Author amykoehn

Just Call Me Murphy

amykoehn Leave a comment

The first few weeks months of school are a bit stressful for me.  Having The Mister around has been a true Godsend.  He has figured out dinner every night;  he has taken over paying the bills and he has done everything conceivable to ease my load.  While it has been truly wonderful to stay in the same classroom and teach the same grade this year, new curriculum in several content areas and adding graduate school classwork on top of my regular classroom responsibilities, I’m pretty useless at home.  In a nutshell, my brain is complete mush. 

Flash and I headed out the other morning with full intentions to drop him at his bus stop (now located nearly a mile from home) and for me to get to school even earlier than usual.  I headed out to the car a few moments before he did, hit the button to raise the garage door and was greeted with a screech and a clang.  The door had opened about six inches and stopped in a rather caty-whampus manner.  I hit the button again, allowing it to go back down, and then hit it again to go up, while providing meager assistance in the lifting, thinking it was just chillier than normal and the door was being stubborn.  No such luck.  I set my keys, phone and iPad on top of the car and tried again with more effort on my part.  No dice.

By this time, Flash had emerged and immediately realized the predicament.  The stubborn garage door was not unusual for us; The Mister had temporarily fixed it several months ago, addressing this same issue.  But now, just three hours after The Mister had successfully opened this same door and extracted his Jeep, we were stuck inside with a door that no longer seemed to be in the mood to cooperate.

Flash and I both tried several options.  We tried the red handle to disconnect the opener and allow us manual operation of the door, but to no avail.  So, we banged on this part, we shoved that part, we hoisted and pulled and pushed and negotiated, but it was clear, the door was not going up.  While I texted The Mister, looking for suggestions, Flash, with some difficulty, disconnected the opener from the door, hopefully allowing us to get the door up. 

Knowing our window of opportunity to get the car out might be extremely limited, I reminded Flash before we even began lifting the door, that if we got it up, he needed to KEEP IT UP until I got the car out.  With greasy hands, high blood pressure, worries about being late to school and a staff meeting, we both hoisted the door with all our might and it went up.  Flash vigilantly held the door while I ran to the car and backed it into the drive way.  Within minutes we were on our way to school. 

Heading straight to his school now, as the bus had long since gone, we were just turning the corner from our house when I heard something off the back of the car.  Realizing something must have fallen off the vehicle, I stopped the car and Flash jumped out with his flashlight app and looked in the road behind us.  Still black as night outside, he came back finding nothing.  We sat for a moment on the deserted road, conducting a quick inventory of our belongings.  Cell phone? Check.  Obviously we have the keys.  He clearly had his phone.  No clue what it was.  Maybe we had set the hammer or one of the pieces from the door on the car?  No clue, but we weren’t too concerned any more.  I had just put the car back into drive when my mush-filled brain realized the catastrophe at hand.  THE IPAD!!  The school-issued iPad to be precise.  Flash leapt out of the car and ran back looking frantically all over.  With a car now approaching behind us, I put on my flashers, put the car in reverse and began slowly following Flash hoping to provide additional light to the problem at hand.  Within mere seconds he bent over and picked up the aerodynamically-challenged iPad and ran back to the car.

“Please, please, PLEASE tell me it’s not crushed!” I yelled.  The case, a wimpy, cheap, not-impressive-at-all case, seemed completely intact.  Flash opened up the cover while I held my breath awaiting cracked glass and professional humiliation as the “techie” teacher is the first to destroy her school iPad.  There wasn’t a thing wrong with it.  Flash and I both exhaled a great proverbial-but-true sigh of relief and proceeded down the road to school.

Upon closer examination later, under sunlight and fluorescent lighting, there are a couple scratches on the corners of the cover that might allude to an altercation, but the iPad itself is in perfect working order.

My heart, however, is now about as useless as my brain after that near catastrophe.

