I walked into my classroom yesterday prepared for war. My last day of school had been the worst one in the history of ever.
 I opened the door and was greeted with lovely new trim all the way around the room.
But that wasn't what I saw first. What I saw first was everything in the room in a very large pile in the middle of the room. The schoolbooks were piled in a red crate and the only thing that really registered with me right away was that the desks were still upright... Well DJ and Ginnys desks were, I couldn't find mine. I found out later that one of the carpenters was standing on it and it had collapsed. I felt bad about that. I should have written "not safe to stand on" on my desk top. It would have fit right in with the "I love you" and the face, and the "FRG", and all the other graffiti that happens to decorate the top of my desk.
 I took a quick survey of the room and started stacking cabinets on top of each other and piling Christmas decor into a large cardboard box willy-nilly. I also went inside and found a bucket of hot-soapy-water and a vacuum sweeper. When the girls and I were done re-arranging the room one of the girls informed me that "Kyle's right there". So I poked my head out the door and told him that I'd like him to fix my desk... Which he did, nicely, thank you Kyle.
 And then I started to vacuum. I'd done quite a bit of the room till it finally made sense to me why there was a a great cloud of white floating about with the sweeper. The gray tape at the end of the hose was coming undone. (I LOVE gray tape... my one and only pick with it is that they don't seem to make it in pink camo). Anyways I  had one of the girls find me a role of the stuff and I fixed the sweeper. And it was no longer accompanied by a lovely white ghost floating along as I swept the floor. By the time I was done I liked the room better than I had before the coming-of-the-carpenters. (A large part of my liking it this way is that my chalkboard is now sitting the right direction and its up at the right hight.)
At ten thirty or so I had finally started school. Their new sound for the day was "sh", slightly ironic considering that my classroom isn't exactly the quietest in the world. It used to be fairly quiet... when I first started, before I discovered that I had larger battles to fight than having a silent battlefield.
 The day went very well. At one point DJ looked up at me and smiled "I'm bein' good right now!"... It made my poor soul shake. Maybe I'm a horrid monster of a teacher who aught to be sitting in a dungeon eating bread and water and conversing with the rats. At the end of the day he was hanging on to me around the waist and declaring that he was going to keep me there forever and I had several other children clamoring about how "that one was SHORT, can't you read another one!?"... So I decided that maybe I don't need to worry about  learning rat-speak anytime soon.
 Lily asked me at the beginning of the day if I felt like my life was in an uproar when I went there. I smiled and shook my head. I don't, I like being there, I like teaching, I like children. I like feeling like I'm doing something profitable. And I like challenges that I can be in control of and conquer. I enjoyed cleaning that room up.... I knew I could do it, and I did. I wonder how often life's challenges are not conquered simply because we don't take control of them. We look at them and think, "As soon as somebody will give me directions I'll try but I'm not making any promises". When is it our responsibility to take responsibility?
Quote of the Day:
 "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." -Philippians 4:13