The results came back. I have pertussis and pneumonia. Gee, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to me. I am grateful to have gone in for a second opinion because if I would have believed what that yahoo of a first doctor had said to me, I would have been miserable and much more ill than what I currently am.

In better news, I had a family-filled Christmas. Christmas Eve was very low-key as we skipped our usual visiting and church services because I felt so rotten. I've never missed visiting on Christmas Eve, so it just didn't feel right. I feel guilty because we always go to visit my godparents. My godfather passed away in February of this year, and Christmas Eve was his birthday. My godmother just sold her house and moved into an apartment, and nothing was the same. I feel pretty guilty not going to see her because she's had a hard year. Even though Claus had living in the nursing home with Alzheimer's for quite a while, it's still difficult to believe that he isn't here with us, laughing and joking. I didn't buy a bag of Hershey's kisses for the first time in probably 20 years. I always gave him a bag of those for Christmas because they were his favorite.

Christmas Day I spent with my dad's side of the family. It was so nice to spend time with my nephews. I rarely see them except for holidays because I live 3.5 hours from the rest of the family. They don't come and see me, so I always have to make the trek to see them. It gets old, but I don't want to miss out on the boys growing up. I saw my stepdad's side of the family and some of my mom's family on Christmas Day morning while I was on my way to my Dad's. My parent's host Christmas dinner for those people who are without family or friends or resources at the store. My sister and her brood, and my cousin and her family came to help out. It sure was busy there! I wish that I could have stayed because it sounds like it was a lot of fun.

Every time I come back home, I feel like I really should move back. Maybe not back to my hometown, but somewhere that isn't so far away. I certainly don't want to teach up here again- been there, done that at most of the schools around via ITV. I'm still trying to work out what I want to do when I grow up. I love spending the time with my students, that's why I've been teaching for 9 years. It's the rest of the bureaucratic crap that I deal with that's pushing me away. Tell me in what other profession out there are the people who make the decisions and mandates not members of that profession?

Anyway, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, or whatever you happen to believe or not believe in. 2009 is just around the corner, and may it be a better year than 2008!

I was tired of trying to deal with the doctor that I went to the week before last, especially since the pertussis test came back negative, but I still feel horrible, so I decided to wait until I could go to my regular doctor to see what was really up. Wow, that was a long sentence. Anyway, I just had a set of chest x-rays and a pertussis titer drawn. And the doctor took me seriously. Imagine that.

I got to see the x-rays, and there is definitely something going on in my lungs; they look "fuzzy". The dr. thinks that perhaps I have chronic bronchitis, pneumonitis, or asthma, besides having pertussis. You see, a negative throat swab test does not mean that you may not actually have pertussis. The blood test is a better test, but it's going to take 7-10 days for it to come back since it's the holidays. My symptoms are classic pertussis, and, shocker I know, someone actually believes me! I got a prescription for antibiotics and prescription cough medicine to help. I also found out that my backache is due to all of the coughing. The x-ray results should be back from the radiologist by Monday since the rest of the week is blown due to Christmas.

I'm hoping that this treatment helps because the next step is an appointment with a pulmonologist, and that will be way pricey!

Recently one of my classes was playing a board game that involved trivia about Spain. One of the questions asked was, "What is cocido?" The student being asked incorrectly answered, and so the student asking the question read the answer. It went pretty much like this-

Student says, "Cocido is a type of soup made with chicken pee."

Teacher chokes at desk and says, "Um, chick peas."

Student says, with a blank look on his face, "Huh?"

The other students' eyes grow wide upon realizing what other student had accidentally said, and they start laughing uproariously. It takes the poor student a moment or two to realize his mistake, and then he joins in the laughter, but with a bright red face.

These kids just crack me up!

I still wasn't feeling any better this morning with my cough, in fact I was feeling worse than ever, so I decided to call my hometown doctor to see if there was anything she could do. I talked to her nurse, gave her my symptoms, told her about my pertussis test last week, and she was astonished when I told her that I hadn't been given any antibiotics, cough syrup, or told to stay out of school for 5 full days of antibiotic usage. Unfortunately, my doctor couldn't diagnose me over the phone, so she told me to call the doctor I saw here and complain. So, that's what I did. Well, that's what I tried to do.

I talked to a nice nurse who upon hearing that I was a teacher said that she would talk to my doctor right away to find out what was up with my test and if I should be in school or not. She said she would call me back asap. This was 10:00am. Fast forward to 2:30pm, and she hasn't called back. The school nurse is offering to have the state health department call the doctor and pressure him into giving me something because they want to be very proactive about this and not let it spread. I told her to wait until I've heard back from the nurse.

So, I called again. It turns out that the doctor is out sick, and his nurse isn't there either, and that I was talking to a triage nurse in the morning. I leave a message for her, and she calls me back fairly quickly. She let's me know that the doctor was out ill and had my records with him?? The computers had been down that day I was there, and my records had been hand-written and not entered into the computer the next day as they were supposed to have been. She said she would check with the lab on my test and get back to me before the end of the business day.

