I HEART 3 Day Weekends!

I mean really who doesn't?!? 

Three days to sleep in, check. 

Three days to stay up late drinking adult beverages, check.

Tons of Mr. B time, check.

Oh and let's not forget tomorrow is already Wednesday. 

This week is nearly half way over...ever the optimist.

Mr. B and I actually had both Sunday and Monday off together, while most people might not find this groundbreaking, I do believe we have not had two days off together since we went to Denver January of 2011. 

Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, there were not huge orgies and pantless riots in the streets BUT we did manage to have a pretty awesome weekend.

I Cooked!

Seriously if you have a store that sells the shrimp you should drop everything you are doing and go buy them ASAP. They are AMAzing!!! I tried to healthy it up with some lime jalapeno soaked kale and avocado. 

But I might have eaten three of them they were so yummy. 

Saturday night we also watched Django Unchained and enjoyed a few adult beverages, the company was lovely (of course) and the movie was pretty hilarious. 

We Golfed!

Sunday we went with another couple up to TopGolf and swung at a few golf balls. It was on the pricey side but a ton of fun and their food was delicious which was unexpected. And YES that is a beef jerky straw you see in my Bloody Mary. #YOLO

We Got Sun Burnt!

Monday we headed out for the lake for our very first boating trip of the season. We are super lucky to have friends that have a boat and are willing to cart us around sometimes. This year they have twin girls, pictured above so there was a little less boating and a lot more hanging out on the shore but seriously who can complain: great view + good friends + cold beers = bliss. 

I am ridiculously sun burnt and was welcomed back to work to a classroom with no AC which was sort of like a small piece of hell on earth BUT I wouldn't trade this weekends festivities for any amount of extra sleep or pale skin.

  

- The Babbling Box!

How To Be The Best Gym Goer

This month I have been trading shopping for working out, oh and I also found this addicting app Running With Friends. But that is besides the point.

I have been observing some really 'great' gym techniques with all of my people watching. So today I am here to pass on a few lovely nuggets of 'How To Be The Best Gym Goer' in a room full of amateurs.

ONE.  When you get on a cardio machine set yourself up and then go ahead and start making phone calls. Really you are doing two activities at once: moving at a snails pace and having a conversation, so you must be burning more calories then the rest of those amateurs. 

TWO.  Gather as many free weights as possible and surround yourself with them. Screw all those amateurs they can just wait until your done with your workout buffet. Oh and leave them there when you are done, putting them back on the racks is for the peasants that work there.

THREE.  Wear whatever you want to workout. Jeans, sandals, booty shorts, no shorts bra, it really doesn't matter you are the king/queen of the gym and its your domain so safe/respectable dress code be damned. Workout clothes are for amateurs. 

FOUR.  Jump on a machine and put it at maximum speed for a few minutes and then jump off and move on to another machine. DO NOT WIPE IT OFF. This will just let your heartbeat rest for a second and we can't have that. AND you will be back to that machine at any other point during your four hour workout. Remember these are your machines, you just let the amateurs use them occasionally. 

FIVE. Say hello and shake hands with as many fellow gym goers as possible. If its been a day since you have last seen them you should have a 20 minute conversation in front of a machine or better yet while one person is using the machine. The amateurs can just wait to use the machine or walk in that area until your social time is complete, you burn more calories when you stand and talk. 

SIX.  Grunt, moan and sing your song lyrics as loudly as possible. You are putting on a show for those amateurs and every good show needs some sound effects.

SEVEN.  Bring your significant other to the gym and then move around the gym like you are conjoined at the hips. Repeat each other's moves and stretch at the same time and in the same position. If possible you should kiss after each rep. Keep your significant other close you don't want no amateur stealing them. 

And finally EIGHT. After your workout is complete go ahead and post your stats on facebook so everyone knows that your title of GYM King/Queen is still in tact. And no post is complete without a few pictures or videos of your shoes/treadmill or weights. The amateurs need to be shown who the best gym goer really is.

