Awkward and Awesome.

Awkward.

-Not remembering I have my wedding dress fitting until my phone gives me a ten minute reminder. Can’t help but feel like a bride that dropped the ball on that one.
-Mosquito bites on your feet. Horrible. Terrible. Inconvenient. I’ve never had a mosquito bite on my face but I’d imagine that’s the only place that could be more awful than having them on your feet.

Awesome.

-Going into Panera and the puppy is in the backseat. Coming out of Panera and the puppy looks like she’s driving the car. Sadly I left my phone in the car and wasn’t able to snap a picture. I’ll just sum it up as adorable.
-I have a serious appreciation for organization. I am an organizer. People who aren’t organized confuse me. When I find someone who is organized like myself and also appreciative of my organization I have an awesome moment. Passport office man and I had quite the chat about my preparedness and how we wish everyone else out there could just get on with the organized way of life.
-On my last day of work we had a giant water balloon/ shaving cream fight. I told the kiddos I wasn’t down for the fight, I’d strictly be an onlooker. Well it turns out when you tell one girl she can put one spot of shaving cream on your leg, it turns into you be covered head to toe, and in between the toes. The kids obviously enjoy smothering the teachers more than they do each other. Fairly certain my hair still has that minty shaving cream smell.

What’s been awkward and awesome lately? 

The Last Day.

Terrified, worried and obedient. These are the three words I would use to describe my first day of work. Almost exactly nine months ago I walked into my first day at my first post-grad job and somehow, hours later, I walked out alive.

When I graduated in May of 2011 I had no desire what so ever to get a job in the field in which I had just earned my degree. I had completed four years of college and the entire time I was there I was itching to take a trip somewhere to do service work. When I graduated and was officially obligation free I knew I had a unique period of time to do something different. I wanted to go somewhere and do something amazing, gain perspective on life, see a world I never knew existed, one so different from my own. Little did I know I’d find that place at the heart of the town I’ve always called home. Unemployed and directionless I turned to the outreach program at my church. They had pages upon pages of tutoring positions available at a local children’s ministry. I clicked past these pages quicker than you can say kelly’s not a kid person. However, Clint, also unemployed at the time, took a second look at these opportunities and investigated further. I guess this is fitting for someone who would soon land a job as a special investigator. While Clint was looking for service opportunities there, I was revisiting the Peace Corps website ever other day and attempting to tell myself it could be just what I was looking for. Long story made a bit short- When Clint went to the ministry to start tutoring they mentioned that they had a teaching position open that they needed to fill. Apparently he saw something in me I had yet to see in myself, and told them he had just the girl they needed. I hesitantly went in to hear about the position, filled out an application and soon after went for an interview. Days later I received a phone call offering me the position and that I would have a few days to consider. This is where I stand there in my driveway with a quizzical look on my face and think, what am I doing?! I am far from being qualified to be a teacher. I always thought the closest thing I’d ever get to being a teacher was having college roommates who were education majors. One thing I can now certainly attest to be true, and the mentality that led me to take a job in which I had no background or experience is that

God doesn’t always call the qualified
But he will always qualify the called

I have spent the past nine months doing something that in my heart, I felt God call me to do, and in only a way He can do, it has been the most incredible, rewarding, exciting, enriching, and life-changing thing I’ve ever done. It didn’t take a trip around the world or cold-showers in a hut off a dirt road. It took a drive ten minutes down the road and a bold faith that God had something great in store for me. Something far greater than what I could have ever hoped for.

Today I say goodbye to my students but I will be forever grateful to them. They taught me incredible lessons. They opened my eyes to the purity of a child’s faith and reminded me what it’s like to live in today, worry free of tomorrow. I can only hope that I’ve played a positive role in their lives. I hope that they become the teacher, vet, performer, artist, illustrator, soccer player, doctor, carolina panther, lego designer, and author that they dream of being now. But more than that, I hope they continue to dream big, to thank God for the individuals they are blessed to be and to be as kind and open-hearted to the next teacher as they were to me.

They’ll never know it, but I do believe they changed the course of my life. I don’t have a map of what’s to come, but I know where I’ve been and what I can do. And I am more confident now of my ability to accomplish anything I dream of than I have ever been before.

I am sad, I am excited, I am grateful and I am blessed.

Awkward And Awesome.

Hey people.

I actually wrote awkward and awesome yesterday on my phone while waiting patiently for my lovely dinner to be packaged into its to-go container, but never got around to posting it. I added in all the A&A that occurred between then and now.

Awkward.
-When the bottle of detergent is so heavy you have to let out a Serena Williams style ‘uhhhghghghg’ to lift it back up onto the shelf.
-Hugging little kids can be awkward, I try to avoid it at work. You see, I’m tall, five-year olds are short. They tend to wrap their little arms around me and land their hands in some not-so-appropriate places at times. And sometimes those little hands have chalk all over them and they leave a nasty little trail of all the places they’ve been, including the back-end of my white skirt.
-Pretty sure my co-workers think I’m anorexic. I don’t eat around the kids for a very specific reason; as darling and wonderful as they are, kids are down right gross. On a daily basis I pull one child’s hand out of his pants and the others out of his nose. My hands cannot get clean enough, and I probably couldn’t muster up an appetite if I tried. So while the staff eyes me up and down as I don’t partake in the ice cream party, I sit there and stare at sticky hands and watch as kids show a complete disregard for germs, it is NOT ok to pick your ice cream cone up off the floor and eat it, sadly, I might be alone in that thinking.

Awesome.
-I text Clint goodnight almost everyday (although I won’t lie, many nights end with me falling into a FRIENDS induced slumber). One of my favorite things is how he responds. He always tells me to have ‘pretty dreams’. Not sweet, not good, but pretty. I’m sure he thinks nothing of it, or maybe he does, but I love it.
-Our darling kitty, Sydney, stayed at my house over the weekend and it was so adorable. Forcing my sister, Kim, to hold her.. hysterical. From watching little Sydney box with my dangle earrings on my earring stand to snuggling up with her to watch a Braves game, she’s awesome.
-Today is me and Clint’s 78 month anniversary, that’s six and a half years folks. whoop whoop. LOVElove.

This next one I am going to categorize as Awkward and Awesome. Part of my job is helping my students do their homework from school. On occasion I have to brush up on some skills (multiplying fractions and such) and sometimes I find that the simple tasks can be surprisingly hard. Yes, I had to google ‘how to do long division’. People, we live in a calculator world, I got my TI-84 in 9th grade and haven’t looked back since. Anyway, one of my students had a math question that 100% had me. I was awkwardly trying to figure it out, remember I’m supposed to be the all-knowing teacher, and simultaneously freaking out that I could not let this child go home and tell her parents that dumb Miss Kelly couldn’t help with her homework. I have a diploma!! 3rd grade math should be a breeze!

Eventually, I pulled through and solved it. But I’ll give ten million awesome points to anyone else that can do it (because I solved this by extensive trial and error, no rhyme or reason).. so here it goes…

You have 100 pennies, 100 nickels, and 100 dimes. You have to use at least one of each coin. Using exactly 21 coins, make a combination that adds up to exactly $1. How many of each coin did you use?

Good luck peeps, let’s see how awesome you are.

What’s been awkward & awesome lately?