I'm bad at coming up with creative titles.

So I've been listening to mainstream radio a lot lately... I've been trying to listen to NPR as much as possible, but there's only so much news I can take at once. Sigh.

Anyway, point at hand: there is a vast amount of songs that deal with men being crappy. Here are a few titles & artists that are presently played on popular radio:

-Who Knew by Pink
-Hate That I Love You by Rihanna
-Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood
-U + Ur Hand by Pink

There are countless others, but those are the only examples I could come up with offhand. While looking up songs online, however, I noticed that there are some performed by male singers who were equally screwed over by ladies. Some examples:

-Wake-up Call by Maroon 5
-Over You by Daughtry
-Dreaming with a Broken Heart by John Mayer

Maybe people in relationships can be bad, regardless of gender. :P I was just surprised by how many "men suck" songs there were on the radio the past few weeks, and I thought I'd share.

In other news, I taught back at my old school yesterday (where I taught last year). It's good to be there just for a few hours at a time, and I love seeing my old kids & teacher friends. However, I was a little (wrongly???) disturbed by an occurence yesterday...

When I abandoned my classroom at the end of last school year, I left a note in the desk for the next occupant of my room. The woman who now teaches in my old classroom called me, thrilled to be in contact. I've come in (on my own time) to teach math lessons for fun. (Sick, huh??) Anyway, I've been doing weekly nutrition lessons in her class for the past few months. At first, it was totally weird being back in the room where I had the roughest year of my life. Now, fortunately, I'm used to it.

Well, last year, I gave probably 200% of my efforts to that school. (And I'd like to think that my 100% is a lot!) Toward the end of the year, my class & I worked on a community-wide silent auction/raffle/carnival to raise much-needed money for a crumbling playground. With contributions and event proceeds, we raised over $4,000. Though I had been hoping for more (I was going for $10k), I was still happy we raised a significant chunk of change.

So yesterday, while doing a lesson in the current teacher's room, I learned that the class was on the front page of the local newspaper. They had raised $150 for Unicef, which is awesome. However, my pride overcame me, and I was suddenly both saddened and angered that my class & I hadn't been recognized for all of our outstanding efforts, and we raised more than 25 times what this class did! With a slightly wilted ego, I proclaimed to the class, "Wow! That's wonderful that you were able to raise that money! Congratulations!" Inside, my spirits sunk, and I then did a relatively bland lesson. (I'm usually pretty spazzy when I teach, so this was a huge change.)

So after the whole day of teaching (6 classes!!!), I got to the car in kind of a funk. Do I *need* recognition for the things I do? It seems so! How disheartening. I thought I was above that, but I guess not. Don't get me wrong; friends, family, and coworkers have been outstanding at making my efforts seem worthwhile... but I guess I just wanted a newspaper article or something. Yuck. And you know, I've always seen people in magazines or on Oprah or whatever who had gone unrecognized for months, years, decades, until someone decided to share what they were doing with the world. I figured then that the most amazing people are humble and do not go in search of fame. This makes my realization (that I need recognition) especially painful. Sigh.

Anyway, I suppose that's it for now. The roommate & I have decorated the house with lots o' Christmas goodness. As soon as I find my dang camera cord, I shall share some of those photos on this blog. For now, peace.