Please note that doing any of these eight items will in fact not make The Best Gym Goer but make you look like a complete and utter fool/douche bag.

And since I don't mind looking like a fool sometimes, here is my progress on my 30 miles in 30 days challenge. 

05/13 - 1.85 miles on the stair master and 1.18 miles on the elliptical

05/16 - 2.27 miles on stair master

05/17 - .51 miles on elliptical and weight training

05/19 - 1.93 miles on stair master and 2.01 miles on elliptical and ab workout.

05/22 - 1.90 miles stair master 
05/24 - 2.62 miles on stair master

Combined with my workout last two weeks I am already up to 30.09 miles this month. Woot! Woot!

- The Babbling Box!

Gansta's Paradise

When I first started telling my friends and family about my students and stories from my classroom most of them suddenly pictured this: 

And up until about a month ago my sister actually thought my school was located somewhere that had drive bys all the time. 

Before I go any further let me be very clear that I do not in fact teach in a 'Dangerous Minds' type school. I know that there are schools much rougher, scarier and with more problems than mine. And despite what my students think we are a good middle school. For some reason they like to think that they are 'bad' 'ghetto' and one of the worst middle schools in the district/world. But we have teachers that care, a large group of students who care and an administration that understands our struggles and tries their best to help. Most Some days.

But there are times and situations that happen that would make some people think otherwise. 

Until I started teaching there I did not realize the types of 'adult' decisions that students as young as 11 years old were making. 

While of course this is the minority and not the majority we have students: who have kids, have probation officers, have tattoos, have gang contracts and who smoke and drink then come to school. A perfect example is the student who stole my phone last year. When I pressed charges he was arrested because it was not his first or second Class A Misdemeanor.
Hello, he is 14 when has he had time to get a rap sheet.

So in order to keep my insanity and to not fear for the future of the world (these kids already have babies...dear lord help us now) I take most things that are said by students with a grain of salt, or a shaker. And while I wish I had started doing this sooner, I am going to share a few nuggets of 'delightful' things my students said over this week.

Female Student: "Misss did you dye your hair"

Me: "Yes" 

Female Student: "You trying to be a chola now" "You trying to be gansta"

Yes, because as a grown woman my goal is to be a 'gansta'

Female Student:  "Misss you just don't understand TV portrays life more true now then they did when you were young, so they show us what we need to know about life. If not we have our friends."

Female Student: "are you on your period or something"

Male Student: "Missss you let them talk about periods but we couldn't talk about 13 year old girls having a miscarriages."

An actual conversation I had to shut down earlier in the week between boys no less.

A male student gets mad and walks out, yelling 'fuck this shit' and other things.

A female student stands up and yells and snaps, "he just put you on lock"

A male student, "dammnn, why you always picking on me, you hate black people, you racist."

When telling a student that we needed to call home, "go ahead there tired of hearing from your asses anyways."

Telling students that no bathroom passes will be issued the last two weeks of school: "if I get a bladder infection I am suing you" "what if I poop my pants" "that's illegal" "I will just go anyways."

And one of my all time favorites, "why you all up in my business. you need to get a boyfriend so you get the f*ck out of my life."

So for the next three days I am NOT going to think about my delightful kiddio's and enjoy my three day weekend with hopefully plenty of sun, booze and Mr. B time.

And come Tuesday I will put my Michelle Pfeiffer big girl panties on and go back to the war zone. And hopefully be able to provide you with a few more chuckles of the darnedest things ever said by my kids.

And for your listening pleasure I am linking up with Whitney for of course:



With an oldie but a goodie:

Coolio Gangsta's Paradise from Victoria Ramos on Vimeo.

- The Babbling Box!

P.S. I hope that you found some chuckles from at least a few of these quotes, I am not by any means complaining about my job or looking for pity. I love my students, just not always their thoughts.

P.S.S. I hope you have an AMazing Memorial Day Weekend!!!

Poop Free

Hey there, its been awhile.

