Engaged.

I'm engaged.  I'll write what happened later. I know I need to write something and I will. Later. :) But not too much later.

Jon Schmidt!

The first bone

On Wednesday I was at school moving things around and putting things away in my classroom. As I was attempting to move a table from the spare room to my classroom, the table slipped and fell onto my big toe on my right foot.  After I moved my foot from underneath the table, I sat down on the ground and kept saying, "You'll be alright, you'll be alright, you'll be alright." After the pounding in my foot subsided after a minute or so, I got back up, grabbed the table and hauled it over to my classroom. I noticed my toe was bleeding a little bit so I rinsed it off in the sink and put a band-aid on it from the handy-dandy first-aid kit in my classroom.

(my swollen right toe compared to my normal left toe)

Eventually I told the other teachers that were there and asked them what I should do--I took some Excedrin and iced my foot, but they said I couldn't really do anything for toes, so I decided I couldn't really do anything and kept working.

After driving home, I ate dinner and iced my foot again.  My roommate, boyfriend, and Dad all told me I should get it looked at by a doctor; accordingly, Cody and I drove to the InstaCare at the hospital. Turned out I had broken my toe, but only the bone on the end of my toe so I wouldn't need a cast. I would just wear a shoe for 2-3 weeks, take an antibiotic for a week, ice it, elevate my foot, and try to stay off of my foot as much as possible. 

And that's my story of the first bone I've ever broken. 

I'm a nerd...

I've been able to finally start the research that I've been waiting to start since Monday (a glitch in communication held up starting the real research) and I have to say...

I love it.  I love working on research. 

At least this stage of things--because I know there will be findings! Even if it's mundane, as I'm doing my part analyzing fourth grade literacy readers, I know that it's part of a larger whole that will produce some interesting and insightful findings.

Revision on Goal #1

Goal 1: My body protested quite forcibly when I tried to force it awake to go exercise at 5am.
Revision: Keep going once a week for now; when I move to Alpine Village I can use the machines there in the evening-time.  Focus on waking up at 6am to get to the library on time. That's enough for now. Maybe someday my body will be okay with me waking it up at the crack of dawn to exercise. So far it hasn't worked, but stranger things have happened, right?

Goals to help Beth become Human again...

I will never deny that I have thoroughly enjoyed the past couple months of sleeping in because of being job-less and in search-mode. But the time has come for me to join the rest of society again, leave my vacation-like life of sleeping in and getting around 10 hours of sleep every night :) ... Let's see if these goals help:

1. Wake up at 5am to go running on the BYU track with my roommate
2. At least this week and next week, be at the library by 7am to work on research till about 2pm.
3. Eat salads for lunch--or at least something vegetable-y.
4. Write down what I think I need to do for school and for sanity and organize them by days so I don't feel overwhelmed and can work on a little something every day
5. Try as hard as I can not to get behind on my journal...at least no more than a week...
6.Write things down...
7. Decide what needs to stay or go to protect my privacy and image as a teacher...maybe this blog will become private...

Let's see how this works...

I JUST GOT A JOB!!!

5th grade. Barnett Elementary in Payson. I am sooooooo excited.

I'm going to be a teacher. :)

"Let the memory live again"

I love remembering. And this week, it isn't just me remembering! With Independence Day on Monday and Cody's one-year mark home from his mission yesterday, and with my crazy ability to remember things, there has been a lot of memories swirling around in heads lately.

Which gets me thinking--why do we remember?  Why don't we just forget everything that we experience, that we say, people we meet, feelings we've had?  As Cody and I have talked, we've brought up lots of different memories that we have, from the trivial and mundane to the life-changing and critical.  I get why we would remember the life-changing/critical experience, but why don't the little memories dissolve?  Why is it that whenever I smell a new stick  of cherry Chapstick, I always think of being huddled under my blanket at Rainbow Academy during naptime playing with my Polly Pocket from McDonald's?  That's such a random memory, and yet, it always comes to the surface when I smell cherry Chapstick.

Some obvious and important reasons why I can think of why we remember is to relate to people, to not make the same mistakes, to predict actions/consequences for ourselves and others, and to be grateful for changes in our situation or in ourselves that have led us to be where we are, even in hard times.

And then Cats comes into the picture. I've never seen the musical Cats, I'm not really sure if I want to or not; I know nothing about it. But I do know that I love the song, Memory.  In the sharing of memories, as we allow others a small glimpse into our experiences and into our becoming process, we live again in that moment.  Yet, while we can remember how we felt--the fear, the thrill, the excitement, the newness of situations we experienced in the past--we also have an added lense of the experiences since that moment. 

For example, as I think about my dating experiences, I've had some really fun dates and have dated some great guys, but I have also had some really awful times and when I remember them, I remember how I felt, even if I do not feel the same way now.  As I've talked with Cody about different experiences I've had with dating--good, bad, and ugly--both he and I came to the conclusion, that even though some of the things we've had to pass through were not ideal and we wouldn't have asked for them, they brought us to where we are in our lives, and that since we've moved past the people or emotions that are involved in our pasts, they pale.  Of course, the memories do not dissolve, they are still there.  But they pale in comparison to the new experiences, the new emotions, the new growth that is happening.  The lense of our experiences and situation now allow us to see more clearly the road that led us here, a road that seemed directionless and dark before.

And that same thought is true with so many experiences in my life, especially since being out here in Utah and during my undergrad years. There was a lot I couldn't see about the experiences I would have, the people I would meet, the person I would become.  Yet the best part is that I'm still meeting people, I'm still having experiences, and I'm still becoming. So, in a way, the memory does live on, because more memories are being made all the time.