Overwhelmed by Emotion

The past two nights I have woken up about 5 am from a terrible dream. Not the same dream both nights, but both high emotion dreams.
The first night I was saying goodbye to my very best friend who was moving away and in my dream, right before I woke up, I was on the floor in a fetal position sobbing. When I woke up, I felt like I had been really crying.
This past night in my dream we had been away from church for a couple of weeks and when we came back, heretics had taken over and had changed everything away from the traditions of the church. I was so angry about it, my husband actually had to restrain me from doing bodily harm to someone. When I woke up, again, I felt like I had actually been through those emotions.
Do dreams actually mean something? (My husband asked me what I had been eating!) The first day kind of made sense because we are actually having to say goodbye to a family we are very close to who are moving far away. And in the second one, we actually have missed quite a bit of church recently. But I am wondering if these dreams have more to do with the overwhelming amount of stress, especially emotional stress I have been under with the start of school.
It will all be over on Friday! I need the long weekend! I think I will try to get some peaceful sleep.

First Day of Class

Today I taught my first day of class for this school year. It is always nerve-racking! Every year, no matter how many times I have taught the class before. I don't sleep well the night before and the butterflies in my stomach going into class are big enough to fly several hundred people across the Atlantic! I don't even want to know what my blood pressure was this morning about 10:00am!

It was interesting to me coming out of that class though how many things don't change from one year to the next. Every class has what I call the 'answerer' - the person who always raises their hand with an answer for whatever the question might be. And there are the quiet ones (usually more than one) who sit there and never give you any feedback at all. Every once in a while you see a look of interest or a nod, but they never answer any questions.
And in my subject field everyone falls into two catagories: the scared and the bored. The 'scared' are afraid it is going to be hard and not even close to accomplish-able. (How I love to disprove them!) The 'bored' are confident in their abilities in the subject and just really don't think they need to be there. (A much smaller catagory in my field and obnoxious to have in class!)


All in all, I am glad the first day is behind me.

17th Anniversary!

My husband and I celebrated our 17th anniversary yesterday. With the sick child that had to be kept home from church and his job, which is overwhelmingly busy these days and caused him to have to go to work in the afternoon, we actually didn't see much of each other for most of the day.
We did get a babysitter to come over in the evening and managed to get away for dinner and a movie though which was wonderful! We went to dinner at a place I have been wanting to try (Nagasaki Inn) and to see a movie we have been wanting to see and were afraid would make it out of the theater before got to see it (Prince Caspian). It was a great date night! Probably made better by the fact that I think it has been about a year since our last 'date night'! We really do need to do that more often!
So 17 years! I was telling someone the other day, that we don't really have big fights anymore. Just small spats. Usually they stem from the fact that most of the time we can almost read each others minds, but occasionally when we try, we fail. And then we are misunderstood. And then we spat! But I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world! To be understood and to understand another person even most of the time is a wonderful thing.
I was listening to a podcast on marriage the other day. Apparently there is new term out there to try to explain the high divorce rate in this country: Starter marriages - you get married young and when you out-grow the first husband, you get a bigger and better second husband. Yikes! That is just frightening to me.
But the really interesting thing about this talk was when the guy asked the question: on a scale of 1-10, what is your commitment to your marriage? My immediate response was 10! After 17 years, I can't imagine life without my husband. I am always saying to my girlfriend: "You and I got 2 of the good ones!" My husband is definitely one of the good ones. He is faithful and kind. He is loving and fun to be around. He is a good father and a good provider. He always takes our family's needs into account when making any decision and will work harder and longer to make sure that we have what we need (even, and especially hard, time). He drives me crazy sometimes and I love that I know how and when he is going to do that!
I love him and I look forward to the next 17 years!

Back to School!

So my girls went back to school today and just as I suspected I suddenly have more energy (and concentration power) for my blog!

Some thoughts on going back to school:

• For the first time in 6 years of sending the girls off to school, I didn't take pictures. Which I really regret actually because all of the previous years' pictures were taken in front of the fireplace in the old house. With the new house, I would like to document the change at least!
• I don't think I have cried when dropping the girls off the past two years, although I felt like it both of the past two years! I remember crying like a baby as soon as we walked out the door the first year I had to drop off the oldest. I really boo-hoo'ed! Two years ago it was the first year for the baby of the family and again it was hard leaving her there.
  
• While I feel like crying even thinking about leaving my girls at school, when I walked into my office this morning, a sense of peace just swept over me! ALONE-TIME! There is nothing quite as noisy as two little girls! I have missed my quiet office this summer.

And now I get back to work!