One of my 2012 goals is to “be happy being single.” This should be easy enough. Being single means getting to do whatever (pardon my language) the fuck I want to. All. The. Time. I can spend a full Sunday on the couch watching nothing but Dance Moms, Mrs. Doubtfire, and 500 Days of Summer. I can spend my Thursday nights marathoning The Wire and getting drinks on a whim with my TFA friends. I can go dancing with my college girls on Saturdays and get brunch every Sunday with everyone. I also live alone now (which is AWESOMELY AWESOME by the way. You should all try it sometime), which adds even more to this “All What Amanda Wants to do All of the Time” business. (It also means every show on my DVR is mine, which is epically fantastic. Also great? Ample fridge space!)

It also means I should have significantly less drama and angst in my life. When any of my friends or I am in a relationship, there are always so many questions – where is this relationship going? Why didn’t he call me today? Why did his voice sound so weird on the phone? Who is he texting all the time? Why is he hanging out alone with that girl he’s “only friends” with ALL THE TIME? Well, not all the time, but enough that is annoying and a thing and I’m going to ask questions about it, goddamnit! I mean…yeah, there are a lot of questions. And sometimes stress and angst, thus being single should be easy! Stress and question free! All Amanda All The Time!

But for some reason, for the last few months, it hasn’t been all easy. It has kind of sucked. And I know it’s sucky, not because being single is inherently sucky, but because I, on some level, am making it sucky for myself. It is sucky because I sulk about it to myself when I get asked these questions by my friends, when I see people holding hands or sitting on the same side of the booth at brunch (which, I mean, NO ONE SHOULD DO!! Just eat your eggs without getting handsy. It is not that hard), when I see stupid RomCom commercials and hear single girls behind me in CVS bitch about how Valentine’s Day isn’t fun for anyone because its about corporate greed and making single people sad! (Oh, CVS girls, you are just sooo original.) It’s sucky because I (horribly) have internalized that being single is somehow a reflection on my self worth, like it means that I am somehow less than a woman who is in a relationship and that no one wants me , not that I have yet to find anyone worthy of my awesomeness, which to be frank, is probably closer to the truth. (You are loving my humbleness right now….) I have grown up in a culture where, for girls, love is the goal, and since I have yet to attain it, I am somehow missing some big, important facet of my life and should be spending all my free time searching for it and sulking for not having it yet. It is even more sucky because I regularly deny to myself that all of the proceeding facts are true. I tell myself that I have actually truly internalized all the feminist literature I’ve read (and fully believe) and am totally happy with my awesomely independent life-style, but honestly, I still feel kind of sucky. It’s a terrible vicious cycle. I make myself feel sucky for being single and then feel sucky for feeling that way instead of feeling sassy and awesome and on and on and on.

BUT step 1 of my 2012 goal is to admit all of this, here on the internet, to try to begin breaking the cycle of sucky. I desperately want to fully enjoy being single because it is in so many ways, for me right now, the best possible thing. I need time and energy to focus on not failing at my job, on filling out grad school scholarship applications, and on finishing The Wire season 1. Plus, I need to spend as much time as possible with my amazingly awesome friends, who I will miss terribly come fall if I end up using those grad school scholarships and momentarily leaving LA. So, deep breath….new mantra: single is super not sucky.

Also, full disclosure, I will for the time being, be on E-Harmony, (Thanks enabling work friends who are also on E-harmony!) because single girls still like dates right? Right…

My senior year of high school, my dad ran a half marathon.

For a lot of people, this is a big deal, but in my family, I now see it as sort of a pivot point – the point at which my parents’ lives went in this new and totally interesting direction. At the time, of course, I did not give it proper credit. I was pretty wrapped up in that whole “I’m 18 and my life and where I’m choosing to go to college is pretty much the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of all mankind, forever” thing. I remember seeing him lying on the couch at home afterwards, wrapped in a blanket, because even though it was April, Ohio had decided it would be an awesome time for some snow. I said congratulations (I think), but really, I should have celebrated more. Up until I was in high school, my dad had always been moderately overweight. Not horribly, like a Biggest Loser contestant, but I would never have called him skinny, and I didn’t give that a second thought. That was just how my dad was. Then, when I was in high school, my dad started losing a ton of weight. And he started running. It culminated in his running a half-marathon. Again, I gave this very little thought at the time.

