Awkward and Amazing Adventures

Valentine's Day Happy List

2012-02-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

Since V-Day is around the corner I thought I would make a Happy List for the day of the things I love. I think it goes without saying that I could make a very long list of people I love...if you're reading this then you're probably one of them because no one else would put up with this somewhat narcissistic drivel.

A Happy List for February 14, 2012
-Grape soda lupine along the roadside.
-The first sip of a vanilla latte, mostly foam a little bit of latte.
-That quiet moments, early on Saturday morning when the world is gently waking up.
-Watching students go from being hesitant writers to excited writers.
-Losing 14 inches and 42 pounds...hopefully never to find again :)
-Mexican Coke
-Dreaming big dreams of wonderful and creative things
-Lettuce fresh from the garden
-The sky right before it rains, especially late in the afternoon when there are "god-rays" in the distance.
-Longer daylight hours, which means not getting home in the dark
-Making soup from a chicken carcass and some veggies
-Waking up before my alarm and realizing I have another hour to sleep
-Finding out that I can do once-impossible things
-Grilled cheese and thick tomato soup

Barack Obama is a Lollipop and the Korean Dictator

2012-01-15T21:32:00.000-08:00

We finished our Biography projects in 2nd grade. After we finished our research, I made everyone complete a timeline made from a sentence strip and also draw a portrait. We don't get enough arts in the classroom so any time I can justify adding art it I do. I will post my favorite portraits below with a brief comment. I would also like to state that I did give them guidelines like; they can't be lollipop heads, you need to fill the space, try to add a few objects in that relate to their job, they need a nose, etc.

Amelia Earhart. Actually a very good drawing if Amelia had made it to old age.
My favorite parts are the planes in the background.

She drew Marie Curie as a princess and then I told her that even though Marie Curie found Radium she was not a princess in any country. The girl was mad because she wanted to draw a pretty dress...apparently she was so mad she only gave Marie Curie three fingers. I know that Curie eventually died of exposure to radioactive substances but I didn't know she that affected by it.

This is my favorite! I love the flag in the background. Classic!

I have failed, this girl thought Rosa Parks was Asian.

Martin Luther King Jr. has ears all the better to hear you with and a kickin' mustache.

Kim Jon-Il. NO! Steve Jobs! I swear to you, a teacher came in and said,
"Why does the North Korean dictator have a iPhone and a computer?"

Barack Obama is a lollipop head. The leader of the free world my friends.

Another Steve Jobs, I kind of wish he had a turtle neck on...that would have been epic.

Don't worry Microsoft fans, we also have Bill Gates.
He is famous for computers and piles and piles of money.

Best picture ever. No comment needed.

Apparently George Washington is an orange dinosaur...I am mad that this kid still couldn't spell his name after a month of writing it. How many more times can I yell at someone for not trying their best.

When I asked why he colored him so dark he said that "He was outside a lot so he was probably very tan." Good thinking kid. I am impressed.

This kid couldn't find peach so he used yellow.
Jury is still out on why his neck is blue and his hair is green.

This kid wanted to write about the "person who invented books". Johannes Gutenberg isn't exactly an American hero but close...kind of. I did not know that the inventor of the movable type printing press also wore a poop hat.

I love that she added monkeys in the background. It doesn't matter that Jane Goodall studied apes...I appreciate her effort and execution.

We just started writing personal narratives. So far the most promising one is about a kid who played Bingo on the rez with his grandma. I am just glad not to be writing biographies!

Ms. A., An American Hero

2011-11-12T22:42:00.001-08:00

A panoramic of where I live my life.

We just started a research unit on famous people. We are researching people and then writing biographical essays before Christmas. On the first day, we brainstormed some famous people who would be good to write about. We decided that they had to be famous for something that was unique, they couldn't be celebrities, and they had to help people in some way. We came up with a great list; Marie Curie, Michelle Obama, Ghandi, Ben Franklin, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Seuss. The Who's Who of famous people. (They were a little confused about how Barack Obama could be the president and George Washington was also the president...I guess when you're 7 there is not a big difference between the far away past and the recent past).

Then one of my little friends said, "Ms. A." and all the kids started to agree that I was indeed a famous person worth writing a biography report about. I apparently did not do a good enough job explaining exactly what the qualifications were for this report. I told them that they could not do a project on me even though I am famous at school, I am not a celebrity, and I help people learn. I was flattered....I wonder if they knew parent teacher conferences were coming up this week...hmm.

Well since the first semester is done and it is closing in on the 50th day of school next week I thought now would be a great time to post the pictures that are from the beginning of school.

There's the area that gets piled higher and deeper throughout the semester.

The classic kidney bean table, Lakeshore calendar, and pocket chart...staples of 2nd grade.

The front of the room. It looks different now...50 days later and more things going on.

The word wall is full now. I love our little library.

Some of my favorites so far this year.

The "Up"grade

2011-11-12T21:52:00.000-08:00

As some of you may know, I used to live in the basement which I lovingly called the dungeon. I liked it down there. It was cool in the summer, warm in the winter and only occasionally flooded. When C-Dizzle moved to pursue bigger and better adventures at higher elevations I also decided I should try a higher elevation (higher by about 10 feet). I moved upstairs! However, I unlike C-Dizzle do not like the color purple and especially don't like the color lavender for a bedroom, I decided to re-paint it. Here are a few of the before and after pictures.

The Empty Lavender Room

A Pepper Tree Print and a funny little box that I found on Etsy.

A ridiculously tall bamboo and the early morning sunlight

A letterpress drawer. I'm not entirely sure what I should put in the little bottles. We will see what kind of inspiration strikes.

A headboard that I made from shelves.

A rifle cabinet from the basement and a old candy box.
A fish packing box and an art project that I made myself.

A close up of the tree art. 5x7 canvases with acrylic.

A few of my favorite trees.

I love this little box.

A Poor Decision, A Turtle, and an Almost Disaster

2011-11-04T20:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when kids have hair-brained ideas like; "I want to get rid of my little brother.", "I think aliens are living in my attic", "It smells like nachos and earwax in here". I usually say something non-committal like, "You're parents have the final say" or "If that's what you think" sometimes a well placed, "We'll see..." is sufficient to get them off my back.

A girl, we will call her Candace for her high pitched voice and histrionics (Shout out to Phineas and Ferb), asked if she could bring her pet turtle into school. On Monday I said, "We'll see...". On Tuesday I said, "I don't think that is a good idea..." On Wednesday I said, "I'm pretty sure we won't have time for show and tell, you're not in kindergarten anymore..." On Thursday I said, "You will have to talk to your parents because I don't think they would want you to bring it in." Apparently her wheedling caused her parents to do what most parent would do in that situation...cave like a house of cards in a hurricane.

This morning she showed up with a baby turtle about the size of an oreo in an open cottage cheese container. His name is Cookie coincidentally enough. She brought him in and then the 10 minutes of calming and refocusing to breakfast started. I corralled the turtle onto a shelf and the children to their desks to eat the cured turkey roll-up and fruit juice. I knew it would be annoying...I didn't realize that she would ask me every 90 seconds if "Now is when I get to show the class my turtle." After about 30 minutes I was going to say something that was neither helpful or kind (the two ways we gauge our words in my class). I let her do a little blip about it and then had a Q and A session. I repeatedly warned the kids that they could look with their eyes and not with their fingers and gave an impromptu soap-box lecture about the fragility of amphibians and reptiles and how they gauge the planet's health which is why we cannot put our grimy little 7-year old fingers in the turtle water...not to mention salmonella. Only one kid got their digits in the turtle poo water.

After the cottage cheese container had been carefully taken to each row on the carpet, I took the container back and as I put it back on the shelf I noticed that it's eyes were closed and and it wasn't moving even a little bit. I tried to not go into natural overreaction mode...like I sometimes do. I decided that it probably was going to die anyway and that it wasn't a visit to my room that killed it.

After about an hour, I took another look in hopes that it had perked up/resurrected. Still no movement, still no open eyes, still dirty turtle poo water, still uneaten turtle pellet, still a dead turtle. I decided now was the time to start softening the blow of a death in the classroom...I started with something innocuous like, "So how long have you had this turtle?" then went to"Are you really attached to it?" then I threw in "Raising turtles is really hard, some don't make it out of turtlehood." I didn't want her to blame herself for its death so I added "Some turtles die for no reason at all, it doesn't mean that they wanted to die but it was just their time to go to the happy turtle pond in the sky." I'm not sure these were direct quotes but I started rambling in more and more desperate ways in hopes that she wouldn't blame me for killing her beloved pet.

When it was time to switch classes for the afternoon, I took a deep breath. Got the cottage cheese container off the shelf. Took another deep breath and prepared myself for the dreaded question that I knew was coming which would sound something like, "Hey, Ms. A, why isn't my turtle moving?"

I looked down and in a glorious moment I made eye contact with that tiny little reptile. This turtle that I had been mourning all day had been revived! It was alive! I was not the turtle kiss of death!

After a day of fretting about this stupid turtle I have found my backbone and the next time a kid asks me about bringing their pet, I will firmly say ,"No."

You Live. You Learn. You grow a pair and stand up to a 7 year old.

An Abundance of Tomatoes

2011-08-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

So many tomatoes! About 7 pounds of them.

When I got back from my extend travels through the Midwest the garden was a mess. Most of the plants were past their prime. There will be another post about the rejuvenation of the garden. There were several tomato plants that were in the last stages of life/the first stages of death so I picked the salvageable tomatoes from them and decided to try my luck at making tomato sauce. The hardest part of this whole process was preparing the tomatoes. First you have to wash them, then blanche them, then chill them, then peel them, then dice them. All of this I did with a huge cut on my thumb so it burned like nobodies business.

The washing.

The boiling.

The chilling.

More chilling.

I didn't take any pictures during the peeling or dicing stages as my hands were covered in tomato innards and there was no photo assistant (Catherine) to help me document the event. Then the easy part started...the making of the spaghetti sauce. I mostly based my sauce off a Cooks.com recipe but added a lot of other great things so here is a lot closer to the "recipe" that I used.

4 cloves garlic
2 lg. onion, chopped
4 tbsp. oil
6 lb. tomatoes
24 oz of tomato paste
2 tbsp. sugar
6ish tsp. instant beef bouillon granules
4 tsp. oregano
2ish tsp. salt
15 fresh basil leaves chopped
1/2 tsp. pepper
2-4ish tsp of Italian seasoning
1 small jar of fire roasted peppers chopped up (throw watery stuff from the jar in there too)
lots and lots of dashes of crushed red pepper flakes

Peel and mince garlic. In large saucepan cook garlic and diced onion in hot oil until tender. Put quartered tomatoes and juice into pot. Add all other ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, simmer on low for about 2 hours. I also harvested a lot of cherry and grape tomatoes from other plants and threw them in there whole. Enjoy!

Saucy and delicious!

So chunky and wonderful.

Smelling Is My Super Power

2011-08-20T09:21:00.000-07:00

I am a super sniffer. I like to smell things. I like to smell everything, even things that smell disgusting. I like to smell my socks when I take them off, my scalp on the 2^nd no-shower-day, any type of food before I eat it, freezer burned ice-cubes, basically everything. At camp, I am the person who they call when there is a question between poop vs. chocolate, pee vs. water, or Cheez-it vs. Cheese Nip. The joke is that my olfactory sense are compensating for my hearing.

My favorite smells change, but today I am enamored with these:

-Water coming out of a hose

-Sunscreen on pool water skin

-Coffee beans in the Magic Bullet

-Nepthala soap scented clothes

-Fire roasted peppers

-Wet blacktop

-Overripe bananas

Geocaching in Wyboring

2011-08-15T11:13:00.001-07:00

An intimidating team of serious geocachers

While I was in Wyboring visiting the family, my mom left my dad and I on our own. Both of us possess strong impulse control, ambitious drive to accomplish things, and an overwhelming responsibility to be mature….HA just kidding. We are both big kids who like to take naps and mess around with ideas and experiment that most adults would have little to no interest in. I always enjoy hanging out with the dad but this time was more fun than usual because we had some projects to work on...important stuff like walking with grandpa, trespassing to take pictures of the remains of a little town called Bosler, drinking Sonic vanilla diet cokes, watching YouTube videos of stuff blowing up, and finding geocaches.

If you live in America and don’t know what geocaching, you need to ask St. Google about that right now. Also if you don’t know what it is then you are probably not middle-aged, middle-incomed, and middle-of-the-countried. It’s very popular with the white, 40 something, in the Midwest. In a nutshell, it’s a treasure hunt using latitude and longitude coordinates and when you find the “cache” you write your name on a list and then log it on the computer. Super fun!

I knew that my mom and dad participated in this activity because they fit the demographic and apparently it’s popular with my mom’s group of friends. So as we were sitting with Grandpa at the botanical gardens I asked my dad about his recent success. My dad was explaining exactly how it worked and pulled out his GPS (cause that’s what everyone needs to bring with them on a walk). He entered the location of the swing in the rose garden and said, “I bet there’s one around here somewhere, probably right here where we are sitting”. We finished our walk and then went back to the house to nap (walking takes a lot out of ya).

Later on, we entered the swing’s location into the geocaching website and there were several caches within a mile…there was even one that said; “Location: Here”. THERE WAS ONE RIGHT WHERE WE HAD BEEN SITTING AND TALKING ABOUT IT! So of course we had to go on a treasure hunt for this cache immediately! We wrote down the location of a few others in the area and my nephew helped decode the clues.

We went back to the botanical gardens right at the swing and looked high and low. We found a baby bunny who was cute as the day is long. We found a lot of leaves that had fallen because of the hail. We found trash. We found a lot of stares from other people walking in the garden. We found a headache from ramming my head into a metal pole when I was crawling on the wall. Eventually we found the small cache in the crack between the retaining wall and the swing structure (SPOILER). We wrote our names, “The Salamander Duo” and the date. We then congratulated ourselves on our wit, our ingenuity, and our stick-with-it-ness. Quickly we jumped in the car and headed towards the next location. For the rest of the day we roved around the greater Cheyenne area looked for caches by statues, lakes, historical markers, antique fire trucks, and thickets of thistles. We had found 4/5, but had to give up by the lake because of lack of preparedness on our part. All in all a good day.

The dad with a cache...this one took a while

Our names on the log

More messing around in Wal-Mart

The code breaker for our team. Looking like he's ready for a safari.

Geocaching makes a person hungry. Taking a Dilly Bar break with the family.

Earwigs! My Arch Nemisis

2011-08-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

The Casa Del Fuego has been under siege by the most distasteful insects in the entire world (after scorpions but tied with cockroaches and Missouri june bugs). For those of you who don’t know what an earwig is then you should say a thank you, kiss your mama, and pray that you never have to witness the horror that they are.

I’m not sure what is the worst thing about them; the sick way they wiggle when they move, how they just won’t die even after you crush them, the pincher butts-which really do hurt, or the urban myths that everyone has about a friend’s friend that got one lodged in their ear and then they had to go to the hospital and have it removed after it ate their brain and laid eggs in their nasal cavity. I think it’s clear by this point how I feel about them…obviously not a big fan.

I lived in distasteful ambivalence for most of my life. Until June 2011, the month in which they attacked the things that I hold dear. The earwigs invaded our pumpkin garden, which most of you know is something that I value above most things, and my bed which is just plain uncalled for and unnecessary. Catherine and I retaliated with a show of force.

My dad says, "Only boring people get bored". In retrospect, this is probably his way to get us to stop complaining about being bored but it's a mantra that I have lived by. I try to make most things that are dreary into a game or competition. Cathrine is a good sport and puts up with the endless games of "How Many Pomegranates Can We Dissect In A Given Time", "How Long Can We Wait Until We Do Dishes", and "I Bet I Can Do More 'Chubby Bunny' Marshmallows Than You". For this competition the rules were as follows: Each contestant gets 5 self-made traps of their choosing to use for 5 days, to be placed in locations around the pumpkin plants. The winner to be determined by daily body count. The winner gets a hand made certificate declaring them the Ultimate Earwig Killer and a McDonald's hot fudge sundae.

I did a significant amount of research and found that most forums suggest a combination of oil, fish oil, beer, soy sauce, corn syrup, and/or dish soap. I put a little bit of everything in mine in varying concoctions. Catherine decided to experiment with height and the difference between canola oil and extra virgin olive oil. We placed our cups and then waited. I ended up going to Arizona but Catherine carefully documented and counted the bodies. After the first night the death count was Adrielle- 32; Catherine-2. The big winner was the soap, oil, and high fructose corn syrup trifecta. What we really decided is that it came down to location. Because I get home earlier than Catherine I do the watering and so I had scoped out all the places that were being ravaged by the earwigs.

Catherine's Multi-height Hypothesis

Clearly scientific in our investigations (or killings)

Another view of mine.

Here were Catherine’s results after the first day.

1 - Canola oil and tuna (short): 0
2 - Canola oil and tuna (med): 0
3 - Canola oil and tuna (tall): 0
4 - EVOO and tuna (med): 1
5 - EVOO and tuna (short): 1

Mostly ants and one earwig.

And mine.

1 - EVOO, Soy Sauce, Tuna: 0
2 - EVOO, Soy Sauce, Corn Syrup: 1
3 - EVOO, Corn Syrup: 1
4 - EVOO, Beer: 9
5 - EVOO, Corn Syrup, dish soap: 22

Take that suckers. Basically that's what you get for eating my pumpkins.

After the first day, I went to Arizona and Catherine was in charge. When I returned we reset the traps and in total Catherine had killed around 30 and I had killed 92. Even though I won, the real losers were the earwigs.

August Update: I was out in the garden puttering. I tore out the sunflower and corn bed because they were done. As I was turning over the soil I found that they had come back with a vengeance. Since Catherine is gone I guess I will just kill them solo..less fun but hopefully it will save the new pumpkin that I just planted.

A Happy List for Camp 2011

2011-08-08T23:31:00.000-07:00

A Happy List for Juliette Low Camp 2011

Happiness is:

-Mornings, afternoons, and evenings in the pool

-New Unit Counselors

-Pancake Buddies "I just love them so much"

-Using tongs in a variety of ways

-A talent show that didn’t suck

-Fitting 110 mini-marshmallows in my mouth during “Chubby Bunny”

-Trying new things

-Becoming a Widgey Woman of the Woods

-Playing “Never Have I Ever” endlessly

-2011: The Year of the Potato Products

-Learning new songs, singing new songs, killing new songs

-Closing campfire in the Dining Hall

-Kyle and Chris trying to learn the Edelweiss motions and failing

-Sno-cones

-The huge and various bugs

-The frog that went up into the urinal to escape Bamboo

-Chloe saying her nightly prayers and mentioning every person in camp

-Saying goodbye to my childhood and Harry Potter in the same movie

-Spending the morning swinging from the trees in our pajamas

-The Dirty Bucket Band

-Love cake

-Awkward conversations with ambulance drivers

-Sonic’s vanilla diet coke

-Sleeping in the Ad Building

-Heat lightening and watching it with friends

-The Bacon Fairy leaving wonderful presents

-Panera’s cinnamon rolls with butter

-Riding to the OP in the golf cart

-Making natural dyes

-Trying to use natural dyes

-Watching in horror as white pillow cases come out of the laundry…natural dye fail

-Cooking with charcoal that is not covered in lighter fluid

-The thrill of thunderstorms that you can feel shaking the walls

-Making laundry soap

-Trying to save a baby bird, even though there was little hope of survival

-Teaching snorkeling in the deep end of the pool

-Pickle Pops

-Katie’s dad and his love of Pickle Pops

-The Infinity Pool

-Bleaching the Unit shirts

-Meeting new campers like Beth, Ella, and Kim

-Parachute fun

-Stacy’s new found life as a gangster

-Allison singing “Dynamite”

-“Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle”

-The Fire Department coming to hose us down

-A fancy fan and cooling pad

-Dicecapades and Bang

-The Unit Party

-"Tell me your story, you inspire me"

-Annie and all of her exploits (especially ones involving the creepy Elmo hat)

-Maggie and the face paints

-Whipping hair back and forth

-Lola and Professor Cheesy the cabin mice

-Packages from far away friends

-The "classics" that make me miss camp for 11 months

The unit and their tongs

The natural dyes that seemed like a good idea at the time

Pancake buddies and a tired but happy me

Swinging under the Black Walnut Tree

110 mini-marshmallows...Impressive

Joy riding with Annie

Post-Potter Depression

2011-07-20T08:01:00.001-07:00

After camp ended, a group of staff went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two. Mariah found wands for us to carry in and we set off in a slightly sleep deprived caravan to see the end to a 13 year journey. I was excited to see it but also dreading it a little bit because now the magic is over. I am a rational adult and can comprehend that the Harry Potter phenomenon is fictional, re-readable, and accessible in a variety of mediums at any given moment. However, I felt like I was saying goodbye to old friends; friends that helped me suspend reality, friends that I had laughed with, friends that I had cried with, friends that I had shared adventures with, friends that I had grown up with.

