Livin' the Dream

It's not every day you land your dream job.  I did!

Yep, I packed all my belongings said goodbye to my 4 friends and drove home.  Nope, I still haven't unpacked everything.  I was here for a whole week and then got called in the ward to work with the 9yr old scouts.  (I don't think they even read my membership record in, is that legal?)

Anyways, people ask me every week how my job is going.  Even at church yesterday, I had a couple people ask me what I'm doing here.  Apparently they missed the over enthusiastic job memo.  I never know what to say to that.   To me every day is an interesting adventure but still middle school is middle school and will always be middle school, and kids are kids. 

I talked to one of my friends' moms who is a string teacher here, and she said that she hears good things about me and therstudents say that Ms. Helm is an enthusiastic slightly crazy, but fun teacher.  Hmmmm...  Hope that's a good thing.  It can be a little awkward at church because I get called Sister Helm, who in my opinion is my mother, Ms. Helm (that's definitely me) and Angela which is also me.  I only have one student that stumbles over my teacher name because she has older siblings my age. Poor kid!   

 Speaking of poor kids, the first week of school I had this specimen left alone, on a chair all by itself.  I was tempted to put a sign on it that said "will play for food" and hang it, but I didn't. 

The poor kid came back the next day and said, "Ms. Helm!  Someone has stolen my violin from its case!!"  I said, you left it out dear...  He turned purple and said, sorry and quickly sat down. 

Perk of living here, the super cute tree frogs.  This is Ferrars the frog.  He only sings in F major. 

















Another perk!  Super cute people over here that take you places with green chile.  Home life, FTW!

Story of my Life!

I think I'm off the negativity for a bit.  Here's a happier post.  My Birthday!  25! Maybe it's 25... old age problems.  Anyways I think my body is popping more, but my kids were the best, and my two AZ buddies came to spend the weekend with me!! I love them!  Pre-birthday with the fam....

My beautiful college roommate and friend joined us. She was super helpful. We played my ukelele together but I forgot to record it...fail!

Daisy and Emily provided the entertainment

The cake does say 25 I promise.   the kids are my cousin Mandy's kids, not to be confused by my friend Mandy.  He so wanted to blow out my candles...

flashback to my 21st birthday... Notice how 2 candles are out.  Don't worry I blew them ALL this year!

Fast forward a week....

My kids are weird...

But my best friends from Arizona surprised me. I was out to dinner with my coworkers.  I have no idea why I don't have a picture but here is my complimentary ice cream!  We had so much fun we stayed out for 3 hours! Poor restaurant people.  I think they were just happy they stashed us in the back.

I dragged my friends birding early early and I personally had a grand time. I don't know if they thought it was as much fun as I did but oh well! It's my birthday!.Afterwards I made up for it by dragging them off to my favorite breakfast place!!  It is DELICIOUS. Seriously delicious!  We didn't take a picture of our food because we were busy stuffing our faces.  We had carrot cake pancakes, biscuits and gravy, lemon ricotta pancakes (my favorite EVER) and TLC pancakes...toffee lemon and caramel....in absolute heaven.  Sometimes I take creep pictures of my friends.  

Dragged them to the Belaggio.  Alicia really liked the fountains.

 I SAW A ROADRUNNER. Basically, my birthday was made on that particular moment. Actually that picture is from a different roadrunner I chased in a parking lot but I did see a roadrunner. Really! I think the roadrunner is probably my spirit animal...just ask my mom. Here one minute then gone.

 After our naps, we went to our other friend Elise's house and ate with her and played games and had a grand time.  I was very sorry to see them go.

 I did get a candy bouquet from my beginning orchestra as well but I didn't take a picture...it was delicious!

Oh, and we did a session at the temple which was awesome.  These pictures should show exactly why they are my friends...    Lindsay enjoyed yelling out my sunroof....weird.  Actually, I think I've always wanted to but I'm usually the one driving and I think that would be considered unsafe to try. 

It must sound like my life is super up and down and up and down...or I am. I guess that's normal.  I could use a little more flatline in my opinion. However, my life is pretty darn awesome.  Did you see my uber cool family!?  And my uber cool friends!?  But that is not all....

 I see this when I go home from work. 

And these when I get there. Yes that kid sitting close to me is in trouble.  Story of my life. 