A year later, I was in college at BU, and I got to watch my uncle as he passed by my dorm in mile 25 of the Boston Marathon. My uncle had never run a marathon, but a series or circumstances – him being the weatherman on ABC and having the chance to run for a charity close to his heart – allowed him to do it, and he did. He finished the Boston Marathon.

His running Boston and my Dad running his half then inspired my mom to start running. When I went home the next fall, she would be out doing intervals in our neighborhood. When she started, she couldn’t run a mile.

This year, she ran her third marathon.

Again, at the time, I did not give any of this much thought, except that when my mom came up to Boston my Junior year of college to run the Tufts 10K, I felt vaguely guilty and out of shape. A year later, after several visits home during which I would roll out of bed at 10, only to encounter my parents coming in from a ridiculously long run, I finally felt guilty and out-of-shape enough to try to start running myself. I went with the Couch to 5K program, and it went pretty well for about a month. I would go running along the Charles, congratulating myself on how fit and dedicated I looked. I got up to jogging for about 5 minutes. Then the knee pain hit. Debilitating knee pain that made me limp home in shame and made walking up and down stairs for the next week or so extremely difficult. Bye-bye running.

For the next few years, my parents continued to kick-ass at running. When they moved to Delaware, my mom got a job at a gym, which led to her becoming a personal trainer and starting a local running club. My mom began to inspire adults to run, giving them tips, helping them train, and giving them the inspiration to start. She also started coaching Girls on the Run, a program to help girls in 3rd-5th grade build confidence through training for and running a 5K. My parents ran several half-marathons before they needed a new challenge and decided to take on a full marathon – the Marine Corps Marathon, which my dad used to help run (as in facilitate) during his years as a Marine. At this milestone for my parents, my guilt kicked in again, and I thought I’d give this running thing another try. Maybe that knee thing was a fluke, and as I’d been using my knee as an excuse to not run anymore, I thought, why don’t I just do it again to see what happens. I got four weeks in for the 2nd time before the knee pain popped back up again. I gave up again, and frankly, I was sort of happy to have an excuse as to why I couldn’t do it to use every time people would say “So are you a runner like your parents?”

I used that excuse until this past Spring, I suddenly, and happily, became extremely close to Christina. Christina is a runner – a logs Daily Miles on facebook daily, has run 3-marathons runner, but she hasn’t always been. She only started three years ago when we started teaching. She ran the SRLA program at her school and ran her first LA marathon. She reminded me of my mom in that way.

Around this time, I also heard that Nicole was training for a half marathon, and I know that Nicole was not a runner before this.

Suddenly, I felt stupid and lazy with my excuse. My knee hurt. So what? My parents had several injuries that they had gotten over. So has ANYONE who has ever run, ever. My excuse felt flimsy, and I was suddenly tired of telling stories of my parents’ awesome running lives to my friends with awesome running lives, instead of having any of my own besides “Oh, I don’t run. You know…knee pain and all.”

So I started the Coach to 5K again, for a third time. I pretty much had the first 5 weeks memorized at this point. And at about a month and a half in, without fail, my knee pain came screaming back, but this time, I wasn’t secretly relieved. I was pissed off. I wanted to join this elusive running club of which I had never been able to gain entry. I wanted to punch this knee pain in the face. So I did.

I finally went to see a sports doctor who diagnosed my injury in 2.5 seconds and gave me a way to fix it. Two weeks later, I was easing back into running, pain free. Four weeks later, I ran for 20 minutes without stopping – the longest I have ever run in my life. And I couldn’t wait to call my mom and tell her.

This week, on the eve of attempting to run for 25 minutes, I signed up for a 5k and had my mom make me a training plan to work up to running a half-marathon in the Spring. Christina has been cheering me on all week. When I get back, I’ll probably ask Nicole to show me some running trails by our apartment. I finally feel part of the club.