Entering the movie, I felt weary about one more emotionally draining event…when the Warner Brother’s logo appeared after the trailers I was more melancholy than anything else. The entire beginning was me saying silently, “No, no, no, no, no, no” because knowing the outcome already made the inevitable dreadful. Basically from when Fred and George were on the roof and shared what I knew to be their last moment together (spoiler alert for those of you who do not live on planet Earth) until long after the credits rolled I cried like a small child without regard to social norms. I’m pretty sure I sobbed during Snape’s memories in the pensieve. Cure you, unrequited love! When Dumbledore asked “After all this time?” and Snape answered, “Always”, I remembered that Harry is far from the greatest hero in these books. For Snape to care for Harry, not always in the most loving way, even though he was James Potter’s son is a love of the highest order. The author does a profound job of portraying people as they are; good, bad, selfish, selfless, loving, jealous, angry, exuberant, humble, arrogant, brave, and cowardly. Sometimes all of these things at the same time.

After the credits, we all sat in stunned silence. We made our way out to the lobby in a depressed haze and it only took a moment to realize that all of us had been weeping…maybe we weren’t mourning the loss of the book series as much as mourning the loss of something indefinably special; a time in our lives, a framework for figuring out our world, a decade of change and growth. Maybe that indefinable something that we felt the loss of is what makes the Harry Potter books so wonderful. J.K. Rowling taught a generation how to grow up; how to trust in friends, value love, fight against oppression, stand up for those weaker than ourselves, do good, believe the best about others and that those we love never really are gone. As mad as I was that J.K. kept offing the characters that I loved the most, maybe she was helping us understand a valuable lesson about life—that it is fleeting, but love and hope remain. Maybe Harry Potter gave us back a little of the magic that gets lost in the everyday. Maybe it gave us a chance to see ourselves in the roles of hero, friend, and adventurer. Maybe it taught us that who we are is based upon what we do, not what we have. Maybe it showed us the worth of friends who will never abandon us and how to forgive those who come back after abandoning us. Maybe it taught us that courage is not being afraid but rather doing what is right even when we are afraid. Maybe it was just a story well told. Whatever it is, thank you for a great 13 years, it’s been one heck of an adventure.

One died for power.

One died for unrequited love

One greeted death like an old friend

Crack...yes it's that addictive.

2011-07-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

In this post, I will divulge the secrets to both being a popular host and ensuring invitations are extended to you again. The trick to succeeding in these things….bring Crack! What is Crack? No, not crack cocaine, but you should probably specify that in your recipe searches on Google so that the DEA doesn’t show up at your door asking about recent Claritin purchases. This special is recipe is called more formally “Christmas Crack” but its street name is Crack. Essentially it is called this because of its highly addictive nature and that it can be made from common household ingredients. Oh yeah, and you crack it before you eat it…but mostly the first two.

I learned of this amazing recipe from the kindergarten team where I work. I lovingly call it Kinder Crack…because in my opinion anyone who is teaching kinder is probably on crack…or should be.

You will need the following things,

-pot (cooking, in case that needs to be clarified), cookie sheet with edges, spatula, stove top, aluminum, cooking spray, other cooking accoutrements

-saltine crackers

-brown suga’ and butta’

-chocolate chips

-vanilla to taste

-sea salt, if you are feeling pretentious

-toppings (aka, whatever you have in the cupboard)

When cooking, I rarely measure things but for you type A personalities here it is (with picture support for you visual learners too):

Cover a cookie sheet in aluminum foil. Spray foil with Pam or some off-brand cooking spray. Spread a layer of saltine crackers on aluminum foil. The amount of space between the Saltines is up to you. I covered the whole thing but I suppose that it would be as good or better if there were nooks and crannies to fill up with goo. Put that off to the side carefully, otherwise you will be rearranging rows of crackers. Preheat oven to 400.

A mostly filled cookie sheet.

In a pot, melt 1 cup of butter. Once melted stir in ¾ cup of brown sugar. I used 1 cup but only because I couldn’t find the ¾ cup measure at the time. Bring to a boil. Boil for exactly 3 minutes, just kidding boil for as close to three minutes as you can. Take off heat and add about 1tsp of vanilla and a pinch of sea salt.

You know it will be good when there is this much butter involved.

Stirring, stirring, stirring.

Pour sugar goo over saltines. Use a spatula to spread out over all the crackers.

Thanks to my assistant, Catherine for taking this picture.

Stress level: High! It cools quick so spreading and giving artistic direction to Catherine was tricky.

Bake for about 5 minutes, or until the goo is bubbly and clear. If it is dark around the corners then it is getting burned. Take it out and let it sit for a few minutes to firm up. Spread chocolate chips over the caramelized sugar goo. You can spread them with a spatula or just leave them as little chunks of chocolatey goodness.

If you wanted to leave it like this you could.

Clearly I used my spatula to spread chocolate chips around.

Then I distributed mini-mallows and walnuts on the top. This is where your creativity can lead your cooking…or really whatever you have left over in the pantry. Some toppings might be: peppermint pieces, granola, coconut, any type of nut, various types of chocolate, sprinkles, red hots (I’m just getting started). You could also use different types of crackers; graham, animal crackers, pretzel crisps, ritz, or matzo! Just go wild!

We happened to have a few marshmallows and some walnuts.

After it is done cooling, use the fridge if you need it too cool faster or it's warm in your house. "Crack" it into smallish pieces and enjoy!

iPhone is a little blurry but this is a picture of the crack being cracked.

A few minutes after putting the bulk of it in the fridge and some quality control.

Who am I kidding...this is really what it looked like when we were done.

Summertime Fun

2011-06-09T23:07:00.001-07:00

I was looking through my pictures today while making then end of year slideshow and I found some favorites from around San Diego...mostly the zoo.

A little polar bear, surprisingly in the water...that never seems to happen.

A seal on the beach with that come hither stare.

He's chewing but he's also saying, "Hey, I'm ridiculously adorable and I know it"
And yes, yes I am projecting human emotions on animals...how can you not with something this delightful.

Crazy Koi going wild for some food.

A dragonfly on a peach tree.

My favorite primate's little hand. I love me some orangutans.

My favorite orangutan, Clyde, wasn't visible this day, but this guy is a close second.
Soon after this he started launching lettuce into a crowd of children which amused me, startled them, freaked out some parents.

Moo to you too.

A few little peacock feathers.

Giraffe!

Sometimes I go back to the black and white. Sometimes, on purpose. Sometimes because I bump my settings by accident and a happy surprise is waiting for me.

I forgot what this guy was called...probably something like a Great White Hymalaian Climbing Yak. I just call him cute.

This little guy has a funny story. We were working in the garden and Catherine found a chrysalis on the bottom of a cauliflower leaf. Since my class is studying butterflies we thought it would be a great idea to take it in to school and see what it became. I took the leaf and chrysalis inside and then promptly forgot about it over the weekend. When I found it, there was a leaf, a empty chrysalis and no butterfly/moth to be found. Two days later, I saw it on the window of our kitchen. We trapped it in a cup and took it outside. It however, had different ideas about where it wanted to be. I am the butterfly whisperer apparently.

I'm not too sure why this is funny, but hopefully it makes your day. Because at the end of the day, things could be worse...you could be covered in ocelot pee.

While finding these pictures I found some others that I liked and forgot about. Hopefully with the school year coming to an end I will update a little more often.

A Just, Verdant, and Peaceful Life

2011-05-22T20:59:00.000-07:00

Spring is here and the plants are growing, growing, growing! In March, Catherine and I expanded our garden to 6 raised beds instead of two. We also moved a bunch of things around so they would be better set for the long term. Now the beds are established and the vegetables are big enough to harvest. We have a variety of things like onions, artichokes, spinach, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, soybeans, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, corn, pumpkins, watermelons, squash, cucumbers, peppers, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, pineapples, eggplants, and chives. We also have a variety of herbs, mint, and flowers. Below are some of the pictures from around our house...mostly of the garden.

Yellow ranuncluas in the flower bed.

Purple ranunculas in the garden.

Marguarite daisies by the mailbox.

A little baby cauliflower.

The snap peas on the trellis.

Some huge green onions. We might have left these in the ground a little too long.

The iceplant growing over the shovel.

A funny red pepper plant...it looks like a fist.

Sunflowers as tall as the sky.

Strawberries in the cutest little strawberry planter.

The pumpkin and squash with the sunflowers in the background.

A new pumpkin on it's way to greatness!

The pumpkin is taking over the world! Catherine doing work as I mess around with a camera, as per usual.

A squash in the beginning stages.

The corn that is being smothered by the sunflowers.

The cherry tomatoes that are green...I ate all the red ones right before I took this picture.

The cauliflower that was getting out of control. We pulled it out, it was a whole lot bigger than the 4 plants we put in.

A campfire that started off quite large and impressive. It was not nearly as impressive as it looks in this picture.

The sunflowers are much taller than Catherine.

It's fun to come home and harvest dinner. This cucumber, tomato, and the peas became an excellent pasta salad. The dahlia bloom dressed up the kitchen from ordinary to garden chic in a second :) The veggies are not miniature, the dahlia blossom is as big as my head. Also, the cucumber is hard to see in the poor light, but it was delicious!

The Casa del Fuego is so verdant that even our carpet is growing things. Damn Bermuda grass.

Update on the Froglets

2011-05-22T20:42:00.001-07:00

Here is a very short update on the frogs from a previous post.

Look at his sweet little tail and his dark "spectacle" markings! Love him.

This one is kind of "Leo the Late Bloomer". He's special.

The Professor (with spectacles) is so much bigger than Leo.

One more picture...a little distorted but cute, cute, cute!

The baby snails. I love their little feelers.

My eraser after the CST vs. Esperanza's eraser after the CST.
Guess who had more erasing to do!

I love this picture. We did some bubble painting in my class. I was cleaning up and was inspired by the vividness of the the paint cups.

Pepper Tree Prints

2011-05-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

Hello all! I am working with my business manager, Lito :) on marketing my photographs. He suggested that I start a twitter page, an instant feed, a photo blog, and a facebook page for my new found side business. Three of those things I've done!

So if you want to check out a photo blog with some pictures and some narrative then you should check it out! If you don't want to check out a photo blog but you think I am delightful and witty then you should check it out (peppertreeprints.blogspot.com)! If you don't want to check out a photo blog and you don't think I am delightful or witty then you should check out www.stumbleupon.com, maybe you will find something there you like.

Here is my Etsy shop link:

www.etsy.com/shop/peppertreeprints

Costa RIca

2011-05-10T22:59:00.000-07:00

It’s been about a month since I left for Costa Rica upon my return several people asked me to tell them about it. It’s hard when describing something in which there were so many events, places, and goings-ons that happened. I decided that in honor of the 10 days that I spent there I would make a top ten list of the things that I love about Costa Rica. I know I have been writing a lot of lists lately but hang in there, I will get back to narrative one of these days.

1. The Embrace of Their National Love of Mayo

I love the way that Costa Ricans love mayo! In America, people who love mayonnaise are considered lowbrow, or poorly educated, or morbidly obese. Saying that you love mayo is akin to admitting you like Miley Cyrus “music”, or you shop at Wal-mart, or you enjoy watching American Gladiators. However, the Ticos love them some mayo. They use it like elementary school kids use ketchup. It’s everywhere! Most restaurants have it sitting on the table with the ketchup in the yellow bottle (no mustard to be found). I may have gotten terribly sick from the room temperature mayo that I consumed in great quantities, but it was well worth it. It’s not even cruddy lite mayo; no…it’s perfectly full-fat, full-fun mayo!!! Catherine and I ate our way through Costa Rica and you can bet your bottom dollar that I ate my way through Costa Rica with a side of mayo!

Mayo Love! And a rather large picture of a bull.

2. Cane Sugar Coca-Cola

The newest love of my life is the Coca-Cola made with cane sugar and not the disturbingly artificial high fructose corn syrup. I don’t know which was more wonderful the thick glass bottles with the worn down ridges or the fizzy deliciousness of high levels of caffeine and more obscene levels of pure sugar. I think that a liter of this soda is more of the daily-recommended sugar consumption…I’m pretty sure I had at least two a day. I’m not sure what effect that much sugar had on me was but I do know that sipping that sweet nectar of life made everything more delightful. No matter what we were doing or where we were going if there was a Coke around I probably would get one for the road. There’s something that’s so fantastic about the smoothness of the sugar cane, there’s not a hard after-burn like Coke products in the United States. It’s like a million little bubbles rolling around your taste buds and each one is saying, “Ahhh!”

Sweet nectar of life.

3. Dads and Kids

I think that dads all over the world care about their kids. However, the Tico dads that I saw were so very loving and would go out of their way to show it to their kiddos. I saw more dads and kids holding hands, walking linked together, playing in the parques, and sitting and enjoying each other’s company than anywhere else I’ve ever been. It was nice to see the outward affection being shown over and over and over. Sometimes, I think that dads in the U.S. either lack the time or feel it is not macho to show how much they care about their families. It is so frustrating to see my students eagerly awaiting even the tiniest bit of outward affection from their parents and not getting it. Ticos seem to be a fairly expressive society and they are touchy-feely in their greetings, their time together, and their goodbyes. I think that it would be nice to grow up in a place where the men are secure enough to show their soft spots.

4. The Tour-Guides

It’s an amazing thing to watch people talk about what they love. The tour guides in Costa Rica love the things they are talking about. I am sure there are a few less than enthusiastic tour guides in Costa Rica but for the most part the ones that we encountered were absolutely fascinating. Their passion about crowned tree frogs, the smallest orchid in the world, or the native scorpion population made me want to become more passionate about the things I love.

Of all the tour guides we had, the one that I had the biggest crush on was the one that the Ranario (Frog Pond) in Monteverde. He was all nerd armed with coke-bottle glasses, a headlamp, frog sounds, semi-inappropriate jokes about amphibian sexuality, and the worst/best puns I’ve ever heard. He was simply hilarious because he didn’t know he was hilarious. I enjoyed everything he had to say about the frogs and toads. Not only because it was informative but also because he would make up things and sound completely convincing…a skill that I admire and practice from time to time. At every frog display he would try to get the frogs to croak back to him. Each time they wouldn’t croak back. Each time he would say that he didn’t have the right accent. He repeated that joke about 25 times and every time I guffawed. Of all the things that we saw in the cloud forest area it was one of my favorites!

The crowned tree frog that the L of my L was enamored with.

5. The Food

Costa Rican food is not spicy or extremely flavorful but it is delicious. It doesn’t have a lot of variety but what it does, it does well. I particularly enjoyed the chicken and rice with a batido (fruit smoothie). Catherine preferred the casados, which are like the lunch daily specials, they usually had a piece of chicken, pinto gallo, fried bananas, salad with vinaigrette, and then something special like yucca, spaghetti, or fruit. Mix anything from a Soda (lunch counter) with a Coca-Cola and I was a happy camper.

Another thing that Costa Rica has in abundance is ice cream shops. They have all sorts of flavors and psychedelic colors. They don’t hesitate to use food coloring that is for sure. What’s interesting is the different types of flavors, everything from prickly pear to “Winston Churchill”…every scoop is an taste adventure!

This shaved ice man gave us a taste adventure...not necessarily a good one though.

6. The Sound Of The Rain In The Rain Forest

In Costa the amount of green is almost overwhelming. There is green on every scale imaginable from the hills covered in emerald to the tiniest moss coating all the surfaces both vertical and horizontal. Walking through the forest is dizzying because all you can see in any direction is varying shades of green. For those of you who think that rain forests are filled with plants and animals of every color that is somewhat inaccurate. There are some blooms and some animals but for the most part it is just green, green, green. I don’t have the vocabulary to describe what it is like to see nothing but green but what is even more impressive then the sheer amount of plant growth is the sound of rain on that many leaves. I love the sound of the water drops hitting broad leaves...times that by a million and it sounds like a continuous bout of thunder that ebbs and flows as the shower passes. I tried to capture this on video but failed miserable because the sound is so much more tremendous that can be captured on a recording device.

7. The Central Valley

There a hundred of places to visit in Costa Rica. Most people will tell you exactly where you should go without a moment’s hesitation. I agree that people should go to the “typical” tourist destinations but I think most people make the mistake of overlooking the central valley. We stayed mostly in the central valley and I am so glad that we did. It has so much to offer but not in the tourist centric way. It is a little slower, a little more rural, a little understated. It is basically where the working people live and play…Costa Rica’s agricultural backbone. It is lovely with the patchwork fields of different crops, living fences, cows in the road, local markets, the quaint feel of a simple life. This is how living off the land should be done; the smell of dirt, rolled up shirtsleeves, weathered old faces, and a peace that comes with working hard. We spent about four days there at the end of our trip, we could have spend another forty exploring all the little known gems that sparkle upon closer inspection.

The local butcher.

The patchwork fields.

8. How Ridiculously Nice Everyone Is

People in Costa Rica are ridiculously nice! I expect that people who are in the tourism business would be nice but even people who had nothing to gain by being nice were nice. Everyone was genuinely interested in how we were, where we were from, and how we were enjoying our stay. The food services people, the taxi drivers, the tour guides, the hotel people were thoughtful and engaging but even people on the streets would smile and say hello. The one exception to this is bus drivers, but they have a hard job so I don’t blame them for being a little cranky, especially when two girls cannot seem to understand why a particular bus doesn’t go to where they thought it did. However, the people on the buses would always tell us to get off if we were about to miss our stop.

9. Café Delicias

In Alajuela, there is an amazing little café called Café Delicias. It is wonderful! They have salads, sandwiches, pasta, comida tipico, pasteries, coffee, batidos, and the best of all coffee frappes! After discovering this fantastic café we went every night we were in Alajuela. I am still dreaming of the whipping cream, it was like whipped frosting with a hint of awesome. The people watching was amazing and the staff watching was even better. The people who worked there were funny, animated, and a little clumsy, which makes for many hours of entertainment.

Even the chairs are cute here!

These were amazing!

10. The Parque Central

Of all the things I loved in Costa Rica, numero uno is the way that people enjoy the central parks. In every little city there is at least one central park. Most of them are adjacent to a beautiful church and have a ice cream shop in the near vicinity. It's really not the park itself but rather the way the parks are used throughout the day...it's almost like the rythm of the city can be felt in the park. In the early mornings there are little old men with their newpapers and canes. In the middle of the day there are business people eating lunch and sharing a laugh. In mid-afternoon the high school students walk through arm in arm. In the early evening, the parents and young children come to play and enjoy the out of doors. In the evening there are events and gatherings around performers and music. After dark is when the young adults come to make out on the cement benches. We decided that the national past time of Costa Rica is sucking face because no matter where you look someone is doing it.

The central park that we most frequently visited was the Alajuela Parque Central. Here is a short list of some of the things we saw at the parques:

-A revival lead by a Christian rapper

-A television news crew filming a story

-A spring festival with traditional dances

-The world's largest ox yoke (the world's largest ox cart was being fixed on the day we visited)

-A compilation of the best Broadway musicals being performed by children

-A reenactment of the proclamation of statehood.

-A craft fair complete with churro maker

-A very drunk man giving his best rendition of MacBeth in spanglish

-A mutant squirrel showering me in mango bits

-The filling of a very large water fountain

-A shaved ice maker who added malted milk and sweetened condensed milk to the tutti-fruitti flavors...a taste explosion.

