December 14th--short

It seems that I don't use the stove well here.  I am too used to electric and turn the flame up too high.  My fried egg isn't burned but it wanted to spit all over the place-not good.  Tastes good, but I have no idea where the egg pieces blew off to.  I am writing very early today because I am going to head to Boston for a show.  I will post when I get back but will be super tired so I wanted to get a start.   Just in case I am too tired to post anything new, my happy for today will be that I was asked and am going to this show.  It will all be good, right?

It was.  Sleep now.  😊😴
  

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Wednesday-12/13 Tidbits

A coworker asked me if I wanted to go to a show tomorrow night in Boston.  She is possibly with an extra ticket and thought I might be interested.  I was so surprised at the invitation I am not sure if I responded as positively as I felt.  At the same time, I am fighting this cold, I should make sure she is aware before we end up in a car together for any period of time.  😉

In 7th grade Science the teacher used pictures of aliens and emoticons for the students to classify as we begin to learn about taxonomy.  Some of them figured it out, others we will need to work with more.  After school on Monday-Thursday the 4 teachers take turns staying after for students who need extra time to work on things.  Today I stayed too and tried to help out a bit.  For me, it is volunteer time.  The thing is, when I decided to apply for this job I knew that helping the kids to succeed would be important to me.  What I didn't expect is that there isn't always time during the day to help all the students that are struggling.  So if I want to stay an hour later a couple times a week I can, as a volunteer.  Hopefully this will mean that I will see progress, because that is what counts.

Crash Courses with Hank Green is just too much fun.  I know I have linked other episodes here before, this one is about Fungus.  🍄

Happy for today is Heather scritches. 🠇

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12-12-Tuesday in which I go emoticon crazy

The school I work at was not closed today so work happened.  Drove there in the snow and back to the house much later in the rain/freezing rain.  SO glad that I have new tires.  The cat, Cloe 😾, probably wasn't very happy with me when I got back.  I came in, put my stuff down, pulled on my son's boots and went out to shovel.  She was very ready for food by the time I finished and came back in.  Heather 🙀, the cat that likes to sleep with me, came upstairs without too much coaxing tonight.  She seems to be in the same place when I get home as when I leave every day.  I really hope she does more during the day. 

To the people whose cats and home I am watching:

• Thank you for the leftovers.  😋
• Thank you for thinking of me to do this.  😊
• It is nice to have the Christmas lights on when I get back at night.  😎
• Thank you for reminding me that owning a home is more than I want to do right now.   😏
• I enjoy watching your home for you, but am glad that mine is, so far, getting taken care of by others.  😉
• It turns out that I don't miss shoveling as much as I thought!  😁
• I may have inadvertently shoveled a pile of snow in the way of where you keep the snow blower... oops... seriously sorry that I did that.   😕
• Thanks for having internet and thousands of TV stations.  😺
• The cats are fine.  🐈🐈
• Your snowmen are drunk!  ⛄

🠉Someone is missing...🠉

🠉Oh, no!  He melted!! 🠉

🠉A little bit of pixie dust and the🠉

 magic is back in that hat!  Haha!

❆❅❄❆❅❄❆❅❄❆❅❄❆❅❄❆❅❄❆❅❄❆❅❄❆❅❄❆

To my son:

• Thank you for leaving your boots behind when you went south.  They probably should have been tossed, but I keep using them, even though they are huge for me.  
• I miss you.

👢👢👢

To my daughter and her family:

• I miss you all but since you are sick, and so am I, it is probably best we don't morph this cold virus and continue to share the rest of the season.  

💤😷😵😴😪

To anyone who reads this:

• Thanks for stopping by!  I try to write about something everyday that makes me happy or that I am thankful for.  Some days it is easier to do than others.  When I started this year I was also planning to hike the AT but a work injury kept that from happening-hence the Blog title.  Thank you for being a happy for me today!

😻 😍 😻

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December the 11th

Wow, yesterday I forgot to give the post a name...