I didn’t write a post this week about what I’m thankful for because it felt like it would be cliche and sound like everyone else’s. I’m of course thankful for my friends and family, but today, I am specifically thankful for having such inspiring, motivating, helpful and encouraging friends and family. If my dad, my uncle, my mom, Christina, and Nicole hadn’t put on shoes, walked outside and started to run, despite the fact that they had never done it before, despite the fact that it was hard, I never would have done it…three times. I would have given up and been fine with that, but seeing them do it and keep doing it, I realized I wasn’t fine with giving up. I wanted the joy, the frustration, the pain, and the triumph of running too. So, thanks you guys! I wouldn’t be doing this without you.

So here I am. Still alive after all these months. Who would’ve thought? I certainly wouldn’t have thought that I would be sitting here in November, single, living in my own apartment, questioning my next step, having accomplished none of the goals I set out for myself in my last post what seems like a life-time ago but well on my way to accomplishing new goals and being totally fine with all of that.

While my life on paper looks pretty much like it did before, there are some minor changes. Still Teaching For America, though as an official alumnus now and not as an active Corps Member, and I did move up a grade with my kiddos. Plus, I joined the TFA staff bandwagon, working at their Summer Institute this past summer, which was both the most ridiculously tiring and stressful and most ridiculously fun job I’ve ever had.

Still living in LA, but I made the move from my super trendy, Grove-adjacent neighborhood, to a less trendy, more quiet, much much much closer to work neighborhood within walking distance of Nicole and Drea. Also, I’m living alone for the first time, which was mildly terrifying at first (like double-checking the locks every night before I went to sleep and then getting up again after 10 minutes of being almost asleep to check them again terrifying), but now that I can come home, sit in silence while watching a DVR full of shows that only I have taped, I’m starting to enjoy it. Plus, I get to feel all adult and accomplished when I do crazy things like unclog my shower drain after being annoyed with the standing water for a month. (That’s an adult thing right?)

And there was that whole, I was in a long-term relationship and now am not thing…which I’m fine with. I’ve had a crazy single summer and have been spending more time brunching, dancing, and just generally hanging out with my amazing friends and some new amazing friends, all of whom say I’m way more fun than I was last year, so I’m going to call it a win. Also, I may be contemplating joining a synagogue just to meet new cute Jewish boys, which I think God would be totally fine with…so maybe I’m not totally fine with being single, but I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

The other big change is that I’m thinking I may be done with teaching after this year. While I certainly don’t hate it, I’m starting to feel the “wow, I’m actually completely burned out” feeling, which may have something to do with that ridiculously tiring summer job and the fact that I”m teaching a new grade/subject for the third year in a row, and have thus never been able to reuse any of the work I’ve done for the past two years, and yeah….I’m feeling a little done, which means I need to now have that whole WHAT THE HECK AM I GOING TO DO NOW conversation in my mind for the next 8 months, which in turn means a lot of grad school applications, TFA staff applications, and web searches for jobs in theater education to see what comes up. So you’re welcome for the slew of angsty, where-do-I-want-my-life-to-go posts that will be coming your way in the next few months.

That’s all I’ve got for now – hopefully now that I’m a regular person again, after a lovely two-year hiatus, I’ll make this posting business a regular part of my week again. I mean, I owe it to the awesome redesign to at least give it a chance. (Thanks, Steph!)

I’m not a huge fan of resolutions, because they feel kind of unmeasurable, and I usually forget about them. This year, I’m going to try something (slightly) different, and set specific goals, as Teach for America has so kindly taught me how to do.

So here, for public consumption and accountability are my goals for 2011:

1. Lose 10 pounds before the summer. (How? Working out an average of 3 times a week and re-joining Weight Watchers, which helped me lose 10 pounds in three months in 2009.)

2. Bike 50 miles in the Tour de Cure for Diabetes in Long Beach in May.

3. Read 8-10 books, with the help of my new super awesome Nook!

4. Blog….more. (This shouldn’t be hard, as right now, I’ve averaging six posts a year.)

And that’s all I’ve got mentally for now, as I have a horrifying cold and am currently wrapped in the softest blanket on earth reading Dan Savage’s The Commitment on my Nook, both courtesy of my super awesome boyfriend. Hopefully, if I stick to goal #4, I’ll be back with a voice and a slightly higher capacity for thought soon.