-Hundreds of couples participating in the national past time

It was refreshing to see people simply enjoying each others company. I think the problems in America can be attributed that there is not a strong sense of community. I don't know my next door neighbors let alone the other people who live on the next block. I think that a too hectic lifestyle and television are destroying how connected people feel to those around them and to their community. It's a shame that people here don't just sit and talk for the sake of sitting and talking. I rather enjoy kabitzing about nothing and the spectacular people watching that the parks provide.

A dance celebrating spring.

Love blooming in the park. The concrete benches are essential to the sitting and watching.

The Ugly Brown Sweater

2011-03-23T19:55:00.000-07:00

Seinfeld makes a reference to having the perfect shirt and his "golden boy" shirt is the one he likes the best, wears first, and is always in rotation. This is a post in homage to my "golden boy" sweater, also known fondly as The Ugly Brown Sweater!

Have you ever had a perfect piece of clothing? One that you just love to wear? I have the perfect sweater. It's sleeves are just the right length. When it comes out of the dryer the cuffs are the perfect width and when I push them up they stay up. It's weight is perfect. It's texture is perfect. The way it feels on a brisk morning, rainy afternoon, or chilly evening is perfect. The size of the knit is perfect, not so dense that it's too heavy but also not so loose that it catches on things. The way it feels when I put it on is cozy and comfortable. It has a v-neck which I love! Some of my fondest memories were made while I was wearing this sweater. About 4 years of my life have been lived in this sweater. In essence, this is the one thing that I feel most comfortable in and if I could wear it all day, every day I would. If I could change only one thing about it I would change the color...it unfortunately was the color of baby poo. I say "was" because this sweater has been through the literal wringer and with so much love it has been every color from Hershey squirts to day-after-Pepto-black-poop to newborn diarrhea yellow.

Here is a little pictoral timeline through the colors and styles of The Ugly Brown(ish) Sweater. Enjoy!

The Early Days:

Enjoying the desert flowers with a milk chocolate sweater to ward off the mountain breezes.

At the tide pools and trying unsuccessfully to look intelligent,
not to worry though The Sweater is saving me from unpleasant seawater.

With a sweet friend in a poop brown sweater, luckily she rocks the outdooor chic much better.

Transitional Stage:

This is really the height of the ugly brown color

By the time this picture was, I have loved it so much that it has faded into a light khaki.

Mid-Life Crisis:

Don't worry! I dyed it brown again.

The brown stayed for about a year and then started to fade again.

The Dark Ages:

About a year later, I dyed it black for a change.
My students were amazed that I had two ugly sweaters in different colors....fifth graders a awesome fashion critics.

By this time this picture was taken, the black had faded mostly, expect out of the sleeves and the bottom.
This picture was about a year ago, after that The Sweater took a turn for the worse, it had begun to fade rapidly and not in an even pattern. It turned into a horrible striped pattern between khaki poop, poop, and dark poop. It was at this point my friends had an intervention, their bottom line was that I could no longer wear it in public but they also wouldn't purposely try to assassinate it (I think there was a foul plot afoot involving an accident and a sharp pair of scissors).

An Oldie but a Goldie:

In a last ditch effort to save the love of my life I used Rit Dye Remover and it turned into this odd color. I was expecting it to go back to brown but instead it changed to what I like to call "Prairie Meadow Gold" but what is now know to most as The Ugly Yellow Sweater.

Blood Orange Marmalde....errr I mean Blood Orange Ice Cream Topping

2011-03-20T21:22:00.000-07:00

Blood oranges were 88 cents a pound at Henry's the other day. I was inspired to once again undertake the madness that is making blood orange marmalade. I can't describe why I like it so much...I think it's the color and the novelty.

As with most jams, jellies, and marmalade love is the first ingredient....here is the recipe I followed (http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/surejell-orange-marmalade-52014.aspx). What I mean by followed is read it once and then tried it from memory...hence the syrup and not the marmalade. Apparently sugar and pectin are not interchangeable.

I took some pictures of the process...I got a little busy towards the end and didn't take many pictures during the exciting parts (not to worry I have 2 more batches to make in the freezer and will not be so distracted that I forget the most important part...the pictures!)

The worst part is sterilizing the jars and lids...I always a third degree burn that melts flesh off.

Here are the cute little oranges and some lemons ready to be sacrifice to the marmalade gods.

Cover your eyes...they're naked!

The carcasses that are to be discarded.

The rinds ready to be cut up.

After a long nights work-such little slivers of peel.

How mesmerizing....the swirl of deliciousness.

Looks disgusting, but it smells awesome.

This is when the smell is out-of-this-world!
I just want to bottle it up and save it for gloomy days....it smells like happiness.

The chopped up fruit bits ready to go for a swim in the rind jacuzzi.

Finally all together and simmering for quite a while.
This makes the fruit/pulp mass that you mix with pectin and sugar (in that order!)

If you have read to here then you deserve a treat! E-mail me or facebook me and you could be the proud new owner of your very own jar of blood orange ice cream topping/pancake syrup/whatever else you could use a slightly runny version of marmalade for!

Layoffs, Ides of March, and Another Happy List

2011-03-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

Bottlebrush with dew taken at my school

I was laid off today or as my dad calls it, "Liberation!". Either way I am fine with it. I like being a teacher but it isn't the beginning or end of who I am. I decided that there would be no better time to stop and make a list of the things I am in love with right now then, well...right now! Here goes nothing (also you should stop reading now if you are tired of my happy lists because clearly your heart is three sizes too small!)

A Happy List for Being Laid Off:
-The new, improved, enlarged garden!
-The little baby poppies coming up everywhere I turn around
-When I hear tiny, little, 2nd grade voices saying things that I say, like: "Is that helping our class?" "We're not talking about dinosaurs right now, we are talking about fractions-that is irrelevant." "Whose jacket is this, I am not your mother!" (all of these hilarious when said dead serious sometimes accompanied by hands on hips).
-Early morning hikes in the desert
-Camping with friends
-Cheddarwursts over a fire with some hard apple cider
-The tadpoles finally turning into frogs
-Blood orange ice cream syrup (heads up for a blog about this disaster)
-Krakatoa's fresh squeezed orange juice
-Playing Puerto Rico with friends
-Daydreaming about my upcoming Costa Rica trip and all the photographing that will be done
-Tiny Wings app on my iPhone
-Students moving up reading levels...how exciting to see kids go from struggling readers to fluent readers!
-Blood orange cosmos
-The little baby asparagus that are starting to grow
-Sugar snap peas straight off the vine
-My Etsy account (http://www.etsy.com/shop/PepperTreePrints?ref=si_shop)
-Working in Adobe Lightroom 3 with some photos...see them at the Etsy store (is this shameless self-promotion?)
-Shameless self-promotion :)
-Brisk morning and warm afternoons
-Another hour of daylight to play outside in
-Playing Words with Friends with far away friends
-The Hillcrest Farmer's Market and the people watching opportunity it presents
-Daydreaming about what my next career will be

I added a few pictures of my favorite things too!

A funny little eraser face I found in a pencil box...
I wonder who was doing this and not paying attention to my droning on and on?

The logo for my Etsy store that I painted myself!

The daisies by our mailbox.

A letter one of my students wrote. Translation below:
Dear Ms. Aldrich,
A love you, and
you are so pretty.
And (your) eyes are pretty.
And (your) hair is so pretty.

Possibly the worst picture of the digestive system ever...
I'm not sure how the small intestine attaches to the heart
or why there are no veins/arteries in the legs.

A ranuncula in our garden

A picture on my drive home from camping

A poppy from the Hillcrest FarMar

Bucket List

2011-02-15T21:16:00.001-08:00

Since everyone in the world has made a Bucket List, I thought I would jump on the Bucket List Train! Skip to next post if you are O-V-E-R ridiculously self-indulgent narcissism.

Bucket List:

-Finish a quilt

-Become a published writer

-Have a gallery show of my photography

-Go to a former student’s graduation

-Visit Chile

-Go to Haiti with my dad

-Learn conversational Spanish

-Relearn how to play the guitar

-Grow a pineapple from a cutting

-See the aurora borealis

-Drive down the Mexican Highway 15

-Celebrate Dia De Los Muertos in Central America

-Finish an entire book of Suduko puzzles

-Introduce myself to John the Starbucks Barista

-Visit Petra and Israel

-Live abroad

-Solve a Rubik’s cube

-Take a pastry class

-Learn more than straight lines in knitting

-Get rid of cable t.v.

-Join a protest for peace

-Be part of a flash mob

-Live carbon neutral for a year

-Buy a hybrid/electric car

-Write a letter to the editor about something I believe in

-Perform stand-up comedy

-Invent a board game

-Understand my 403b Investments

-Grow grapes/have an arbor

-Go geo-caching

-Make apple butter

-Maintain a saltwater aquarium

31 Things I Love in 2011

2011-01-31T21:57:00.000-08:00

For the first month of 2011, here is a list of the things I love:
-Real Simple Lemonade
-Gardening on the weekends-but not roter-tilling
-Working on the quilt until I have "quilter's knee"
-My students, most of them anyway
-Monday's off (Thank you Dr. Luther King, Jr.)
-Hoarders on A&E
-Getting rid of the excess things in my life
-Thank you notes from my sweet little nephew
-Books on CD, especially obscure economic books
-Photography blogs
-Krakatoa's Trader's Head Sandwich
-Sleeping in late on Saturdays
-Cut the Rope App
-Brand new 650 thread count sheets....heaven!
-Small World Board Game "It's a Word of Slaughter After All"
-Freezer paper stencil crafting with friends
-The Knitting Kneedle's secret weapon
-Book Club Lite
-Toddlers and Tiaras on TLC
-Watching the vegetables grow and grow and grow
-Taking care of business
-Reading books about Polygamy
-The Ugly Brown Sweater, which is now uglier than usual
-Getting letters from long lost friends
-Finally fixing the number line in my classroom (now 99 and 100 are present and not behind the cabinet)
-Smelly stickers, especially the Taco scented ones I found Cinco de Mayo (Ole!)
-The tadpoles that are quickly turning into froglets
-The Rose Bowl Parade and the quick friends we made with a game of Parade Bingo
-Going to student's birthday parties and bringing the best gift (Yay for Legos)
-New shampoo and conditioner flavors
-Surviving another month without getting lice or ringworm from the kiddos...that in itself is an accomplishment!

Hurray for another great month! Here's to the next 11 of 2011.

Blizzard on I-80

2010-12-31T16:25:00.000-08:00

I realized that I said I was going to blog about my road trip to Wyoming but never got around to it. In the post-holiday boredom I thought it was a good time to catch up…. actually I am just avoiding doing dishes.

I got up early and drove north of the 15 for a long long long time. That part of the trip was both uneventful and somewhat boring. Don’t get me wrong-I love to drive. I mean I really love to drive, however sometimes it gets quite lonely. Nevertheless I had my podcasts and overactive imagination to keep me company.

South of Salt Lake the rain started and was very heavy. Not a big deal as I am a capable of driving a Saturn through wind, sleet, rain, and snow (much like the postal service). Once I turned east on the 80 things got a little more treacherous. As I climbed in elevation towards Parley’s summit the torrential rain turned into a blizzard of epic proportions. Not far out of Salt Lake I saw a sign that said, “Chains Required”. Now, most of you may know that when there is a sign requiring chains you do one of two things; either pull over and put on your chains or turn around. I chose option three: keep driving like I hadn’t seen the signs. After all the sign was not very specific…it didn’t say, “Hey, any cars that are very light and are built out of plastic parts like Legos this sign also applies to you”. At the very least I thought that if chains were really required then there would be someone checking to make sure stupid people followed the rules. Needless to say, no one stopped me.

I kept driving in the left lane following the row of cars up the summit towards the Wyoming border. As I was driving the snow was incredible, if you’ve never driven in a snowstorm then this is impossible to describe because the sense of isolation is tremendous. The snow is mesmerizing as it comes right at the car and then swoops around the windshield at the last second. It looks a lot like “Warp Speed Chewy” mode from the original Star Wars. Added to the hypnotic flakes is the absolute darkness of the world around, as the snow blankets the sky and ground the only illumination comes from the headlights that light up the flakes like a wall about 5 feet in front of the vehicle and occasionally there is a street light that makes a cone of white blizzard that reminds me of a glitter lava lamp.

After what seemed like a lifetime, I started to notice a few things, the roads were getting more slippery, the snow was getting thicker, the trucks had all pulled to the side of the road, there were not lights on the west bound side of the road, and all of the cars that were the same size as mine were stuck at varying degrees of haphazardness in the right lanes of the interstate. I knew that as long as I kept driving then I wouldn’t get stuck and wouldn’t have to explain to some patronizing and overly concerned good ol’ boy that I ignored the chains warning. So I stayed behind the SUV I had been following and just kept creeping along. The long line of cars was going approximately 5 miles an hour... sometimes hitting top speeds of 7 mph. As the line got closer to the summit it thinned out and the cars that had 4 wheel drive speed off to Evanston and I was left with the handful of semi trucks that were still creeping along and a whole lot of nothing.

This is when the crazy set in. I was terrified that I would get stuck and not be able to get unstuck before someone rammed into my car. I just kept thinking about possible heroic deeds that I would have to perform to get out of these horrible death inducing scenarios. I settled that if I got stuck I would use the car mats as traction and just leave them on the road somewhere in east Utah. All I could focus on was; keep driving, keep driving, keep driving, keep driving. If there had been a snapshot of that moment I would be headed toward bedlam for sure; wearing my traveling clothes (flip-flops, pajama pants, old t-shirt, ugly brown sweater), a death grip on the steering wheel, no sound, no distractions, rocking back and forth, muttering to myself and paranoid searching for cars that would probably kill me if for some reason I got stuck.

Fast-forward about 3 hours of this rocking and muttering and I realized that I had another crisis; I had drunk a very large Diet Coke about 5 hours before and now bladder capacity was reaching threat level midnight. Again, so many scenarios flew through my mind most of them ending in death by freezing, being hit by a semi, or dying of carbon monoxide inhalation from being trapped a snow bank and running my engine (curse you Hunter’s Safety classes in middle school!). I had come to two options; the first (which was becoming more and more of a possibility) was just peeing and then cleaning it up later when I was not in a death or death situation, the second was to pull of the road and hope that I wouldn’t get stuck. After about an hour of deliberation (and 20 miles or so of road) I couldn’t hold it anymore. By this time there was no one around. No semis, no d-bags in giant pick-ups, no one! Pulling over was dangerous because I was worried that I wouldn’t get going again and would have to employ the car mat crisis procedure. I saw a bridge up ahead and realized this may be my only chance at relief. I pulled into the right lane and stopped. Not on the shoulder, not in the barrow pit, IN THE RIGHT LANE. I opened my door put one foot out and took care of business quickly. Needless to say it’s not every day my bare behind is in a blizzard. Luckily, I had stopped under the bridge so it didn’t take much to get going again and I just kept driving.

I finally had driven the 120 miles or so to Evanston and pulled over there after calling WyoRoads to find out that 80 was closed for the next 100 miles or so. I got a motel room and settled in for the night. The next morning, I got up at 6 and followed the plows out on a clear morning that can only happen in the high dry mountain ranges of Wyoming. The dry snow crunched and squeaked…but more than that it sparkled like someone had flung glitter over the hills and valleys. There are few sights that are more breath taking than freshly fallen snow on a day when the sky is achingly blue and there is nothing buy white in every direction as far as the eye can see. It seems like the whole world has been washed clean and can start over new. The air has a crisp quality about that burns the lungs but also makes you want to breath deep as if you could inhale the freshness and turn it into something tangible. It makes you want to live a little closer to the Earth and spend more time out side where the distractions are less engaging and the quiet moments stretch to span hopes and dreams.

When Are the Tadpoles Coming?

2010-12-28T19:58:00.000-08:00

When are the tadpoles coming I wonder?
What is this package under the tree?
Ohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohno Oh NO!

When are the tadpoles coming I wonder?

While futzing online during my trip to Wyboring, I decided that it would be a good idea to order the tadpoles I have been promising the students since the beginning of school. In the spring, 2nd grade studies complete and incomplete metamorphosis so I thought it would be fun to have tadpoles. Usually I have this grand idea in May when it is far to late for them to metamorphasize before school comes to an end. Anyway, I order the tadpoles and expect that a certificate for live specimens will be sent and that I will mail that when I get back to San Diego I can mail in the certificate and the tadpoles will come just in time for school to start again. This is the way it worked in my head....

I returned home on the 25th and was wondering when exactly the tadpole certificate would arrive. I chalked up this delay to the fact that it was Christmas week and the shipping people may be off or it got stuck in the Christmas package rush. No big deal, the kids aren't coming back until the 3rd.

What is this package under the tree?

On Monday, the 27th, I wake up ready to get my life in order. I decided the best idea was to take all of my stuff that has piled up in the living room to the basement and therefore at least the living room will be less cluttered even if I don't get the basement completely cleaned. I am gathering the little piles of things that Catherine so carefully stashes when she finds my junk scattered high and wide. I am ever so gently shoving things into bags and taking them downstairs. I get to the tree and find a present (oooooh unexpected) with my name on it and a package under that present from THE FROG COMPANY!

Ohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohnoohno Oh NO!

This package is SUPPOSED to be a certificate NOT the tadpoles!!!! I immediately drop everything grab the package, that is on it's side, and hustle to the kitchen. I grab a knife and hastily open the package. In it I find the container, special sand, food, AND two desperate looking tadpoles (I am inferring their desperation). I know that I can't put them in regular water and the booklet (which is trying way too hard to be cute and provides very little actual information) says I need "Spring Water"....this goes against my water buying philosophy but we are talking about LIFE OR DEATH. I grab my keys and rush to the door. I drive in a fluster to Vons and jump out of my car. It is at this point that I look down and realize that even though it's about 2pm I am dressed in slippers, pajama pants, a teal t-shirt, and a brown jacket with lime green buttons. I also haven't showered in like 4 days and still have the travel look still from plane ride 2 days before. Needless to say, I am looking rough.

Abandoning my vanity (ha), I grab two gallons of "Spring Water" and a liter of Diet Coke (on account of) and rush back to the house. I quickly pour the water into their container then empty the tadpoles from their shipping containers into their new home. I finally take a deep breath and realize that I haven't really taken one since finding the package. I am convinced that these tadpoles will not survive as they are both looking very ill and laying on their sides at the bottom of their home. I then read and re-read the FAQs section on their website and they said that this lack of liveliness is normal....of course I am convinced that my tadpoles are special in every way INCLUDING the fact that they are more sick than any tadpole has every been in the history of all tadpoles.

Luckily after about an hour they started to perk up. As of today they are doing fine. I am now very concerned that they will be frogs before next Monday when the kids will get to witness the miracle of metamorphosis. It is very cold in our house so hopefully that will slow them down a little bit. When Catherine got home I asked her when exactly the package got there, she didn't know but thinks it was sometime before Christmas. So really there are two Christmas Day Miracles here, one that the USPS actually works sometimes and the other is that my Superior-In-Every-Way Tadpoles are of such resolute determination and upstanding moral fiber that they can survive anything...hopefully that includes 2nd graders.

Look you can see its little leggies!

Another one of the same tadpole. This one is a littler dark and more developed than the other one.

This one has little tiny leggies and is lighter. Oh my heck!

Baby Killer

2010-12-28T17:49:00.001-08:00

Today I went to school to check on my fish tank. I had a pretty bad ich infestation before break and wanted to do damage control (ie. replacing the dead fish) before the kids got back and started asking questions about where exactly their favorite fish were. I fed them and was watching them like I often do when I should be doing something far more productive. I put a chunk of food in and then lifted the lid to separate it so the little guys could get some too…often Big Red is too pushy to let the little guys get their fair share.