Fast forward again a couple of hours, and she called me back. The lab had grown my culture in the wrong stuff. I didn't realize there was more than one kind of stuff to grow bacteria in. Anyway, they just realized this when she called about my test, and so they need to completely re-do the test. Have I mentioned that the test takes 8-12 days? She apologizes and then tells me she really doesn't know if I should be in school or not because the sick doctor has my records so the on-call doctor can make any assessments. She is apologizing profusely at this point and tells me that she will get this all taken care of as soon as the doctor arrives tomorrow morning. I asked what would happen if he was still sick tomorrow- no answer, so let's not go there! She also tells me that I should maybe think about taking tomorrow off while waiting to find out what to do.

Am I taking tomorrow off? Of course not! My principal told me that I should only take it off if I wasn't feeling well because she doesn't want to dramatize this whooping cough thing and doesn't believe that anyone will get it from me if I have it because the kids have been vaccinated. Newsflash! I've been vaccinated too!

And people wonder why I continue to do my doctoring in my home town?

If you weren't sure that winter had arrived up here, after this weekend you would have no doubt. We only got 7 inches of snow, but the wind and the temps have certainly created a mess out there. Last night I knew that school was going to be 2 hours late, so I set the alarm for 8:00am, and when I woke up, school had been canceled for the day! I love snow days!

I have a few Brazilian foreign exchange students that I can't wait to talk to tomorrow. They just couldn't believe that we could have temperatures below 0F, which would be -17.7C. The temperature is currently -11F (-23.8C), and when the wind chill factor is added in, it is -32F (-35.5C). And that is our high temperature for the day!

I'm getting really excited for Christmas. I love this time of year, and I really wish that the holidays lasted through January, the dreariest month of the year.

Every year I go to my mom's for Christmas Eve and my dad's for Christmas Day. I have no say in what I have at my Dad's, but I always get to pick the menu for Christmas Eve (which I suspect is because I have done the lion's share of the work making it since I was in upper elementary). Now don't think that my mom and stepdad are lazy bums; they work on Christmas Eve as they own a gas station/convenience store/pizza shop. They both work Christmas Eve morning, and my stepdad always works the evening shift so that the rest of their employees can be at home with their families. It's pretty dead in our little town on Christmas Eve after the early church services.

Anyway, we traditionally have potato klub as the main dish. Klub is a Scandinavian dumpling made of ground potatoes, flour, salt, and baking powder. You have to squeeze all of the water out of the potatoes before you can mix everything together because the dumplings are boiled, and if they are too wet, you will end up with klub soup instead of dumplings. Sometimes we put a piece of sausage or fat back in the middle of the dumpling, but I prefer to leave it out. They are boiled for 45-60 minutes along with a few chunks of onion and some sausage. They are served with lots of butter and are the size of baseballs. One will fill you up, and two will make you miserable. They are even better the next morning fried up in lots of butter for breakfast. Yum! I can't wait!

Also on this list this year: korv, creamed peas, and appetizers to hold us over through church and peeling, cutting up, grinding, and squeezing all of those potatoes. It goes a lot faster now that we have the grinder attachment for the Kitchen Aide. I used to have to attach the old hand-crank grinder to a stool and manually grind the potatoes.

Can someone please explain to me why a test for an extremely contagious illness takes longer to get the results from than the period of being contagious?

There's a confirmed case of Pertussis, aka Whooping Cough, at my school. The staff found out yesterday, and we all got Dept. of Health information sheets to educate ourselves about it and our students as well. According to this information, I have all of the symptons, and the fact that it is extremely contagious made me decide to go to the doctor and be tested. So I got a thin wire probe shoved up my nose and down my throat to "swab" for a culture. That just makes it sound so much more pleasant than it really was. And after this was done? I was told that the results would take 8-12 days to come in, and by then if I had it, I wouldn't be contagious anymore. So if I do have it, I get to go back to school and merrily spread it around.

Perhaps this is the reason why it's becoming much more common all of a sudden, hmmmm?

Could they make the trailer for Terminator: Salvation any more of a Batman rip-off? I understand they want to capitalize on Christian Bale, but where's the originality? I'm still excited to see it because Christian Bale has been one of my favorite actors ever since "Newsies," and I really liked Terminator 2. I skipped out on Terminator 3 because it just didn't look any good, even though it would have been neat to see some of the robots. Their track systems were made in my hometown by a company called Mattracks. After Terminator 3 came out, they had an open house at the company with tours that included one of the robots. It was very impressive to see in real life.

They got it! Wahoo! My 6th hour class was able to successfully grasp the concept of the present tense and use it as well! They were even reasonably quiet during notes, and most of them even wrote everything down as well. I was pretty impressed with them. Now the biggest hurdle will be for them to remember that nosotros means we and vosotros means you all.

I tried two new recipes today. One was Weight Watchers friendly, and the other was so not! I haven't had a chance to taste either of them, but they both seem like they'll be good ones. I have Chicken with Coke Zero Barbecue Sauce in the slow cooker, and Hollywood Squares, which are supposed to be better than peanut butter cups, chilling in the fridge. If they taste good, I'll post the recipes (and then quickly put the treats in the freezer to keep them for Christmas and away from me!).