This week is my birthday week.

Wednesday (my actual birthday), I’m going out to dinner with the boyfriend, and probably getting a chocolate cake from one of my students who came to me the other day to ask me, and I quote, “chocolate questions,” to determine my cake preferences.

Friday, my boyfriend organized a dinner with our awesome and amazing co-workers at one of my favorite LA spots. (In fact, I was just there enjoying buttery garlic balls with Andrea and Amy!)

Saturday, my roommates organized a dinner and small get together for my outside of work friends.

Today, my sister told me she is getting me tickets to go see a taping of “Big Bang Theory,” something we’ve been talking about wanting to do for months.

All in all, I’m feeling overwhelmed with the amount of love and general awesomeness in my life right now.

After my last post, I’ve been trying to live in the moment, to stop thinking about how my life looks and to start focusing on how happy I am at this juncture of my life.

In thinking about this coming birthday week, I went back and read what I posted last year on my 23rd birthday, and this one line in particular hit me:

“While my 23rd year most likely won’t seem as life-changing on paper as my 22nd, I’m thinking that by my 24th year, I’m going to be an entirely different person, and for today at least, I feel kind of OK with that.”

This hit me, because of how right I was in my assumption. On paper, my life is almost exactly the same as last year. I live in the same apartment. I have the same job. I have the same friends, but this year, I feel, somehow, more whole. I feel much more grown up, more settled. Despite stress, I feel good at my job, where as last year I felt, at times, like I was drowning. Last year, though I would rarely admit it, I felt utterly, emotionally alone, and now I’m with someone who constantly surprises me with understanding and with exactly what I need at the end of a long day. Last year, I still missed my “homes” in Boston and with my parents, and while I still feel a little ache for that, I now feel like when I come to my apartment, I’m home. I feel like LA is where I live, and when I fly into LAX, I feel like I’m returning instead of just staying for a bit.

My prediction came true. My 23rd year was not life-changing like last year was. I’m different now, and I’m still very OK with that.

I’ve always been a pretty self-reflective, always dreaming up extremely vivid images of what kind of life I want to lead and what kind of person I want to be. I think blogging has factored into this a lot in the past few years. Blogs constantly expose you to a multitude of life choices, crazy adventures, and differing attitudes. In a weird way, it was reading blogs – mom blogs and blogs of people working for themselves, in particular – that made me realize I didn’t want to work in entertainment, because I wanted a more “regular” life, and that influence hasn’t gone away yet. Being constantly exposed to other people’s lives in this way allows me to see how other people are living on a weekly basis and see if they are living the kind of life I want for myself.

The problem with this, and with me, really, is that I have terrible “grass is greener” syndrome. Even as I’ve been happy with my life, I’m always seeing the awesome, cool, interesting, and exotic things OTHER people are doing. I see people eating at amazing restaurants, going on hot air balloon rides, creating a ball-pit in their living room, traveling the world, staring their own businesses, decorating adorable apartments, getting married, going to grad school…I see all these things, and I think, THOSE are the types of things I want – the interesting lives with the new, small adventures, with the adorable outfits and the Etsy adorned apartment and the fun, entrepreneurial new job….

Lately, I’ve come to realize, however, that what we see on blogs is SUCH a small slice of people’s lives, and not just any slice, the slice people *choose* to share with the world. We sometimes see the struggles, but always protected and monitored, always as a small chunk of the image. We don’t see the daily grind, the annoying traffic, the family frustrations, the utter heartbreaks, and the boring days. The more bloggers I’ve met in real the life, the more evident this has become to me. As much as we know and share with each other, we don’t know that much *just* from reading blogs. People are doing these fun, cool, adventurous things, but they are also living real life. Just like I am.

With this realization, it has been my mission to think about how my life could (or would) be perceived (if I actually blogged about it on a regular basis, that is), and what people may see in me, when you take away all that daily grind crap.