When I lifted up the lid, I noticed that there was a very large nasty looking cluster of small egg things above on the underside of the hood. Please don’t judge the next few decisions I made, or if you do judge keep in mind the cockroach infection of 2009 and the fact that I watched the old Willy Wonka a lot when I was a kid and this looked like something that would be in the scary acid-trip tunnel on their way to the Inventing Room. Anyway I, being a mature and responsible adult, promptly stuck my finger in it. I was amazed that it was basically a hard outer shell with a gooey inside. This really grossed me out so being convinced that this was some sort of cockroach infestation I poked it with a pencil until it fell into a cup. Then deciding that I didn’t want to have cockroaches in my class (in case they hatched in the trash can) I went to wash them down the sink, but that idea was dismissed when I realized that I would have to squish them down the drain and I didn’t really want to touch this mass again…especially since it was probably cockroach babies waiting to jump out onto me and give me enough fodder for nightmares that I would never sleep again. After eschewing the drain and the trash can, I decided that I would throw them outside and hope they died in the elements. I opened the door (that won’t stay open) and was holding on to it as I flung the mass out of the cup and it ever so gracefully flew across the sidewalk and splattered right before the rail.

Having convinced myself that the impact would probably kill whatever was growing inside I returned to the tank and all of a sudden remembered that before Christmas break the snails in my tank had been “playing” a lot. Apparently, I had been inadvertently letting my students watch hours of snail porn. They thought it was funny how one liked to ride on the other one’s shell. According to wikianswers this is how they mate and the large glob of eggs were probably snail eggs. How was I to know that this type of snail lays their eggs out of the water…after all they live in the water all the time!

"Look the little brown one is riding on the yellow one."

"They must be good friends to be playing so nicely"

So in less than a minute my freaking out because of the gooey cockroach eggs turned into freaking out because I had probably killed all of the little baby snails that my snails had so lovingly conceived in a public venue. So then I went back outside armed with a piece of paper and the cup that was previously mentioned. I scraped the blob (now not quite so cluster shaped and quite a bit more slimy) and fixed what I hope will be a nice little home for the little guys in 2-3 more weeks. That is if they survive the poking, screaming, pushing, flinging, scraping, and relocating.

This is what the eggs looked liked. This is not my image as you can imagine mine look a lot more like this...

Flies In My Coffee

2010-11-11T20:26:00.000-08:00

The other day I was joyfully sipping my coffee from Latte Mi Corazon (R.I.P.). I got busy and distracted, as a 2nd grade teacher is want to do. When I came back several hours later and picked up my thoughtlessly abandoned cup there was a small gnat that flew out of hole in the lid. I was horrified!

Suddenly, I had a flashback montage that involved every cup of coffee I had drank carelessly in the last few weeks! Days of picking up cups while teaching addition, yelling at small children, cursing thunderstorms, and checking homework (teachers are masters of multi-tasking). I imagined the tiny corpses of flies that were lured into a vanilla latte by the sweet nectar of sugar and caffine that I had inadvertently consumed! I had gone from happily getting my caffeine on to contemplating how many diseases I had ingested, because flies after all are poop eaters! I basically had convinced myself that I could stop eating meat and legumes because I had eaten so much protein in fly-sized bits and pieces! I was horrified! Disgusted! Outraged!

Then I had a moment of clarity! I realized there were two paths that diverged in the woods; one in which I would give up coffee entirely (ha) more probable I would spend hours carefully checking under each lid and on the foamy latte surface before every sip OR I could ignore the one stray fly and embrace that flies rarely fly into coffee and that was probably the first time it had ever happened in the history of mankind. Ignorance is bliss...oh, I think so.

As I was driving home, I realized that this coffee/fly fiasco was really a just a confirmation of things I already knew to be true...the fear of the not-yets, not-quites, not-at-alls has a lot of people paralyzed into not doing or trying things that could be amazing. Do I think that drinking flies is the amazing experience that people are missing...No. However, why should I let something that may or may-not ever happen dictate my daily actions.

So my friends, here is to living! I am going to try something new. I am going to order something that I haven't tried before...even though I know what I like and the fear of not liking something as much as what I always order has plagued my ordering choices for years. I am going to drink from water fountains. I am going take all the sloppy 2nd grade hugs that are given to me even when I can see their crusty, booger noses and dirty, somewhat sticky hands. I am going to abide by the 5 second rule. I am going to use pencils from the kids' desks and not even look at who sits at that table. Don't get me wrong, I still am going to wash vigorously and use clorox wipes at every possible opportunity, but I am also going walk barefoot in the grass sometimes. I will wipe off hot dogs that have fallen onto the ground before I cook them, but enjoy the crunchy bits that are reminiscent of where they landed on the patio. I will sometimes do something that scares me just to make sure I haven't slipped into a wasteland of stagnant living. And I am definitely going to drink my coffee without looking for flies!

The Extra Mile

2010-09-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in life there are people who give a little extra in their jobs...it's those "extras" that make an ordinary day extraordinary. A couple years ago at camp, Rover read us a story about people who go the extra mile and strive make memories and leave fingerprints on other people's lives. She challenged us to "leave fingerprints" on our camper's lives. These fingerprints are what shows our love, our passions, our care about the details to the world around us. When it comes down to it, the small things are the ones that are special. I don't want to waste my life waiting for big things to happen, I want to be enamored with the small things, the insignificant things, the silly things. I can't help but thinking that the only way to find contentment is to be content with the everyday things. I hope that I can make memories for my students. Even on rushed and running late day, like today, I want to give a little extra that will make second grade something special. I hope that I can find the energy to connect with students on a personal level and maintain those connections by doing small, extraordinary things.

This is a coffee from the Roasterie in KC. Such skill.

This is a sandwich from Krakatoa (25th and Broadway). I always get the Traitor's Head sandwich. It is awesome....roast beef, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and horseradish cream cheese! Today I laughed out loud when I saw the picture that was drawn on it. Thanks sandwich dude for making a memory for me. The littlest things make the biggest difference!

On The Road Again

2010-08-29T22:10:00.000-07:00

August 5, 2010
Dark and early, Emma and I reluctantly pried our barely living bodies out of bed and into the car. We groggily drove northwest in a slumberous state. After describing to Emma the chances of finding a Starbucks in the state of Wyoming, outside of a grocery store or in general our hearts were filled with a longing for a latte. We got to Casper and while I was asleep, Emma started driving in the wrong direction which was somewhat reminiscent of the scene in Dumb and Dumber in which Jim Carey wakes up to find they drove a day in the wrong direction. She hadn’t gotten a days journey away but a little detour nonetheless. We then used my dear iPhone to google the directions to a Starbucks and eventually found the sweet, sweet nectar of life.
Our trip continued on what is the worst section of road (in my opinion) in existence…and I’ve been on a lot of desolate roads so that is saying something. The road between Casper and Shoshoni is the WORST!!! They literally film movies that are set on desolate planets there (see Galaxy Quest and Strange Encounters of A Second Kind)! We made it Shoshoni, mourned the loss of the Shoshoni Malt Shop to the economy and traveled on to the great metropolis of Thermopolis.
We stopped at the most janky Subway that I’ve ever been to…..in one word- horrifying! Then we went onto the Hot Springs State Park, which is awesome. I have always loved the suspension bridge, smelly hot water, limestone terraces, and people watching there. We walked around looking at the odd additions for the benefit of tourists and even shamelessly used some for a photo opp.
Eventually we made our way to Cody, Wyoming and then on to Yellowstone National Park. By this time we were a little road weary and ready to see some large mammals of the Great Plains. Against the advice of several signs warning against bear mauling we gladly jumped out of our car with the hundreds of other fools to openly gawk at a grizzly bear that was relaxing in a lake. I being wiser that most fools stood well behind the first row of idiots, knowing that if there was a bear attack not only would he probably choose someone closer but I would also have an excellent vantage point to capture the carnage on film. That may sound heartless…but there were warnings, lots and lots of warnings!

After the excitement of a grizzly we drove on and saw another bear in the same lake further on. The main attraction was the buffalo which were like as numerous as the cockroaches in my old classroom….and to that I mean more than you could keep track of. They were not only quite large but they were also quite close and slow moving. We were stuck in traffic for over an hour waiting for one to get out of the road. I’m not sure what was more exciting, the close up buffalo or the tourist who were blatantly disregarding all warning of a goring. I’m not exactly sure what compels people to jump out of their vehicles with such abandon at the sight of a several ton WILD animal but nonetheless I was hoping a little bit that we would get to see someone self-selecting out of the gene pool. The long and somewhat boring waiting was a practice our car dance moves and take ridiculous pictures.

We passed the buffalo finally and drove back to Cody for the Cody Nite (this spelling kills me) Rodeo held every night in June, July and August. We were there for a pretty exciting night. It was fun for Emma to see a part of Wyoming and fun for me to be nostalgic about the many summer nights in my formative years that were spent by a dusty arena hoping for some excitement but not too much excitement, the kind of excitement that ends at the hospital trauma center for someone unlucky/dumb enough to be smooshed by a large wild-eyed beast. I’m not sure which was better the people watching or the clown who was homophobic and who was less than impressed with Obama…I guess there is no blame in pandering to your audience but somewhat unnecessary in my opinion.
After the rodeo and the amazing people watching opportunity that it provided, we went back to the Cody KOA to sleep in our cute little cabin. About 400 motorcyclists traveling to or from Sturgis Rally joined us there. We fell asleep listening to thunder roll in over the mountains, the car alarm of the d-bag next door, and a copious amount of Jack Daniels being consumed by those who donned mullets, cut off t-shirts, and leather chaps. All around a great day.

August 6, 2010
We decided to leave early on this day also…not as early as 4 like the previous day but too early for the faint of heart. We got up and Emma drove to Old Faithful while I did a very poor job of faking like I was awake. We arrived at Old Faithful in time to sit on wet benches by other freezing tourists to wait while the pressure built up enough for her to blow her top. Right before 10:03, a very, very large group of Asian tourists descended on our small huddling group and we got to see a man loose it on some of them which upstaged Old Faithful. The best part by far was watching the varied poses and compositions of the Facebook default pictures that were taken there. If you have never had the opportunity to see large groups of tourists at a somewhat famous geological (or other type) attraction then you should find one in your area and enjoy the show. There are few things I like more than people watching and Old Faithful provided another perfect opportunity.

Leaving the tourists and the great caldera behind we travelled on towards Jackson Hole. I can’t say that I have any affinity towards Jackson. That it is the only thing that most people know about the great state of Wyoming is somewhat annoying to me. I love Wyoming, but there is far more in the other 99.9 percent of the state than tourist traps, overpriced goods and services, and some of the most disturbingly un-Wyoming people I’ve met.
We drove on towards Boise through southern Idaho, I was impressed with its agriculture base and overall beauty. Idaho sometimes gets a bad rap and I think some of that is probably undeserved. We stayed the night with friends from college and got to meet their precious new baby. We also played a game, Bang, which was fun and I am looking forward to playing again. Another great joy of the day was that we started listening to Harry Potter 7. Emma and I frequently would start talking to each other in horrible English accents while alternately cheering, hating, mourning, celebrating and generally enjoying the story.

August 7, 2010
This was one of the two big day of our travels as we drove from Boise to Bellingham. There was nothing notable that happened on the trip besides a continued dependence on Harry Potter and several questionable choices regarding good food for road trips. The drive was beautiful from the rolling fields of soy and other undetermined crops to the winding drive through the fog-shrouded mountains. We hit a wild wind storm at some point during the day and my car grill was filled with tumble-weeds…we decided to leave them in as an experiment in how long they would last (and maybe a little bit because we are both lazy)
We arrived in Bellingham a little earlier that anticipated but it was a relief to be able to stretch and walk off the teriyaki jerky, sprite, and funyons that were irritating my lower gastrointestinal track. Jell-o took us to dinner at the Bellingham Brewery, we not only got to eat wonderful mac n’ cheese but also got to see what can only be described as a hot mess getting started. As we enjoyed our meal, a very large group of similarly dressed college students came in and ordered drinks. They rowdily drank and then marked the number of drinks they had on their “Pub Golf” “scorecards”…and by “scorecards” I mean t-shirts decorated with sharpie marker. The brewery was only the second place but by their general demeanor I imagine that there was a Text From Last Night submission and maybe a bail that had to be paid before the night was up. Then we went back to Jell-o’s and played games while generally enjoying each other’s company. It was a delight as always to see sweet Jell-o. Her apartment is dreadfully adorable; she had made us cookies for our arrival, and had even made a little basket for fun times. I can’t tell you how much I miss Jell-o at camp and throughout the year. She really brings out the best in everyone around her…and especially me! It’s nice to have friends like that.

August 8, 2010
With Jell-o in tow, we drove down to Seattle and met Slide at the Science Museum. If you have never been to the Pacific Science Center…GO! It’s awesome. I’ve been three times in the past few years and every time I spend hours and hours there. They have a great physical science place, a good planetarium, dinosaurs, butterflies, hissing cockroaches, a tide pool, and so many other things! I’m sure it’s fun with kids but unlike some places not necessary to take the little ankle-biters along. We spend most of the day doing things like seeing how well our super sniffers worked, petting starfish, learning how to swallow swords, blowing gigantic bubbles, and found out our genetic pathways.
After playing at the museum, we went to a very nice little Thai restaurant. It is called Rice and Spice and it was very delicious! We met up with Emma’s family afterwards and they took us to a fish restaurant for drinks and dinner. Then to top of the night we walked through Pike Place market to the gum wall. At the gum wall we took photos, as everyone should. I pretended to lick it and this girl who was the epitome of stuck up gasped in shock like I had actually licked it. I was surprised that she thought that anyone would like the wall (ok I probably would have for like 5 bucks…It builds up the immunity!) but then a minute later when she was posing for pictures her hair was getting stuck in it….a small victory for not-cheerleaders.
We walked on to the best gelato store that I’ve been to outside of Italy. I had pear and lemon and it was AWESOME!!! The flavors were amazing and I was delighted at everything I tried. So again if you are in Seattle, Bottega Italiana on First Ave. It’s worth it. After leaving Emma’s family, Jell-o was a rock star and drove Slide to her car and then back to Bellingham as Emma slept and I pretended (poorly) to stay awake.

August 9, 2010
Our wanderlust took us to Vancouver, BC on this fine (but rainy) day. We eventually made it into Canada after being rigorously questioned by the border officer who could not believe that we “came all the way from California just to go to the aquarium.” We simply had to stop by Tim Horton’s on our way through. If you haven’t been to a Tim Horton’s then there is a little something missing from your life. It’s basically a coffee shop but has excellent food and donut holes (TimBits). There is kind of a cult following by people who have the excellent fortune to go to them. After filling up on soup, bagels, coffee, and TimBits we drove on to Stanley Park and the Vancouver Aquarium. I have to say that as nice as Canadians and Canada in general are the roads in Vancouver are not well designed. This is my third time there and every time I am amazed at how industrial it seems and how poorly planned the infrastructure is. I guess I am spoiled because I can hop onto any number of freeways and get to where I’m getting but there the highways wind (annoyingly slow) through residential and commercial areas. I have no idea how they survived being flooded by the Olympic traffic.

The Vancouver Aquarium is one of my two favorite aquariums (the Shedd being the other one but that is an entirely different story). It is in the middle of Stanley Park and is amazing. There are belugas, dolphins, seals, hagfish, octopi, Amazon fish that are over 12 feet long, sharks, lionfish, sea turtles, and my favorite jellyfish. I love that aquariums are a glimpse into a world that is so different than the one I live in but also so tranquil, life-abundant, and richly textured.

We spent the day exploring the underwater world and then drove back down to Bellingham to end the day by collecting seaglass on the beaches of Bellingham. We didn’t find a lot of seaglass but did enjoy the sunset on the beach. This was our last night in Bellingham so we lived up to the motto of “Subdued Excitement” by subduing our excitement.

August 10, 2010
We got up early and drove to Seattle to eat a very good homemade breakfast with one of my friends from way back in the day. We then continued down the 5 on our way through Washington and Oregon. Somewhere in the middle of Washington we thought it would be an excellent idea to stop and get some blackberries for jelly and other delights. We were lacking some of the things we needed to know about picking blackberries, which might have limited the enthusiasm in which we jumped into blackberry brambles. Let me explain what we found out…. 1) blackberry brambles are thorny 2) the best blackberries are just out of reach 3) apparently when you are hooked on thorns you should push towards the bush instead of ripping flesh outwards 4) long sleeves, pants, and shoes are recommended…none of which we used 5) tiny little splinters will get in to your hands, arms, legs, and feet and then fester over the next several weeks 6) there is a chemical in blackberry brambles that make the scratches almost intolerable. We picked about 28 cups of berries and then continued on a little more beat up than before. The rest of the day was driving and thinking of how to smuggle theses blackberries into California. We made it to California and declared a peach at the agriculture check point but didn’t find it necessary to declare the huge amount of berries too. Emma was a rock star with the driving. She drove through NorCal and got us to Davis safely. We staying in a motel room there because of our arrival time. It was at this point in the trip that I was getting ready to be home. I get a little barn sour.

August 11, 2010
We awoke refreshed and ready for some adventures in the wonderful city of Davis. Emma and drove to Fairfield to the Jelly Belly Factory to people watch and get some Jelly Belly Flops (the beans that are not quality). We were in a tour group with the most unenthusiastic tour guide ever. I wish that this blog had sound because I can do an excellent impression of her….imagine the most monotone, job-hating, angst ridden teenager you have ever met-times that by 10 and you have our tour guide. It was cool to get to taste the jelly beans at every stage of their making.

After sampling candy to our hearts content, we went back to Davis for the world famous Davis Farmer’s Market. It was so good! We had corndogs from The Hotdogger, awesome peaches from the market and a pretzel croissant that blew my mind. We met up with Chelsea and her fiancé, Blake, and listened to some great music and watched little kids do what little kids do best…dance without reservation. We played games and went to bed pretty early.

August 12, 2010
Feeling ready to hit the road again we travelled to San Francisco and visited the Castro. We walked around for a while and then we went to see the Golden Gate Bridge. We saw the bottom half of it and I was supremely frustrated by driving in San Fran…annoying hills, people, and tourist. I was getting kind of annoyed with everything though…it had been a long couple of days. Emma drove through Monterey and we sat in hours and hours of traffic. We then drove down the 101/1 which was awesome. It is the most scenic route, even if it is very time consuming. We got to the Hearst Castle sea lion beach right at sundown (it was freezing) and decided to continue on to San Diego. The rest of the trip was a haze of sleep, Disney music, and RadioLab. I was delighted to be back in my bed and out of the car, it’s nice to be able to stretch out after so many days of sitting.