This Is My Classroom

amykoehn Leave a comment

My classroom is one of the smaller classrooms in our building.
My classroom has 27 second grade students this year.
My classroom has 15 boys and 12 girls.
My classroom has one diabetic child.
My classroom has one child on crutches after breaking both legs this summer.
My classroom has four students who spend portions of the day in the resource room.
My classroom has three students who receive speech therapy, and three more who need it.
My classroom has one student who receives weekly occupational therapy, three more who are “monitored” and two more who need it.
My classroom has two students who have behavior charts for every activity.
My classroom 11 students who are not academically at grade level.
My classroom has two students who spend time with the district social worker.
My classroom has more than one student who has seen a parent get arrested.
My classroom has more than one student who does not live with a biological parent.
My classroom has 5 computers and 24 reading books.
My classroom has push-in parapro support for one hour each day.
My classroom has a teacher who is fulfilling certification requirements by taking graduate courses that cost more than half her annual salary.
My classroom does not have one hour of uninterrupted time in the school day.
My classroom has a teacher who leaves the house at 6:30am and returns at 5pm.
My classroom is expected to implement new math stations this year.
My classroom is expected to implement new reading comprehension techniques this year.
My classroom is expected to implement new writing curriculum this year.
My classroom is expected to implement new reading stations this year.
My classroom has a teacher who has already spent more than she can claim on her taxes on her classroom.
My classroom has a teacher who will be evaluated based on student growth.

My classroom has a teacher who spent significant time this summer thinking through her schedule, her daily goals, her approach to curriculum, only to realize a week into school how futile a dream it is to think the teacher has any say or control over the logical order, timing or scheduling of academic subjects. 

My classroom has a teacher who wonders how on earth teachers in less fortunate districts ever teach anything at all.

Nothing Like It

amykoehn Leave a comment
There is nothing that can compare to dinner on the deck in September.  The Mister is home, the boy was home from work, and we all gathered outside on the deck for dinner, fresh from the garden.  
There were more tomatoes and cucumbers on the plate, but in the ten seconds it took me to get my phone to take pictures, the boys had taken their shares (and then some!) 
We are so excited about our potatoes this year!  We love the color and flavor of the red/red ones as well as the russets!  Needless to say, there weren’t any leftovers!
Okay, so the chicken wasn’t fresh from our garden or even raised by anyone we know, but we talked about how much we’d like our own chickens, and with a year left until Jacob is gone, that dream has the potential to become reality soon!

How to Earn Wife Points

amykoehn Leave a comment
Step #1:  make sure your secret Saturday destination is full of tractors

Like this one

Or this one

Or even this one that I dubbed “the racing tractor”.
Step #2: tell your husband he can have the one with all the bells and whistles. (That joke was for you, Dad.)
Step #3: make sure there is good food there, like amazing steamed, butter-dipped corn-on-the-cob.
Step #4: be willing to get dirty.  A tractor show is no place for prissy wives.  Returning home in desperate need of a shower but without complaint earned extra points. 
Step #5: remind The Mister that he is, if only on occasion, a man on a tractor and keep the dream alive that someday he will have his own hay field.

Call It the Cuervo Edition

amykoehn Leave a comment

I saw this commercial, maybe you’ve seen it too.  It’s for some new schnazzy refrigerator.  There’s some guy at a dinner party who is apparently a “rocket surgeon” who, despite his amazing intellect, has trouble finding the sparkling water in the door of the fridge, because it is on the outside of the door, where the regular water and ice usually are.  In any case, the fridge in the ad is amazing, no doubt, and probably costs more than a room full of furniture, but the thought that keeps coming to my mind is…

…if that woman can have snooty sparkling water come out the dispenser on her fridge door, why couldn’t I have tequila come out of mine?  I mean, potAYto, potAHto, right?  And with the new school year starting and twenty SEVEN kids in classroom, I can see how easy-access-tequila might be a selling point for me in a fridge.
Just sayin’. 

Or Maybe He Just Wears Earplugs and Nods A Lot

amykoehn Leave a comment

It’s a well-kept secret amongst teachers.  Don’t let it get out that I am the one who told, but we get scared.  Or at least I do, and I’d like to believe I am not alone in this.  Every year, before school starts, we get scared.  Scared that the year will go terribly wrong.  Scared that the kids will hate us.  Scared that years from now, they’ll be reminiscing and they’ll say something like, “oh, I remember my second grade teacher.  She was just cold.” (Like I would say if you asked me about mine.) Worse yet, we are scared that we won’t like our kids.  