My blog would show that I love my job, stress and crazy kids and all. It would show that I have a great adorable teacher boyfriend who loves me. It would show that I do go on some crazy adventures, like hitting up Disneyland with these lovely folks and having a heart attack on Space Mountain, like going with my best friend to see Maroon 5 at the Greek theater, and like going with my hilarious co-workers to Drag Bingo in West Hollywood. It would show that I do have some cute Etsy jewelry. I do go to fun restaurants that have been featured on “The Best Thing I ever Ate,” and even though it isn’t super decorated, I do have a pretty sweet apartment.

Someone reading would look at my life and not see the disorganized room, the hour of me in sitting (and screaming) in traffic, the pain of getting up at 5AM, and the lack of decoration in my apartment, but they would see someone who has a pretty good life. And it is definitely the life I want.

Looking back on some of the major turning points of my life, I realize most of them have come out of rash decisions. Momentary whims that turned into life paths and completely new directions.

Rash decision one: Give up theater, after a life time of dance classes, voice lessons, summer theater camps, and a performing arts high school, after a terrible college program audition (complete with crying phone meltdown to my mother) and a comment from my high school drama/playwriting teacher that my play read more like a sitcom. Instead of pursuing an BFA in Musical Theater (which I could not have done solely due to lack of necessary talent…) or even a BA in Theater Studies, I decided to major in Television and Film with the new dream of writing for Television. It was quasi based on my lifetime love of television, but looking back, it was also quasi reactionary. Even so, that decision shaped the next four years of my life.

Rash decision number two: Apply to be a counselor at a Jewish summer camp. A completely random decision a the time, having never attended camp myself. It came up after a third or forth viewing of the MTV Documentary “Fat Camp” with my friend Nick my second semester of college, during which I talked about how I almost went to sleep away Jew camp as a kid, but chickened out at the last minute. I thought about how I had nothing to do that summer and about how much fun I’d had the summer before working at a Performing Arts Day camp, and how I’d always secretly wished I had just sucked it up and GONE to camp that summer, so I, of course, randomly started researching and applying to Jewish summer camps in the Midwest. I heard back from several, got hired at one, and proceeded to have the best two summers of my life 20 minutes outside of Cleveland, Ohio, which in turn led to both my amazing Australian adventure with my two camp BFF’s and my third rash decision.

Rash decision number three: Apply to Teach for America. After my second semester junior year experience of interning and hating life in LA, I felt lost. My rash decision to major in TV was looking like an epic failure after discovering I didn’t, in fact, enjoy working in television, and I had no idea what to do with my life. The only vague thought I had was to maybe apply to Emerson to study Theater Education and circle back to my original love of theater and my new found (Thanks to Camp!) love of working with kids. I doubted I would get in, however, with my limited camp experience teaching drama one summer and my one vaguely related to education class, the Politics of Education. Then I saw one of those pesky recruitment signs touting the (horrifying) statistics about low-income schools, which reminded me of all the things I learned were broken in the education system in my one education class. I went to an info meeting, told my mom I was thinking about applying, and filled out the application in a day, figuring I would let fate decide, since I didn’t really have faith in my decision making skills at the time. Then a funny thing happened. Fate decided I should be a teacher.

And that’s where I am now. One year into my two-year commitment to TFA, which is when everyone in TFA starts asking “What are you going to do next Spring when you finish?” They, of course, are asking so they can steer you into staying in education, thus fulfilling step two of their two-part plan to close the education gap. And for the first time in a while, I’m not feeling like making a rash decision that will throw me in a completely different direction.

Maybe it’s just because my life is going pretty well right now that I don’t feel like changing it and, eventually one small blip will send me looking at law school applications, but for now, for the first time ever, I’ve drafted out a plan for the next five years of my life, based on where I am now right now. It’s weird to write out where I want to be five years into the future, because for the last five years, my plans have been changing and evolving on a regular basis. There has never been a constant, because I have always felt unsure, like I wasn’t good enough to act or I wasn’t cut-throat enough for Hollywood. It’s kind of scary to feel stable and to plan, because I have a history of planning and then pursuing those plans only to chuck them out the window and do something totally different. I even wrote my college admissions essay about how I did this, and after that, I changed my mind again!