For the rest of the photos you can go here...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=202283&id=503376579&l=e99dba49b8

J. Low 2010, A Happy List

2010-08-13T23:36:00.000-07:00

Juliette Low Camp 2010

A Happy List:

-making it work with only 17 counselors
-leading camper’s choice
-getting to drive both gators and the golf cart
-having Papa Hobbes visit
-swimming, swimming in the swimming pool
-cutting Slide’s hair
-the baked potato and buffalo chicken dip from Lisa
-staying with my favorite family
-Mama Mia and Hairspray
-going to Moon Marble Co. with my dad
-having s’mores with the girls
-Song’s dislike of the fried oats making
-this being the year of butter and bacon
-The Show Me The Butter State shirts
-getting packages from loved ones
-killing a my 28th hoe with Bamboo
-$2.99 margaritas at Chilis
-seeing my Kansas City friends
-not being in the Ad Building very much
-Annie in the shower
-being able to fit the entire core staff at one table in the DH
-late night games and snacks in the DH
-playing Plants vs. Zombies late at night and getting a little scared
-sleeping on picnic tables again...realizing that I am not 18 any more and that even though I like picnic tables they don't like me as much
-sno-cones
-spending the 4th with some of my favorite gals
-Sequoia and Wallaby coming to visit
-going on hikes with Annie
-meeting the most bad-ass boy scout ever
-the PC’s
-Mr. Janks
-Moose’s toe shoes and Clone’s hate of them
-Losing 2 ½ sets of bed boards
-Dead Squirrel and Peanut Butter
-the amount of sausage that I consumed
-breakfast buddies, fajitas, cheese square croutons, and more BACON
-making fried oats 4 times
-letting Reptar explore with my camera
-the nurse and her love of the frogs
-the new campers
-finding out that I can do an acceptable job as Grover and The Count from Sesame Street
-messing around with Captain Kirk
-seeing the k-boys growing up
-Jeff and the poop scooping
-Elmo going via con huevos into the poop water to scoop out corn chunks
-the new camp shower mix
-Beiber Fever…I mean Bieber Fever
-Tidal Wave into the deep end
-going through sooo many tubs o’ love
-sleeping in cabin 5
-making someone’s day everyday
-hanging out/hiding out in the laundry room
-Lepi’s 84 list about 84
-Rhubarbs sweet spirit and jam
-gold bond green
-getting sunburned and trying to hide it from Rover, completely not succeeding
-Waldo’s pizza
-Starbucks runs
-the heat….ok not really
-Black Eye Pea’s “Tonights Going to be a Good Night”
-Realizing that I make up names for almost every song in my iTunes…that are really far off
-Spa night and the oatmeal fiasco
-‘Da Unit showering ALL of camp
-Slide comparing the DH to a caste system
-'Da Unit dance off at the pool...in which Twiggy, Elmo, and I dominated
-Reading Skippyjon Jones and Where the Wild Things Are to Unit 1
-The demonic Grover voice
-Having dinner and story time with the Conners
-Cooks parade and the awkward Funky Chicken Dance at banquet
-Funky utensil meal being during biscuit and gravy meal
-Cooking out at the upper fire circle
-Elmo putting mustard in the beans
-Fried oats breakfast with the kitchen staff......awkward
-Bamboo and 84 drinking the rotten watermelon (see video below)
-The counselor drama

Misery to Wyboring

2010-08-09T21:59:00.000-07:00

July 31, 2010
After a long and trying day at Girl Scout Council, we foolishy decided to head out to the great state of Wyboring, with a car full of dirty laundry, a bag full of discarded snack food, and hope in our hearts. The trip started off well enough, spirits were high. However around, Lincoln Nebraska-the crazies started. If you have never had the opportunity to drive for 10 hours, mostly in the dark, do it! It is a social experiment that will leave you wondering where your common sense has gone. We drove giddily through the night on nothing but Starbucks Frappacinios, peanut M&Ms, and laughter about the creepiest doll we’d ever seen. I (Adrielle) was relegated to the back seat and promptly fell asleep because I couldn’t hear a darn thing. I’m not sure what adventures Emma and Hayley had while I was napping but I did wake once to an urgent cry for help as they had driven into the nothingness of Nebraska with no gas in the tank. Apparently the concept of pre-planning was lost at about 3:00 am. Luckily, I woke up in time to save the day (night) and navigated sans Iphone GPS to a nearby gas station. My dear Pacifico’s tank (12 gallon capacity) thirstily gulped down 13 ½ gallons…we were near crisis! I decided to take back the wheel and continue on towards Chey-town. We arrived early in the morning and slept soundly.

My car got to 100,000 miles this trip!!!

This is quite possibly the creepiest thing I've ever seen...you can't unsee things like this!

August 1, 2010
I wish that I had more to say about this day. I woke up at 10 and reacquainted myself with the creature comforts that most people take for granted while Emma and Hayley slept. When I say slept, I meant SLEPT! At about 4:30 when I came home from the movies with Dr. and Papa they had arisen from dreamland. With the day mostly over there was little to do but go to Sonic for corndogs and play a ridiculously long game with my friends from college. The game lasted until 12:30 am…good thing the girls got so much shut-eye the previous night/day.

August 2, 2010
Determined to get up a little earlier than mid-afternoon, we set out on an adventure to “shoot some shit”….I do mean this literally. My dad took us on a Camper’s Choice outing to the metropolis of Burns to meet the most bad-ass cowboy ever! This sure-shooter, Maverick, was 6 foot and a lot, had a mustache (not a beard) that swept gracefully down to his shirt pocket, a swagger that only comes from riding horses for the better part of a life, and more guns that the US Government. He let us use his private shooting range/hill for disposing lead and other toxins into the environment via .22 shells. Not only did he let us use his property for the shameless destruction of pop cans and eggs, he also let us use his “cute little devil” pistol that shot .357 but he loaded with a special hand packed lighter caliber bullets for us. I have only shot a .22 pistol but it was pretty awesome shooting something with a little more punch. After Maverick left we continued to try to shoot a few other things brought with us, a yogurt container, eggs, strawberries, pop cans, and a picture of Zoe LaRue the poodle. Once all the ammo was spent and we were well satisfied with our collective ability to shoot whatever piece of trash or road sign that was in the vicinity we rolled out feeling pretty proud of ourselves.
We also got to hang out more with my dear friend Kirstin. We saw Dinner for Schmucks the movie, which is painfully hard to watch because Steve Carell is so good at being awkward. We also met up with Abi to see her new digs and meet her husband.

August 3, 2010
On this fine Wyoming day, we met up with my aunt and grandpa for their weekly picnic. My dad had brought the canoe to the lake so he and my aunt took it for a lap or two. Then Hayley and Emma courageously took it around the lake. We also ate some Toxic Johns Potato Ole’s, which are a blessing and a curse. A blessing while you is eating them and then soon after a curse. We got to see my other Aunt and blew some bubbles with her after putting together a fan. Mostly today was my taking care of business day and like it or not the girls were stuck with me.
We had found some darling little baby gifts and took them out to Abi’s school to give to her. They were adorable! I love shopping for baby stuff…if only you could do that without the actual baby…I guess that is why I will be an awesome auntie.
We topped off the night by playing card games with the dad and it was a nice end to a relaxing time spent in Chey-town.

My dad and I had a water race...I lost!

August 4, 2010
Today was filled with good friends, good beer, and less than good Mexican food. We started the day off by going to the Budweiser tour in Ft. Collins, Colorado. I love, love, love factories so it was a good tour and a beautiful day in the foothills.

We are standing in front of 11.3 million gallons of beer!

Cheers to free beer.

Then we drove down to Denver and picked up Mariah. We decided to go the best/worst restaurant in Denver, the one and only Casa Bonita. If you haven’t been to Casa Bonita and you live within a days drive of it….GO! It is as horrible/wonderful as you can imagine. Essentially it is a dark and damp restaurant that was designed by someone on acid who had access to a lot of chicken wire and fake rock material. You might be asking why anyone would want to drive to a strip mall in the red light district of Denver to eat bad Mexican food in what looks like a poorly made movie set…and to those people I would say two things….Cliff Divers and Sopapillas. Every 15 minutes or so there is a extremely poorly scripted and even more poorly executed melodrama that ends with someone diving 30 feet into a pool of water. To those neigh sayers and sayers of neigh, I say….EMBRACE THE CHEESE! You are doing no one any good by being too serious to laugh at the absurd and the outrageous. I also have to say that things that make Casa Bonita horrible are the same things that make it awesome….I mean some of it might be nostalgia but where else can you see a gorilla and pirate fight, a mariachi band, Black Bart’s cave, a piñata being broken by 6 years all amped up on high fructose corn syrup, and get to eat in a cave!

For further information please visit this website…hilarious. http://blogs.westword.com/cafesociety/2009/01/casa_bonita_a_survivors_guide.php
To his suggestions, I would also say….Avoid the meat-go for the cheese enchiladas but the safest things are the sopapillas and diet coke.

Old Friends

2010-06-24T23:19:00.000-07:00

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted;
nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested:
that is, some books are to be read only in parts,
others to be read, but not curiously, and some few
to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
~ Francis Bacon ~

There’s something about the last day of school, in the quiet of the afternoon with the calm and peace of another year put to rest. It dulls the annoyance of ten-year olds, erases the frustration of stupid questions (yes there are such a thing), highlights the best memories and takes the edges off the rough ones. It was nice to be able to dismantle the room; take down bulletins boards, recycle ungraded homework without feeling guilty, throw away the pencils that are shorter than my pinkie finger, and un-goop the glue bottle tops knowing they will stay un-gooped for longer than a day.

As I was packing up my classroom, once again, I was slowly sifting through the chaos that is my classroom library. As I was uncovering books in book bins I found several things; an empty milk container, 40 pencils, three sporks, a straw, four markers, several wads of Kleenex, a cheese omelet from at least two weeks ago. Besides the treasures that I found, I had an entirely enjoyable time uncovering books I had forgotten about. I felt like I was reconnecting with friends that I had lost contact with. It’s funny that I can’t remember where I put debit card but I can remember the first time I read each book. Each one brought back a memory of my favorite character, the chapters that made me cry in empathy, the person who recommended it to me, or the kids I shared it with.

It made me realize how important reading is…or I suppose more than the skill-the love of reading. As a kid, I had the world in my hands and as an adult I have a lifetime of memories of places, people, and things that have broadened my world, my view, my understanding of things I’ve only experienced through text. So I admonish you to find a good book, read a good book, share a good book. As Ms. Carlson once said, “Writing should be readable, re-readable, read-aloudable.” Good books should be ones that you will stay up all night and read but still feel a little sad to turn the last page.

Boodacris

2010-05-09T21:59:00.000-07:00

I have a wonderful and wonderfully trying 5th grader. He is awesome when he is alone but in the large group, aka classroom, he needs everyone to be focused on him. He also really doesn't have a filter because of his impulsivity he will just blurt out exactly what is on his mind...whatever thought if flying through at that exact moment in time. He has been known to walk into a room and say something like, "It smells like earwax and nachos in here" This of course causes about 20 other kids to start disagreeing with him about what exact food product and or body product it smells like in the classroom. He is also known for trying to make up his own nicknames, which are both random and never ever stick. I've been keeping a list going throughout the year and here are the ones I could remember at the end of the school day-there are probably hundreds more that I forgot before I could get to a post-it.

Boodacris
Saliva
Double A
Big Mac
Big Deezy
Tonail
Muerte
Big Booty Judy
Athlete's Foot
Babooshka
Oompa Loompa
Buttercup
Shamu
O'Doyle
Anthony
Jerome
Jermaine Dupri
Zit
Scorpion
Spade
Dead Zone
Butterscotch Ripple
Criss-a-fur
Biltoe
Hazard

Guns are for getting food

2010-04-08T20:39:00.000-07:00

I've learned a lot of things at my new school but I also try to remember the things that I learned at my last school...ah the memories :). One of my dearest friends there once told me that when a kid says something shocking that it's better not to react in shock (like expected) but rather to accept what they are saying and then be open about the reasons behind why they are saying it. I have to say that I am always trying to cover the shock and not always succeeding...I finally felt like I had implemented this lesson into my teaching...below is a transcript of the conversation:

Me: Today in ELD we are going to be talking about how you feel... You can talk about how you feel about the recent earthquake, global warming, going to 6th grade, or anything else you want to talk about.
LB: I have something I want to talk about...
Me: Great (Internal monologue:awesome this kid finally wants to participate)
LB: In my opinion, (which was our language frame) holding a gun is awesome.
Me: (Crap..I am out of my depth) Ok...how did that make you feel?
LB: It made me feel strong, powerful, and like I could protect myself
Me: (Don't freak out, don't freak out) Well, in a lot of cultures guns are a way of life. Who do you feel like you need to protect yourself from?
LB: Other people who would do bad things.
Me: Ok, I can see where having a gun would make you feel safer. Guns were made so that people could get food, protect their families and their lands...it makes sense that you would feel in control when you were holding a gun. Guns can be both dangerous and helpful-like if you were getting food for your family.
LB: Exactly!
Me: Obviously, having a gun at your age is inappropriate but as an adult who has to hunt for food it would be a necessity.
LB: Hunting?
Me: You know, using a gun to get food for your family...hunting, shooting wildlife, deer, elk, moose...you know?
LB: Oh...I thought when you said getting food for your family you meant taking it to Wal-mart and using it to get food for your family.
Me: ?
LB: You know, like using the gun to get food and money from the store people
Me: Oh....that's not what I meant. (Transition to shocked teacher mode) Guns are dangerous and there is no reason ever you should hold one again.
LB: I know, I know they are inappropriate for children.

My students are funny because whenever they are about to say something that they know will set off a "life lesson" they always preface the statement with "I know ______ isn't appropriate for children, BUT ....." I must start every soapbox lecture with,
"______ is not appropriate for children because...." It's funny that the idiosyncrasies that they emulate are ones that I am not aware of until I hear them said by a 10 year old.

Accident of Nature...another camp post

2010-03-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

Daylight savings time in the spring is the first tangible clue that summer is just around the corner. The weather in San Diego last week was enough to tip the balance between “Ready for Summer” and “Need Summer Now”. I also had a chance to finish a book about a camp for kids with disabilities called Accident of Nature by Harriet McBryde Johnson. The narrator has cerebral palsy and it’s her observations on the systems, campers, and staff at a residential camp.
There are things you read that stick with you and as you mull them over your understanding becomes deeper so that the next time you think of something your perception has changed. This is how it was with the following passage. It stuck with me and changed some of my perceptions.

“Cabin by cabin, we go on the deck to see our candles lay on the water. From the dock, I look back at the shore at the candles resting in hands and on laps, hands and laps made anonymous, made uniform, by the darkness. I look down at the candles floating away, and at their light reflections shimmering on the black water.
As I watch the flickering light drift away like tiny souls leaving, I think there is such a think as Camp Spirit. But it isn't what Mr. Bob was talking about.
Mr. Bob may think he lit the first candle, but the flame is beyond anything he can control or even comprehend. Passing from hand to hand, the fire becomes new for each person.
Camp Spirit is like that too--complex, changing, elusive. I think kindly of fire, its warmth and light, the fire of the hearth. A place where people gather for strength and nourishment. And I think of fire's power to consume and destroy. A raging force that blasts away the good and the bad, the weak and strong, without discrimination, reducing them to their elements. And finally I open my heart to then small flame that flickers out in an instant, to endure only in a brief afterlife of memory. A spirit that exists only as long as it has something to act upon.”

The initial thing that struck me was how similar this was to the boat ceremony of yesteryear…replaced by the “keepsakes” sometime in the mid-2000’s. I didn’t appreciate the ceremony then because it usually involved crafting something out of meat trays and pipe cleaners when there was laundry to do, socks to find, and cabins to clean-up. Those ridiculous boats have been replaced with making similar things out of construction paper, Popsicle sticks, and sheets of foam-same concept except they don’t have to be seaworthy.
I read, re-read, and then read it again because it reminded me of the closing day of camp. When the cicadas are starting their nightly chorus, the families have gathered around a smoky campfire to celebrate another great camp session, and the hard work is mostly done. There is a feeling of completion and contentment as I look around the campfire at the staff who look battle-worn but triumphant, the counselors who I am alternately loving and hating, the campers who are a little more bug-bitten, a little-more sunned, and smell like camp but glow with an inner light that only comes after doing things once thought impossible.
I love the phrase “Passing from hand to hand, the fire becomes new for each person. Camp Spirit is like that too—complex, changing, elusive” It encapsulates that which makes camp special, memorable, and absolutely indescribable to those who have not been. I think the reason why camp is still as powerful now as it was 50-some odd years ago is that it is unique to each person. By working and serving others the things that are selfish, lazy, and bitter are burned away and the purities in life are left. I can see the changes in others as their thinking, their actions, and their reactions are refined and matured.
I think my camp friends are so close because they have indeed seen “my elements”-at the core, the base, the center of me. I wish I could say that they have only seen patience, love, and tact but they have also seen laziness, bitterness, and anger-that they still have unconditional regard for me is a credit to the good it brings out in those brave enough to open up their hearts. The memories I treasure but even more so the relationships forged during the memory-making.

Twilight Comes Twice

2010-02-28T17:30:00.000-08:00

In my class we are studying poetry. We are read the book Twilight Comes Twice and I thought it was a beautiful book....with some amazing illustrations. Here is most of the poem so I hope you enjoy the imagery and the figurative language.

Twilight Comes Twice
By Ralph Fletcher

Twice each day
A crack opens
Between night and day.
Twice twilight
Slips through that crack.

It stays only a short time
While night and day
Stand whispering secrets
Before they go their separate ways.

Dusk is the name
For evening twilight.
Dusk gives the signal
for night to be born.

Dusk deepens the colors
Of ordinary things.
Even the common grass
Takes on a luster
That makes you
Stop to look.

In the summer, dusk
Hisses on the sprinklers.
It flushes out
Millions of mosquitoes
And armies of bats
To eat them.

Fireflies appear,
Swimming through the air,
Writing bright messages
In secret code.

Slowly dusk pours
The syrup of darkness
Into the forest.
Crows gather in the tree
For last-minute gossip
Before nightfall.

In the early morning
A pale twilight touches
The edge of the sky.
It is called dawn.
Dawn is like a seed
That will grow into daylight.

With invisible arms
Dawn erases the starts
From the blackboard of night.
Soon just the moon
And a few stars
Remain.

Dawn picks
Bits of dark
From between
The blades of grass
In your backyard.
No job is too small.

In the forest
Dawn drinks up night’s
Leftover darkness,
The great black pools
And deep-rooted shadows.

Walking at dawn is
A special kind of walk
Sounds ring out more clearly
The air is till moist
From the cool of the night
And your own skin
Feels all tingly clean.

Dawn signals the crows
To start their jabbering
What a racket they make
In the willow tree!

Down below, three robins
Hop through wet grass
Shopping for breakfast
Worms.

Spiders rouse themselves
Still stiff from the night
And go to work repairing
Their dew-spangled webs.

I think I love this poem so much because it reminds me of the quiet times in my life before the day starts that are filled with the anticipation of a new day....or as the dusk settles into evening when I can revel in the fulfillment of day well lived.

At camp this time comes early, those brave of heart (or foolish) can feel the calm excitement that comes dawn. Some of my favorite moments at camp are waking early (ha-ok after the actual waking up part), getting my coffee bleary eyed and waiting for the day to begin. It starts slowly with a few people moving about, the fog burns off quickly, then the first wheelchairs begin making their way back to cabins after being charged up, soon the camp will be bustling with movement, shouting, laughter, and giggles in the warm summer sun. This is much better when shared with a friend in companionable silence, just soaking in the quiet before the lost swimsuits need found, mosquito bites need anti-itch cream, and one stubborn camper needs reminded why we make our beds at camp. This time comes again, usually just around when Taps sounds softly. As the cicadas start their nightly humming, the sun fades into the shadows, and the heat becomes comfortable again. It is now, during this time I can look back and smile about the things that at the time were not significant but now with time and distance are what make days special, what I look back on during the year, and what I look forward to happening once again.

The ShamWow Chronicles

2010-01-18T21:36:00.000-08:00

A view of the clean fish tank

If you haven’t read the first installment of the ShamWow Chronicles, you should. As some of you know, I am not always the greatest planner…in other words I have some impulse control issues. I just see something and do it instead of taking time to stop and think. Such was the case on Sunday….or as I like to call it…The Fishtank Fiasco.
In our living room, we have a 30 gallon tank with 6 huge goldfish (Rack, Shack, Dennis, Dorothy, Nemo, and Dori…it’s what happens with 4 years olds name them) and 1 fat frog named Groucho. Occasionally the fish tank becomes clouded with all sorts of particulate matters. This was such the case because of poor filter and crummy food. Anyway, being buoyed by the success of the previous day (we installed carpet) I was in the “Takin’ Care of Business” frame of mind. So I set to cleaning out the tank, which is quite the process.

I found all the materials and got going. The worst part of the job is sucking on the tube to start the suction hose….I never seem to not get a mouth full of fish water-gross I know. I filled up a container then started filling the five gallon bucket to empty the tank. I carefully scooped out the fish and frog into another container. I then started scraping the sides of the tank with a razor blade and congratulating myself on a job well started.

I was scraping and daydreaming, when all of a sudden it sounded like the shower was on…not thinking anything of it I kept scraping until my foot got wet. As you can imagine it is hard to keep an eye on both ends of the suction tube and scrape the sides of the tank. Water was pouring out of the bucket and all over the living room. I (being a quick thinker) grabbed the hose and put it in the container the fish were in and that is when my good judgment ended. Somehow, I got the door open and then started to move the five-gallon bucket that was overflowing. However, between the door and the bucket was the hose still emptying the fish tank. As you can foresee, and I failed to, when I started to drag the overfull bucket towards the door it caught on the hose and the hose started to spray everywhere! I dropped the bucket-no matter the carpet was already wet and grabbed the hose. I corralled it and stuck it flowing back to the tank so now there is a full bucket, a full fish container, a square yard of soaked carpet, and me looking like a slightly disoriented drowned rat.