This weekend was a bust. I had hoped maybe by the end of the day Monday I would be ready to be bright and cheery or at least somewhat sarcastic, but I wasn't. I hoped that by the end of Tuesday maybe I would be ready to post, but I certainly wasn't.

Then today, at 6 am no less because its when I do my best thinking, I had a revelation. 

I am in love/hate with my blog right now. 

Why I love my blog:

It has forced me to start taking more pictures and recording parts of my life that would otherwise be forgotten. 

It gives me a platform to write out my thoughts and crazy classroom stories. 

I get to 'meet' so many people that I would other wise never meet, I love having that feeling that 'holy crap if that girl lived near me we would drink together every night' when I read a blog post.

I have 52 followers, WTF?!?! Seriously when did that happen, I am blown away by that number.

Why I HATE my blog:

Sometimes I feel 'forced' to take pictures so my posts will be more 'entertaining' and I feel awkward constantly asking people to take pictures with me. 

Sometimes I feel 'forced' to come up with new and interesting, to me at least, topics, because truthfully no one wants to see picture after picture of me and Mr. B, the one person I don't feel awkward taking pictures with.

And sometimes I feel 'forced' to be positive and not unburden my silly problems on here, because frankly we are all constantly aware of how great our life really is when we are surrounded by all of this tragedy recently.

And here is where I have a problem. 

For me my blog is a record of my life, a way to take a mental and literal snapshot of where I am. So that one month or one year from now I can go back and recall how I was feeling, thinking and maybe even what I was wearing. If I am being real here, which I hope I always am, sometimes I feel like I want to share the lows with the highs. Or really just whine about the lows to people who can't tell me to shut up already. And I don't want to feel bad about doing it. Most importantly, I don't want to sit here and compare my weekend/life to everyone else's and feel like I have to be fake in my post in order to not be the debbie downer.

Because life is messy and relationships are hard. Some days being happy takes work and some days you really have to fake it. I want my blog to represent all of my days, not just positive spins on how my life is going because to me that just seems pretty damn boring. 

I am pretty sure that if I got on here everyday and told you how 'perfect' and 'wonderful' my life was your only response would be:

So here is my current snapshot, poop free:

1.  Weekend started off great, met up with Amber for a drink and only took a picture of our menu cause I am cool like that.

2.  Followed pinterests advice and painted my iphone cover because it looked gross, mistake on my part that I can't really undo. Stupid iphone reeks of fingernail polish now. Stupid no spending money rule!

The before.

The after.

3.  Ate pizza at 11 pm Saturday night because I can, screw the diet and the gym.

Just a normal midnight snack...three pieces later.

4.  Mr. B and I had our version of fight which basically meant not speaking to each other for two days.

5.  Dropped my phone and cracked the back really badly, because my cover was still drying.

6.  Sat in my hammock and cried, because that is what girls do when everything seems to be going wrong.

7.  Had no AC in my classroom Monday and Tuesday, I was cranky and not the kindest teacher.

It was 87 degrees in my classroom + 32 computers + 30 middle school students who may or may not be wearing deodorant. How's that for a mental picture. 

8.  Skipped the gym for the last two days because after sitting in a sauna all day the thought of working out is unbearable. 

9.  Some how I let me students talk me into organizing a Harlem Shake dance with both our robots and them dancing tomorrow. Administrators please don't stop by. Thank you!!!

10.  Had entirely too much booze the last four out of five nights, that is never a good sign for my liver or diet.  

And there you have it, my life right now. No bells and whistles or filters and certainly NO POOP!

   

- The Babbling Box!

Love Like Crazy

As the school year dwindles down I am trying to stay as positive as possible sane and today was a very simple reminder to focus on what I love/like about life and not so much the crazy.

I LOVE my classroom. I blogged about it here and here. Both today and tomorrow I have been/will be displaced while there is EOC testing in my classroom because it is the quietest computer room on campus. And I am experiencing the main building for the first time, lets just say CRAY CRAZY!

