Getting Personal...

So I've been thinking about writing this post for about two weeks now, but haven't actually sat down to do so.

Stephen and I were fortunate enough to go visit my littlest sister, Sam, for her high school graduation. She's seriously amazing. She's the recipient of the Horatio Alger Scholarship, among other academic and sport scholarships and is headed to college in Seattle in the fall to play soccer and become a nurse.

For those of you who are confused, Sam is technically my half-sister, but we are definitely full sisters, as we so deliciously found out during the trip. Attached at the hip? Check. Ordering the same food? Check. Making the same ridiculous faces during photos? Check. Honey Bunches of Oats fanatics? Double check. Plus we both think it's cool that we look alike.

That was something that was new - looking like family members. Totally new to me (being adopted - I do look similar to my mom, and Megan, my other sister, looks suspiciously like our dad, but it's a total coincidence - or God's way of pointing out we were meant to be in this family together). I had the extreme fortune of meeting cousins and an aunt and uncle that I'd never known before - and boy do I fit in to the Porter family well. Stephen's always saying my family would be an excellent study in learned and genetic behavior (this is too true).

Now for the gritty details: I've known my biological mother, Rhonda, my whole life. She's had a close relationship to my family (especially when we still lived in California - she visited all the time [bringing me stickers and rocks and other cool things! Yes, Momma Rhonda, I remember that]). But never once for eighteen years did anyone ever talk about my biological father. All I knew is he never visited me and my parents didn't know anything about him. Sometime during high school, I asked Rhonda about him and she told me his name and a bit about him. It was interesting. I was definitely interested - timidly interested, but still.

Right after my eighteenth birthday the coolest thing ever happened: Sally called my mom and told her all about how she had been married to Phil (my biological father) and they had a daughter named Samantha. I had been even more curious about potential siblings than I had been about my biological father - so this was totally cool. Sam and I started emailing back and forth (she was 12), and naturally we had a lot in common (both playing the flute? check).

When Stephen and I got engaged, it seemed only natural that I wanted both of my sisters as my bridesmaids. Even at this point, Sam felt to me just as much of a sister as Megan was. It seemed wildly unlikely that her mom would want to fly her fifteen-year-old daughter to a wedding for family she didn't know. It turns out I didn't know how great Sally was.

Me with my sisters - Sam and Megan! 

That was a great time in my life. Unfortunately, weddings are hectic, and I didn't get to spend nearly as much time with Sam as I'd wanted to. And also unfortunately, we're poor, so traveling isn't always easy for us. But I was determined to visit Sam for her high school graduation, and so we did - and it was one of the best trips we've ever been on. We loved Portland, we loved the family, and I really, really loved spending time with my little sis. 

Now on to the real meat and potatoes - the biological father. (cue dramatic music - no? okay, no.) So I figured I'd be meeting him at the graduation, but when the time came, I completely panicked. I've not heard nice things about him from anyone, and he doesn't mean anything to me. That seems cold, but the curiosity I had about him waned after I got to know Sam and realized how little of a positive influence he had been in her life. Part of me is angry at him for not treating her better and being a better father to my beloved sister. And I've got a wonderful father in my life, so why make myself sick with anxiety about meeting this man I don't know? 

Unfortunately life didn't see it that way, and the introduction happened - much to everyone's discomfort.  I mean, how does one strike up a conversation with a biological parent? It went a lot like "Hi, I'm Phil;" "Hi, I'm Vanessa," "We're in town for a few days." "Yeah, the weather's great." You can imagine the uncomfortable awkward glances and nervous gestures and foot shifting. Oh, there was handshake involved, too. I think it's cliche to say that the minutes dragged like hours...but oh, they did. So cliche or not, that's the way it was. Oh, and to cap things off, my IBS was acting up, so I physically felt super great, too. (Probably nothing to do with anxiety and nerves, right?)

But the kicker, the straw that broke the metaphorical-no-it-turns-out-I-don't-like-my-biological-father-for-sure camel's back was his parting remark to my husband: "Take good care of her."

Really?! The sheer audacity of that shocked me. I literally had nothing to say - in fact, it took me almost 24 hours to understand how I felt: I was pissed. What right did he have to say that? None. He's most definitely not my father. He's known about me for twenty-four years, known my name, had multiple opportunities to visit me when I was young, email me when I was older, and Facebook me in recent times. He knows that Sam and I are close, and that she came to my wedding, and that I was coming to Portland to see her. I'm not angry that he's never made contact - because I haven't either. I don't feel that pull - I don't feel any need or any want to know him or have a relationship of any kind with him. And it's okay with me that he (presumably) feels the same way. But that means he's given up any right to say something along the lines of "take care of her" to my husband. First of all, I'm 24 and perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Secondly, even if I weren't - he'd have no way of knowing that. 