Remembering the garbage disposal incident of ’09, I ran out to the garage to get the ShamWows forgetting that we couldn’t walk on the carpet that we had installed the day before. So I run over it and then get the Shamwows but don’t want to feel guilty walk on it again to get inside. I walked barefoot around to the front of the house through the weeds, dirt, and ouchies. I soaked up the water using the Shamwows, emptied the bucket and then started the draining again. As I mentioned before I drank a little fish water on accident.

If I didn’t believe in overachieving in everything I do (ha) I would have stopped there but oh no! I finish emptying the tank with only a few more minor spills. I took out the rocks and carried the fish tank outside. While washing the fabric that goes under it I thought I would get the hose and spray out the inside. Let me paint this picture for you….Front steps, open door, hose, tank on steps, me, sprayer nozzle. If you are moderately intelligent, I imagine that you know these pieces make up a mess. I started gently spraying the tank out and as space out thinking about orange marmalade, the evils of high fructose corn syrup, orangutans, tomorrow…you get the idea. I am spraying, spraying, spraying and then I realize that not only am I thoroughly washing the tank I am also spraying the water through the open door into the living room and have been for several minutes. Again ShamWows to the rescue!

After mopping up enough potable water to last a small country a week, I successfully fill the tank, move the fish, and call it a day. Looking around at the chaos scattered around the greater part of the house, I could only smile and say "Wow"

They think I am going to feed them

Groucho doing nothing, like usual

A rare action shot

I thought I was the teacher....

2010-01-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

Oh the things I have learned this year. Today we had a very long discussion about the difference between shanking and cutting. Apparently shanking is to stabbing what cutting is to slicing….put that in your bridge map. I learned that sometimes when the police come the best idea is to run away-according to Calvin that is “You know, Ms. A. because they start to ask questions and stuff.” I’ve learned the difference between eviction notices and past due notices…”Eviction notices is when you have to start packing your stuff.” I’ve even learned that when your electricity goes out then you can’t open the fridge until your dad calls the company and gets them to turn it back on. Apparently “visiting family in the hospital” really means going to jail to see both your mom and your dad who are incarcerated. There are no cardinal directions, but everyone knows if you say "Go to the liquor store, up the hill....".

What is amazing and fascinating to me is that as little as these kids have they are more grateful, more giving, and more caring that just about any others I have met. No matter how little they have they always ask if I want to share their snacks. They are ecstatic when I let them take home books. They have never have complained about there not being seconds on cupcakes. I’m not exactly saying their angels, I have been given gifts that look almost identical to things I already have and my pencil sharpeners keep disappearing. However, if these are the kids of the future ---who are surviving in a rough world and still coming to school and doing their best when there is no one there to get them ready in the morning, their heads hurt from being hungry all weekend, and who never really lose the sadness behind their smiles ---then I think the future is in good hands... besides who else can make an analogy like "School is to job as dropping out is to drunk, shirtless guy on the corner."

December 2009...A Happy List

2010-01-06T20:57:00.001-08:00

The end of 2009 was a lifetime better than the beginning...I have high hopes for 2010.

A Happy List for December:

-Balboa Park Field Trip
-Jamie and Sabrina's visit
-The zoo, twice!
-December Nights on the Prado
-International Houses
-International Spirits at that International Houses
-New podcasts
-A 21 hour drive to contemplate life, love, and other mysteries
-Getting to meet the Franny Pack
-Knitting and Intervention
-Mac and Cheese and Dino-nuggets
-Eating at the classiest place in Bryan, Texas
-Say Hey by Michael Franti
-Jersey Shore
-The three hour breakfast fiasco
-Meeting Scout Eleanor Roosevelt Wren
-The accumulation of snow on Christmas Eve
-Finishing the Christmas puzzle
-Barfing and sketchy Santa's being the themes of Telephone Pictionary
-Getting to hang out with with sweet Cathyrn
-Almost winning Pictionary...we were robbed!
-The almost snow-ball fight, the almost snow-angel, and the almost perfect picture of snow-ball catch
-Apache Dip
-"Sorry about the trash. We had a frat party"
-Trying to get a picture of Scout and the Santa hat
-Finding an open Starbucks in El Paso at 11:45 pm!!!
-Singing "The Gambler" at the top of our lungs early in the morning
-Trying to sleep in 16 degree weather and not really succeeding
-Meeting up with dear Becca
-The trunkful of liquor and games
-Exploring Uncle B's house
-The Spades Championship of the Decade
-Homemade pasta and meatballs
-Being complete tourists in Hollywood
-Taking pictures of Trach along the road
-Hot tubbing it up
-An entire season of Glee in less than 24 hours
-Crumbs Bakery
-Ringing in the new year and decade with precious friends
-Introducing Emma to all of the kids who fill up my days
-Hand and Foot show-down at the Greife's

Camp Post

2009-12-22T18:54:00.001-08:00

Being with my friend, Twiggy, in Texas makes me think of camp. I miss it so much in the middle of the winter. So this is for all you camp friends who are a little camp sick.

YOU KNOW YOU'VE BEEN AT J. LOW TOO LONG IF:

-Your goal for the year is to kill a "hoe"

-You remember your first taste of Emergent"C"

-You miss Diet Dr. Thunder

-You look for wagons if you have to move something larger than a shoebox

-You have more than one bracelet with your camp name on it

-You can make anything with pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks

-In August, you try to hold stranger's hands

-You know camp sign langugage

-You know of the J. Low Time Warp

-You've had to have Marsha help you with lat bag tapes

-You plan what color of beads you want in January

-You can admit you like the Spice Girls

-You Dirty But Dry your own laundry

-You have one outfit with bleach stains

-The first thing you do when entering the lats is get a set of gloves

-You have mastered the changing without gloves master

-Nose goes and rock paper scissors solves all your disputes

-You have ever bought Flintstones vitamins to remind you of Rhonda

-You know what the keys open

-Your Chaco tan lasts all year

-You hate A/C

-You know if Bridget has had apples, tomatoes, or corn

-You have been run over by a EWC

-You have chigger scars

-When someone asks you to say grace you start thinking of songs

-You know what P.O.P.C. means

-You question the names on the flow chart

-You've worn a bib

-You can discuss the pros and cons of funky utensils

-You've received fudge from the Carlsons

-You can recite Marsha's graduation speech

-You can name which campers have fragile X, leaky guy, vagal nerve stimulators, and g tubes

-You have 50 hot dog recipes

-You save paper all year long to write Happy Notes on

-When you feel sad you go through your scrapbook

-You think an Olympic event should be water balloon throwing

-You know what Little Foot/Big Foot is

-You can name the tattoos that will be at the tattoo station

-You think fried oats are a part of life

-You know each others "schedules"

-You know the favorite napping spots

-You know the word to Yellow Submarine

-You have ever used chocolate milk as a meal replacement

-You have attempted to make gooey butter cake and grilled cheese bits at home

-You ignore expiration dates

-You know where to find the turkey bacon

-You have seen more than your fair share of butts and boobs

-You have used the green gold bond...and regretted it later

-You drink 2 glasses before starting a meal

-You take "lats" trips during the year

-You look for kitty litter afer you spill something

-You don't use the end sinks in the bathroom

-Your disability radar works within 50 feet

-You label things with your camp name

-Half of your phone numbers are programmed in with camp names

-You have a seperate part of your brain for things related to camp

-You can speak "camp"

-You sign your camp name until mid-September

-You cut all of your food before eating

-You like taking nudie showers with others

-You've taken an OP commando trip

-You've forgotten your towel but not been worried because you can always get J. Low ones

-You own more than one J. Low item

-You know what it means to "J.Low it"

-Thinking of camp gives you a slightly giddy feeling

-You know what every cabin's staff bed feels like

-You dread night swims, but haven't actually been in the water for 4 years

-You can name the Square Dance Man's songs in order

-You start dreaming about camp in mid-June

-You have more J. Low shirts than regular shirts

-You have a seperate tubbie for camp things

-You look forward to Fajita Day all year long

The FISH!!!

2009-12-14T21:31:00.000-08:00

Time: Approx. 1:30 pm
Setting: Room 208...after lunch read aloud
Characters: Me, a slightly befuddled teacher on a little too much DayQuil trying to get through the day
Budachris (rhymes with Ludacris), a kid who has just too much; too much energy, too much talking, too much moving, too much yelling, too much imagining, too much inattention, too much impulsivity-you get the picture.

Me (reading along as fast as my cold-fogged head can read)
Budachris: (in my ear) Ms A. I have to tell you something
Me (ignoring him and trying to focus on the words swimming in front of me)
Budachris: (in my ear a lot louder) Ms A. I have to tell you something important
Me: Not now
Budachris: (forgetting the pretense of trying not to be distracting) Ms A. It's an emergency about the fish
Me: What? (all reading has stopped now)
Budachris: The fish! It's about the fish.
Me: What? (again the DayQuil making me not as sharp as usual)
Budachris: Something is wrong with the fish!
Me: What is wrong with the fish?
Budachris: They stopped time!
Me: What?
Budachris: They were all swimming and then all of sudden they stopped. The stopped time!
Me: The fish didn't stop time.
Budachris: Yes! They did stop time. They froze it and then they all started it again.
Me: I don't think the fish have the power to control time.
Budachris: They do too!
Me: Ok...? Can we keep on reading?
Budachris: Yeah, I just wanted you to know.
Me: Ok...thanks?

Needless to say this whole encounter left me more befuddled and more confounded. I can also tell you who I am not putting next to the fish tank again when we move desks.

Big Plans

2009-12-09T21:05:00.000-08:00

There is a very funny picture book called Big Plans by Bob Shea (illustrated by the guy who did the Stinky Cheese Man). In the book, the protagonist boy gets in sent to the corner and the whole time he is making BIG PLANS! That background to say that I have a 5th grader who is this boy to the letter. I will call him Big Plans because of his big plans. Every day he tells me some story about something that he is going to do and every time these plans are so extravagant and well...big. Today we were riding to Balboa Park and he was telling Budachris (a later story) about how they were going to go to Colorado for Christmas. Not only were they going to go to the snow but they weren't going to go in a car they were going to get a RV. In the past few weeks he has told me about how they (Budachris and him) were going scuba diving, not snorkeling, but diving to catch sharks with knives. They are going to move to Temecula to get a fresh start (apparently 10 is the age at which you need a fresh start). They are going to go to Hawaii and live with a long-lost relatives. They are going to refurbish a abandoned trailer and make it a clubhouse in which they can put their PSP and DS. They are going to move into a dorm room with one of their brothers and go to parties at State. You get the idea...these elaborate stories sometimes annoy me but I began thinking today that these plans may be the only thing that keep these boys going. The community that I work in is pretty hopeless and maybe I should embrace the hope instead of shaking my head in disbelief. Maybe next time I should say, "Tell me about these big plans". Hopefully one day, a lifetime away from now, I will come across Big Plans and he can tell me about how the made all of these things happen...I believe he will because after all he has BIG PLANS!

Ansisters

2009-12-04T16:29:00.000-08:00

Calvin (A fifth grader): Ms. A. I think that ancestors are prejudice.
Me: Ok....(imagine bewildered expression)
Calvin: Yeah, because even boys are called ancestors.
Me: Well....(again bewildered) boys can be ancestors.
Calvin: I mean they should call them something else.
Me: Uhhhh...(you can tell I was adding a lot intellectually to this conversation)
Calvin: It's just not fair. They all them annnnsssssiiiissssttteeerrrsss and they should be called anbrothers too.
Me: Actually it's annnccccessssstttorrrr.
Calvin: Oh, nevermind.
Me: (nothing more to say besides shaking my head in amazement)

Ahhhh the joys of teaching second language learners.

You'll Say WOW Everytime

2009-12-03T20:02:00.000-08:00

For this story to make sense you need to know three things.

1: My roommate, Catherine , has in the past-much to my amusment and entertainment-clogged the "in-sink-erator" (I know that is like a Dr. Doofenschmertz name for a garbage disposal but scout's honor that's its brand). She has only done it a few times but based on the amount I talk about it you would think it happened quite frequently.

2: We had an "As Seen On TV" Party at our house recently and there is currently a huge table full of As Seen On TV stuff in our garage.

3: Not too long ago, our landlords replaced our in-sink-erator with a new, top-of-the-residential line disposal. I literally quote, "It should be able to take care of anything you have".

Now fast forward a few weeks. My roommate was on the East Coast and I was holding down the fort. I found an amazing little market called North Park Market (you should go, it's on H street) and got a few huge pineapples. I happily peeled, cut, and ate pineapple. After finishing the cutting process I decide to have another go at propagating pineapples. I quite happily peeled the leaves of the pineapple and then decided to put them in the sink. I decided to take this new disposal for a test run. I guess it is fair to also tell you that ground up pineapple leaves have the consistency of a old dish rag. I think it is also fair to assume that you can guess what happened soon after the grinding ensued.

Of course, the other side of the sink starts to fill up with the bits of pineapple, strawberry tops, an orange peel, a few other unidentifiable pieces of previous vegetative matter. I don't panic yet, I being a well-rounded individual have a basic understanding of disposals and pipes. I know that you need to get the clog out and the hope that the clog is not so far in the wall you have to call some guy named Joe who likes to show his butt cleavage.

I open the doors and get the allen wrench. I turn this way and that..who knows what lefty or righty it needs but at this point I still fell confident that I will be able to unclog this sink and no one, including Catherine, will find out about it-this of course would lead to the end of my bit about Catherine and the disposal and I hate losing good material. After quite a bit of turning I try the water, try the grinder, try the hoping, try the mild cursing-no luck.

I decide the best idea is to empty the sink of water and try again. Some people may have thought that I scooped out the water. Those people would be a far sight more sensible than I. I thought the best way to empty the sink of water was to drain it from the bottom. I moved the various sundries from under the sink (not all of them mind you because again that would show some foresight) and started to unscrew the pipe on the left side of the sink. I underestimated a few things in this manuever; 1) the amount of water in the sink, 2) the comparative smallness of the pot that I found, 3) the amount of pressure that was pushing the water downwards, 4) the position of the L bend pipe, which made an amazing deflector for the aforementioned chunky water.

You can imagine my surprise the water didn't neatly fall into the pot like I had imagined but instead shot out (or more appropriately out and up) of the pipe all over me, the inside of the cabinet, all of the things I had left inside the cabinet, and the floor. So there I am sitting in a puddle of water with bits of pineapple in my hair. I undid every pipe under the sink and each time more water filled my already soggy kitchen. I couldn't get the blasted thing to work so I put all the pipes back together and decided that I would wait until Catherine got home and confess my sins. As I stood up, I noticed the drain plug. I plugged up the left side of the sink and turned on the disposal with a muttered prayer. Sure enough that wad of pineapple fiber shot through the pipes and into the ocean (you know all drains lead the to the ocean...Nemo fans?)

At that moment I felt a wave of triumph and then I looked around; I was covered in soggy clothes and had disposal gunk all over me, there was an inch of standing water in the cabinet, every thing under our sink was dripping and soaked, the floor was awash in water and bits of pineapple. My heart sunk....then I remembered the ShamWow in the garage! I gleefully ran out to the garage and got the brand spanking new felt-ish cloth and sure shootin' that ShamWow soaked up about a gallon of water. Again my life was flooded (pun definitely intended) with a sense of victory. Looking around at the mayhem that I had created I just smiled to myself and said "wow". It's true what the infomercial says, "You'll say WOW everytime."

Pineapple Express...not really

2009-10-02T17:10:00.001-07:00

Catherine and I have started propagating pineapples and our first one is in the garden with two little "pups" coming off the sides. Pups are smaller suckers that can produce fruit so this is exciting. We will soon have pineapples to enjoy (in 2-4 years)! The first step is picking the perfect pineapple. It should have green leaves that are not easily pulled out. I should be a little on the under-ripe side. When you cut it cut right below where the crown meets the fruit. Pull off about 1 inch of leaves until you have a some bare stem. You should be able to see little nodules of roots beginning. The pineapple below is about 2 weeks old.

A closer view of the little roots just forming. When the roots are about 2 inches long you can plan them in a sandy soil and wait (and I literally mean wait) for the magic to happen.

We are currently using this little jar but only because it was in the clean dishes when I was looking for something to use. I have used cups with success. It's important that the stem is in the water but the leaves are above the water as they are prone to rotting. I change the water when it gets cloudy and smells funky.

Best of luck! Here are some more shots of the cute little pineapple plant :)

New growth inside the middle. This is where the stems will come with the flowers and eventually the fruit. YUM!

Kinder Treasures

2009-10-01T21:43:00.001-07:00

I have some treasures from kindergarten that my students made. So I thought I would share them. This is me standing on a student...I also have fangs!

In this one my hair is really crazy and apparently I am going on a treasure hunt because X marks the spot.

This may not be of me at all but rather a family at a beach. My favorite part is the sun is saying "Go". Let this be an admonition to indeed GO...to where? no idea but at least go.

I am standing on the right side of the paper...next to a chair? I'm not sure.

Ms. A, is that a rainbow on your head? No, no just my hair.

Again with the crazy hair...it's like there is a pattern over time or something.

This is not me...It's Mario. I thought the kid had a cousin named Mario who was a plumber but then it all started to make sense when he talked about Luigi.

This is my favorite one. I am the circle person and I am holding hands with my friend Uh-uh from the earlier post. The sweetest gesture he made ever. I hung it on my desk and will continue do so to remind me that the kids who are the most difficult need the most love and patience.

Easy Come, Easy Go

2009-10-01T17:59:00.000-07:00

My life has been so full of transition that I was waiting until I was absolutely positive to post a new message. I haven't taught kindergarten in a while and to that I can only say, "Thank God Almighty I am free at last". So apparently if you start something with full blown optimism and somewhere deep down you know that the situation is a train wreck waiting to happen then there is quite a bit of relief when it ends abruptly. So that sums up kinder for me ....optimism, screaming, train wreck, relief. I have done a lot of crazy things in my life but kinder is by far the craziest thing that I tried. For the most part, the kids were cute, funny, interesting and endearing. Then there were the kids who make hairs gray, sighs weary and days long. We will call them No and Uh-uh. Literally all they did everyday was say No and Uh-uh...of course that's when they weren't crying, throwing, or trying to escape. It was ridiculous! It seems as though according to the other kinders I won the lucky honor of having "The class". You know the class that starts in kinder and strikes fear into the hearts of the next years teachers. So needless to say I was elated when they had to close a class due to enrollment.

This leads us to what I have been doing for the last two weeks. I gave the WRAP and Express Placement (lame-o assessments) to all the kinders (about 90 kids in all) and then gave it 30 more times in Spanish. Apparently I have mad skills. That pretty much took a whole week. I also had the privileged of doing lunch and recess duty. There is nothing more uplifting then yelling at kids you don't know for a solid hour about rules you think are ridiculous and that suck the fun out of being a kid. Because our school has uniforms, 80 percent hispanic kids, and an excessive amount of hair gel being used it's extremely difficult to yell at kids using descriptors...ie Hey you kid! Stop that! No not you the kid in the white shirt (they are all wearing white shirts), Yeah you with the black hair (they all have black hair) and the faux hawk (most have faux hawks) STOP!

For the past week I have been the lunch monitor/recess lady and teaching computer lab. Let me tell you there is nothing to instill your place as the coolest teacher at school then to be related to the computer lab. On Tuesday, I found out that I will be teaching 5th grade starting on Monday. I am really excited about it. I have been working in the class and they are delightful kids...there are enough "High Fliers" to keep it lively but not so many that is overwhelming. I am excited to take over and get all my stuff in the class. The teacher who is there is transferring to a different school and is working on getting her stuff out so I am kind of in limbo. I will have a lot of work to do this weekend but am really quite excited! I'm not sure if it will be more exciting to teach 5th grade or to not be in kindergarten...only time will tell.

