Today has been a whirlwind.  New state legislation can possibly make my job completely and totally impossible to complete without cheating, but this is not the point of my blog.

Today was a day where things went wrong all morning, and started to come around after lunch.  During the time when I was feeling like things were getting better I got a migraine in the loudest class of my day.  I managed to keep them quiet, despite the fact that they fought me on doing the assignment that meant they have no homework, but they did stay quiet enough that I didn’t have to get too terribly upset.

The next thing that happened was one of the most inspiring and ingratiating thing that has happened to me in a long time.  I added to my PowerPoint that I had a migraine, and when my students came in one stood at my door and made sure the kids coming in the room were extremely quiet.  Then as the kids came in, they all shhh-ed any student who got loud.  When the bell rang, they were all working on their bellwork, and you could have heard a pin drop in my room.  Now, please note that this is the last period of the day with 25 8th graders in it, and today was the basketball game against our biggest rival.

The entire period, not one student yelled, talked back or raised his or her voice.  They were all quiet and respectful, and when I put them in groups, it was never above a loud whisper.  I realized how wonderful it was to work with a group of student who actually care about me as a person.  I am not just this monster who stands in front of them day after day and rants about diagramming sentences and transitive verbs.  They know who I am and that I love to knit, that I suffer from mind blowing migraines, and that I am a total geek.  Even when the buses were being called, they all were quiet a rarity  no matter what grade level you teach.  They quieted a teacher who was yelling, they helped me with anything I asked and were more than gracious.

I managed to beat the pain back with drugs enough to meet a friend of mine who came up from Chattanooga for knitting.  She is a hand dyer, and her yarn is FABULOUS.  You can check her out here.  She had to drive to go to a meeting, and decided to meet my friend and myself at our local sit n’ knit.  We all hung out and had a great time.  It was a wonderful experience to have people who just appreciate the finer things in life like fiber and friends, and just hang out.  We all went to dinner and my new out of town friend gave me a beautiful skein of her hand dyed sock yarn.  It is purple, the best color in the world.

I realized as I was driving home how blessed I am, sure I moan and groan about my job, but I do have a lot of things that are going right.  I have a husband who loves me and who is making a job for himself as a freelance writer.  I have a sister who makes beautiful art, a mother and father who love me beyond recognition.  Maybe I can’t make my house payment, maybe I can’t buy that pair of shoes that I need, but I know that I have people around me that are committed to making it work and working hard to see that it will.

I just realized that I need to stop complaining so much and be grateful.  I have a lot of things other people don’t.  Granted a lot of those things staying in my life are in the air, but I realize that I can’t control that either.  I am doing everything I can to make this work, and I am working hard and with faith and sweat and a lot of tears, I know that God will not let us down.  If he did, he wouldn’t be God.

So, today I was reminded, I teach some pretty amazing students, I work with amazing people, I have an amazing family, and I have friends who help me with my yarn habit.

Students + yarn = gratitude