Randomness

Tales From Blogger Slackerdom

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 3 Comments

I’m here and plan to be back more regularly now that school is almost over.  I am done as a student but still have about a week left as a teacher and am anxious to be finished and not at all excited about reading final essays. 

Life has been crazy, busy and lazy all at the same time.  I know that sounds a little contradictory to many of you, but trust me it is true.  Things here at Che Finley have been buzzing along.  The past few weekends have been hectic–New Orleans, Bill’s golf weekend, then we had my mom’s birthday, a wedding and mothers day this past weekend. 

I am feeling a bit overwhelmed at all I want to get done these few weeks I have off before I start my JOB on June 1.  In case you can’t feel my excitement–let me just say I. AM. VERY. VERY. VERY. EXCITED.  I can hardly stand it.  I am going to check out a daycare possibility for the kids that is close to Noah’s future school and is a place Zoë can continue at until she goes to school.  I am hoping it works out–as the price is right and that isn’t always a good thing.  I’ll report more on that later. 

I want to organize the office space and clean up a little so that the space is functional for me when I decide to work form home. 

SAD NEWS–Team Finley will not be able to attend Wannafest this year.  Sorry fellow Wannafesters–we are traveling so much this year that we just can’t afford the over $1200 in airfare for us to fly to Seattle.  We had been hoping to use miles but we’d need 200,000 miles and that just isn’t happening.  I am so sad, but we are so going next year.  This  year we have a trip nearly every month from March-September and we are strapped $$$$ at this point.  Add to that Noah’s exorbitantly expensive private school and we just can’t make it all work.  We will miss seeing all of you.  But I did read that Hayat and Kiya’s new house has guest quarters…

I have been working out and am feeling really good physically–a little sore because my trainer often busts my ass but he also reminds me that that is what I am paying him for.  He rocks. 

Noah is officially in a big boy bed.  His twin bed came yesterday–he picked it out and it was the tallest one–he loves mommy and daddy’s big bed and wanted one of his own.  So, we’ll see how that is goes.  He loves the bed but last night we had some thunder and it woke him up and he ended up in our room again.  We’ll keep working on that. 

I am looking for any sage wisdom for getting my little man to poop on the potty.  We have the peeing thing down 99.9% of the time but we are at a big old O for pooping.  It’s frustrating.  I have until aug 27th for him to be 100% potty trained and I fear the time is going to go too fast.  So any tips/tricks would be great. 

Zoë is a pistol and is getting more ornery every day.  But she is so cute that it’s often okay.

Sorry for the randomness but Slackerdom provides only that.

Humdrum

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 2 Comments

Life is kinda boring and humdrum these days.  Not much going on other than school, work, kids and really how much can I write about them?  Just joking–consider this entire blog is pretty much dedicated to those 3 things. 

I haven’t heard from any more school districts and know that a lot of districts won’t begin the whole interviewing process until May–but that doesn’t make me feel any better knowing that some of the student teachers this semester already have interview with other districts–ones that I also applied to.  I’m just more expensive than they are. 

I also applied for a graduate assistantship and have to admit that while it doesn’t pay much it is my first choice, since my future career is to be a professor and not a high school teacher.  Getting an assistantship would help me considerably in the future with securing a university position.  I sadly didn’t get an assistantship in my area, but the associate dean of the college of education was so impressed with me and my cv that she found another possible assistantship working with charter schools.  I am interviewing for that assistantship next Thursday.  I am hoping I get this position as it is working with a world-class professor and it will allow me to get much needed experience in the world of academia so that when I finally have that PhD, I can get a job. 

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On another note–I dare say that Noah is potty-trained as far as peeing goes.  The rest–quite another story.  If he is wearing underwear he’ll ask for a pull-up to poop.  He wants to poop on the toilet but hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it.  I think he will soon. 

His sister on the other hand is a piece of work.  She is a pistol.  I wish she was starting to talk more–she’s a screamer and is happy to just scream.  She’s cute and has that going for her.  I am sure she’ll talk soon, but she isn’t babbling as much as Noah did and I think part of that is due to the fact that her brother actually never shuts up and the only way for her to get a word in is to scream as loud as she can.  We’ll see how that develops.  She is almost 18 months and I would certainly like to see her start to talk more. 

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One week from tonight I will be in New Orleans for a weekend with my hubby and best friend and without my kids.  Is it wrong to be as excited as I am?

Up For Air

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 3 Comments

or procrastinating if you want to call it that.  I have been MIA lately and so many of my wonderful readers have dropped away.  I can’t blame them, since baby #2 entered the picture, I have had less and less time to think, let alone blog.  I miss it.  I miss all of you–even though over 60% of you are gone.  But, I won’t focus on that.  I didn’t start this blog with the aspirations that I would become widely read and I am lucky for the people I have met and who I now call friend. 

I am sitting at the local bread co. supposedly working on my literature review.  I need to finish it today so that I don’t need to do it on vacation.  We leave tomorrow morning…7:45am.  I can’t wait. 

Noah got into what was my first choice of schools and waitlisted for Bill’s and my mom’s first choice of schools.  I strongly believe  that everything happens for a reason and that he will be really happy at his new school.  And if for some reason he isn’t and we aren’t, we have the other school for next year.  I am happy and it is one less thing for me to worry about. 