The First Week

2009-09-13T20:18:00.001-07:00

As some of you know I began teaching kindergarten this year. I am excited but also a little discouraged that another year will be spent doing primary. I also moved schools so that has been a hard transition. When I left Whitman last June I really thought I would be going back and so closure has been very slow to come. I am now working at a HUGE elementary school in south San Diego. The demographics are a little different but I am enjoying my students and their families. The hardest change is that I really don't know anyone. It's nice that I get a lot done during lunch and can go home before the sunsets but it is awfully lonely.
I have 11 kids in my class right now. I am probability going to get more this week. You would think that 11 is a really small number but I have a slough of behavior problems and 4 year olds should not be in a full day kinder program. It's hard to have so many good ideas for upper grades and then be stuck on the color red FOR A WEEK!!! Needless to say, I am singing a lot of songs and doing everything I can to make letters and numbers interesting. I will keep writing of my adventures...hopefully more amazing than awkward.

Summer 2009

2009-09-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

A list for the last day of summer!

Happiness is…
Cold milk and warm cookies
Air conditioning
Magic Bulleting stuff
Lazy summer afternoons
Eating produce you grew from a seed
Taking naps while the sun is shining
Cherry sno-cones
Coming home after a long trip
Seeing old friends and making new ones
Winning at Scrabble
Cold sheets
Swimming late at night in the moonlight
New crayons and sharp pencils
Making new school year resolutions
Sleeping in late
Cooking on the grill.
The smell of a rainstorm coming
Finishing a scarf…finally
That chlorine smell that lingers
Hot dogs cooked over a fire
Listening to books on CD
Extra crispy bacon
Fried oats
Cheesy puns
Cheese in general ☺
Gorilla Tiles “Tiles of the Unexpected”
American Gladiators
Little fish babies
Graphjam.com
C.O. Bigelow Lipgloss
Over The Moon 1% Milk
Musicals
Meerkat Manor
Finally having a schedule again
Working hard at something and succeeding
The last first class of my master's program
Having friends and family that care and support me in all of my adventures

The Arts

2009-08-30T01:55:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, when you're on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live. -Winters

I went to Wicked the musical today. If anyone has been to it before they know that the stage, the costumes, the music, the plot is amazing. It is transfixing! Incredible! Amazing! As I was sitting in the dark auditorium and the audience was hushing, I was struck by the thought that the arts have the ability to transform thoughts, ideas, and feelings. It seems that paintings, sculptures, photographs, plays, musicals, songs, and other manifestations of creativity can take people out of their humdrum lives, away from the stresses of the day-to-day, and into a world where the limits are only set by what can be imagined. The beauty of humanity is that people empathize with others through arts.

Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto. –Emerson

I am transfixed by the thought that emotion that can be captured in a photograph, drawing, or song. To be able to touch the heart of others who are unknown to you and come from a different context is a humbling power. The power of the arts is in its ability to make people embrace humanity.

Once the mind has been stretched by a new idea, it will never again return to its original size. -Holmes

One of the most wonderful and terrible things about creative arts is that often the most thought provoking and remembered are the things that make us disquieted, uncomfortable, unsure. By providing cognitive dissonance, art forces us to re-examine beliefs we hold true and ideas we were once sure of. Once we confront these emotions and assimilate the new perceptions and perspectives into our frames of context then our world becomes a little bigger, a little more tolerant, a little more forgiving, a little more passionate. The world could use a little more of all of these things so embrace the arts, the artist in you, the art around you no matter if it is a masterpiece or a crayon drawing taped to the fridge.

Prejudice much?

2009-08-25T21:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I usually don’t get annoyed with cars or mechanics but I was really annoyed with the Saturn guy. So let me back up. Yesterday, I went to get some “too good to pass up” sale items from around the city…you know pencils for 10 cents, folders for a penny, scissors for 12 cents…thing that make teaching and shopping a rewarding experience.
So I drove to Wal-mart (I’m not proud but I am cheap ☺) I parked my car, Pacifico, and went to turn off the engine as one does when they are parking a car. I turned and nothing, I jiggled and then turned nothing, I jiggled and then turned and then swore and nothing. So I moved my car to a different spot assuming that Pacifico was having a bad day and tried again. Nothing again. Now I am extremely annoyed at having my day of shopping nirvana interrupted.

I drive to National City to the Mile of Cars in attempt to go to the dealership there. I drive up and down Mile of Cars Way and don’t see a Saturn dealership. I get out my new GPS toy and program in and sure enough there is one in the area and it takes me to where the Saturn dealership used to be…now it is a Subaru dealership. So I then look at the next closest dealership…Kearney Mesa (about 15 miles away).

I drive up there and park in the service area and go inside. Of course there is your usual smattering of semi-annoyed/bored people sitting around looking at magazines that they have no interest in….Muscle Cars Today, Homemaking in the 21st Century, Pop Culture R Us….you know these magazines-the herpes of waiting rooms around the world. There are also the usual cast of mechanics and service people…all named Joe, Mike, Tom, Bob, or some other one-syllable name. Lee (my service guy) asks what the problem is and I look straight at him and say, “My car won’t turn off.” He looked at me like I was quite possibly the dumbest person on earth. I was expecting this so I smugly watched as he went to my car, got in and then tried to turn it off. He shifted gears, tried again. Jiggled the key and tried again. Essentially repeating the same few steps that I went through. He got out and said in a truly astounded voice, “It really won’t turn off” I refrained from using the phrase, “No shit” but was willing him to get the message by my general body language.

We went back inside and he took my information. When looking up my name he asked if it was under my parents name…I know I am young looking but honestly! He then took at deep breath like he was preparing to inform me that I only had 2 weeks to live and said in a very serious manner, “Well it is either a problem with your key or your ignition.” Again I had to refrain from stating aloud the phrase that was bobbing around in my head. He said it would be a few hours and I replied that there was nothing I was planning on doing besides reading Outdoor Fishing and Hunting Weekly and luckily I could do that here. After I had settled among the various secondary characters in the waiting room he came out again and with a grim expression informed me that he was going to have to keep it overnight. I called the Greifes and they rescued me from Kearney Mesa.

Fast Forward to this morning. Lee at the Saturn dealership called and informed me that it would be this afternoon before Pacficio was ready so I happily gave up my to do list in favor of sleeping and watching Netflix. My friend Michael drove me up to Kearny Mesa and on the way I was venting about how irked I was when mechanics treat me like I am to stupid to understand even the most basic concepts about cars and maintenance. Anyway, I picked up my car and it was cheaper than they had quoted which was a delight.

Michael and I went to dinner as we had already driven up north. We went to the Teri Café, which is an amazing Asian place that has great food. I ordered my usual Chicken Teriyaki bowl and Michael got something that was soup like. When we got our food the guy gave Mike (who is Chinese) chopsticks and me a fork. Talk about salt in the open wound of self-concept/esteem.

Pacifico is now back at home, safe and sound. I ate my chicken, veggies, AND rice with chopsticks to prove to that guy that I too know how to use chopsticks…I really showed him! Now if I can find a way to stick it to the mechanics!

Have you ever played Uno...ok, it's nothing like that

2009-08-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

Over the last few months I have played cards with a lot of great people. For the sake of time and efficacy I am posting the rules to the games here so get some decks of cards and play on.

Canadian Salad
Players: Any number greater than 3
Number of decks: 3-5 people= 1 deck; 6-10 people = 2 decks; 11-15 = 3 decks.
Score: Low score wins!!!
Time Commitment: 20 minutes or so
Object of the game: To not take “tricks” and not turn tricks….ha! This game is played like Spades except there are NO TRUMPS at all, and only six hands are played.
Rules
*You MUST follow suit lead if possible.
*On multiple deck games, when two identical winning cards fall, the first one thrown wins trick.
*Deal the whole deck and the person to the left leads the first trick.
The tricks are as follows
First No tricks Each trick = 10 pts
Second No hearts Each heart = 10 pts
Third No queens Each queen = 25 pts
Fourth No K of spades K of spades = 100 pts
Fifth No last trick Last trick =100 pts
Sixth** All of the above Points count as above
**It’s easier to keep track of the score after each trick during the last trick

Threes
Players: 2 or more
Number of Decks: 2
Scoring: Low score wins!!!
Time Commitment: 5-20 minutes per hand
Object of game: To get rid of all of the cards in your hands. Each card in your hand is worth 1 point at the end of the round.
Rules:
First person takes 4 cards and then tries to make either a set or run of three or more.
If they cannot make a set or run of three then they need to keep drawing until they can.
Once they put their set/run in the middle of the table then they can knock on the table and pass the cards or say “Pass”.
The next person draws 4 and tries to lay down a new set/run or add to the existing cards, if they can’t play then they keep drawing until they can play something.
This continues until someone discards all of their cards.
*All cards on the table must be in sets or runs of three or more.
*The cards can be rearranged as desired to create opportunities for play as long as there are still three in each set/run at the end of that player’s turn.

Hand and Foot
Players: 4 (2 teams of 2), 3 (cut-throat….every man for himself)
Number of decks: 4…if more than 4 are playing then add one deck for every person.
Score: High score wins!!!
Time Commitment: 1 hour..a little more if you have more people
Object of the Game: The aim is to get rid of cards from your hand (11 cards), and then from your foot (11 cards), by melding them. A Meld is a set of three to seven cards of equal rank placed face up on the table. A Meld cannot have fewer than three cards. After a Meld of three or more cards has been started, you can add further cards to it until there are seven, which makes it a book. Then it becomes a Book. You can meld cards of any rank from A, K, Q, ... down to 3. Deuces and Jokers are wild cards and can be used in melds, as long as there is at least one more real card than wild cards. You cannot meld wild cards alone.
Every round you pick up two cards and then discard one.

There are two types of books:
A Clean(No Wilds) Book = 500 pt.
A Dirty(Wild) = 300 pts
First team/person out = 100 pts.

Card Values:
Jokers = 50 points (Wild Card)
Deuces = 20 points (Wild Card)
Aces = 20 points
Eight through King (8-K) = 10 points
Three through Seven (3-7) = 5 points
RED THREES = -300

Round Points-You must lay down at least the round points to play ONLY the first time someone lays down in that round per team/person.
Round 1, cards points must total at least 50 to play
Round 2, cards points must total at least 90 to play
Round 3, cards points must total at least 120 to play
Round 4, cards points must total at least 150 to play

In order to go out, you must:
1. Have reached your Foot and played it completely.
2. Have at least one Red Book and one Black Book.
3. If you are in partners, your partner must “get into” their foot and play it at least once.

In order to pick up the discard pile the following criteria must be met:
1. You must have 2 matching cards in your hand
2. You must be able to play the top discard
3. You must have the required round points
The top discard may give you the required round points, no other cards below can be used to give you the round point when you first lay down.

SCORING:
You receive two scores per hand. One for the books, then the combined face value of all cards played on the board, booked or not. Once your books have been counted then all the cards you played, including those in the books, are added up at the card point value.
This applies to all players, not just the person going out. If you did not go out, and are caught with cards in your Hand and/or your Foot, those points count against you. If you did not go out and you have books and or cards on the board, those points count for you.

Books, Books, and Yes More Books

2009-08-12T23:11:00.000-07:00

I know some of you think that I only read children's books....which is mostly true. If you are looking for some good end of summer reads before school resumes or life gets crazy then here are some of my favorite "adult" books.

Travel:
In a Sunburnt Country, Bill Bryson
Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a deep love for this kind of chubby, kind of dry, kind of rambling, completely amazing writer. He has a way with words that makes sense to me. If you walk into a library and see anything by him-you will not be disappointed…if you are then you should go see a doctor because your sense of humor is not in working order.

Non-fiction:
Microtrends: The small forces behind tomorrow’s big trends, Mark Penn
This is a fascinating book about trends that are affecting politics, commerce, and other landscapes in America. It provides short vignettes about different trends of less than three million people that can and do have great impact on society.

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, Paco Underhill
You will literally never go into a store without thinking about some of the basic concepts that my friend, Paco (ok…we’ve never met but I think we could be friends) discusses. As you can tell I love consumer trends (even though I hate shopping…enigma aren’t I) and this book is the one that started it all for me.

Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, Martin Lindstrom and Paco Underhill
This book I read just because Paco wrote it and I was very impressed. It uses vignettes to map the neurology of buying and what certain brands make us feel on a biological level.

Freakenomics, Steven D. Leviitt
Oh gosh! This might be one of my favorite books of all time. It you think economics is boring then you are as wrong as Richard Simmons in sweat pants! All I can say is READ IT…you will love it-unless you are Richard Simmons and then all bets are off.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
This book is not short but it does cover nearly everything. DO NOT READ THIS BOOK…you need to listen to it on cd. If you do not heed this warning and start reading this book then you will be overwhelmed. It also has a pretty extreme evolutionary bent so if you get riled up about that then do your blood pressure a favor and read something else. It is a comprehensive history of scientific progress and worth the listening time especially if you have a long commute.

Lies My Teacher Told Me; Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James Loewen
A great book for teachers. Read it with an open mind…think upon the things presented and let it give rise to being aware of prejudices and biases. It has a really good chapter on poverty and every teacher should read that chapter at least.

Rethinking Globalization, Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World
This book has short non-fiction stories from around the globe about different topics related to globalization and what it is doing to cultures, people, and places.

Fat Land; How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, Greg Critser
Don’t read this if you ever want to enjoy a donut or potato chips for a while. It is very similar to Fast Food Nation and Supersize Me in the sense that it explores a lot of the politics and things behind the national food scene. It is an extremely honest look at food and how Americans relate to food.

Mouse Tales: Behind the Ears Look at Disneyland, David Koenig
This is by far the best 10 cent book I have ever purchased at a used book sale (and I have bought a lot of used books). The expose book has chapters about deaths, practical jokes, behind the rides, history, and even the lawsuits that have taken place at the Happiest Place on Earth. If you like Disneyland, or even if you are ambivalent like me, this is an interesting read! Plus it will give you more things to discuss at awkward social gatherings...believe me sometimes you need to state how many people have died while riding the Matterhorn to break the ice (the number is 2 in case you were curious).

Biographical/Auto-biographical:
Across the Wire: Life and hard times on the Mexican border, Luis Alberto Urrea
By the Lake of the Sleeping Children: The secret life of the Mexico border, Luis Alberto Urrea
These books are hard to read but are extremely well worth it. Luis documents his time working with the people who live in the dumps of Tijuana. He describes with both shocking honesty and refreshing humanity the lives of the people who change his life.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson
This book on CD is read by the author and I suggest listening to it. Bill (he’s my friend like Paco) relives his childhood growing up in small town America in the 1950’s. He is a delightful writer who shares his stories with wit and wonder.

Shakespeare: The World as Stage, Bill Bryson
A great look at how William has changed the English language and the influence he had on writers, theater, and culture.

Etymological:
Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language and How It Got That Way, Bill Bryson
The only thing I love more economic books are books about the history of words!!! This is a great book about how Americans have ruined, improved, and change English.

Alphabet Juice, Roy Blunt Jr.
An alphabetical look at words that are rich in history or funny in the way in which they came to be. A good bathroom book…a little daunting to read all in one shot.

Word Wizard: Super Bloopers, Rich Reflections, and Other Acts of Word Magic, Richard Lederer
Short stories about language and the way in which it is used, misused, and sometimes abused. An excellent book to read if you are a social misfit because then at parties instead of standing awkwardly by the French onion dip you can entertain the other guests with stories of obscure words and expressions…it works for me ☺

Short Stories:
Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros
The author goes above and beyond in her short stories of women. She does an amazing job of connecting the stories with great writing, a whole lot of heart, and a true representation of women throughout their lives, ages, and cultures.

House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
This book is half poetry, half short stories but completely amazing. I absolutely love the figurative language. Cisneros writes about her life growing up in the barrio and gives glimpses into a child’s life that are both humorous and heart wrenching.

Religious
Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennen Manning
If you are going to read one religious book (apart from the NKJV) hands down it should be this one. This book is an amazing reflection of what could be if people chose to live their lives as if it is indeed God’s grace that makes us worthy of love. If you are unsure, undecided, or just plain fed up with organized religion this book makes a strong case for getting back the basics.

What’s So Amazing About Grace, Philip Yancey
Another great book that gives vignettes about what it means to be gracious, graceful, and be forgiven by grace. If you are interested in the application of grace in and through your life it is worth a read.

Nebraska...land of straight roads and soy

2009-08-11T12:01:00.001-07:00

Sometimes driving alone, I find myself enjoying the things that are so common, so usual, so ordinary. Like the sweet smell of rain showers that take me back home to lazy summer afternoons. The hypnotic repetition of delineator posts. How Nebraska seems half full of corn, half full of old tired looking barns, but all the way full of I-80 running like a silver stream to the horizon. The excitement about the destination and what is to come. The gentle ping of bugs losing their fight with a windshield. Corn rows quickly comng into and going out of focus at a dizzing pace. The earthy and rich smell of feedlots- "That's the smell of money, kids." Humid air that is almost tangible and weighty. Heat haze looking like a tiny pool in the middle of a black sea of asphalt. The rumble of a semi, like a gaint woken from slumber. The neon yellow and green spats of insects, like a Pollock on my windshield. Dust bits and chaff thrown by the farmers mowing the median; how sweet that smell of grass, and dust, and summertime is. The heinous zing and startle of the rumble strips as my tires fly over them. The quiet charm of towns that once were but are now shadows of the past-forgotton and forlorn. The calm that surrounds as the sun quickly dips past the horizon and makes the world a wash of vermillion, scarlet, ruby, tangerine, and saffron.

A Happy List from Camp

2009-07-31T20:09:00.000-07:00

As many/all of you know, I work at a camp in Missouri. Working at this camp gave me the most terrific experiences and I have gotten to work the the most amazing people. One of those sweet people is Jell-o and she has a habit of making "Happy Lists" and so this is for you Jell-o...I missed you.

A Happy List
J. Low 2009

The Hoedown Throwdown Disaster
The Sugar Shack
Julia's kisses
Jell-o's visit
Sewing aprons for the Go-gos
The new macro lens
Titan and the other ho-dos (host-dogs)
Clean But Wet shirts
Salmon surprise and other questionable menu items
Katianne's enthusiasm
Getting to watch a movie instead of going to the pool on closing day
Slide...like an onion
The weirdest staff meetings ever
Jillian and the mixed emotions of her involvement in the Ad Building
Getting the giggles at lunch
Getting glared at like first year counselors for the giggle fit
The stupid lights key...I hate that key
Surviving Shitstorm 2009
"So formal"
Hanging out with Dot and the Sci-Fi Channel
Kayla's dry dry humor
Cooking out like 5 times in a row...not on purpose
Being a Unit Counselor again
Realizing how good I have it as a Unit Leader
Lepi's wellness and zest for honesty
Cleaning up vomit in every color, viscosity, and stage of digestion
Cleaning up poop in every color, viscosity, and stage of absorption
Razzle's friendship bracelet
The Paper Source
Staying up late talking to Twiggy
Calvin the mouse in cabin 3
84's camp chic look
My Keens...so comfortable, so fugly
Duhbul's expressions that are not really expressions
Missing out on all the Michael Jackson news
Lauren's laughter
"There are snakes in the grass, get your ass in the cabin!"
Meeting the new campers
Sequoia's impromptu orienteering course
Maggie's fishy faces
Spending time at the tables with 'Da Unit
The incredible weather
Getting to spend an evening with Katydid
A Diva is a female version of a hustler
Unit 1...enough said!!!
Throwing pepperoni and hot dogs into the woods
Elmo's sweet smile...and teasing her about Abraham
The cooking demo
Hearing about the cooking demo about a million times
Trying a few of the cooking demo ideas...abandoning the rest
Lizzy and her swimming program and sweet letters
Bamboo/Katherine Heigl
Mullet Margaritas
4th of July+Missouri+Online Ordained Minister+Breathalyzer=Awesome time (the breathalyzer was used purely for recreational purposes)
Discovering Facebook Scrabble
The charcoal chimney vs. chiminea discussion
Twiggy
A thousand little smiles and laughs that cannot be captured or described but make up memories that will last a lifetime

Silkworms...finally

2009-07-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have been promising the last installment of insect posts for a while now....and I was waiting for the silkworms to complete their life cycle. The tragedy in this post is that they have been in their cocoons for about 1 month and I am a little doubtful that they will release their enzyme and crawl out of the carefully woven silk to flutter, mate, and then die.

