A life in progress

I have not done any blogging lately, because as most teachers will tell you, May is terrible. Most of May is a lot like that purple one.  As a teacher, especially as a teacher in an alternative school, you become frazzled and exhausted.  I have literally come home and napped for hours at a time out of sheer exhaustion.  Students are panicking because they haven't completed any of their work for the past 6 weeks and suddenly they need enough points to get course credit for the semester.  They are needy and desperate.  I do my best to be helpful and supportive, but it is wearing.   I mostly finished what is essentially my last academic semester in law school in late April, so I've been able to focus on my students and their needs, but now law school is picking up again, so I will once again have divided interests.  Part of me will need to focus on my students, while the rest of me will focus on my studies. Despite all of this crazy, Mike a...

After watching Fed Up, which I outlined in my last post, Mike and I decided to do a 30 day clean eating challenge.  Part of which is Dr. Mark Hymann's  10 Day Blood Sugar Detox . Essentially, this is a slightly more severe version of the first week - there seems to be less fruit involved - which makes me sad because I like fruit.  I'll outline the basics for you in case you're interested at all. Breakfast:  Protein shake.  He offers a few recipes, but a lot of them include bananas, which I'm allergic to.  Also, I use Shakeology, which I'm pretty sure is the healthiest substance on the planet.  The idea is to have a filling, nutrient dense, low-glycemic index breakfast that will get you through until lunch. Lunch:  Salad (He gives a big list of mix and match stuff and says eat whatever you want, as long as its on these lists), or if you get tired of salad, there are some soup and grilled meat recipes to use to mix it up. Dinner:  Meat,...

Last week, Mike had some dental work, which resulted in an extraction, which resulted in some nerve damage and some terrible pain.  He's anxiously awaiting a root canal, which I believe is happening sometime next week.  He had a rough time scheduling with his endontist.  In the meantime, while he was trying out different combinations of pain killers and antibiotics, he had a number of sleepless nights. On one of those sleepless nights, he stayed up watching various Netflix documentaries, including " Fed Up ".  This is a documentary outlining the physical and mental issues that stem from eating processed foods, and specifically foods with processed sugars.  The movie is fairly long (about 1 hour 40 minutes) and deals with a number of different issues, so I won't go into everything.  However, in the end, it does challenge individuals to try a 30 day "cleanse" or "detox".  I'm always very hesitant to use both of these words because it makes...

This picture has made Mike and I internet famous - in a HUGE way.  I'm not exactly sure how or when it started, but someone linked this photo from my Facebook page to a "weird wedding photos" contest.  The website actually emailed me to ask if they could use it and got my explanation of the photo.  I mean, look at it -- it's a weird picture. And the internet seems to agree with us.  Every few months it seems to pop up on a list of  21 Wedding Photos that went Hilariously Wrong  or something equally weird.  We even made  Buzzfeed , which is kind of awesome, because I love Buzzfeed.  We are also on  The Daily Mail . However, there's a problem.  I realized today, after the latest round of internet weirdness - this time on   twentytwowords.com  - that somewhere along the way, someone in Poland decided they would claim the rights to this photo - and went so far as to put a watermark on it claiming ownership.  THAT p...

Like I ATTEMPT to do most Thursdays, I'm linking up with Jen from  Ramblings of a Suburban Mom  for Thursday Thoughts. This Thursday is a little different because I'm in China. That's us in the Forbidden City.   Blogging from China is a lot more difficult than blogging from France was - for a number of reasons.  (A few people have asked me if I'm travel blogging while I'm here, because I haven't really posted anything) First -- China has filtered internet access.  Which means I can't always visit the sites I want.  They even have a filtered version of Google -- and since Google hosts my blog, it's kind of a pain the neck to deal with working around the Chinese filters just to get to my blog.   Secondly, we have been running ourselves ragged while we are here!  We had 22 or 23 days in France.  We didn't feel desperate to see everything in the first couple of days.  But we only have 6 total days in Beijing, so we are ...

I don't have much to say today, as I'm completely exhausted from a hellacious week at work... but I wanted to post one last time before I wandered off this side of the globe. In 12 hours, Mike and I will be sitting in the Las Vegas airport waiting for our flight to San Francisco, which will then lead us to a flight to China!  Woo!  China! This is my excited face!  I'm going to do a combination of being an insane tourist and seeing all of the awesome stuff that China has to offer, and relaxing and getting a lot of massages.  Massages are cheap and unlike in the US aren't often confused as a method of prostitution... don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are plenty of "happy ending" massage parlors to be found, but the general idea is if you want a massage, it's because your back or feet are sore.  :) After this week, if I wasn't going to China, I would just dig a hole and hide for the next 10 days.  My students have been absolutely insane ...

This morning, Mike and I are starting to take care of some of the little details for our next adventure -- hunting for camera chargers, talking about packing lists, and other things we can take care of a few days before we go; we'll go out this afternoon and pick up a few things - as it's probably the last opportunity we have to go out together before our flight Friday morning.  I even took the plunge, and against my frugal nature paid for the "economy plus" upgrades for our flight to Beijing.  Our flight home isn't very full yet, so I moved us to a window/aisle seat with a empty center seat between us, in hopes that either a) it won't fill up or b) if it does fill up the person in the seat will move to another empty seat.  I don't love long haul air travel, but I can deal with it.  Mike, on the other hand, at 6'2", finds it uncomfortable in the best of situations.  He's still trying to wrap his mind around a 10+ hour flight.  At the very leas...