I know, I know. I think this is the longest I have ever gone without writing. Usually when I am not writing it means that I am happy! And I am! Very! Happy!
Things are going really well in general. Things with Chad are great. We have had a few fights since we got back together, but we are learning how to communicate better with each other, and overall things are wonderful. My therapist said that if I got back together with him I had to embrace that and have confidence and not doubt his feelings for me. So that is what I have been trying to do, and for the most part it is working. I still have moments of low self-esteem, but I think that I have gotten a lot better.
School has also been a lot better. Our schedule changed around to my dream schedule (I won't even get into it, but because my school is filled to capacity, we all have crazy schedules and they change halfway through the year). Now that I have a relationship with the students they are behaving so much better. The students also had their second round of testing and they improved by 12% as a whole. The first round was a nightmare and the test scores were bad. I felt like the worst failure of a teacher, but this time the majority of them put in their best effort and the scores showed that. They are still not as high as I would like, but I don't feel like a failure, and they still have another round of testing. Hopefully they will improve even more (the best of the three scores they get is the one that counts). I also have very few students now that I have real problems with, which is very nice.
Chad and I stopped our vices together--he stopped smoking and I stopped drinking diet pop. We have been doing it over a month now, and it has been really hard. I think it has been harder for me than for him! I miss pop a lot. I have been drinking tons of water, which is great, but I miss my pop. I had pop every morning instead of coffee, and my favorite thing in the world was to go to 7-11 before school and get a huge pop and brownie. Yes, the most healthy breakfast ever! Anyway, supposedly Chad read some study about aspartame causing brain cancer and he was all worried about it blah blah, so I gave it up. Ugh. Apparently, splenda is fine, but I hate the diet coke with splenda. I sometimes drink hansens with splenda, but they don't make cola, so my pop days are pretty much over. It is nice that he stopped smoking, though. I think he had been smoking since he was 14 or 15, so that was a pretty big accomplishment (and I don't think he had tried giving it up before).
I also gave up sweets, but I went back on that. I am still trying to eat less, but that is just too much with the no pop thing.
I've decided to work during spring break again because I am kind of broke. I want to pay off my credit cards again. I am going to be doing state writing scoring, which I said I wouldn't do, but I am because it is easy and good money. It takes away my spring break, but I guess I will live. Normal people don't get spring break and they survive. Besides, I will have summer break soon enough.
I am also still trying to get a roommate. It would be really nice to have someone help pay the rent and bills. I think that going from sharing this apartment with Justin to being by myself is where I ran into financial trouble. I can afford it all on my own, but I am just on a tight budget that I don't really follow. I keep going into my reserve line, which is not good! Hopefully I can find someone, but the thing is that I don't exactly live in a desirable location. I love it because it is close to my work, but most people want to live in the Belmont/Hawthorne area. I would like to live there, too, but I can't afford it on my own, and don't really want to bring my cat into someone else's home to wreck it. So we'll see.
Valentine's Day was actually good this year. Last year I was seeing Jose and he didn't get me anything, even though we hung out. That sucked. This year Chad made me dinner and he got me chocolates and earings. He was very sweet. The last time I talked to Jose he told me that he was not getting his long distance girlfriend anything for V-day, sort of like a test. What an asshole. I basically told him that, and I haven't heard from him since. He was really weird the last time I called him...anyway, he has continued to cheat on the poor girl. I went to lunch with him a few months back and was relieved that I felt nothing toward him anymore. It is amazing that I spent so long feeling such strong emotions toward him, and then I felt just...nothing. I guess that is what it is like to actually get over someone, right?
I had sushi this weekend with Chad and his brother, and then I got a really weird rash all over my chest, neck and face! It was really gross and it worried me a lot. However, today I took the day off work thinking I should go to the doctor, and it went away before I could go. I have never had an allergic reaction to food before, and I have eaten sushi a lot, but I am not sure if I ate some new kind of something. Anyway, I guess it is good that it went away. The doctor said if it comes back I should come in. I just didn't want to go to school with a rash on my face.
Nothing else too exciting is happening lately. Hopefully something will! :)
