Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad...... WEEK

So, if you are having an extra happy, super positive kind of week, warning, you may want to stop reading now because I am not and I would hate to spoil anyone else's mood....
That being said... THIS HAS BEEN A TERRIBLE WEEK. I know that it is only Wednesday but I am kinda counting the end of last week, the weekend and the beginning of this week as a cumulative "one week". I don't always like to vent on the blog because I feel that it is just a snapshot of my life and I hate for it to be negative or for people to see me as a generally unhappy person... because I am not. But in the interest of being genuinely true to what the "snapshot" of this shotty week might look like, this is just plain HONEST. My job is hard. You all know this. No need to drag you through last year to understand the workload. This year is better, I have a boss that listens and backs me. Even though I know no job is perfect... I am frustrated with the lack of ambition, accountability and work ethic that people can have. Maybe I was raised in a family that had an unspoken rule of responsibility, elbow grease and no whining.... but I am not sure what happened to people that just expect to do less because someone else will ultimately do it for them.... and we DO! Those of us that have a need to see the job get done, get it done. I have a couple of workers that are my aids in the classroom that are the laziest, cockiest and rudest people I may have ever come in contact with. I don't know if I would ever have the guts to challenge my boss in an unprofessional way, lie about work I have done and show up late every day without apology. I am not great at staff management as I really hate politics and confrontation but I had to go head-to-head with these two this week to ask them to just simply do their jobs. As a result, they both quit- in a "stomp my feet, roll my eyes, Im 17" way. I am actually relieved to have them gone but now have to go through the process of interviewing and training someone new. Now, the rest of the week has been horrible because I have this stomach bug that just wont kick and on my ONE outing out of the house to deliver PROMISED treats to my college class (aka accountability) I got pulled over, given my very FIRST TICKET EVER and now have to appear in court... super....
Coming away from this week I hope that I instill in my own children someday the character and accountability to finish the jobs you start, admit the mistakes you make, respect the people with more experience and work hard to get where you want to be by SHOWING them how valuable you are... never telling them.
Humility, tenacity and tact..... where has it gone??

But since I just complained for too long.... here are some things to be thankful for this terrible week
The school that I work in for backing me
my lovely husband for taking care of a very sick me
my family that made me take responsibility for myself even when it was embarrassing or hard

stump growing

This past weekend I was lucky enough to be able to get out of town with my favorite girls on the planet! My girlfriends from Boston had planned a girls weekend in Chicago and up until a few weeks ago, I didn't think that Mike and I could afford for me to go. However, with a little creativity and frequent flier miles, I scored a FREE ticket!! The trip was incredibly fast for me as I have no flexibility for days off. I flew into Chicago late Friday night and back Sunday morning... wheew- quite the whirlwind... but I am so glad that I had the opportunity to reconnect with these women. All 5 of us work in Deaf education and work(ed) at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston. These small things give us a lot in common and A LOT of very funny stories. It was great to be around people that already know me since I spend so much time here in Colorado trying to help people get to know me. These girls make me laugh, they support me but know when to tell me that I am being ridiculous and best of all, they fill up my emotional "bucket". All day long, all year long we give back to our students, our school, our peers and our families... we give and we give until sometimes we feel positively empty inside. It is nice to be around others that fill us up, that remind us of our humanity and who will actually TELL us why we are great and appreciated.
We ended up having a discussion about the book "The Giving Tree" and how each of us loved that book as kids.... then we started talking about the message that particular book expresses. Keep in mind that this was all (mostly) in fun as we laughed at ourselves, but we thought about how the tree gives and gives to the boy who keeps taking and taking. The tree literally gives up its whole self because she loved the boy so... and ends up being a stump. Even in the state that the stump is, when the boy needs more the stump gives him all she can by offering him a place to sit. Now, while this a great message of unconditional love and maybe the kind of love that only God or a parent can give... it started to bother us. We all LOVED this book but what kind of a message does this send? Give and give until you have nothing left and then give some more? I am all for unconditional love but there is a lot to say for a friend that loves us back, who fills us up, who helps us re-grow our stumps. I am thankful for these people in my life. Laughing so hard that you cry is the BEST fertilizer.
Who re-grows your stumps?? :o)