Stay at home mom versus working mom…

I have to say it, I cannot deny it.  I enjoy working.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved being home with Michael today.  I loved that I didn’t have to wake up so early to get the kids and I up and out the door to make it to work on time.  I even liked being able to drop off Leilani at school like a normal parent, rather than Safekey first thing in the morning.

But, to be honest, I missed teaching today.  Getting this “three-day weekend” was not the same as an actual three-day weekend scheduled in the school year.  I missed being in the classroom today!

Michael was great today.  He enjoyed his day with Mommy.  We went to the park and played after dropping Leilani off at school for an hour.  We came home and made tuna pasta salad for dinner tonight.  We played Transformers and Cars (his toys and imagination).  We even took a nice nap in the afternoon, which I was grateful for since my migraine was becoming unbearable to the point where a nice dark room was an inviting thought.

I have been productive today.  Although, I didn’t clean the house, I did do productive work on the education side of life.  I posted some links I have been sitting on top of on Twitter.  I have been such a bad tweeter!  I haven’t been sharing ideas or links with my fellow colleagues.  I haven’t participated in chats recently on issues in education.  I won’t be able to tomorrow, either, since I did pick up a sub job at a local middle school my old sixth grade reading teacher currently teaches. 

I also have been brainstorming ideas for lesson plans to place into my portfolio.  If you aren’t aware, my portfolio is online.  It is my teaching blog.  I have my ideas, my artifacts, and different things related to my portfolio placed on there.  You can check out my portfolio by clicking here, if you are interested.

If you are a principal in Las Vegas, Nev., looking to hire a secondary English teacher, then please PLEASE do look.  I am in the middle of looking for a teaching contract.

In the meantime, I have decided to start rededicating myself to reading and writing.  I started reading a new book that came in about a week ago from the Bloomsbury publishing company: Moonlight in Odessa by Janet Skeslien Charles.  I saw it on the New Authors bookshelf at Barnes & Noble on Saturday, so it grabbed my attention even more when I wanted to read something new.  So far, it is pretty good!

As for writing, I am working on my fictional writing.  Nothing major in the works yet, but mostly playing around with ideas I usually just quickly type up in OneNote to save for a rainy day of writing.  I do need to get into the garage and get my writing exercises books.  I have been having writer’s block lately, for like the last year and a half, so it is time to give those exercises a dust off and a look through.  Perhaps some exercises and mini lessons to dig back into the craft are in order to prep myself for long term writing again.  Before teaching, and going to NSC full time, I used to write all the time.  I never published anything other than my poems online, but it was gratifying because I was unloading all these random thoughts that ran through my head.

I am at that point where those random thoughts will make me go crazy if I am not occupied with teaching. 

Of course, I am going to refocus on issues in education and teaching, as well.  I have quite a few ideas for articles in the works.  I want to beef up that area of my teaching blog.  That is a great eye catcher for a portfolio, contributing to articles in the education field.  I only wish I had a little more experience to put behind the words I write when it comes to teaching and learning.

As we speak, I am multitasking between bookmarking educational links and resources, sharing the ideas online, and writing up my own ideas for articles.  Nothing fictional … Yet.  I have a couple of story lines written up in OneNote, but really need to crank out some characters before I move further into those stories.

Well, I should probably wrap this post up and focus more on finding work for Wednesday and Thursday and getting ready for bed.  Story Time here in the Kulseth household in about seven minutes.  TTYL!