I LIKE my crockpot and pinterest recipes. Oh and tacos, but that's a given! My dinner cooked all day long and I came home to yummy pork tacos, tried to keep it healthy with corn tortillas and lots of veggies but I probably indulged a bit too much. 

I LOVE skirts and dresses with pockets. I am not sure exactly why I love them so much, I never use pockets in my capris. But suddenly pockets in my skirt and I can't shut up about them. Also I love the pattern of this skirt, it just screams spring!

Shirt - Target
Skirt - Old Navy
Shoes - Dr. Scholls

I LIKE colorful pants. I am most definitely a black and white sort of gal, if you checked out my closet you would notice that most of my clothing is in those two sections. But I have been trying to branch out a bit and I took a big dive in the color department with colorful pants. I have coral, kelly green and these hot pink ones. My only issue is I never know what shirt looks best with colorful pants so I always go back to my go to color, black.

Shirt - Old Navy
Carpri's - Gap
Shoes - Reefs

I am CRAZY about Mr. B, but really that is a given. 

I LOVE all of my new ideas for my classroom next year. Pinterest is most likely going to be the death of my budget but I can't seem to stop finding new pins that would work perfectly in my room. (This year I used  cheapo table clothes, but this vinyl looks much sturdy. Borders on shelves, why didn't I think of this! I rarely find bulletin boards that would work at the middle school age and I really dig this one.)

    

I am CRAZY over both of these pinterest finds!

If someone could go ahead and give me the money to recreate this bedroom I would be over the moon, do anything for you, be forever in your debt...any takers?!?

Oh and this picture, HOT, enough said!

And I LOVE this song by Lee Brice:

Linking up with: 

   

   

- The Babbling Box!

Obsessive Quitter

There are certain things that I have just accepted about my unique personality:

1.  I am a control freak!

2.  I get irrationally mad at inanimate objects.

3.  I will always be running late.

4.  I get drunk off of two drinks regardless of the situation.

5.  I am an obsessive quitter.

I start up a project and become...well let's say... obsessed. Like must do this hobby/activity all hours of the day and night, talk about, write about, purchase items to make it happen, etc.. Then I get bored and just quit the whole thing all together. 

I have the attention span of a five year old most days. And a hall closet stuffed with would be obsessions. It's where things go to die.

Things I have loved then quit include but are not limited to: painting, crafting, decorating the house, my 365 photo project (such a shame), working out, reading, dying my hair with koolaid, cooking, TPT, master's programs, downloading music, bubble baths...you get the point.

Chances are I will 'fall' back in love with any of these activities at any given point but when and where remains a mystery.

Quite frankly I have been pretty impressed that I have stuck around this old blog for nearly a year, and Mr. B for nearly six years. I guess some things are worth being obsessed over. 

What's the point?!? Nothing, I just felt like babbling...

Actually I just wanted to share my latest obsession before I quit it, this could very well be tomorrow so...must type faster!

I have been on a working out and eating healthy kick lately, shocking right I haven't talked about it at all lately.

Anyways my mom suggested this site Wellness Mama as a place that had good clean recipes for both food, cleaning products and makeup. Let's be real for a second, I have no intention of making my own makeup, I keep Target in business with my obsession with buying it. But I have learned that baking soda makes an amazing face exfoliant and is super cheap so there is something to be said about this site. 

My weekend consisted of a lot of browsing this site, planning my weekly menu from this site and cooking some of these recipes. Don't you wish you could live this fabulously!

So if you are looking for a new place to find recipes or healthy living ideas that isn't pinterest, blasphemy I know, you should check out this site!

1. St. Louis Blues lost in the playoffs Friday night, Mr. B was a sad panda.

2. Went to the gym and had the whole women's section to myself, its the little things.

3.  I made Apple Cinnamon Muffins from the Wellness Mamma site so yummy!

4. Dyed my hair, without koolaid, and yes it takes two boxes.

5. New hair color, completely surprised with how much I HEART the color.

6. Calamari Pasta from Wellness Mamma, unexpected yumminess!

7.  Finally used my press on nail polish from my Birchbox in March, still on the fence about the design.

8.  Went to brunch on Sunday with some old friends. Sat on the patio and enjoyed a spicy Bloody Mary and chicken and waffles cause screw the diet, YOLO!

