Here A Duck, There A Duck, Everywhere A Duck Duck

 Here I am, getting my act together for the new y--ahahaahaaahaaaa! Maybe I should insert "trying to" in there. I MEAN well, but let's face it, my ducks are NEVER all in a row*. Oh, one or two follow me, but the rest are wandering. One fell in the lake. A couple of them are eating cheese like there's no tomorrow. 

*legendary story - once upon a time ago, I worked at a law firm with a sweet but dingy girl named Kay. She had just finished typing some letters that had been dictated (raise your hand if you ever used a dictaphone). She brought one of them around to all the secretaries and read it to them, because she thought it was so funny. In essence, the attorney had dictated "...let's get all our ducks in a row..." but Kay thought he said "let's get all our dicks in a row." One of the secretaries gently told her the phrase was "ducks," NOT "dicks," and she was so disappointed. "I kept picturing all these different dicks lined up, short ones and long ones and fat ones and skinny ones. Oh, well!" And off she went to correct the letter. 

Anyway, mine are DUCKS and I'll always be trying to round them up. Caught the one responsible for writing the Ten Things of Thankful, so here they are:

1. My class had a delightful holiday season! They were sooooo excited for Christmas! We did lots of seasonal activities and drank hot chocolate and sang Christmas songs and made gifts for our parents (and wrapped them ourselves!). We played bells to "Jingle Bells," and then to "Jingle Bell Rock," which led me to telling them about this cute dance some girls did to that song. I pull up the scene from "Mean Girls" and show it to them without thinking about it possibly being a little inappropriate for the audience. Which it was, but they didn't notice that part, and they asked to see it EVERY SINGLE DAY. 

2. I had eleven days off. Of those eleven days, I only spent three of them in my home, but it was worth it. My daughter (the almost-attorney) was home, my son and daughter in law (the doctors) came back for a couple of days, and my brother and niece (my sister in law recently had knee replacement surgery and wasn't able to be with us) came for a few days. We also went to Tulsa to spend time with my husband's sister and her family. It was all lovely, but I had to go back to work to get some rest!

My dad with his grandchildren

With my son

My kids: daughter, son, daughter in law

With my brother

3. Oh, one of the reasons I was exhausted from the festivities is because my husband shared his MAN COLD with me. He spent the week BEFORE Christmas huddled under a blanket in his recliner, coughing, checking his temperature (he never had one), taking a COVID test (negative), and going through a box of kleenex. The day before Christmas Eve, it was MY turn for the cold. I spent the duration of it wrapping gifts, grocery shopping, cleaning, baking cookies and making caramel popcorn, fixing meals, feeding cats, returning to work. No blanket. No recliner. I still have the dregs of it more than two weeks later, but there's a light at the end of the cold tunnel.

4. The long-anticipated addition of a garage and workshop to my dad's house is going well. It's all framed now, roof on it, and it's going to be fantastic to have the space.

5. Dealing with this construction project has taught my husband and me that we are never, never, EVER building a house.

6. I am thankful for cheese. I had a lot of cheese over the holidays. I'm currently in a 12 step program for it.

7. I FINALLY completely straightened and organized the closet in my classroom. It's only taken five months of being in that classroom to get it done. There's a duck! Next project is to finish organizing the observation room that is attached to my classroom. That duck takes off just as I get close to finishing the project, but I feel my duck corralling skills are on point right now, so we shall see if I can get it done.

8. I'm thankful (thanks to my daughter) to discover the Libby app for my phone. I haven't been reading very much the past few years, and now that I can just pick up my phone and read a book, I've returned to being a voracious reader! I'm reading David Sedaris's "Theft By Finding Diaries 1977-2002." I have enjoyed his readings of his works on NPR for years, but I didn't know very much about him. Let's just say that if I didn't already know he was alive and well, I wouldn't have thought he would have survived the 70s.

9. Speaking of my daughter, big shout out to her for her hard work so far in law school. She just got word that she received her second CALI Excellence for the Future Award. Don't ask me to explain this, because I can't, but it's a nation-wide program that around 200 law schools participate in where the top grade in each class is recognized. She got a CALI in the summer of '22 in Professional Responsibility, and she was just informed she got a CALI for her just-completed Estates and Trusts class. We are so proud of her!

10. Hey, I just remembered that I, too had to pass an exam. Long, dull story, but in order to fulfill a grant at work, I had to take a standardized exam (Missouri Educator Gateway Assessment/Early Childhood Education and never mind that I have LIFETIME CERTIFICATION K-6 and had a minor in early childhood education). Oh, and I also had to pass it. Our student workers who are education majors must also take this test in their content areas to graduate and receive their teaching certification, but they also prepare for it as part of their classes. I had not taken a standardized test since I took the ACT in 1978, so I was a wee little bit stressed about taking this one, but I NAILED IT. Yay, me!

Start your new year the TToT way and join us every weekend for the Ten Things of Thankful. Write a post. Link it up. Read and comment. Rinse and repeat.

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