Where's my nap!

Where's my nap!? Seriously, I frequently find that I want a nap! 1pm seems like a nice time. I'm full from lunch, it's a small group of kids who are tired too. It sure would help my yawning problem from the hours of 1to 5!  I get a second wind around five but by seven I'm ready for another nap because I'm too young to go to bed at 7pm and too old not to know I'm tired! Since no one sees the benefit to starting school at ten am, an hour nap would be a nice alternative or compensation for getting up at five, to be at work by 730 ,to educate kids who sleep in class until ten anyway!  My cat naps most of the day, babies take regular naps, why not hard working teachers? I just want a nap! It's a small request and I promise I'll be a more rational, functional, productive member of society if I can have a nap!

What The Hell Mondays

I think its time for a new tradition on Mondays! Those moments when you see something or hear something or do something that just makes you say "What the hell?" Well I think we should share such moments with the world so, the next time we have a wth moment we can assure ourselves that it's perfectly normal!  Wth Wednesdays has a nice ring to it, but wth moments don't seem to happen to much in the quantities that they do on Mondays so, wth Mondays it is!

Today's wth moments were plenty but the most outstanding one will not make you want to send your kids to school anytime soon!  I'll start with some minor wth moments before the shocker wth moment.  I find its best to go slow with wth disclosures for people outside of education who don't believe such craziness happens, but wth it does everyday! Maybe it was the break, or coming back to school from the break, or just the youth of America but.. wth was I thinking expecting students to work the day we get back from break? Yes in deed, at least one student every period said that, and yes people that's what your tax dollars are paying to educate! That's probably not a shocking wth moment for many of you so, here's another one! Had a student who has a major medical moment that leaves him incapacitated. 911 is called and the ambulance is on the way! The patents' response when told of the situation was panic, concern? Guess again! The parent wanted to know if it was really necessary for them to go to the hospital. WTH?! When your kid can't talk and is blue medical attention is necessary! The last wth moment? We were going around the room asking how everyone's break was. Most kids responded with a good, fine, it sucked... general stuff. One kid though just blew my mind  he shared that during his break, he "ran a train" and not the kind that goes choo choo! WTH?! At first I thought he was trying to be funny and didn't know I knew what he was talking about and despite the other kids and myself telling him to shut up, this joker wanted time continue with descriptions of his exploits! WTH? I don't get paid enough to deal with that sorta stuff so, tomorrow the ad administrator who does get paid for such situations gets to speak with the young man and have his own wth moment!

Feel free to share your Monday wth moment!

Getting Ready

While the pies are baking and the house is sorta clean, I'm attempting to get three boys ready to run tomorrow. It's hard enough to get yourself ready at 5am, but throw in three boys and it can be a recipe for disaster! Oh, did I forget to mention the new exercise I started last night to help strengthen and stabilize my ankles has my left foot swollen and painful? Right now I'm not feeling optimistic about a run to show how thankful you are that you can run! In fact, I'm down right scared for tomorrow!

Why am I full of fear instead of joy and thanksgiving?  There's always the fear that the alarm doesn't go off, or we don't arrive to the start corral on time. There's the possibility of losing one of the boys in the 4000 people that are running tomorrow, in Atlanta. There's the possibility that my foot will be so bad in the morning that I'll not be able to run, or possibly walk the entire three miles. This induces a full panic attack for the coach in me that yells finish the drill and the athlete in me whose never not finished a race! There's also the big meal that will need to be cooked and ready for nine other people by six pm. I'm also fearful that I won't get a nap so, I will be awake enough to enjoy my family that I'm very thankful for!

I'm not fearful by nature and this isn't our first family race. As FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!" So, on a day where we offer prayers of thanksgiving for what we have, here's my Thanksgiving Eve prayer (and we'll take all the prayers we can get)!

Dear Lord, I thank you for my family and their willingness to share the day with me. I thank you for our health, our home and too many blessings to count! Amen!

Marathon Mom?

Today, three of my boys and I went to their first racing expo. They were super excited and enjoyed their new shirts for the race. Colin is ready to run a marathon and told anyone advertising for marathon that they should allow him to run because he's the fastest in the family. Unlike their mother, these boys are positive that they can run a marathon and that their mom can run one too. I, on the other hand have some serious doubts that a marathon is going to be possible.

In a room full of runners, there were many people that thought I could run a marathon, but when the alarm goes off at five am, or the migraine has taken hold to such an effect that every step reverberates in your head, or your adorable children are having a fist fight in the car, those runners are long gone! Don't get me wrong, I have a very supportive family that cheers me on at races and willingly will let me have a couple hours for a ten mile run. My family has even been known to ride their bikes while I run/walk/crawl long runs and always has a coke ready for recovery! The family has great faith that I can run 26.2 miles in 2013.

