Perks of Living in the Ghetto

Saving money. Financially responsible. Living within your means. These are things that parents and adults preach at us from a young age.

Unfortunately, they sometimes forget that this means you must make a stint in the ghetto for this to be possible.

Chris and I have big plans for our future. Houses, children, safe neighborhoods, good schools. We are attempting to accomplish this on our own. No loans. No debt. (Okay...maybe a house loan at some point...) But no school debt, credit card debt, or car debt. Just our income and that's what we live on--rent, gas, groceries, grad school tuition, and if we're lucky, a redbox movie every now and then.

A hard lesson I had to learn--no thanks to The Sims and the motherload cheat--is that to achieve your financial and standard-of-living goals, you must live a little below what you expect for a while. It takes time to save money for those nice houses with big yards. In the meantime, we've had to adjust to a different lifestyle than we were raised. The attitude adjustment has been the hardest, for me anyways. I've learned that to make this saving period a little more bearable, I must look for the best in it. And hence, we have...


THE PERKS OF LIVING IN THE GHETTO

1.  Cheap gas.

 

Seriously, when your local gas station has residue of a previous fire, they just can't charge that much for gas. I haven't paid over $3.39 for gas since we moved here.

2.  Authentic international food.

Gojo Ethiopian Restaurant. This is right down the street from us. We haven't actually eaten here yet, but we plan to. Also within 3 miles of our apartment are: 9 Mexican restaurants, 4 Greek restaurants, 2 Middle Eastern grocery stores, and 2 Ethiopian restaurants.

Most of them look like this so it's a dinner surprise! You don't know which ethnic food you might get tonight!

3.  Lessons in Culture

I'll be honest with you. I was raised in white bread southern America. My neighborhood and school were not terribly culturally-diverse. Going to a big university helped a lot. I got to meet a lot of people who were different from me and learned a lot about different cultures. But not quite the experience that living with people of different cultures has been. A few weeks ago, I was working out in our apartment's fitness center alongside a Muslim woman. She was in full headdress and burqa, jogging on the treadmill. I was in my shorts and tank top gliding on the elliptical. I no longer felt as hardcore.

4. Convenient location.

You see the little 24 sign in the very bottom right corner? That's where we live in relation to Nashville. Sure, it's heading towards Antioch, but it's not Antioch yet. We found a cute little location somewhere between Brentwood-standards and Antioch-standards right where that 24 sign is. The perks? I go against traffic every morning and every afternoon. And wave at the people on the other side of the interstate at stand-still traffic at 6:30 in the morning. Chris follows 440 all the way around the city to get to TSU. I-440 is usually not too bad. At least it's no I-24 or I-65. All in all, we can get to downtown Nashville in about 10 minutes. I can be in Smyrna (for work) in about 15 minutes. Great location!

5. No hipsters. 

6. We'll have this adorable place someday with money to spare.

Okay, sure. Maybe not money to spare. Or not this exact house, since I think this is a tour house in Arlington, VA, but the point is...all our hard work and years saving will help us afford something fancy-shmancy. Not because of our outrageous salaries (I'm a teacher...remember), but because we were willing to take our turn in the ghetto. 

Now, I'm going to take my dog out before it gets dark, lock the door, and enjoy my Sunday evening.

Life Update

My carefree summer of blogging, facebook, and this schedule are over. Here is my life now:

• Second grade. Not too bad but definitely more different work than PreK. PreK was high intensity, in-your-face, don't look away for a second. I had no bathroom break, lunch break, or special areas. But I never took work home because PreK is not really a grade you plan for. You just wait for teachable moments to arise. Second grade is high intensity planning and assessment, but not as intense during the actual school day. All in all, second grade is definitely better. I haven't had snot wiped on me yet!

• Allergies. It took 3 years for my face to adjust to Knoxville Worst-in-the-World Allergies. Now I'm back in middle Tennessee, and I have allergies before the weather has even changed. It's going to be a long year.

• Missing Knoxville. Especially my church family. I miss Market Square, the Old City, Turkey Creek, the Apple Barn, and of course UT's campus. Sitting in traffic on I-24 is just not as entertaining as sitting in traffic on the Strip. I tear up just about everytime I see a UT bumper sticker. I think I actually did tear up when I saw a Knox County license plate. I miss my old life.

 

• My parents' pool exploded. For the second time.

Pool collapsed. Fence broke.

 Thus began Operation: Build a New Deck.

My parents made a crazy decision to get rid of the pool after this season and finish the deck that was partially built around the pool. Fortunately, Chris is super awesome at building stuff, so he's been heading up this project. We helped though!

 My job was to use this thing to screw big silver bolts into the pieces of wood. I don't know what it's called, but it made my elbow hurt the next day.

Dad's pretty handy using a very loud hand-held machine and a hammer at the same time! (See...I know the names of some tools!)

Chris will be finishing the deck this weekend, so I'll try to remember to take some pictures of his masterpiece.

• Chris also goes back to PT school next Monday. I will miss all the house-husband meals and being in the same room with him. But I also know he will inspire me to get more work done when I'm home. I get a little distracted when he's around.

• We are looking for a church in Nashville. We're a little frustrated, especially with the church hunt. It's almost impossible to find a church by just searching for them online, and even scarier to just pop into one. If you know us and the type of awesome churches we're coming from, pleeeeeeeease help us out with suggestions in Nashville. I think church family is the most significant thing we're missing in our new Nashville life. And it's a big one.

That's about all I have tonight. It's 9:02 here and I am out of steam. This 3-am-bedtime girl is quickly becoming a 9-pm-bedtime girl. I don't remember the last time I didn't feel tired.

But you can look forward to a pretty informative post about the perks of living in the ghetto.

