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!

Reconsidering my blog?

So I have decided that the reason I never post anything to my blog is because I read my blog list first thing in the morning and I can't think straight that soon after I wake up. Most days I never make it back to my computer when I can put two coherent thoughts together. Maybe that will change when summer is over cause I do spend more time on the computer during the school year.

Thoughts when up in the middle of the night

Yeah, it really is 3:30 in the morning! I woke up about an hour ago when I realized that I had forgotten to let my cat in before I went to bed. I tried to call her, but at 2 o'clock in the morning any calling just sounds really loud. I eventually woke up my husband (inadvertently, not on purpose!), but we never found her. We did crack the garage door just a bit so she could take refuge in there once she comes home. She loves to go outside, but (as our recent house/pet-sitter said) she always seems to want to be on the other side of the door. I think I spend more time letting her in and out than I do the dog!
So anyway, I went back to bed not sure I could get back to sleep. My ceiling fan has a tick in it. (It is bad enough, it entered into my dream before the cat being outside woke me up!) Then my nose was plugged. Then my neck started hurting. These two are always the precursors to a migraine headache so I got up to take some medicine before it went there. And now I just can't sleep! Of course it didn't help that I remembered that I had forgotten to pay a bill the other day when I paid all the bills. Or that I remembered that I needed to check on a shipment from Gevalia. So I just got up.
Now I am starting to get sleepy again so I think I am making less and less sense. I will probably read this in the morning and wonder what on earth I was thinking posting at 3:30 in the morning! I think I will try to go back to bed. My head feels better and my meds are taking effect.

OK, that's better!

I couldn't stand to go to my own blog because it was so pink. This is a much better template: still pink (which I love), but not so pink as to hurt the eyes. Now maybe I can actually stand to post stuff on my blog!

I have been on vacation for the past week and didn't have much access to the internet (ack!) or much time to write posts when I could get on (just a quick check of email). I will post more in the next couple of days on my thoughts of my vacation.