Sad randomnicity...I'm an English teacher so I can make up words...read the fine print.

I'm supposed to have answers. I wonder who will answer my questions? This week has been a major challenge for me. I feel beaten and broken down. I don't feel successful. I definitely don't feel pretty. I don't think I've felt that in about 200000000 years. I see so many things around me that I wish were different. I ask my students and my children all sorts of random things. I imagine that I am quite an enigma. I look back now at my childhood and adolescence and realize that I am the weird child they talk about in the child development classes.

This weekend friends of our family lost their sister, daughter, aunt and mother in a car accident. Car accidents...for as long as I can remember...are one of my biggest fears. It seems too terrible to bear. My heart breaks for them.

I see so many kids doing so many things that are hurtful. Babies having babies, kids lying and stealing, breaking into the school- particularly my room- just to be vandals, kids calling in bomb threats, using language EVERY DAY that would make my Navy veteran Daddy blush, drinking until they pass out or smoking until they can't speak then posting the pictures ON THE STUPID World WIDE Web, arguing with one another to the point of fighting over things that won't matter two weeks from now, kids who will "yes ma'am" you 'til the end of the world and pay no attention whatsoever to what you've told them. Not to mention a lunatic pulling a gun on the campus my daughter attends along with many of her high school friends.

Is the rest of my career going to be spent speaking to noone listening? I don't know if I can handle that. I try really, really hard to make a difference. I love these kids, I really do. They can't understand, because of their youth, I know that...well, intellectually I know that. Emotionally, my heart breaks. Every day. A million little pieces.

I'm told not to trust them. They can't be trusted. Well, I trust them. I will trust them until they give me a reason not to. Once that trust is broken...not likely to get it back. Am I naive? Probably. Am I going to regret it...maybe. Do I believe what the Bible says about 70 times 7? EVERY DAY EVERY SINGLE WORD.

So then, that's the answer to my questions. I have to hold on to the hope that Jesus gives me. I have to believe he knows what's around every corner, behind every wall, and in every day. I have to believe the old adage that "If I can reach just one child..." I can only hope. There ya go...ramblings of an old, fat, menopausal lady. Be afraid...be very afraid.

and more...

Even though it's a bad day, I'm surrounded by beauty. My diploma, the back of my Mama's house, the dogwood tree, a lily, the redbud tree on a blue sky canvas.

so you had a bad day...

Yes, a bad day. A bad week. I am on administrative leave from my teaching job. I am heartbroken. But, I know that God is in control. "I don't know about tomorrow, there are things I don't understand, I don't worry over the future, but I know who holds my hand." Here's what I've spent my days doing... and the chocolate cake is actually amazingly delicious...the pic doesn't do it justice. : )

Imagination---more important than knowledge.

I am not one to do things the normal, easy way. I have taken a lot longer to get to where I am than the average person. *sigh* But, the best part is, I'm here. I made it and I get to wake up every day and go live a dream. That makes life something fun. It also makes me thankful that God is God and I am not.

I have lived in Florida all my life. My parents moved down here from Tennessee a few months before I was born. I am the youngest of four kids. I'm the only native Floridian...Becoming a rare breed these days. Everyone else was born at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. I am thankful for those days my Daddy spent in Annapolis(and everywhere else) because it paid a lot of bills and still provides for my Mama today. I love my life in rural Florida. I can't imagine living or raising my family anywhere else. It has given me roots that bring me a great deal of peace. I love Florida...but I anguish over the loss of the real Florida. Each trip I take to my MIL's house near Orlando, my family gets to hear the same agonizing sigh from me. It breaks my heart to see the beautiful orange groves being sliced down making way for cookie cutter houses. I think sometimes I should have been alive a long time ago.

So, I start this blog on a hopeful note. Writing makes me feel better. I love the sound of the keys on the laptop and the look of the words on a page. I hope I will have something to say that makes people taking the time to read these words imagine what life can be regardless of what it is at the time. Albert Einstein's words grace the wall of my classroom, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I couldn't agree more.