buzzing in my head

this is sort of a conglomeration of things that have been inhabiting my head mostly over the last week or so. some of it frustration i have over my job this year. the teachers i have worked with in the past have all treated me as basically a co-teacher. i helped them plan activities, pulled groups, read stories, and countless other things. this year i feel more like - oh, an office aide for the classroom. and yes, i realize that my job IS a classroom aide, but i used to feel more involved with teaching kids which is what i love to do. i don't even have an area this year and i spend much time collating papers, and even when i am working with the kids, it's as a wandering help-person rather than having any specific job to do. i don't know, maybe that's what most people who have my job do, but i was used to doing more and it makes me sad. i don't have a problem with the teacher; i just miss my old job.
this is a side note but also related to my work. every day at lunch if our kids do not want the hot lunch, they have the choice of totally packaged foods served in a plastic clam shell container (and no this is not going to be about the disgusting, preservative-laden food in our nation's schools - though i also have a problem with that.) anyway, i had seen the clam shells be collected by one of the paras at lunches the whole time i have worked at parkview, so i would collect my kids' also. i assumed we were recycling these (especially since unlike the plastic forks and spoons we also use every day, these clam shells never even touch food), and i would leave the ones i collected on top of where the kids get milk because i wasn't sure where the recycling bin for them was. earlier this year i handed the ones i just collected and watched as they were promptly put in the trash can. so i decided to see if we could recycle them. out on the playground i saw our secretary and asked her if it would be possible to get a recycling bin for the clam shells and was informed that the district won't ALLOW it. a teacher a few years ago tried and she said the district wouldn't budge citing federal health codes. WHAT??? so anyway, all that clean recyclable plastic cannot leave our cafeteria except in a trash can (except of course when we used to collect them for use in after-school art projects. too "toxic" to be recycled, but ok for art i guess. ) and my principal made it clear that she does not support the idea either, so fighting the district seems pointless if my own school doesn't agree with it either - so trash can it is.
with all this spinning in my brain i got an email about a possibility to go back to san diego. now at this stage it it purely in the "this floated through my brain - what do you think about it?" stage, but nonetheless there is now a ever-present burning desire to go home. i mean, i have always wanted to return to so cal, but had reconciled myself to the fact that i would never go back to live because i would never have the money. but i guess nothing is impossible, and the option, however slim at this point, of leaving utah makes me almost cry because I WANT TO SO BAD. i didn't realize how much i utterly dislike living in this state until the possibility of leaving came up. the other possible places we talked about were all about equally "meh" to me so i didn't think about it. i realize i had just resigned myself to the fact that i would never live anywhere i really wanted to again. i f i do get a chance to go home, i know it won't be forever because to have a farm in so cal is not a realistic dream and i am not asking kevin to forgo his dreams, but if i could get a chance to live once more in a place I love i think it will make a big difference in my life. also, i have wanted to get cass out of here for awhile.