Not A Happy Post

If you're looking for something funny or happy to read this post is not for you, so check back later.  Sorry family.

I'm feeling very frustrated and angry nearly to the point of lividity (I used the word wrong but oh well) and being awake at 3 AM isn't helping.  I guess all you can do for me is just say a little prayer.  Which now that I think about it is a little ironic considering what I'm going to write about.
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Maybe it's just me but I feel like most bad things don't touch us for awhile as children.  Sometimes they do, but generally speaking, most of us live our happy lives and look around at bad things feel a moment of sad and move on.  I guess some people would say that I've seen my share because of my disability and all the junk that comes with that.  I've dealt with death, but even then it stings a little, It's not the end and you learn how to deal with it and move on.  People are always saying, but Angela, you've dealt with some really hard things and you do every day. HA!  My life is so easy!  I don't even have the right to complain!  I'm not a single mom struggling to make ends meet, I'm not starving, I have a job, a house and I could go on and on.

Right now, I'm not dealing very well.  One of my best friends in the whole wide world has cancer. There's no family history or anything so it came as quite a shock.  It sure shakes up your world when this person is just a year older than you.  It could be me next year.  I think what has me so bent out of shape is that I simply can't fix it.  I can't take it away no matter how hard I want to. I HATE feeling helpless and not knowing what to do. It's the worsestestest!  I feel like I could handle this trial and it is totally unfair that she has to.  She is young, brave, so kind, friendly, one of the best teachers around, uber talented, beautiful, dates a lot, has a great job and everything awesome. I know, I know I have most of those things, but I sure feel like like an ugly duckling in comparison, but I sure feel like a trial like this would be ok for someone like me because I'm not that. I know I know, but that's just my opinion right now when I'm mad!
 When she first told me, we laughed.  I guess you could say you can either laugh or cry and we picked one.  When I got off the phone I cried.  I don't know anything about cancer really and I don't know a lot about how to get rid of it.  I don't know anything about chemo  except for the fact that it's poison. I don't know how it affects the body and if it changes if you can have kids or any of that.  I just know that it's evil and that people don't live or do live that have it.  Anyway, I could rant and rave some more but it's not going to make any difference.  I just felt like needed to write in a fairly safe place.  Sorry family.  Once you write something down it becomes not just an idea but real because it was created.  I'm hoping that writing words will make it so I can sleep.

Personality Tests

Do you know why they didn't hire the cross-eyed teacher?

She couldn't control her pupils.

That, right there is a joke worthy of being called a dad joke.  I have more if you need them.

I haven't blogged in awhile because i have been super busy.  Like, crazy insane busy.

I've officially hit the bottom of the low point in my first year, and yes it is the pits.  I am grateful for the fact that I know this is normal and will go away eventually.  Working in charter school systems is hard.  Parents decide that their kid isn't doing well, or not learning what they want or blabbedy blah blah blah.  I just feel bad for the poor kids because I feel like they deserve some stability but that's just me.  I keep losing kids, even in orchestra and it makes me feel like a bad teacher even though it's not my fault.  I just always really like the kids that leave. Can't they just take the awful ones?

It doesn't help that other jobs are opening and I keep wondering if I would be happier here or over there, but then moving sounds way more daunting than just staying put for one more year so that's that.

I always wanted to be that cool teacher where students write me love notes....but this is all I get I guess.

It was pretty cool.  I whited out some names so that I would be legal.  If you see Jeffrey on there that is a student but not really.  He's the invisible class member who tries to turn in other people's stuff with his name on it. 

One more moment.  I give my new students an orchestra personality test and this semester I worked super hard to make it seem legitimate.  Then I interview all my students and make sure I have a balanced orchestra. When you tell someone that they test shows that they should be a cello because of this and this and this they will sometimes pick cello.  It's manipulative I know, but it works for me!  I got this idea from an awesome teacher friend of mine.  Anyways,  in class I'm tuning (story of my life) and I hear a cello player ask, so do you all wrote on your test that you like chocolate ice cream?  I panicked for a moment because some of them put like rocky road or something of that nature, but I guess they just heard do you like chocolate? They all looked at him and said well...yeah duh!  He said, awesome then we are meant to be cellists!!!  He looked at me and said, Ms. Helm personality tests do work!!   I was so relieved, all I said was yep. Phew! Crisis averted!