Now while you're squirming in your seat with discomfort at this entire situation - I'd like to point out a few thing: 

1 - I have definitely encountered the most awkward moment of my entire life at age 24. Nothing in my life will ever top that - it's all down hill from here! I no longer have to worry about uncomfortable moments, because that was it. 

2 - Besides the awkward meeting - I adore the rest of his family. Amy, Mercedes, Mariah, Megan, Mark, Janice, and of course Vienna - you welcomed me into your family despite the fact that Phil is Phil, and made me excited to be a part of your family. I can't wait to visit and hang out more! 

3 - Sam's mom is like another mom to me (I mean, how many moms am I lucky enough to have!?) and never once made us feel like we were an imposition or unwanted because of our odd connection to the family - and is amazing for letting her 12 year old daughter get to know a complete stranger. 

4 - My sister. Words just can't describe that feeling. 

And yes, it was June 9th and we were wearing sweaters.
Gotta love the Northwest. 

So there you go - an in depth, awkward-filled story that I'm sure some of your are curious about. If not, rest assured the blog posts will resume normalcy shortly - I'm not sure how much soul-baring I can do on the interwebs without feeling completely creepy. 

Love,

Vanessa

Summer To-Do

Today's my first Monday off for summer break, and I'm enjoying it by doing some laundry and watching a lot of The Office on Netflix. Winning.

But, as both my mother and husband have pointed out, I should probably actually accomplish some things this summer (hardee har har you guys). So in the hopes of actually getting these things done, I'm posting them here for you to see (motivation, right?). So here we go:

• New window treatments in the master bedroom. 
• Window treatments in the small bedroom (Stephen's office).
• Window treatments in the guest bedroom (do you see a pattern here?). 
• Spray paint a whole lotta picture frames that are gathered in the basement. 
• Re-paint the master bedroom. 
• Upholster our boxspring for a makeshift bedframe. 
• Do at least one get rid of 100-things weekend. 
• Get rid of the fan in the guest room (okay, this is more something Stephen has to do). 
• Grow some basil and lavender. (I didn't tend to my garden this year...)
• Organize my classroom units into binders. 

I think that's about it for now, although I may definitely add to it. What about you guys? Any summer projects? I know Stephen's planning on finishing our master bathroom (woot!) among some other things.

Love,
Nessa

Yearbooking

You'll have to excuse my recent absence from blogging...it's been almost two months! But between preparing my English I and English II classes for EOC's, planning and executing prom (which involved doing the catering, building the decor, and photographing the event), and finishing up the yearbook, I've hardly had any time to do anything else except sleep and eat. So here's a blog post about my reason for not blogging: yearbook! 

We use an amazing company called Walsworth: 

As you can see, we've sold 120 yearbooks and can do everything from marketing
to keeping track of student and business lists on this site. 

Without this company, it's unlikely I would have been able to do yearbook. They provided me with everything from lesson plans to theme ideas and directions on how to use online design. Speaking of online design, here it is: 

This is where yearbook happens. You can see from our book progress that we have 52 spreads submitted (woo!). A spread is the two pages you see at the same time when you open a book. Submitted means it's 100% done and we can't make any changes without contacting the company and paying a bunch of money. We only have five spreads left before we're finished: one is the track spread - it's done, but we're waiting to see if one student goes to state today before we submit it; one is an ad page (we're waiting for one more ad to place, then it's finished); one is graduation (which doesn't even happen until tomorrow); and the others are the index pages. The end is in sight! 

From there, I can get to all spreads: 

This is the track spread. It's finished, but we'll add the info of the girl's times today if she qualifies for state track. Fartlecked is some weird track term they use - silly, right? If you look, you can see the blue lines that make columns. If I've said "Make sure you align everything to the columns" once, I've said eight thousand times this year. Apparently it's a hard concept to remember to line up your copy and photos and captions to the columns.

I spend a majority of my time super-zoomed in checking spelling, grammar, column alignments, photo quality, and just about everything you can imagine. Hence why my eyes are tired.

I usually catch things like sophomore being capitalized, a missing comma or period, and making sure the captions are justified correctly. This one is not, so I had to fix it.

You can see here how the captions are aligned to the columns and justified
so that the sides touch the column breaks. We do this on the captions to make
the columns more pronounced, which leads to a cleaner looking page. 

My editor-in-chief and I spend a lot of my time in the ladder section, checking the proofs, approving them or sending them back to be edited, and then submitting. It's laid out in a way that makes it easy for us to follow the progress of the spreads. Nothing is ever submitted until she and I have spent (probably hours) pouring over the pages and making changes and tweeks. We both okay it before I submit the final page.

