Always busy

Do you remember telling your parents the famous phrase when you were young, "I'm bored."? I sure would love to have a day of boredom.

Last year, I found out about the Free Tax Act. You can do your federal and state taxes online and even itemize everything for free. You can print off the return and mail it or you can efile. There is a small fee for that, but it is still WAY less expensive than Turbo Tax or Tax Cut from H&R Block. I have used those in the past and this is FAR better. You can find it by typing in "Tax Act 2008" in google. I believe that it is the first link that comes up when you hit enter. Mine are all taken care of and it only took about half an hour to do it.

I can't say that I have had anything really exciting going on; just time consuming stuff. Tonight is Jared's pinewood derby for scouts. He's very excited. Last Thursday, we drove to my brother and sister-in-law's house in Joseph City. Chris helped Jared make a pretty cool car and I just got to do the fun stuff....visit. It was great!

On Sunday, I was one of the speakers at church. Yikes! I knew I was supposed to be speaking, but once again, I did not prepare a talk until 7:00 a.m. Sunday morning. I left the house shortly after 7:30 to pick Tyler up from his dad's house to go to church. I don't know that I would say it was one of my better talks, but it was okay. The good thing is that I should be off the hook on that one for a while.

School keeps me fairly busy. Parent-teacher conferences are in a couple of weeks, so I will be trying to schedule those pretty soon. That should be interesting because I didn't realize that was the week of conferences when I made appointments. Tyler has an orthodontist appointment that Thursday and Alex his having surgery that Monday. Somehow, I will need to schedule my 21 students' conferences and also go to my own six children's conferences around those two things. Hmmmm...that's always a bit challenging.

Speaking of challenging, that is how Tyler has been lately. Teenagers can always make life interesting, but it is especially interesting when one of them happens to be bipolar and have a personality disorder. On Monday, I got a call in my classroom asking if I could come to the high school. (Oh, sure, let me just leave my class full of five year olds while I hurry right over there to chat. Why don't I just leave them a box of matches and some malt liquor to keep themselves entertained until I get back?) Long story short, Tyler is suspended for three days. I have a wonderful friend who has allowed Tyler to go to her school (she is the director there) and do manual labor (for free) the entire time he has been suspended. He thought he would just get to stay home, sleep in, etc. I am surprised he doesn't know me better than that by now.

That night I came home by 6:00 only to have to leave again. One of Erica's friends was kicked out of her house, so she is now living here for a while. She is actually not a bad kid or anything, she's just almost seventeen and is feeling like she does not need to listen to or get along with her parents at the moment. I visited with her mom a little before I brought her home (to our home, that is). That's going okay. What's one more kid when you already have six? The adult to child ratio here is fairy off balance regardless.

There is one more thing I would like to add if anyone reads this. My good friend, Laura, is having a really rough time right now. She is a single mother and was recently diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. Then her mother passed away and her fiance of three years dumped her because he "couldn't handle the stress". This has all been just in 2009. (Keep in mind that it is still January.) She is still coming to work (while doing chemo) and is amazingly upbeat and concerned about others. I honestly don't know how she is able to handle all of that. Any one of those things would be extremely difficult for most people. Please keep her in your prayers. She is a kind, wonderful, amazing person and I love her as everyone who knows her does.

Well, that's it for now. I have been up since about 4:00 this morning and actually was able to get some laundry done. There is always a positive side to insomnia.