The distances alone is overwhelming. There was a shirt at the expo that said "26.2 what could go wrong?" Then there was a list on the back of the shirt that gave ten very real possibilities of what could go wrong. There were some things missing on the list that run through my head, like what if my migraines don't cooperate long enough to get the long runs in. How about all those bone fragments in my ankle? Blisters? Cramps? Arthritis anyone? Three miles, six miles, hell even 13.1 miles doesn't seem that far, but 26.2 seems like a million miles.

I'd like to think that I can get around the time commitments for training, the medical issues and the self doubt by committing to a training team for charity. Then I contemplate the fact that I can't find a training team for something other than cancer. It's not that I don't believe that people should raise money for cancer. Lots of good things have happened because people have raised lots of money for cancer research and support. Also, I have friends that have had cancer and my father died in his forties of cancer, so it's not like I don't have reasons or attachment to raising money for cancer, but running for cancer just... Well my heart really isn't in it. If I'm running a marathon for a cause, I want to draw attention to the fact that disability or epilepsy or chronic migraine does not have to limit you in finishing a marathon. I've spent hours looking for a team in training for arthritis, epilepsy, brain disorders, or education.

So here I sit, contemplating my 2013 racing season, wanting to run my first marathon and not sure how to make that happen. Most of the people around me think I can do it even if they don't know why I would want to. I have two books on marathon training and three different apps to assist in training. I have information on Team in Training for leukemia and several twitter and facebook friends who have run marathons. I have a supportive family and for the most part my body can still put one foot in front of the other. Hopefully my brain will stop with the self doubt and let my body accomplish something great other than the usual getting out of bed everyday!

The Migraine Makes a Comeback

Today marks three days with a migraine. Three days prior I was on a two week reprieve from migraine and for the first time in two years I got to see what a normal brain and life were like. Can I say it was a wonderful experience? Is this how the rest of the world lives, because what a fantastic way to feel! I'd like to feel this way more often and now I know that there has to be a way to have more weeks like the previous two instead of having days like the last three. So, I have been looking over the previous two weeks for enlightenment and more migraine free days. Here's what I discovered.

My brain, like many of the Autistic students I teach, must follow a schedule. I'm not fond of the dictated schedule which is up by 5:40 AM, regular meals and Cokes (3 to 4 a day), 30-60 minutes of exercise and bed by ten! I also have time eat a regular intervals. This has put on some extra pounds, which I'm really not fond of. I'm not surprised by this food thing as I've read countless articles about food and migraines, but have you seen a diet plan that lets you drink three to four cokes a day and a chocolate glazed donut for breakfast? (Aspertaine in diet coke gives me a migraine and five kids makes for a small bladder that water runs through quickly). I'm not sure about my Lamotrigine doing much either. Research has shown it's effective for about one percent of people with migraines, and during my two weeks free of migraine I was only taking two a day instead of my regular seven or eight. This is in part to still struggling with learning to use the alarms on my phone and in part to having a cold and taking s ton of meds for that.

So, that's what I came up with. Tomorrow I will be waking up at sixish on a break, stop tracking calories and walk/run. I'm hoping that does the trick for another two weeks, but if it doesn't that chocolate donut and coke for breakfast is going to taste mighty fine!

New Kicks

I have a new pair of shoes! I love sneakers and in my younger days had quite the collection, but now a days I have to remember that there are five kids who also need shoes so, my sneaker habit has significantly declined. Lately, I've been having some aches and pains running that I don't normally have and when you spend $100 on sneakers, your husband demands that the sneakers get their full 500 miles before they're retired. Despite my husband's demand, I knew deep down that my old shoes wouldn't make the long haul thorough my attempt at marathon training so, I got flashy new ones for a neutral runner (like me).

It's not that I didn't like my old sneakers, but they were causing my knees and hips issues! Sneakers aren't suppose to do that so, I had to let my old sneakers down easy... they'll be kicking around as my daily kicks. I have high hopes that my new kicks will get me to the Flying Pig Marathon in May!

When you have a seizure

"If you have a brain, then you can have a seizure!" I saw an ad stating this yesterday and thought, how true. Seizures are unpredictable, or so they say. I think Elijah would argue that point because his seizures act up with the weather and usually when there's something he desperately wants to do. Like today!

Elijah was excited to go out to eat. Sitting down at a restaurant isn't something that we do very often so, it's kinda a big deal when we do. We were enjoying our breadsticks, waiting on the pizza when the tell tale stare happened. The pizza came, there was some twitching some verbal irregularities and trouble cutting the pizza. His head started to hurt and we still had to go to Wal Mart.

Seizures take a lot of time out of your life if you let them. Elijah tries not to and with the promise of picking out a new pillow, we went to Wal Mart. Elijah rode around Wal Mart in a cart. Motor control was still a bit of an issue, but we got his winter clothes and groceries. There were lots of comments from people that they would like to ride through Wal Mart in a pillowed cart. Elijah had a hard time understanding why someone would choose to ride around a store like he was. I explained to him that the people didn't know that he had seizures, they just thought he was having a good time.
His response? "Well when they have a seizure then they can ride in the cart! I'll trade with them any day!" Me too buddy, me too!