Job hunting.  Can I just say that it frickin’ sucks.  I hate job hunting.  Absolutely hate it.  I went to the teacher job fair at my university on Friday.  It went well, other than the waiting in line for hours to get brief face time.  I have a few leads and people seemed impressed with me, so who knows.  I did score an on-site screening interview and did really well.  The lady who interviewed me was ecstatic that I had an MA in English–as those are really hard to come by as most folks choose to get the M.ed.  So, we will see.   Most districts on are spring break this week or next so it will probably be end of the month or April before I hear about more interviews.  UGH.

Okay, I am quickly running out of time away from home.  I. Need. To. Write. My. Paper.  I don’t want to do it.  I haven’t done one before and I am really uncomfortable with it thus far.  I totally understand how my students feel.

Well Hell…

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

I don’t even know where to begin, other than to say I should be studying and reading about Writing Across the Curriculum until my eyes bleed and brain explodes since I have a literature review due in one week and we are leaving for vacation on Monday and the paper is a minimum of 10 pages.  I have thus far read 23 articles of varying length (4-25 pages each) and have about 10 more to read, plus I have 3-4 books to overview (skim) to also include in the review.  This task is one that has kept me from blogging recently.  That and the immense guilt I feel when I am doing something completely unrelated to the task at hand.

But, did I mention we are going on vacation?  A real family vacation.  As in just us four.  I am looking forward to it.  We are going to Orlando and are staying most of our stay at the Nick Hotel.  I am looking forward to a vacation and Noah is looking forward to Disney World.  Yes, I know he is too young (not even 3 yet–but he’s super close to it).  But that is the beauty of it.  We don’t have to pay for either of the kids because they are under 3 and Bill’s never been to Disney World.  He grew up in LA and has been to Disney Land, but this will be a new experience for him.  And to get to see it through their eyes will be awesome.

What else is going on over here?  I have been applying like crazy for jobs.  Interviews will probably start in April for the most part.  The application deadline for many of them was this week and then they will most likely weed out people and then interviews should start.  I did interview twice with one district and they will be calling folks back at the end of the month for third interviews at the building level.  I am just not looking forward to this whole process.  I am going to a teacher job fair on Friday after work and it’s just pure torture.  But I am still more than ever ready to go back to work.  So, we’ll see what happens.  It’ll all work out the way it should.  I hope.

Tomorrow is the day that acceptance letters are mailed out by the two schools that we applied to for Noah.  I am nervous and excited to see where he was accepted and to see what our financial aid award might be.  This is harder than when I was waiting to see if I got into college when I finally decided to go back.  I will certainly be posting here when I know for sure.

Oh, and as far as bad mother of the year goes.  I forgot to lock the screen door–Noah has become quite the escape artist.  He likes to go outside and come back in.  So we were all playing in the backroom today–he and Zoë were chasing each other and I was the ending spot in the backroom.  They ran back and forth a few times and then they stayed up front–which isn’t odd as there are toys everywhere in this house.  I was petting the dogs and could hear Zoë screaching and laughing.  Then another minute or two goes by and I hear the door open.  I run up front and Noah is yelling proudly “I’m back” and I am thinking Back, where the hell did you go and how did I not know? He proceeds to tell me that “The nice man helped me open the door to come back in.”  Needless to say I flip out.  I yell a little at him–because I am so mad at myself for leaving the door unlocked.  I am freaking out that I had no idea he was outside and that some “man” helped him.  It turned out that man was our neighbor who has kids and one of them is Noah’s age, but still.  It could have gone so wrong and I would have no one to blame but myself.

It really is/was one of those moments that you question  yourself.  I would never forgive myself if anything had happened to him.  I am still a little shaken up and I cried with him. He just doesn’t understand and how could I expect him to.  He is not yet 3.  So, let me just say it wasn’t one of my finer moments.  But he is safe and sound and the doors are locked.

A brief year of exercise update–I have made it to the gym everyday this month except for 3 days (in a row) because I had hurt my lower back.  But I am pretty impressed with myself so far.  Oh and where we are staying in Orlando has a gym. I’ll be working out there too.

A Tad Bit Under The Weather

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 3 Comments

At least it is gorgeous weather today–just over 60.  It was nice to get outside with the kids and to get some sun on my pale face.  Our days around here have been pretty boring–the kids and I go to the gym in the am, we come home for lunch and naps and hang out.  It was so nice to get out today, even if I don’t feel all that great.  Getting a little bit of a cold.  I’ll survive. 

I weighed myself today at the gym and I am down a total of 7.5 pounds so far this month.  Not so bad considering I didn’t lose any weight in January. It’s amazing what you can do when you are actually honest about what you are eating.  I would have lost a little more, but I refuse to deny myself the occasional treat–hello Ted Drewes.

But I have been attempting to limit my calorie intake to 1460 calories a day.  And I have still been exercising everyday for a minimum of 30 minutes but I usually do 45-60 minutes each day of cardio.  I haven’t been doing any weight training, but will start working out with my personal trainer again in March–probably 2x per week.  That should also help the weight melt off a little faster.  It is nice to have some success–even though I fully agree that 56 days of exercise in a row is a success too. 

Here are a couple of pics of the kiddos together. 

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