Clap On! Clap Off!

So EVERY night before Doug and I go to bed, no one wants to turn off the lights. We usually switch or have whoever was the last person in bed turn them off, but last Tuesday I had a wonderful brainstorm...

TRAIN THE CAT TO TURN OFF THE LIGHTS!

Day 1: Darwin, our kitten, is always chasing the strings on my hoodie, so I decided to dangle it above the light switch to see if he would jump up to chase it. Well, he couldn't resist and by the second jump he had turned off the light with his paw.

Day 2: Doug tells me that you cannot train a cat without a reward, so I go get some little tasty kitty treats for a dollar. He turns off the light again the second night. This time with a tasty reward.

Day 3: Darwin has figured out where I keep the treats in my nightstand and is waiting at my nightstand when he figures out that we are going to bed soon. He jumps up and shuts off the light with a reward at the end. *We were just about ready to retire for the night whenever we hear a JUMP at the wall in the bedroom. All he's figured out so far is that jumping at a certain place in the wall will SOMETIMES reward him with a treat.

That's progress. I think Doug is doubtful, but for now he's encouraging it because I turn off the lights EVERY night in hopes of training Darwin. Here's a video of the action. Enjoy!

Woah Negativity

So, I just read my last two blog postings and they were SOO negative. I am a very positive person, I believe, so I just had to write something to cancel out the negativity.

This last weekend, Doug and I spent a wonderful and relaxing weekend at Doug's grandma's house in Romney. Wonderful home cooked food, fireplace pies, and well just sitting around enjoying the countryside. It's quite the trip back home so Doug and I get a lot of time to talk which sadly has not been as much as we would like to recently.

We started to reminisce the early days of our marriage...

It's now been 4 years this coming May since we got married. The summer we were hitched we subletted (illegally, we found out a later) an apartment in a high rise building in Arlington, so Doug would have an easy commute to his internship. I found a job very quickly at a local restaurant as a waitress. We slept on an inflatable mattress for 3 months while we lived there. Yes, I can't even believe it looking back... an INFLATABLE mattress. I also was robbed in broad daylight on my way back from work during this time period. I don't really remember complaining of the trials of this time. I think both of us were just tickled to be married to one another.

Before we left on our trip that summer back west, Doug's relatives forced some money into our hands, "just in case." On our drive back west, with no previous car issues at all, the car broke down twice and had a tire blow out. We didn't have a cell phone at the time. One of the times we were stranded on the side of the road in Middle of Nowhere, Nebreska in the dark. I started flagging down cars and within 15 minutes, someone (non-crazy) pulled over to help us AND gave us $120 cash to help us along the way. Also in Nebraska, a crazy woman ran out in front of the car in the dark while we were driving at about 80 mph. Fortunately we were able to dodge her and report the incident to the police at the next gas station. Two SCARY hotels later, a new tire, a new alternator, and an unsure diagnosis from the last mechanic, we finally made it to Utah in ONE piece. We were very blessed!

Doug and I have a wonderful and adventurous life together and even though we have our occasional speed bumps along the way, I am still thankful for (just about) every day of it.

And the value of your house IS...

$15,000 below what you paid for it less than a year ago.

We saved EVERY penny, put down a good-sized down payment, haggled the sales people, bought well within our price range, got a fixed mortgage, made every payment, etc... I thought we were doing everything right. We are now officially in the hole with our mortgage.

THIS ECONOMY STINKS!

Hopefully we don't have to move anytime soon...

I know there are a lot of people that are in a worse situation. Our neighbors paid almost twice what we did for our house the year before us and I'm guessing their appraisal is about the same. I guess I should feel lucky, but I don't.

Little Complaints

Today after school we had a faculty meeting. The first thing on the agenda was to discuss budget concerns for next school year. The economy is not good and basically we can only afford to spend what we spent this school year for next year. For your information, Loudoun's budget for 2009 was $745,500,922. We are a very large school system, but still, WOW. As a taxpayer that number frightens me. Our property taxes increased by $200 a month this last year, $2400 for the year. I got a $150 raise this year total. I am conflicted because as a taxpayer, I cannot see paying any more. As a teacher, it scares me what we as teachers we will lose.

Annoying thing about faculty meeting... "Equity Training" after budget talks. We're sitting here talking about all of the teachers that will lose their jobs, how class size will increase, and services to students will be reduced. Then we sit there and for an extra hour to be trained on how to be more equitable. NO ONE wanted to be there. How about we get rid of the whole paid team of people that are in charge of creating long and boring trainings on equity and keep some teachers so we can reduce class sizes. just saying... I have nothing against equity. It's great! Let's do it!

Also, after complaints from from some teachers through the union, we now have inauguration day off. You're probably thinking, well that's nice an extra day off of work. What it actually means is that the schools will be closed so all of the work that you would have done that day at school, you will need to do at home. Which means, I get to lug home 24 writing journals and somehow input grades through the internet that I don't have. They are letting us come in the SATURDAY afterward so we can get our work done. I heard an experienced teacher say, "We've never gotten off inauguration day before. Why this year?" ...that's very equitable.

I love my job, the part where I get to teach. The other part, well...

My cats are plotting against me...

Darwin and Lucky USED to sleep with Doug and I every night. Lucky would always curl up at the bottom of the bed and Darwin likes to find the least comfortable place for me, usually directly on top of my face or on my neck. He's still a kitten, so it's actually quite cute. (Unless it's 2 in the morning) As Darwin has started to grow up, Lucky and him have started to play around the house more during the night time and do not go to bed with us anymore. (sniff, sniff, my baby kitten is growing up!)

Every morning, Doug wakes up before the alarm and is out of the house to go to work before 5 am, yes 5 AM. I usually stumble out of bed really quickly to give him a kiss before he leaves and then jump back into my warm bed and promptly return to sleep for 10-15 minutes until the alarm clock goes off. (Every minute of sleep I can get, I will take it!) Unlike my husband, waking up is especially difficult for me and it usually takes a couple "taps" on the snooze before I am actually out of bed.

As of lately, as soon as my alarm clock goes off, Lucky and Darwin have been coming into the room and promptly laying on top of me, Lucky on my feet and Darwin on my chest. They both purr really loudly and give me THE eyes that say, "DON'T LEAVE!" I can barely physically move (Lucky is quite the large, not fat, but large cat) and Darwin is so dang cute that it hurts me emotionally to move his little kitten body off of me. Believe me, I don't want to move because its freak'n feels like its 10 degrees outside my bed...so I just lay there and don't get up until the last possible moment. I've only had time to shower every OTHER day this week instead of every day and I barely make it to school before my students are in the classroom.

My cats are plotting against me. They don't want me to go to work.

He's HERE!

My sister Heather, who lives in Virginia Beach, had a baby boy on December 26, 2008. His name is David and he weighed about 9.5 lbs and was 21 inches long. (I'm sure Heather would have more exact info.) I've been asking Heather tons of baby stuff. Did you know that it's hard to drive for a couple weeks after you give birth? I didn't know that!

We just went down this last weekend for the baby blessing and I tortured the poor child by taking a million pictures of him. It was fun experimenting with my camera. Seriously, I only got about 1 good shot out of every 20. I think Doug is starting to get nervous. He smirked and asked me, "So, does this mean you have all of the baby stuff out of your system?" Umm, no!

David is a cutie. Here are some of the pictures. Enjoy!

When your husband is a techie....

I don't have much time to write because we're going down to Virginia Beach to Heather and James' house for David's baby blessing. Doug and I have been doing a lot of traveling lately, so I thought I would share this little snippet of advice that my husband has shared with me...