But maybe those rash decisions were all just leading me here, to the place I was supposed to end up. I just had to make those giant, seemingly random leaps because I wasn’t going to get to this place fast enough unless I made mistakes, took on random jobs and left a few things up to fate.

Maybe planning just feels scary, because, as I’ve seen, life doesn’t go according to plan, and I’m just afraid to fail. In the past, as my plans have changed or been only a few months ahead of me, I’ve never technically failed. I’ve gotten everything I’ve really tried to do. I don’t know how I would handle it if I made this plan, went for it with all I had, and then didn’t succeed.

Then again, life is scary and unpredictable, as I’ve seen, and I might fail, but I think I need to focus on the fact that right now, in this moment, I’m so incredibly grateful that I made those decisions, and that life, unpredictably, brought me here to this place where I can make plans for my future, because when I think of what my life would have been had I not made those random, rash decisions, I wouldn’t have all the life experience that is now factoring into my plans. I guess I just have to trust that even if life doesn’t go according to the plan, it can still lead you to a good place.

I’ve never really known where home was. We moved so much when I was growing up, I never had a home base or a home town. The sports teams I follow are from PIttsburgh. My best friends from my childhood are from Alabama. My high school diploma is from Ohio, and I spent the last four years living in Boston.

When I say I’m “going home” for the week, what I really mean is “I’m going to where my parents live.” Right now, that is Delaware. I lived here for a couple months after graduating last year, but I don’t have any friends here. I have no old hang-outs to visit, and I basically hang out with my parents and work-out at the JCC when I come here. It’s not home, except for the idea that home is where my parents live.

When I told people I was coming to Delaware this week, I said I was going home for the week, but being here and in Pittsburgh at a family reunion for the weekend, I realized, I’m not at home. I love my parents more than anything, and emotionally, yes, whenever I am in their house, I will feel some sense of home, but I had a surprising realization last night.

When I fly back to LA on Wednesday, I’ll be going home. I’ll be going to the place I feel like I truly belong at this point in my life. I’ll be going to the little home I’ve created with my best friends in our apartment. I’ll be going to the place where I can grab dinner and a movie with my sister at a moments notice. I’ll be going to the place I can drive around without thinking. I’ll be going to the place I feel comfortable and happy and settled. I’ll be going to the place I can’t imagine moving from any time soon, which is exactly the opposite of how I thought I would ever feel about Los Angeles.

The first time I lived there, I thought it was pretentious and loud and too spread out and too sunny. (Odd, I know.) Now, I’ve embraced and conquered (at times) the traffic. I’ve made amazing friends who always keep me busy when I want to be. I’ve found a job I’m (almost) really good at and that I feel fulfilled in. I’ve learned to love the constant sunny and 70 degree weather. I’ve found an apartment that feels cozy and comfortable and (almost) decorated, and I’ve found (for now) a guy who indulges me in seeing Toy Story 3, takes me to Dodgers games, enjoys hanging out and doing nothing but watching movies and eating pizza, and who doesn’t make me feel nervous or self-conscious or crazy about anything I do, say, or feel.

I’ve had a great weekend with my family, revisiting my favorite childhood theme park, Kennywood, hanging out at a waterpark with my cousins, and dancing to a super local Pittsburgh band at a hotel bar with all my aunts and uncles, but I am really excited to go home.

It is the first official full week of my summer vacation, and it has taken me this long to wrap my head around the fact that I’m not a first year teacher anymore. Everyone kept saying that this would be the hardest year of my life, and while my job was difficult and stressful and took up a lot of my time, this was actually one of the most fun and most fulfilling years I’ve ever had.