Updated: Both recipes were smash hits! One day I'll remember to take a picture of what I make before I eat it or put it away.

Chicken with Coke Zero Barbecue Sauce

This is a perennial Weight Watchers favorite, but I changed it up a bit using Coke Zero instead of Diet Coke. The sauce seems like only a little bit at the beginning, but it was enough for twice as much chicken in the end. If you are counting points, the sauce total is 6 points, and the chicken I used is 2 points per piece.

I served this with pasta, using the barbecue sauce as pasta sauce, and it was delicious! Rice or potatoes would also compliment this dish.

6 skinless, bone-in chicken thighs
1 cup ketchup
1 can Coke Zero
2 T cornstarch
water

Put the first three ingredients in a slow cooker. Cook on High for 4 hours or on Low for 6-8 hours. When there is about an hour left, make a slurry out of the cornstarch and a little bit of water and add it to the slow cooker. You may want to add more cornstarch if you like a thicker sauce.

Hollywood Squares
Adapted from The Homesteading Housewife

Bar
2 C Crunchy Peanut Butter
2 1/2 C Powdered Sugar
1/2 C Brown Sugar
1 t Vanilla
1/2 C Butter, melted
1/2 C Graham Cracker Crumbs- I used 4 full sheets, even though it was a bit more than 1/2 cup worth

Topping
2 Oz. Semi-Sweet Chocolate
1 T Crunchy Peanut Butter

Mix all ingredients for the bars together. A stand mixer is good for this. Press into an 8x8 pan. Melt the chocolate and peanut butter together, mix well. Spread this over the bars and chill until set.

These are very rich, so I cut them into 64 pieces.

I work in a job where positive comments are a rare being. I'm sure you all remember being in school, and I highly doubt that you spent your days telling your teachers and coaches how much you appreciated what they did, or at least, I certainly didn't! Being on the other side now, when I do hear a positive comment, it really makes my day.

We just started Knowledge Bowl practice for the season this week, and I had a student come in and say, "You are the best Knowledge Bowl coach ever! I've been waiting for practice to start for a year!" It is so nice to get a pat on the back like that.

So my challenge for you is to drop a note (I cherish all of the hand-written notes I've received over the years) telling one of your teachers, or many of your teachers!, what you appreciated about them or their class, or even that you actually learned something in their class. You will certainly make their day.

You know, there's a reason why I teach high school and not elementary. This morning I wasn't sure which I was teaching.

I looked up from my desk this morning to see on of my junior boys digging his finger up his nose, digging for gold. I immediately looked away because that was just gross. Well, I looked back at him a few seconds later, and what do you think he was doing? His finger had traveled from his nose to his mouth! I really did think that I was going to be physically ill. I hope to never see that again in my life!

Today was a good day with my 6th hour class. I think, fingers crossed, I might be starting to figure out how they think. That's not to say that I like it because I think they thrive in chaos, but it's a starting point. I'm thinking of researching learning stations that work for high school students, the big drawback is that I can't clone myself to be at each of the stations to explain and help with each little problem. These kids have been trained extremely well to be helpless when it comes to any size and sort of problem. It's like all of their systems shut down, and they have a panic attack if they don't immediately understand how to do something. I don't think that I could re-train them, heaven knows I've been trying, to get them to read the instructions before doing something, which would cut down on at least 50% of the problems. One of the teachers who posts on the Foreign Language Teach list serve calls this "Learned Helplessness," and I have to agree with him.

Do you remember the first day back to school after a vacation? How tired you were in the morning, and how much you wished that it could still be Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or Easter? I'll bet you never thought that the teachers felt the same way you did!

I had a particularly slow to wake up morning today, and it took me almost all of 1st hour to wake up. We're reading a short novel in that class, and while I was reading the chapter to them, I kept thinking, "Am I really reading this? Or am I sleeping and dreaming?"

Thank goodness my 2nd hour kids are much more active than my sleepy seniors and juniors 1st hour. I spent a couple of periods doing a straight lecture today, and gosh, did that feel nice! I enjoy lecturing, but kids don't enjoy it as much as I do (what a shock!), so I keep the lectures for the really big important topics. Today we were working on how to conjugate the present tense. I've spent 9 years perfecting how to introduce this so that it both makes sense and is simple to do. So far, it seems like it's all systems go. The real test is when I introduce this in my 6th hour class next week. If they can whine and complain their way through it and still get it, I know I'm good.

Speaking of those 6th hour kids, they're still up to their no-good tricks. They may have dialed back a bit though after they good the poor attitude comments on their report cards. Mid-quarter is coming up this week, so progress reports go out. We'll see if that keeps them on their toes. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the rest of my classes are stupendous. They are so great that if I didn't have this 6th hour nightmare, I would be floating through each day. So why is it that I can't stop dwelling on this horrid class? My guess is that I feel the need to fix everything. Oh, and being human, too. :)