9. Ended the weekend with some awesome hammock time.

A few other recipes I tried out from Wellness Mamma are:

Grain Free Banana Nut Muffins

Chia Seed Energy Bars

Philly Cheese Steak Peppers

Hope everyone has a FABULOUS week, four more days til Friday!

    

- The Babbling Box!

The One Where I Babble About Randomness

Five For Friday Saturday!  I should probably just accept that until summer there is very little chances I will ever make it to one of these on an actual Friday. Shrug, its my blog I will do what I want to!

ONE.  It was Teacher Appreciation this week and I received some of the sweetest notes from a few of my students. Here is my all time favorite note EVER, I really want to frame it.

Also one of my kiddio's gave me a gift card to Starbucks.

Last year I didn't receive anything so all of this completely surprised me.

TWO. Only 17 days left. Woot! Woot!

The general school demeanor has been a bit crazy and it is starting to seep into my classroom. Problem is I have created monsters this year with all of my positive praise. Every time one of my students needs to be directed they have been popping back with 'sorry, but you LOVE us.' Apparently they think my love of them erasers all wrong doings, silly kiddio's.

THREE. I received approval to attend a Texas Career Education Conference this summer in Houston. Our school has no money to pay for any professional development so the fact that the district is covering the expenses is so lovely.

Also the conference is in Houston, where all of my family is so an added bonus will be getting to visit them a bit while I am there.

Oh, and the conference hotel is in the Galleria. As a kid I always thought it would be super cool to stay at the hotel in the Galleria. Hello shopping! And now I get too. I am giddy like a kid getting to go to Disney Land. Perhaps I need to get out more.

Here is to hoping this years summer conference is better than last years disaster in Corpus Christi, the trip we don't speak about.

FOUR. I have been busting my butt at the gym this week and loving the variety I have been working into my gym routines. I have a tendency to get bored very quickly with working out so I am doing two things this month to tackle the monotony.

First my 30 miles in 30 days challenge. I am very competitive so once I posted this on my blog I knew it  would force myself to 'beat' myself up a bit.

05/05 - 1.21 miles and weight training

05/07 - 3.03 miles

05/08 - 2.59 miles

05/10 - 1.81 miles

05/11 - 2.25 miles and weight training

Combined with my workout last week I am already up to 16.82 miles this month. Woot! Woot!

The other way I am 'spicing' up my workout routine has been changing up my weight training routine. I talked about ToneIt Up last week but I actually started watching some of the videos on YouTube this week and even tried out a few new moves this week. So far I am head over heels with how simple but effective these routines are. I also have no short term memory so today while doing my cardio I watched two videos on my iphone and then just repeated the moves. No shape magazines, looking up a bunch of stuff or trying to copy the very fit girl next to me. I actually felt like I belonged in the gym. Crazy I know.

Here is a one of their MANY videos:

FIVE. For me the key to any good workout is good tunes. I used to have a bunch of good workout playlists but then my itouch was flooded in my workout bag. And as I have mentioned plenty of times I get computer viruses on the regular so I have lost all of my music. Perhaps this is why I stopped working out.

Anyways I discovered the Pandora station: Rap Strength Training this past week and I am LOVING these jams. I never get bored of this station or have a desire to skip over songs. Plus I get my 90's rap fix in which has definitely reawakened my inner love for Eminem. Ever since Slim Shady days I have been in crush with him. At one point or another I have downloaded every single one of his cd's. And I can watch 8 Mile any day of the week, and I am not afraid to admit it! 

Some girls swoon over Brad Pitt but I swoon over Eminem, don't worry I already know I am a bit crazy. So now for your listening pleasure:

- The Babbling Box!