I think, as opposed to calling it the hardest, I would call it one of the most eye-opening years. I’ve learned and grown a ridiculous amount, as a teacher and as an adult, this year. I thought that today, as I try to wrap my head about this past year and all the knowledge and wisdom I’ve taken in, I would attempt to recount some of the nuggets of goodness I have acquired this year. Here goes:

- Kids lose EVERYTHING. Staple things to their faces…or just teach them to be organized before doing anything else.
- There will always be one more thing to do. At some point, you just have to accept that, stop working, and go buy shoes.
- Coffee cures all, most importantly, mid-afternoon caffeine-withdrawal headaches that come on from not drinking coffee in the morning. On a related note: don’t get too addicted to coffee.
- Grading sucks.
- Kids get annoyed when you take six weeks to grade an essay that took them three weeks to write.
- Kids will call you out when you misspeak, misspell, or misquote ANYTHING. They will take great pleasure in it.
- Students are oddly interested in their teachers’ lives. Tell them a little something about yourself to get them interested in anything else you are talking about.
- Staying up late to get work done helps no one. You cannot face a classroom full of children on less than 6 hours of sleep without exploding.
- If kids don’t know WHY they have to learn something, they won’t WANT to learn it. Explain why you are making them take three pages of notes or write that fourth response to literature essay if you want them to care enough to actually complete it.
- Make time for students before and after school, even if you have 9,000 other things to do. If they are asking you for extra help, they deserve your time and undivided attention.
- Don’t take things personally. Take obnoxious teenage comments as constructive criticism. Fix the problem. If kids complain that they’re bored, be more interesting. If kids complain that they have too much to do, teach them to manage their time.
- Kids care. Even when they act like they don’t, they really really REALLY do.
- The kids you think aren’t listening sometimes are. They kids you think are angels sometimes aren’t.
- In the end, you’ll be surprised by who claims you were their favorite teacher. You’ll claim you don’t care if kids like you, as long as they learn, but its still ridiculously nice to get the “Thanks and I’ll miss you!” hug on the last day of school.

I probably have more, but I’m tearing up. I’ll leave you with my favorite student letter to me on the last day of school, not because she said nice things (She did), but because of how observant she was and how well she seemed to know me. It completely caught me by surprise. I always forgot that these kids had to stare at me for two hours a day, five days a week, for nine months. They noticed EVERYTHING I did.

“I think it was really funny how you would sing or hum when you were trying to get the class to calm down or when you used to “hmph” really quietly. lol You are a great teacher Amanda, and I love you for that.”

And now….to summer!

(Photo stolen from Andrea.)

So….Vegas happened.

It was, once again, ridiculous and magical and full of hugging and laughing and inside jokes and and and me looking FREAKISHLY good in hats (and also a bit like Jason Mraz when I quickly glance in the mirror after several afternoon drinks).

(FYI I look good in all hats. I feel I may have mentioned this in a post before…oh yes, here.)

So, there was my ride with Ev’yan and Andrea, during which we stopped for SONIC, which I have not had in years and which made me flash back to sitting in the back of my boyfriend’s truck after Battle of the Bands when I lived in Alabama in 10th grade. Yes, that happened.

Then there was the mad sprint Nicole and I went on while trying to get to the Planet Hollywood “I Just Came from a Theme Party” Bar Crawl before everyone else, caused by the fact that instead of actually, you know, walking towards the giant hotel marked “PLANET HOLLYWOOD” we walked in the opposite direction, forcing us to haul ass back the correct way in order to beat the large group slowing converging on the bar and causing me to almost knock down a small child.

A little later was the time I fell asleep (also known as passing the eff out) only to wake up to Kerri to shouting that she needed to go out and “live my life!”

The next day, there was us getting free stuff by the pool before  Chelsee and Michelle (and husband) ran around the strip like crazy people looking for a giant statue of David and taking some photographic evidence.

After that there was a ridiculous amount of laughter, Kori teaching us that life is never that bad when you’ve got a jaw and that hooker cards are meant to be organized, me rediscovering I look great in hats, a delicious meal that was made “breader” by bread, Amy and I discovering we are clearly soul-mates, fountain-jumping, 60-year old brides belting out “Simply the Best” (“Maybe her husband IS simply the best…”),  insane amounts of dancing at Margaritaville (but sadly, NO Ke$ha!), AND a tiny penis straw.

Lastly there was an incompetent cashier, creepes covered with bacon, (finally!) champagne, and more carbs than I care to mention.

And after that, I went home and  there was LOST. OMGLOSTICRIEDFORFOURHOURSANDSTILLCANNOTPROCESSWHATHAPPENED….

But, yeah…Vegas. Vegas was awesome, as I knew it would be. The end.