Deal or no deal

I can't believe it's April. I feel like these days my life is spent running from one appointment to the next, and I am constantly breathless and exhausted. I'm spinning so many plates right now, trying to keep them all going, and while I'm okay with the frenetic pace of it all, I keep thinking that a slowing-down is just around the corner. Problem is, that never seems to be the case.

We are set to move into our new house in a couple of weeks, and I haven't even thought of packing. Well, actually, I have thought about packing, but not enough to actually follow through with the action of doing so. That's pretty much the story of my life: I think about doing a lot of things (writing a letter to Grandma, exercising my increasingly flabby body, not missing friends' birthdays, writing, cleaning, sleeping) but when it comes down to putting action behind thought, I fail miserably. If I just didn't have to sleep; well, that would be fabulous.

I am in the process of working on my teacher certification. I took my big, scary ExCET exam last Saturday, and will get the results May 5. I haven't taken a test in 12 years, and this one was a doozy. The 90 multiple choice questions were hellish; they don't test you on your knowledge of English, grammar, literature, etc.; they want to know about your teaching methods. However, if you have never taught in public school before, you wouldn't know about said teaching methods, because the answers they are looking for are not common sense, real-world answers, but instead these lofty, idealistic, P.C., "let's-include-everyone-so-that-none-feels-out" answers. God was smiling on me that day, though: half of my score is an essay I had to write comparing and contrasting two texts of the state's choice. The brilliant part of it all was that the two texts selected for me that day were "To Kill a Mockingbird," which I've read and studied a thousand times, and "House of Mirth," a Victorian text, which was my specialized area of study in college. No problem. We'll see exactly how brilliant I am on May 5... I very well might have failed the whole dang thing. My brain was literally mush when I walked out of there 5 hours later.

So if I pass the beast, I will be on the road to teaching high school English. That will give me an opportunity to do something I love, invest in some lives, and have summers and holidays free and on the same schedule as my family.

Or, God could pull the rug out from under the whole thing, and that would be okay, too. I'm all about going with what He wants for me, and I'm trying very hard to listen to what He has to say about all of this. I've made so many choices that I've ended up really regretting because I impulsively chose to do what was right in my own eyes rather than listening for His cues, and I really want to be done wasting time with that.

In other news, I think I have truly found musical nirvana. David took me to our new HearMusic store last night, where you can listen to over a million songs at one of the many listening stations, compile all of your favorites, and burn a CD right there in the store. It's fabulous. David made a compilation of his essential metalhead music, and I found many CDs that I wanted, but ended up with Frances Black's "How High the Moon." I haven't been able to find her music around here, and they actually had it in their catalog. I was pleased, to say the least. It's a beautiful CD. What I found ironic, though, was that HearMusic, which boasts a fairly comprehensive catalog, didn't include any of Frances' sister's (Mary) CDs. Go figure.

It was a great experience, though... you can listen to full CDs, not 30-second snippets, and we listened for about 2 hours. I left full of music and inspiration (and excitement over my newly-burned treasure), but was also mad at myself for not discovering some true gems earlier than last night. I listened to Peter Gabriel's latest CD, and was blown away. I delved into Neko Case's latest and was drooling. I browsed through Joseph Arthur's first CD and fell in love all over again. I have a very long list of CDs that I must possess, and it feels good to be hungry for music again.

HearMusic is going to be very, very dangerous for me.

Well, I have probably wasted enough of my day off sitting here on the computer, so I must fly. Time to do more thinking about packing and such.