It is the day that I am to change over the litter box as part of my cat sitting duties.  I get the stuff I need, open it up and a cat walks in.  I go make myself something to eat instead.  Finished eating I think I should get up and... what is that noise?  A cat in the litter box.  Guess I will look at Facebook.  It is getting late, I should change the litter box and then write my blog.  Oh, I hear that scratching cat in the box sound again.  So here I am writing the blog and will be changing the box soon, really.  They have one of the automatic boxes so it is pretty easy to change.  It is best if it does the rake thing before I change it over though.  🐈

After work at the school I had an appointment to get my car inspected.  I knew going in that the tires wouldn't pass but before putting the money into the tires I wanted to see what else might be wrong.  Turns out the answer was nothing, just the tires.  Yesterday when I made the appointment I was told that there wouldn't be enough time to get me new tires today.  The regional manager was there though and he decided that I needed tires before the snow tomorrow.  I ended up paying a little more for them because what I wanted to pay for wasn't in stock and some nice mechanic person stayed late so I can have tires.  This is my happy for today.  Tires before a storm, especially after my drive Saturday during that snow.  I don't expect that school will be canceled, it is closer to the coast and more likely to become rain early on.  I envision my morning to begin with shoveling and end with shoveling-very late after I work both the jobs. 

Time to change the box.  🙀

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Today was a day that I planned to mostly relax and get little things done that I have been setting aside.  I was able to get many of those things done.  I could have done more had I not let myself get sucked into the Outlander Series on Starz this morning.  I read the first 3 books many, many years ago.  We don't have cable at my daughter's home so having access to way too many channels is probably bad for me.  I sat down to find the weather!  The driveway got cleaned off, an appointment to have my car looked at is scheduled and I went through some things I needed to for school.  My back is still bothering me but I did do some stretches and some crunches.  I'm fending off a cold and so I ate way too much today. 

Heather, the older of the 2 cats I watch decided to spend her day on the bed I use.  That is all well and good but she didn't seem to leave, all day.  Now I am sure she must have, right?  But when I tried to get her to go upstairs to eat she wanted nothing to do with it.  She doesn't like to be picked up so I only tried briefly, but a few times.  Eventually I think I did find something that worked.  I did an online search for noises that cats hate.  She got up and soon after went upstairs to eat.  This was after about 10 or 15 minutes of barking dogs doing nothing to move her! 

Another thing I did today was to watch a handful of science videos on YouTube.  They are my happy today and so I am sharing one of them: Biology.

Cat at my feet.

Snow through the window. 

I enlarged this picture in hopes that the icicles that are flowing down--

whatever that thing is towards the right

--would be visible. 

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December 9th-Snow

It is snowing.  That beautiful, cold, white stuff has been landing on this part of the earth a good part of the day today.  This leads me to today's happy.  No, it isn't the snow, but it does have to do with the snow.  My get up early and go to work plan for today didn't quite happen.  I woke up, only a little bit late, and then took my time actually getting up and packing to go.  Part of the reason I took my time is that I did something to my back when I first started packing and that slowed things down a bit.  Eventually I finished packing and left for work.  I had 3 stores to go to for work and it was snowing when I left job #2.  When I left job #3 there was around an inch for me to drive to the place I am house/cat sitting at.  My tires aren't the best right now and I took my time getting here.  Which leads me to that happy thing I mentioned toward the beginning of this paragraph which is that I-am-so-happy-to-have-arrived-at-my-destination-alive feeling.  Yes, that feeling when you are just happy to be alive.  Then I shoveled and relaxed a while.  There will be one more shovel session happening tonight before bed.  The less snow I have to move the better, even if it means moving it more often.

❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅

After shovel #2

Snowman had a bit too much...

He needed a pat on the back to make him stand up and smile. 

The little guy looks like he got a whipped cream pie to the face! 

He cleaned up well though.

Hahaha!

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The 8th of December--tired enough that I hope it makes sense.

As I got ready for work this morning I suddenly realized that I didn't put a happy thing in yesterday's blog.  This was a complete oversight on my part.  The laptop updating for so long had me off my routine.  Yesterday's happy should have been the ability to laugh out loud.  Today I don't remember what silly things got said that had me laughing hard enough to snort, but it happened.  A few minutes ago on my Facebook feed someone shared a post from the Bangor, ME police.  SO funny!!  Not sure how to share that here without breaking some copy-write laws so I won't. 

After school today I hung around and talked with one of the teachers about how to help some of the students more.  We have sort of a plan to do moving forward with a few of the students.  It was a good planning session and I hope I will be able to help these students that are falling behind to catch up.  Today the Google Doodle was about the scientist that discovered photosynthesis.  Photosynthesis is what we have been studying in Science class, kind of cool, huh?

We decorated a Christmas Tree at home this evening.  It got me thinking about all that symmetry stuff again.  Like how many people like the perfectly symmetrical Christmas Tree.  Ours is not.  Most man made trees are symmetrical however.  Many people trim the real trees to make them close to symmetrical.  It kind of puts a hole into a bunch of my post from yesterday.  😵

Fun decorating the tree is today's happy.  We also watched one of my favorite Christmas movies (IMDB link) while we decorated. 

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🌎