And now that Mr. T is almost nine months old (?!!??!!) and we’re back from Europe, I am about to dip my toes back in to being a professional X, Y and Z again.

I am not, in any sense, prepared to give up being Mommy at home with Torsten, but since many of the things I do can be done either from home or part-time (and all of them privately, if I so choose), I will soon be firing up the old brain and integrating some work (some combination of programming, writing and teaching – you didn’t think I got that CELTA for nothing, did you? ) into my weekly schedule.

We’ve always planned that I’d start working on getting this together once we got back from abroad, but now that we’re really back and Christian has Torsten for the day, I’m finally sitting down over a cup of coffee to work out the details, and I must say it feels pretty good. At the moment it’s low-pressure while I work things out, but it’s still nice to be on the path.

More on this as things come together…

(“Knowledge” picture from Scott Meyer’s Basic Instructions comic strip)

So the mind-blowing month of CELTA is officially over, and it was totally worth it. It was stressful and intense, and I learned so much I think my head may yet come apart at the seams, but it was awesome. Sometime after we get back from Europe this summer, I’ll start looking for part-time work around here so that I can put it into practice, but in the meantime, it’s just going to sit in there and stew, and that’s quite alright.

Meanwhile, I’d just like to congratulate everyone in my CELTA class (CELT-ites?) for surviving!

(Click to enlarge)

To Aram, Jon, Jedidiah, Joe, Nick and Richard: it was a pleasure working with you all, and I fully intend to be extremely jealous as you traipse off to the far-flung corners of the world! Thanks for being so collegial and for making the course a great deal of fun.

To our wonderful trainers, Giles and Betty: thanks so much for your candor and sense of humor, and most of all for sharing your expertise with us. It was well worth the pain!

And to anyone who’s thinking of doing the CELTA here in Denver, I highly recommend it. It’s a lot of work and not for the faint-of-heart, but as far as professional development goes, it’s a great experience.

Bah!

So I have a listening lesson tomorrow, and I still have a grammar lesson on the passive to teach Friday. And I am so ready to be done. And if not enough students show on Friday, I’d have to do it the next week with the new CELTA students, which would really suck, but it doesn’t look like that will have to happen.

Still, I hope I get to do this early enough on Friday that I can join the CELTA peeps for beer, because we all so need one!

We’re all pretty sick. I’m the most obviously ill, but Christian’s been coughing horribly for weeks, and the baby got to visit the urgent care last night (although, to be fair, he isn’t apparently feeling all that bad – but he was breathing a little hard, so they wanted us to bring him in). I’m probably only so ill because I haven’t been sleeping, but it’s not good, because I can’t give Christan a break after a long week with the baby, and I can’t play with Torsten, which sucks, because I miss him. Terribly.

The course is going really well, though. I can’t believe how much I’ve learned in the past three weeks, although given the intensity of the course, I’d hope I’d learned something. I love doing this. I really, really love it. I can’t wait to be in the classroom outside of the training environment, though I am going to miss our students here. They’re pretty fantastic. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to use this training yet, but I’m so pleased with having decided to do this.

The downside is that I’m never home right now. I simply cannot wait to be back home and spend time with my family. My baby is growing up without me! Now, granted, he and his papa do just fine, and I’m happy they’ve gotten to spend the time together, but I’ll be happy to have a few more hours a day of my own with my family again.

Hopefully this cold won’t kill me so I can get back home to enjoy them.

I’m sick. As in coming down with a bad, bad cold.

And I teach tomorrow.

And Thursday.

And I have a paper due Thursday morning.

Sick.

Grrrr.

I win.

I feel like I’m learning so much about teaching in such a short time. It’s going to be a while before I can integrate all of this crap into my own brain and teaching, but I’m having a blast. Of course, the other folks in the course are a riot and great to work with, so it helps, but I feel like I’ll really be in a good place for teaching when I decide to go back to work.

Of course, being home with Torsten and Christian this weekend (well, only today really – I was in Colorado Springs this Saturday at the State Democratic Convention which completely sucked for various reasons I’ll disclose in June, after my course is done and I have some time to really write) made me realize that I’m totally not ready to be back at work yet – having the opportunity to enjoy my son’s early months with my husband is so wonderful that I can’t wait for June to come and to be at home with him again, even if I go stir crazy from time to time.

Anyhow, five minutes of non-course writing is all I can allow myself – if I do anymore, my paper and lesson plans will never get done, and that is, quite frankly, not an option!