Here's an example of a page that isn't complete: the colophon and first page of the index. As a rule, we don't do any collages in the yearbook, but they wanted to continue the tradition started by last year's editor-in-chief of adding a collage to the colophon. Our yearbook staff was pretty big this year (20 students), so the editors decided to add some of the silly pictures and quotes from throughout the year to this page. We're an odd group, I must admit, but we sure do have fun. 

The colophon tells all the information about the book (page numbers, paper type, fonts, etc.)
The white space will be the beginning of the index, but we can't flow the index until
all the pages are complete, so we're still waiting. 

I think our yearbook looks pretty darn awesome. The theme is "The Writing on the Wall", so for our divider pages we have different walls fro around the school that we photographed with pictures from that section. For example, the nerd page (academic spread) has pictures from classes. The theme copy is all about breaking out of stereotypes and writing your own story. My kiddos are pretty decent writers. 

In case you can't read the copy, it says:
"If a 'nerd' is defined as an intelligent person, then this school is filled with 'nerds'. Every student
here has a passion for something, whether it be math, foreign languages, conditioning, art, or chemistry.
At North Platte, there are a variety of classes providing everyone with the chance to be a 'nerd'. There are
classes that students excel in, and others they don't do so well in, but the most important thing is that
each student discovers the class that motivates him to be a 'nerd'. 

So yeah, that's the gist of our book. And because I just can't resist, I had to share a few of my favorite pages:

This is a special spread, meaning the topic changes each year. This year,
the students decided to focus on students who volunteer at the local
firefighting stations. 

For one of the academic spreads, they did a spread on Media.
Our photographer (pictured here, obviously) is graduating this year, so they
talked about that, and decided to share with the students how a yearbook page is set up.
It's pretty cool. 

The football spread is one of the best looking spreads, in my opinion. I love the background. 

So this is what has been consuming my life for the past nine months, but especially the past few weeks. We have 3.5 days of school  left and five spreads to complete. With graduation tomorrow, Monday's sure to be exceptionally busy - editing and placing photos, writing the story, writing captions, editing, and tagging the students that are quoted. 

I'll be sure to post pictures of the cover when the book is printed and shipped to us in August (I hate that I have to wait!) 

Were any of you in yearbook? Did you do the cut and paste onto the page instead of doing it all online? Yearbook's certainly changed a lot. 

Love,

Vanessa

How To:

We've done a few "how to" things both on this blog and on Stephen's, but I haven't told you how to make it through the day as a first year teacher (and since I've made it through over 100, I guess I sorta have it down). So, without further, we introduce:

How to: make it through the day as a first year teacher. 




1. Keep food in your desk.
Crackers and granola bars for rumbly tummies; ramen for forgotten lunches; and chocolate for bad days.

2. Always have tons of stuff to drink. 
 My mouth gets super dry when I lecture, so I always have a large container of water (to refill my water container and boil water with for tea) in my room. 

3. Tissues
Yup. For when someone makes you angry. It doesn't hurt to have backup mascara in your desk, either...

4. Be more organized than is required. 
I am ultra organized (individual file folders for every single assignment categorized into crates for each class? check), and still things slip through my mind and get forgotten (still working on that). I have a specific home for every single thing in my room (student's stuff and my own) and if it's not in it's home, it doesn't exist.

5. Learn to grit your teeth and smile. Oh, and bite your tongue.
No matter how much you want to, or how much he deserves it, do not tell that annoying freshman to shut the **** up. (You have to say it nicely - meh)


6. Don't start Senior Superlatives in your Yearbook. 
Here's one I learned too late: not because it didn't turn out great (it did), or because any of the students were upset (they weren't) but because it's new. People don't like change. 

7. Have at least one student aides. 
They're really good at making copies. And if they're not really good at making copies, they will be by the time you finish with them!

8. Find one student who likes to play practical jokes.
You'll end up searching for things like the remote to the elmo, staplers, and post-it notes (and possibly even the entire class), but the reverse is you get to have your revenge by putting hundreds of used post-it notes in their camera bag to find before the big game. 


9. Don't be a junior class sponsor.
Just don't. You know that analogy about having one too many things on your plate? That 'thing' is junior class sponsor (concession stands and prom? no thank you).

10. Keep your liquor cabinet stocked up. 
At the risk of sounding like an alcoholic...this is always a good idea for after the really long, headachey days.  

11. Always remember it could be worse.
You could be in a cubicle, working summers, not getting holidays off or doing something that doesn't have the potential to be completely awesome. 


Love,
Mrs. Waters