I turned 30 on Thursday.
With school starting up and being super stressed with that, plus adjusting to life with baby & work, I almost forgot it was coming up. Seriously. One of my co-workers asked me what kind of cake I would like to celebrate, and it took me a minute to realize what she was talking about. I picked chocolate, of course.
But despite all that, this birthday was probably one of nicest I've had. Maybe because I thought about it less, so everything was more unexpected and fun. On the day of, we went out to dinner at Gordon Biersch with my parents, my dad gave me a beautiful silver coin pendant necklace made from a 100 Franc piece, and my mom gave me a pearl necklace and earrings. Fancy. Casey got me a dozen roses and a new purse from Fossil (which I specifically requested...so pretty). AND then just Casey and I went to dinner last night at the Hibiscus, my favorite, and had a super-swanky dinner. It was delicious. Aubrey babysat so we could stay out late, which was another gift. And we're going to dinner with both Dustin & Aubrey on Sunday night too, which will be super-fun.
So, for this birthday, I've been completely spoiled. Unexpected, but really nice.
Especially with how stressful this new school year has been. Usually the first week is tiring, getting new students used to school and being super upbeat and entertaining to get them excited about learning, but usually when I'm not teaching it's easy because there's not much to do yet.
But this week has been beyond exhausting. Strung out exhausting. Why? Because I have twice as many students as last year, two additional classes to teach each day, bigger classes than last year and twenty less minutes of prep time, and a huge amount of addition paperwork, on top of grading papers for 150 students, re-writing quizzes to multiple choice format to save grading time, making copies because we don't have workbooks ordered yet, etc.
I don't feel like I have enough time to prepare for each level, so as French 2 kids are walking in, I'm trying to figure out what I'm supposed to teach them, then two hours later, the same with French 3. And we have a new shortened schedule, so I have a hard time keeping track of what class it is and when it will end, so I'm constantly checking the clock.
Oh, and add to that pumping (breastmilk) three times a day so that I can continue breastfeeding Indy. I work and pump through lunch, so I don't get to talk to my co-workers much. And I have to leave by 3:30 each day to get home and feed him again, so that the poor child doesn't have live completely out of bottles. This, of course, is my choice, and I could formula-feed him and make my life easier on that count, but I'm not going to do that. But I will complain. And count the days. The work year is 187 days. 182 more to go.
