Forty-One

I am sure peppered throughout this blog are proclamations of how much I hate holidays. All holidays. Or, at the very least, there is self-promotion of myself celebrating the holidays in an effort to defer my deeply embedded hatred for holidays. All holidays.

Teacher's Appreciation Day was yesterday. My birthday is today, and Mother's Day is Sunday. I have often felt this week in May should just be declared National McHenry Appreciation Week. Ok, maybe not seriously... but I may just create a Wikipedia page for it and declare it official... hmmm!

That being said, my most dreaded holiday of all holidays is my birthday. Maybe that doesn't qualify as a "legitimate" holiday, but for tonight's purposes it does.

I know it's because I set such high expectations for a magical day- a perfect blending of a Disney Princess movie and "Martha Stewart Entertaining" rolled into one ball of confetti-throwing, candle-blowing bliss. I want to wake up to a room full of balloons and go to bed with paper cuts from all the cards (not even presents) that I opened. That's not setting myself up for failure at all, is it?

Today was a jumble of highs and lows, feeling completely appreciated and feeling completely disrespected,  some peaks & valleys related to my birthday, and some not at all. I'm going to choose to cherish the good things today though rather than allow my frustration about some issues fester within me. My biggest regret over the past year is just how quickly I let it race by. Like most years, it was a complete blur. I want so much to stop life from getting too busy to live in the moment once in a while, and to blog about those moment too, so here's one of them...

I had bus duty in the gym this morning. While away, the kids festooned my room with streamers and birthday signs to greet me when I started the day.

As if that weren't great enough (as much as I joke about wanting accolades, I don't handle such attention well... and may have hid in the Teacher's Work Center to avoid the kids... maybe), they also bought me a Bedazzler. Now, that is awesome for OBVIOUS reasons, but even moreso than the obvious reasons (Sparkle!), I just off-handedly joked around last month about wanting to bedazzle everything after watching "Gypsy Sisters," so it was a gift of reflection, thought, and appreciation. The Starbucks gift card was a pretty spiffy addition too!

But wait! The day's awesomeness did not stop there in all its bedazzled glory! Last night the Relay team waited tables at Pino's Pizza and raised over $600 in tips (and that was following our bountiful lunch spread for Teacher Appreciation Day, which repeated today with enough left-overs for an entirely extra luncheon)! And with that added to our funds raised thus far this year...I need a new poster!