Real Life

I am overwhelmed.

Sure, school is overwhelming. When is it not? But I'm managing. I have a great team of 2nd grade teachers giving me the best chance possible to succeed. I have a great 2nd grade experience from several years ago (with much of the same curriculum, thank goodness) to give me ideas. But I feel as though the beginning of any school year is overwhelming, and therefore; I am overwhelmed.

My wonderful husband, Chris, has been the biggest help this week. He finished his last final of the semester on Friday, August 5. I started my first day of school on Monday, August 8. This was great timing because he has been home all week to help with around-the-house stuff. He cooked amazing meals all week so I didn't have to worry about being home in time to cook dinner (which I wasn't...any day this week). He's done laundry. He went to the grocery store. He gets the coffee ready for the morning. He takes care of the dog. He's been the perfect "helpmate" this week, and I am deeply grateful for the support he's given me. This was also the worst timing because we didn't get to enjoy any time together with both of us off work/school. Looking ahead at our schedule for the next few years, we don't have any time off at the same time except for 2 weeks at Christmas. Of course we love our families and can't wait to spend time with them at Christmas, but every couple needs at least a few days to themselves to relax. It's a little overwhelming knowing that there isn't an end to this constant busy-ness in sight. We don't know when or if we'll have time off together in the next 3 years. When I let that thought run too far, instant depression sets in.

And then there's overall plans for life. As Chris would say, the alarm on my biological clock went off a while ago. I want to live in a house. This apartment life is for the birds. Just last week, a maintenance man nearly beat our door down at 5:00 AM on a Saturday because of a leak in our toilet. If we get home after 10:00 PM, we don't have a parking space. Do you remember what it is like to walk 1/2 mile just to get to your own home? Pretty sure we should have left that in the dorm era. "Why not just buy a house?" you might ask. Well, we're not really sure where we'll be in 3 years. The housing market is so rough right now, we don't want to buy a house and then not be able to sell it later. So the house must wait. As must babies. But that's a whole 'nother story.

So that's what's going on in my life. I am overwhelmed with new job, new city, living situations, adjusting to husband in grad school, new church hunt, central time zone, cars with leaks, new dog, no caffeine-free mountain dew, accidentally driving through Titans traffic, picking new insurance, etc.

If you see me crying in my car, it's probably one of these things.

It's a great thing that we have Jesus to make all this just a little more bearable.
"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." (Romans 8:37)

A Tour of my Classroom

Wow. This past week has been nuts. I've spent at least 12 hours a day working on my classroom. It's still not perfect, but neither am I. I thought I would share a little of my pride and joy, but first...a look into our Sunday afternoon.

We left a piece of popcorn chicken in the tray on our coffee table after lunch, then ran a few errands. When we got back, the chicken had magically disappeared. Itchy was interrogated with inconclusive results. He has no alibi, so we don't really need the confession for a guilty verdict.

Okay, onto the classroom.

Behavior system. Everyone starts on green. Super awesome behavior moves them to blue. Not so awesome behavior moves them to yellow and beyond.

Who doesn't love a little Rick Morris sign language system? And a little pocket charts that I have no idea what to do with but it sticks to my white board so I thought that was cool.

Our classroom jobs. I've added a few more since this picture was taken, but the basic idea is that almost everyone has a job every day. Chris thinks these frogs are awkward.

Word Work center. Practicing spelling, phonics, and such. I'll try to jazz this up later.

Adorable Dr. Seuss bags for each child! They keep a few books in those bags and take them around the classroom everyday to practice reading to themselves.

Racecar words to help us use more sophisticated words than "like" and "good" when we write stories.

Journals for morning work. We will correct a few grammatically incorrect sentences then free-write every morning. I'm determined to produce children that know the difference between their/there/they're.

My rug that the Northfield kindergarten team lent to me. One of these days, we'll find the foam letter L to stick in that square.

My reading umbrella. Don't look at it... it's a little sparse. I drew some imaginary pillows in there. I just bought a ton of pillow today and plan on throwing them in there tomorrow, but for now, just pretend.

My little classroom library, sorted into categories. I need more books...

Here's how the library works. Every book has a star sticker on it. When you return a book, you must find the bin that has the same color star sticker and put it in the bin. Then record which book you read in your book record. I mean... I don't ask much.

I can't afford the cute little lesson plan books. Plus all their cute little designs on the pages doesn't leave enough room for writing actual lesson plans, so I decorated my lesson plan book with the huge bag of paint pens I found! This will have exponentially more polka dots by the end of the year.

Apparently we will be sharing the one sharp pencil tomorrow.

I am ashamed of the disarray of my desk right now.

This is how we rotate through centers. Each child is on a velcro paw print. The paw prints are velcro'ed to the plates, which are magnetized to the board. We can rotate whole groups of children easily by just moving the plate, but we can also switch kids into a different group by moving the paw print to a different plate. Genius? I think so.

My word wall under the white board. Do you see the surprise?

Okay, how about now? I couldn't resist. Go Vols.

Itchy and Chris came to help on Saturday. Yes, SATURDAY. Chris had a great time, as always. ;) Itchy cried the whole time.


That's it. My stomping grounds for the next year (and hopefully more). Tomorrow is the first day of school. I'm excited, anxious, and a little nervous about getting my kids where they're supposed to be. Being the new kid on the block is no fun, but I love my new 2nd grade team! They have been so helpful and made me feel so much more relaxed about starting in a new place. My prayer tonight is that I sleep at least 6 hours (a BIG accomplishment if you know me), and that tomorrow goes smoothly. I've been told my goal tomorrow is to make sure all the kids go home the correct way. That sounds easy enough, but it's usually the easy things that cause the most trouble....