Yoda, an Owl, and Little Women

I'm sitting in our living room, the smell of cinnamon ornaments drifting in from the kitchen, watching some modern version of Little Women on Lifetime. Part of me is kind of Meg-ish, too: practical and a bit bossy at times. Part of me is a bit Beth: I play piano. But I always really connected with Jo- you know, the independent one who read books and wrote stories and was a huge tomboy.

I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to grade anything before tomorrow. I probably won't. After all, I have to stay at school until 6 for a meeting tomorrow, so I may as well just stay and grade stuff after school. Practical, right? Not the best decision, I'm sure, but I'd really just like to enjoy the rest of my Sunday. That's logical, I think. I have 90 Beowulf tests to grade and numerous other worksheets to look over. But...here I sit, enjoying a break, willing Christmas break to hasten its arrival by decorating our tree and wrapping gifts.

I bought some new ornaments today. One is a stuffed owl, because owls make me think of Harry Potter, and Harry Potter makes me happy. One is Yoda, for my nerdy hubby, who is so excited about the new Star Wars movies that he talks about it almost daily :) One is a kitty ornament- Minion is like our kid right now, so I figure she deserves her own ornament. She already has a stocking.

And the last ornament simply says "LOVE." The reason we celebrate Christmas anyway. I know Jesus wasn't born on December 25th, but we choose this time of year to celebrate God's love for us. We celebrate our love for our friends and family. We love the Christmas movies, the hot cocoa, the twelve kinds of cookies, the renditions of "Silent Night" and "Joy to the World."

What do you LOVE about Christmas?

My new list

I'm a list person. I love all colors, shapes, and sizes of sticky notes. When I color coordinate lists and scribble out items, I want to frolic around the room humming The Sound of Music while simultaneously fist bumping myself. 

I love the satisfaction of clutching my pen and scratching through list items. It gives me a sense of accomplishment.

And this is (partially) why I'm going to grad school (sometime in the next five years).

I need goals. I need a list so I can scratch things off (oh, and also, I'm terribly forgetful). Seeing this on a sticky note satisfies me deeply.

Now that I've graduated high school and college with acceptable grades...now that I've obtained my dream jobs of teaching and coaching... now that I'm happily married to my love... well, my lists say things like "grade papers tonight" and "match up socks that went missing in the dryer" and "clean litterbox," and quite frankly, I'm just getting a little bored.

I need things to strive for. I need my sticky notes to say things like, "study quantitative reasoning for an hour tonight," and "get accepted into grad school," and "actually participate in college graduation, since you didn't walk when you finished undergrad." I need to feel accomplished and like I'm tapping into the gifts and abilities God's given me.

I need better lists on my sticky note. So, today, mine says, "Ace GRE on January 5th." Check back then to see if I can scratch this off. I'm not the only one who loves lists, right?

Procrastination

I've been meaning to blog for the past two weeks. Really, I have.

I wanted to blog about the election, and how Randy and I waited in line for an hour and a half in the cold, and how I kept saying things like, "They should have Starbucks stations out here.I could use a peppermint mocha."


I wanted to blog about how much I dislike this season of The Office. It's just.not.funny without Michael Scott. 

I wanted to blog about my students. For example, I asked the following question: "Was the presentation boring or not? Why?" and got the answer, "Yes." This is a true story. It happened today.

I wanted to blog about how Randy "walks" the cat by just dragging a string behind him. It's adorable.

 But I can't focus. I can't string a coherent sentence together. Right now, I'm only blogging to procrastinate studying for the GRE. Some things never change.

So...what do you do to procrastinate? :)