I know my color wheel...

Purple shampoo is not going to fix this.

What I need is blue. Blue toner. Blue anything. I wanted to try Kool-Aid. Zak threatened to tell our grandkids about it if I did.

Needless to say, I am not attempting to neutralize my orange hair with blue Kool-Aid. Although, it worked great when I was a kid. Once I had a pink streak for three weeks. Or at least some of my friends did. Or.. the kids I wanted to be friends with had a pink streak. I wore floor length floral dresses. With built-in jean vests.

The point is, if I put blue on this pumpkin, it might at least turn brown. Blue and orange are complementary colors. It's science. Or the color wheel. Are colors science or art?

I'm not going to try it with Kool-Aid. Yet.

For now, feel free to revel in my foolery. I was going for ash blonde. I ended up with Jack.

-O lantern, that is.

Don't OTC your hair.

I never learn.

I thought I'd be able to dye my hair with an OTC boxed piece of junk, since I was just trying to fix the lower half (which is the last of the dye from before the wedding).

Instead, I once again ended up with a "lovely" orange hue.

UGH.

I never learn.

And I have no idea how to fix it.

Obsessions

Things I wish I wasn't addicted to:

Source

1. Coffee
- Wouldn't it be healthier if I could wake up all on my own? Apparently the health benefits vs curses are negligible. So I could pretend like it's just like water. But sometimes I hate feeling so dependent on something to keep me thinking during the day.

Source

2.Facebook
- I recently purged a ton of old contacts from my Facebook account, thinking that if I had less traffic on my newsfeed, I'd be more likely to stop spending hours stalking people I will never talk to again. Instead, I've started stalking people I should really just call up on the phone.








3.   Pinterest
 - This site is a black hole. Not only does it show me all the ways folks are crazy creative, but it makes me want every. single. thing. they've made.

Source

3. Teacher Blogs
- Especially since most of the blogs are by teachers who have lower elementary classes. I teach upper and high school. I'm not sure I'm really benefitting from reading up on how to create the perfect bulletin boards.







5. Office Supplies
- This is an expensive obsession. I just find it so difficult to pass up multi-colored file folders!






A few of these addictions are internet-based, so I've decided that the best way to put a clamp on them is to limit my internet use. Of course, every time I start to try to implement said clamp, I talk myself out of all the reasons I wanted to quit in the first place.

Justifications
1. Coffee frees my mind and helps me focus. At least I don't do drugs.

2. My friends are on Facebook because they want to be stalked. If they didn't want to be stalked, then they wouldn't have an account and I would be forced to call them and have a real relationship with them. They have social anxiety. Stalking them is helping them.

3. I need to get more ideas for classroom management. My eighth graders aren't going to self-police. Reading up on this classroom management manual for kindergarteners will help. I can apply the same principles and use books without pictures to illustrate my point.

4. By electronically keeping track of things that I like, I am saving trees.

5. If my desk is not organized, then my life is not organized and I will self-destruct. What if there is a natural disaster and I cannot find my passport? I need that label maker.



Things I wish I was addicted to:
1. Church
2. Exercise
3. Vegetables
4. Classical Literature
5. Cleaning


Dream big, America.

If in the first twenty-something years of your life you don't succeed ...

I'm socially awkward.

This is not a new development, but one that I am finally coming to terms with. Or recognizing. It will likely take years for me to "come to terms with" aka "own" this part of me. I hope I'll just grow out of it.

The problem may have something to do with any number of things: my self-esteem, my ADD, my inability to see out of my glasses, hormones, lack of adequate protein in my diet, fear.

I looked up "awkward" in the medical dictionary, hoping it was a symptom of something else, but nothing came up. So, it's just me. Being me.

I have a hard time making and keeping friends, even though I really really really want to. I am infamous for making a formerly good conversation come to a rolling stop because I offered what I thought would be an encouraging response, only to find out that it was like saying "period" at the end of a sentence. Or writing "The End" in the middle of chapter 3 of a 14 chapter novel.

Usually, none of this bothers me, mostly because I hardly notice. I spend hours alone everyday, staring at my computer, making lesson plans for my hypothetical classes or reading the blogs of people I've never met.

But I do occasionally notice, on those rare occasions when I spend time with the one or two friends I still have, and their ability to be awesome totally blows me away. Then, instead of seizing the opportunity to connect, I spend the whole time admiring and studying their mannerisms, hoping one day to end up like them through mimicry.

This is the way you hold your head. This is the way you laugh. This is how to listen. These are the intuitive questions to ask to invite people in and make people like you. To make people trust you.

And Kellie, these are the ways you are not.

This post will not change your life

Zak and I got up at 5:30 this morning so we could go to the USF gym and work out.

When the alarm went off, I tried to pretend that I couldn't hear it. I thought that if I seemed like I was going to cave, then Zak would too. (Un)fortunately for me, my husband has more self-discipline than I do. He got out of bed and got ready to go to the gym. As much as I wanted to stay in bed and sleep, I couldn't be shown up by him.

After a sweat-inducing work-out, I'm back and showered and trying to decide whether I'm going back to sleep, getting back out of bed, or getting out of bed AND getting dressed.

Anyone who's seen me this summer knows that even if I'm out of bed, I'm most likely still in my pajamas. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Yep. I cook dinner in my pajamas. What? It's the summer. In San Francisco summers, we don't get to wear bikinis and soak up the sun. We wear long johns and build a fire in the fireplace.

Also, whoever invented the elliptical machine really didn't thoroughly examine the mechanics of the human body. For those of you who've never seen one, it's like a standing bicycle. It's supposed to be better for your knees than running. But I toppled over every three minutes. There's just no way to balance on a thing like that. And then when I'd fall off, the machine made this high-pitched beeping noise and told me to pedal faster.

I'd rather have to get new knees at forty.

I hope this post makes you feel enlightened.

Will someone else plan my lessons for me?

Today was not productive at all. In fact, today was counterproductive--

and not because I wasn't working on what I was supposed to be working on, not because I wasn't working at all, but because, through working on what I was supposed to be working on, I figured out that I had DONE. IT. ALL. WRONG. Three weeks' worth of lesson planning done completely wrong. Un-useable junk.

Well, at least I understand the curriculum now.

Right now, I should be feeling frustrated. But, due to my quitter attitude and my procrastinator's mentality, I am seeing this as an opportunity to stop trying. At least for today.

Yesterday, I finished all but four points on my extensive to-do list. Today I only finished one. I made the bed. *pats self on the back*

Discipline?

I have none. No discipline. Whatsoever.

This is a problem on many levels. Except one. When I know I should be getting something done (ie: Lesson Planning), I do something else awesome (like make an amazing craft). The thrill of knowing I am supposed to be doing something else serves as great creative juice.

Bad.

Also, I am not giving myself the One Line a Day book. Because I failed to prove to myself that I could do it. Not only that, but I don't have enough discipline to only write one line. Once I start, it just keeps going. Evidenced by this post.

I suppose I could argue that not-buying the book because I failed to be disciplined is a form of discipline. But that's only because I want to feel better about it.

And here comes a collage of what I've been up to these past few weeks (details to come):

P.S. Today I tested the chalkboard spray paint on cardboard. It worked (sort of). But I think it's mostly intended for wood.

Tonight, I tried to make a strawberry-rhubarb coffee cake for Z to eat. I burned a half-inch-thick-charcoal crust along the base of it.

Disappointing. Maybe he'll pretend he can't see the blackened base and eat it anyway. "Mmmm, good, honey!"