproar, with loads of turmoil and a big dollop of bitterness on the side. And I hate it already. I've been shoved in a corner, and NOBODY puts BABY in a corner!

Wow this post got whiny! Sorry :(

The whole point of the above, incomplete rant, was to just point out that I am in for a year of serious stress and turmoil and biting my tongue and finding my footing YET AGAIN with a new boss. And I need to have an action plan about it. I'm NOT getting sucked in to every little thing at work. I will go to the gym at least 4 days a week and once on the weekends after school starts. I need to start thinking ahead about what my stress management is going to be during the school day -- because folks, I think this guy is going to ruin my quality world. And eating chocolate is NOT, I repeat, NOT the answer.

How do you manage stress during the day? Ideas? Suggestions? Oh! Maybe I should get one of those kickboxing things to kick during the day.........I'm thinking of buying a beach scene from here to put on my wall and bringing in my fountain. Sigh, now if I could just afford a full time masseuse and someone to cook me healthy meals!

Sorry so whiny, y'all! This has just been stuck in my head for too long and it was time to get it out there and start thinking of good, positive ways to deal!

Hope all is well.....

FGS