We end the year with heartbreak, or again, at least I do every year.  I cry.  I downright sob with heartbreak over saying goodbye to my kids.  I pour everything I have into them for 180 school days and then off they go!  But at the beginning of the year, I fear that I won’t like them at all.  They will be difficult.  They will be ornery.  They will lie and be lazy and they won’t get my jokes.  And they will be all those things (and more) and I will still fall in love with them.  But right now, I worry.
Worse yet, my best friend is away.  The Mister is still in PA.  Still eating cheesesteaks.  Still driving around town telling me how everything has changed.  He’s not here.  And he won’t be here for the first four days of school.  (I am convinced the first day is scheduled to be a half day on request of all the teachers’ spouses, who have to listen for hours that night about each and every child.)  And mine will, too, but not here.  Not laying next to me in bed where the best conversations happen.  
I know he hates being gone and for his sake, I swear I am not trying to make him feel worse for being gone (he might be secretly glad to miss First Day Drama). I just mean to say how much I treasure having him to talk to.  Having him to share all the details with.  I know what it’s like not to have someone to tell it all too, and I so love having him in my life, not just as Chief Listener, but because he gets it.  
Because he is here every day, because he hears it all, because he is my go-to confidante, he gets why I stress, he gets why I get mad, he gets why I sometimes cry when talking about a student.  He gets it.  Before too many days have gone by, he know all my kids as well as I do.  He knows why a particular lie from a particular student was worse than others.  He knows why a meeting has me on edge.  He knows why I am worried about Tuesday and why it matters that Devin’s mom called today.  He also knows why I will pause at the store when I see fruit snacks on sale, why I have to make another trip to Hobby Lobby and why the boxes from Amazon haven’t stopped coming.  He knows when to be sympathetic and when to gently point out that I need to make a different choice.  He knows when to nudge and when to just stay silent.  He knows when my silence means thereis nothing to say about my day and when it means there’s too much to even begin.  Most of all, he knows when my heart is breaking and I need reassurance, and when I just need a good laugh.
He is just a phone call away, which is a far better deal than when I had no Mister to talk with at all, but talking on the phone isn’t the same.  He will always know me better, advise me better and love me better because he is present for these moments.  He is here to love me through them all.  Maybe that’s why God put him in such a routine, quiet career.  If we both had days full of the kind of drama that 27 eight year olds can create, there’d be too much to talk about.  
I know, come Tueday, the first day of school, that I could stop by Julie’s on my way home to talk, and I know she’d be happy to listen.  But it isn’t the same.  I am sure I will chat with my teacher friends before we leave school for the day, but it still isn’t the same.  I will call The Mister and he will listen to every word, he will ask questions and he will feel all the things I feel.  But it won’t be the same.
Not until Saturday, when he flies back home.  Not until we sit side by side and I just spew it all.  Not until he sees my face and witnesses the emotion and spends the days hearing all the stories, only then will it be all right.  
For everything is all right when my best friend is home.  

Surreal

amykoehn 1 Comment

The Mister is in Pennsylvania.  He was sent there for work, with three days notice to return to his former plant for two weeks.  We were all particularly bummed as we would have enjoyed all being in PA together, but it didn’t work out that way.

Today, he called me after work and asked for directions to our old house.  He found it with ease, a mere two and a half miles from where he used to live.  He went to dinner at a restaurant he used to frequent that I had been near a million times, but I had never eaten there.  Tomorrow he is going to the flea market famous in our old town, and he plans to drive around a bit and see what’s new in the three years since he moved here.  We already know of several changes in the seven years since I moved away from there.
It is so very strange, to think of how close we came to meeting there.  We overlapped by only a couple months, really, but still…we have to wonder…
And while I might wish beyond wishes that we had met far sooner than we did, at the end of the day, we are just so thankful that we met at all.  He is glad to not be working at that plant any longer, and we are both happier here than there.  So he will eat his fill of cheesesteaks (and one more just for me) and he will return home with Wawa sandwiches, and we will talk about all that has changed.
And we will know, beyond a doubt, that God wanted us to meet each other…no matter how hard we made it on Him!  

Bonus!

amykoehn Leave a comment

We sent the teen to pick up the pizza.  He sent back this text:

Score!  
We happily accepted his accidental generosity.  He mumbled something about paying more attention next time to which debit card he hands the cashier.  One kid’s oversight is two parents’ advantage! 
BTW, Flash, next time we’d like some wings, too.  😉

The Batastrophe (#3)

amykoehn Leave a comment

Anyone who knows me well knows my fear of grasshoppers.  Irrational to some (ahem, Flash), if you understand my fear of things that might touch me in flight, you can see why an insect that jumps/flies in random directions and certainly with the intent to land and you can see why a walk through tall grass might as well be hell on earth for me.

About the only thing worse for me, is the idea that something might fly near and/or land on me in the dark.  There isn’t enough therapy in the world should a large flying bug decide my living room is within it’s flight pattern after dark.
So, imagine, if you will, my terror this morning, when I slowly came out of my dream state of sleep to realize quite suddenly that something has just flown over my head in very close proximity.  Such close proximity that it was the actual sound of flapping wings that woke me.  (I might need a Xanax just to retell this story.) It did not take long to confirm my worst, and I do mean worst fear.  There was a bat flying around my bedroom.
Now, let’s review: 
Bat #1 was found in my living room lamp a few years back, during the daytime, and was removed by my very very kind neighbor, Nate.
Bat #2 attached itself to my nativity crèche this past Christmas, discovered one fine evening and was removed by The Soon-to-Be Mister.
This is Bat #3.   BAT NUMBER THREE.  In my bedroom.  IN MY BEDROOM.  At six in the morning.  IN THE DARK PEOPLE!!!!  
The Mister had left for work two hours earlier.  The teenager was asleep below me and was apparently deaf to my screams.  I immediately hid under the covers and there may have been cursing.  Loud, serious cursing.  I would rather give unmedicated birth to triplets than to be in the situation I found myself in.  Seriously.  I reached out just enough to turn on the light, thinking at least the #%$& thing would stop flying.  I peeked out twice, barely pulling the covers back far enough to see, but enough to know that a) it was still circling and b) THE CAT WAS SITTING ON A CHAIR WATCHING IT.   
I took several deep breaths and reached out again for my cell phone.  With shaking hands, I texted The Mister, “I have a major major problem.  There is a bat in the bedroom.” And, because there is a God in Heaven who was not too offended by the aforementioned cursing, the Mister was not out on the floor of the plant grading cattle, but was in the office and immediately texted back, “I will be there in twenty minutes.”  God, I love that man.
I stayed under the covers, although I did try texting and calling Flash sev.er.al times.  Ahem.  He slept.  The Mister texted me to suggest I close the door at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the bedroom.  I texted back, “I am NOT leaving this f’ing bed!!!!” To which, again, because he is a saint, he replied, “ok.”  
Twenty minutes is a lot longer than I previously had thought, it turns out.   The bat did stop flying around the room, but then I realized with complete horror, that meant it had landed somewhere.  The bathroom door adjoining our room was wide open.  Worse yet, the walk in closet door was wide open.   Oh dear God!  There is now a bat in the walk in closet!!!  
The Mister came home, went to the basement for his thick work gloves and then worked his way through the still-dark house, turning on lights, checking the curtains, couches, rooms and corners for the bat.
When he got upstairs, I was still in bed, trembling, trying to remember the realtor’s phone number.  He immediately started moving things about to which I pointed out that I was STILL IN THE ROOM.  With his assurance the downstairs was safe, I ran, RAN down the stairs and out of that room, closing the door behind me.
I’ll admit, the guilt was thick.   I had basically forced my husband into a room closed off with a bat.  Something I would not do for a million dollars.  I woke the teenager long enough to say, “There’s a bat!” but he doesn’t even remember me doing that.  The Mister went though the bathroom and the rest of the room until he realized as I had that surely it was in the closet.  Brave man that he is, he figured out it was in a boot of mine (he could hear it.  Thank God I didn’t hear that sound, I’d never survive!)  He shouted down to me to open the door and get out of the way (like I needed to be instructed to do that!). He took the boot out on the deck and I watched from the kitchen window as the bat flew out.
OH MY GOD.  
We both took a couple deep breaths.  I hugged him and thanked him profusely, and then he headed back to work. 
The teen woke FOUR HOURS LATER and didn’t know what all the fuss was about.  (He did agree to make my number one that would actually make his phone ring in the middle of the night, you know, like if there was an EMERGENCY.  Good to know, his mother, of all people, was NOT a number that would previously have caused alarm in the night.)
So all is well.  For now.  I have lasagne on tap for dinner, made especially for brave bat hunters (read that: not for Flash).  And the Mister, God bless him, has been calm and cool and was “just glad to help out”.   He did quietly point out, though, that again, I am the one who has had rabies shots.
I just think it’s a good thing that I won’t have to be in that room again, certainly not at night again until…..oh wait….#%$&!!!