So these little preciosos started as little grayish blue eggs and hatched into wonderful little caterpillars with large heads and fuzzy little bodies. In the picture below you can see the three first instars (stages) of their lives. The one in the middle is at the end of the first instar....all balck and fizzy. The second instar is the one in which they get a little bigger, loose the fuzz, and get a bigger abdomen.

Another little picture of the first few weeks of life for these caterpillars.

Here is the third instar...they are so cute!

You guessed it instar number four and the classic "I am king of the moutain" pose. I love their cute little prolegs (the suction ones in the back) and the little back spike.

This big boy is in his fifth instar and is a few days away from starting his cocoon.

Here he is about a day before changing into a cocoon. As you can see he is shrinking a little bit, his skin went from gray white to a creamy white and he is getting a little wrinkly. He got quite a bit shorter and then stopped eating.

This is the beginning of what I call "flossing" in which he begain stringing thick silk strands to an fro in his egg carton. As you can see he had a pretty loose frass (poop) and that will be the last time he ever poops. He also has lost a lot of length. His body got a lot thicker and the last few segments kind of absorbed up into his body.

After a whole lot of flossing he starts producing the actual silk and goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until a cocoon starts taking shape. This is the stuff that they use to make silk cloth and it is just one long thread. Below his head is far away and his prolegs are at the top most part of the cocoon.

This is kind of like ultrasound pictures to me...I don't really see the baby's foot, ankle, face, until I look at it like a 3D picture from 1994. In this one he is on his side with his front legs facing up and his back curling around the bottom.

And finally a cocoon!!!

Silkworms were by far my favorite insect this year. I had so much fun watching them grow. The kids loved them. I had to leave them before they hatched (who am I kidding they aren't going to hatch) so I left my roommate in charge. I told her to throw them away if nothing happened by August. It's only supposed to take 3 weeks...it's been about 5- maybe next time something will actually come out of the cocoons.

2 Words....Economic Downturn

2009-06-10T21:09:00.000-07:00

Well as a few of you (ha...I mean all of you) know this great country that we live in is in an economic recession/downturn/cluster@#&*. Anyway, because of this awesome future Vh1 "I Love the 2000's" show I am not going to be at my amazing, great, superb school next year. I will be at some other equally is amazing school (I HOPE!).
Soooo to the story, one of my dear 5th graders asked me if I was going to be teaching 5/6 next year-which was the plan until the Board of Ed. got in the way with their "Budget Crisis". Again I digress... I told her that I was going to be at a different school and I know she will do well (all of that BS that teachers tell kids when the truth is a little too painful). Then I told her that she had to study hard and become a lawyer, or a banker, or the president so that her generation could get us out of a mess. She looked at me nodding in agreement and then said, "Boy, I hope you are still alive by then." So, I was hopeful that this economic downturn was going to be resolved a little sooner than later but then again time is irrelevant when you are 11.

Self-Concept?

2009-06-05T23:04:00.000-07:00

Throughout the year my students have drawn pictures of me and I wonder if this is what they think of me. I hope not :S.

Before we get started with the art, I thought I would take a minute and revel in what a good teacher I am. At least he spelled teacher right...I have been the "World's Best Techer" a LOT!

This is me and the Governator on a boat.
Please look at my face (on the right) I look a little seasick.

The bigger picture. Apparently a fish is chewing on the anchor. I love this kid! I know you are not supposed to have favorites but he is absolutely one of mine :)

Ironically this is from the same kid who peed on the fence (see first post for more details).

Me and the girls. Apparently MAdlinc (me) has orange dots following along.

This could be my favorite abstract. At least he got the right number of fingers.

This is the best one...and the worst one :) I love that the boys are crawling around me. Maybe a little too realistic to be flattering. Great attention to detail though1

Baseball

2009-06-04T19:49:00.000-07:00

My favorite thing about the spring is baseball. Ok...maybe not all of baseball just little kid baseball. I love it all. The smell of the grass and dirt. The kids with dirty knees and koolaid stained faces. The sunflower seed spitting and nachos with little bits of overcooked cheese. How the kids look wobbly with their oversized cleats and how their helmets are about 3 and 1/2 times as big as their bodies. I love the parents who say things that I don't understand like "Come on, hips and whips this time!", "In and on the outside!" and "Getcha head in the game"...oh wait that last one was from High School Musical. I love how the little siblings play in the dirt and eat rocks. In essence there are very few things I would rather be doing on a spring Saturday than sitting on a bench and cheering for the ________ (insert name of team my student is playing on). Going to Little League games is the only thing that makes my ovaries flutter and my biological clock tick. I work 7 hours a day with kids and that is extreme birth control and yet when a goofy looking kid who is all arms and legs and no teeth tries to hit a ball it make me understand why people chose to procreate. Anyway... I love baseball and I was enjoying one of my student's games this evening (they won! YAY!) and three funny things happened:
1. This very small kid was playing first base and every time he caught the ball he would leap off the base, fly through the air, and catch the ball with such great enthusiasm that he would jump off the base and belly flop on the ground, ball in glove, and tippy toes about 1 inch off the base. The runner was always safe and the first baseman was always a few centimeters from glory.
2. As one of the Jayhawks was running around third, a Cardinal caught a pass and then threw it with a lot of gusto. With soooo much gusto in fact that it flew past third, flew past the third base coach, flew past the fence, flew past the spectators, flew past the previously mentioned kids eating dirt, and into the field across the way. The best part was that no one knew what to make of it. Pandemonium ensued. The coaches were yelling. The parents were yelling. The kids were running everywhere but on the bases. Hilarious!
3. The Cardinals were in outfield and as the first hitter was going up the umpire called a one-minute timeout. This was confusing to everyone as it seemed like an illogical delay of game. Of course it seemed illogical until a tiny little body hopped over the fence, sprinted to the tree line at the edge of the field and then proceeded to relieve himself why everyone waited for him. The umpire said he had a minute and by golly it took him just under. Apparently it was an emergency and the coach said it would take more than a minute to get to the bathroom and back so the woods were the only option. The best part of this is that when the poor kid got back all of the spectators gave him a standing ovation.

Pink Pajamas Penguins on the Bottom

2009-05-07T22:13:00.000-07:00

Matsavinya matiseema va vinya yay
Pink pajamas penguins on the bottom
Pink pajamas penguins on the bottom

hmmm hmmm (not sure of the words)
The sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
hmmmmm (more unknown words)
crescendo to It's the Circle of Life!

Ok it's not really that dramatic in Room 15. There is no manic/spooky monkey holding a little lion cub over all the animals of the Savannah but it is special that we have gotten to see the middle, end, beginning, middle, and soon to be end of the butterfly life cycle.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.... no that's a different story. We got these wonderful painted lady caterpillars about a month ago (see previous post about the hot glue/trauma/butterfly crisis for more detailed history). They grew into 5 1/2 butterflies (one was kind of special needs and might have been on the spectrum). As soon as they hatched it was painted lady porn in our room! I didn't take any pictures of the explicit act simply because I didn't think it was appropriate to draw attention to it in front of the kids and because even insects should enjoy private moments of intimacy. If you really want to see it google image search it :).

Here is the boy chasing around the one any only girl.
You can tell by the size of their abdomen (butt).

I have taught my kiddos a lot of good phrases (TCB, You're on the radar,
Touch it again...see what happens!) and one that I taught them was "Peacocking" That is exactly what Lucky (they named them all Lucky...I don't know why) was doing in this picture.

3-5 days after the 8 hour humping session these tiny mint green eggs showed up. It was amazing! You could actually see the mommy butterfly sticking her abdomen down and sticking these little dots to the leaves. If you look really closely you can see a little black speck on the leaf on the left upper part and that is newly hatched caterpillar. There is also one in the middle of the left cluster of eggs. When they hatch they are less than an 1/8 of an inch long and have the biggest head (like an orange on a toothpick!) and the tiniest little bodies.

Here is a picture of the first 200 or so that hatched. Yes they are the little tiny black specks!

This is a picture of a one-week old caterpillar and one day old caterpillar. I know that this is the curse of the new mother. Every gurgle, spit-up, and dirty diaper is the best, most wonderful, special bodily fluid ever created. Even though my commitment is only for another month or so I still feel like every leaf chewed is chewed in a way that no caterpillar has ever masticated before, and every piece of frass (poop) is the most perfect frass ever created, and every little tiny molt need to be documented, photographed, and then told to everyone I know.
In essence my caterpillars are in the top 99% of all the caterpillars in the whole entire world.

This is a three-week old caterpillar on a mallow leaf stem.

Here they are getting ready to make their J shapes

Some more of the ridiculously huge 3 week old caterpillars.
On the verge of changing into chrysalises.

Here are some of the chrysalises. As the larvae inside age they get more and more beautiful!

This is a chrsyallis who attached to the top of the net. You can see the silk pat really clearly. Here is the butterfly net filled with our butterflies!!!

More metamorphic madness to follow...until the next insect installment :)
Awesome alliteration also :)

Mealworms to Darkling Beetles...an Incredible Journey

2009-05-06T18:15:00.000-07:00

This is going to be the first of several installments about the life cycles of bugs in my classroom. Thank you in advance for reading about something that not even my dearest friends can tolerate anymore...so I am a little obsessed! I can tell when the people I work with start to get that look like they would rather live through a month of Mondays than keep listening that I have gone from "Endearingly Engaged" to "2 Cats Short of Being the Crazy Lady with the 2 Cats" Anyway...I will start where Room 15 started...mealworms! We got our mealworms and eagerly started investigating their weird (and a little creepy) body structures. They are pretty tough and the kids L-O-V-E them. Initially we had put in pretzel bits and graham crackers as food but then that was replaced by bran cereal. Here is one of our cute little mealworm...

It's so cute with it's segmented shell and little pincher mouth. Yes, these are the silly insects that my kids carry around and put on their shoulders, heads, arms, knees, shoes, noses. They even make little obstacle courses with pencils and markers to put them through.

I love his little cute face in this picture!

After waiting for months and months and months....ok less than a month. Our dearly beloved mealworms turned into "mummies" actually pupae. These particular pupae are disgusting looking. They are similar to chrysalises in that if they are bumped then they wiggle like crazy.

Initially I had put the pupae in with the adult beetles but after a tubbie cleaning in which I found about 30 pupae that had either their heads or butts chewed off I moved the few surviving ones back in with the mealworms. It was super disgusting! Even now the kids sometimes find legs and body bits in the bran flakes...sick!

This is before the adults started chewing off butts!

The adult beetles also eat bran and veggies. They have wings but can't fly and they have very sticky feet. My biggest fear is that somehow they are going to escape and invade my whole room. The kids also love, love, love these (even the ones who were scared at first). They have named them all (which makes it a little more traumatic when Sheldon was found half eaten or Rock went belly up for no apparent reason) and have races with them. I was hesitant at first to stick my hand in the tub but over time I began to do it with courage and bravery.

There are some color variations. The light one is newly hatched. When their wing covers are opened (like the one on the left) you can see the ridges that were also apparent on the pupa.

A good example of the sticky feet I mentioned earlier.

Synonyms: Irate, Angry, Mad, Raging

2009-04-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

Everyday we learn a new word of the day. We talk about the synonyms, antonyms, syllabication, and then come up with an action. During the day I try to work it in to sentences and questions. Some are silly (scrumptious), some are content related (conservation), and some are just words that "feel right" (hullabaloo).
Today, a big house lizard came into the classroom and you can imagine the hullabaloo that ensued. There was some screaming, some ruckus, and some general foolishness. I being the competent and ever-ready lizard wrangler I got two rubbermaid lids and started my strategic way towards the door-the child wrangling was a little more difficult then the lizard. Anyway, as I am scooting and cajoling the lizard towards the door I hit the edge of a paint palate, which was sitting on the table, with my arm. This particular paint plate I had asked Preciosa to put in the trash about 1 hour before. When I hit the plate it didn't spill, it didn't tip, it didn't even fall. It flipped up and stuck to my sweater...I had a rainbow of tempera all over my sweater with a paper plate stuck to it, a lizard I didn't want, and a class full of hysterical 7 year olds. I was sooo angry at Preciosa for not doing what I had asked, even when I had reminded her. I was also angry at myself for not just throwing the paint away, and I was very mad at this lizard who interrupted math and my life. I looked up into 18 pairs of saucer eyes and a tiny voice in the back peeps "Furious! You look just like the word of the day." Before I could growl, shout, or exclaim. A chorus of agreement erupted and it was at that point I realized how ridiculous this situation was. A teachable moment-yes. However, when they talk about teachable moments in teacher education programs they never mention paint, lizards, or chaos. Tomorrow's word of the day: pandemonium

Another Field Trip

2009-04-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

Things overhead on Room 15’s field trip:
-Look Ms. A. it says F…..U…..C……
-Ok, that’s enough good reading skills though!
-Look those monkeys are doing what the butterflies do in the class (oh YES they were getting jiggy with it).
-Ms. A. do you think that I could live with the tigers when I grow up?
-He’s my best friend! (10 minutes later) I’m not inviting him to my birthday!
-Can we see the snakes again…pleeeeaaaassseee!
-Please sit down when the bus is moving.
-Please keep your feet inside the bus.
-Please do not stick your hands outside of the bus.
-Please do not stand on the seats while the bus is moving.
-Please sit down.
-Sit down.
-Sit now!
-SIT! SO HELP ME I WILL TURN THIS BUS AROUND!
-What?!? 300 hundred pounds of poo!
-What is that smell?
-That my friend would be the 300 pounds of poo.
-Look it’s peeing on the other orangutan’s head.
-Ms. A. this sunbutter tastes really bad….next time I’m bringing a Lunchable.
-Here Ms. A. I saved you a Dorito.
-Wow, thanks I really was hoping you would give me one.
-This was the best day ever!

Books, Books, Books

2009-04-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

The most powerful catalyst in my reading is listening to people talk about the books they love, it makes me want to sip, slurp, and savor stories. We had a lady come to our school and do an inservice on books and it made me want to read, re-read and share the good books in my life. Many people have asked over the years for a list of the books I love and this is it...I will probably remember one in the middle of the night and add to it. I have also categorized it in a way that make sense to me so don't judge me on my genres :). Oh... and to conserve space and my fingers I am only listing the first in a series even though you should go on to read all of them.

Realistic Fiction:

Diary of a Wimpy Kid- J. Kinney: A graphic novel which is written in first person by a middle school boy who is chronicling the big (and not so big) events in his life. Hilarious! A book that will keep you laughing and turning the pages to the very end.

Freak the Mighty- R. Philbrick: Max and Freak are an odd couple whose friendship sees them through some hard times. Get out the Kleenex because there is a Max in all of our lives and his joys and sorrows make an impression on every reader.

Frindle- A. Clements: A great book for kids who are precocious. A boy changes the English language by creating a new word. An awesome book about the etiology of language and how it changes over time.

Holes- L. Sachar: A crummy setting and situation are changed by a stroke of dumb luck. You will fall in love with the characters and be engaged by the flashbacks.

Ida B:..and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disasters, and (Possibly) Save the World- K. Hannigan: The girl in this book is feisty, fun and has a fantastic voice. She copes with changes in her life and tries to deal with them in her own way. After you read this you will start writing a children's book of your own because the language is amazing.

Maniac Magee- J. Spinelli: Maniac doesn't have a home, an address, or a reason to stop running until he meets some unforgettable characters and remembers what it's like to have a family and friends. This book makes me want to be a better writer.

Stargirl- J. Spinelli: A boy tells the story of his high school life and the people who drift in and out of it. The main character is his friend/girl friend who lives life her own way. Bad things happen when he wants her to change more than he wants her to be happy. The sequel is a little disheartening.

The Thief Lord- C. Funke: A group of orphans and runaways are lead into a life of crime by a disguised leader. The protagonist has his beliefs challenged by experiences, discoveries, and being the caretaker for his brother. A lengthy book but well worth it.

Historical Fiction:

Al Capone Does My Shirts- G. Choldenko: A novel set in the 30's and about a boy and his family who live on Alcatraz island. The subplot about his interactions with the warden's daughter are a sunny spot this powerful book about growing up. It has a great plot and fascinating characters who are endearing, frustrating, and delightful.

Esperanza Rising- P. Munoz: Set in the 1930's a girl finds her self, her courage, and her hope in a desperate time and situation. A very interesting story of field workers and their trials.

Milkweed- J. Spinelli: A story about a orphan who grows up in during the Holocaust and finds refuge and friends in a Jewish ghetto, even though he is not a Jew. A different perspective on the Holocaust story told by a little boy who doesn't understand why his friends live behind the fences and why things are changing.

Number the Stars- L. Lowry: A story about a girl growing up during the Nazi invasion of Denmark and how she overcomes her fears to be the hero her family and best friend need.

Petey- B. Mikaelsen: A unique look from a severely disabled boy who is institutionalized in the 1920's and his growing up. This story is heart breaking, uplifting, and life changing.

The Teacher's Funeral, A Comedy in Three Parts- R. Peck: This book has a dry outlook on growing up in the early 1900's. The boys are smart, playful, a little obnoxious and exactly how boys should be.

True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle- Avi: Written in first person by a girl who shuns convention on her voyage across the Atlantic in 1802. This book challenges stereotypes of girls in the 1800's and their roles in society. WARNING: This is a slow starting book so push through the first few chapters to the murder and betrayal parts and there is one with a stupid cover so get the one that doesn't have the lame dame looking girl on the front...believe me- EVERYONE judges a book by it's cover.

Biography/Autobiography:

Harris and Me-G. Paulsen: This could be my favorite book of all time....really! It combines the hard topics of foster families and the sheer joy of 11 year old boys on a farm. You will laugh until you cry and then cry some more because the story is so good and powerful. It is written in what I like to call "stream of consciousness" style which is entirely entertaining. A good read is Popcorn Days and Buttermilk Nights, same setting, author, and concept but fictional characters.

I Have Lived A Thousand Years- O. Bitton-Jackson: A heartbreaking book about the courage and resiliency of the human spirit. The author lives through the Holocaust as a teenager and loses her family, friends, and life but never her integrity.

Knots in My Yo-Yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid- J. Spinelli: This is best read after a few Spinelli books-it links the stories and the author. A great book to illustrate how authors write about what they love and know.

Fiction:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- R. Dahl: This book is as odd as the day is long and twice as delightful. If you have never read it-do yourself a favor and read it!

Charlotte's Web- E. B. White: A classic that is better as an adult (in my opinion). It is a slow starter so be ready to push past the first few chapters. If you've only watched the movie then spend a day or two with these characters and fall in love with them again...or for the first time.

The Giver- L. Lowry: A great book about a utopian society that has some dark secrets. A boy is given the memories of the city and finds a great life outside of this highly structured society. You must read Gathering Blue and The Messenger...it will blow your mind!

Gossamer- L. Lowry: A book that explores foster parenting, second chances, and anger through the perspective of dream makers. An interesting look at the problems that kids, adults, and families face.

The Ink Drinker- E. Sanvoisin: A little book with big figurative language. This book is great short read that is as suspenseful and it is well-written. The author has captured the essence of enjoying a book and wrapped it in a wonderfully engaging story.

Tale of Desperaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread- K. DiCamillo: Exactly what the title says. It is written in second person which adds some interest. The stories intertwine and the moral is that every action starts a chain of events. This is another book that makes me want to be a good writer.

Nod's Limb (Edgar and Ellen)- C. Ogden: Engaging for non-readers. Similar to the Lemony Snicket books except the children are throughly bad and nothing ever works out in their nefarious plans. The pet that they hate and torment is really good and foils them at every turn.

High Fiction:

Artemis Fowl- E. Colfer: A boy who is equal parts smart and self-serving tricks the fairy world into releasing it's secrets and gold. The greatest lessons in life are those that are learned through trial and err and Artemis learns a few along the way. A great series. An even better book on CD-the reader is AMAZING!

Eragon- C. Paolini: A boy and his dragon...need I say more. Similar to Tolkin and Lewis but wonderful and worthwhile all the same. The books are pretty heavy and need to be read with an alertness that isn't often found after 9:00.

The Edge Chronicles (Beyond the Deepwoods)- P. Stewart: Set in an alternate world with a very definite class system a boy realizes his dreams of being a sky pirate. The pen and ink illustrations make this book come alive. Clear your calendar and settle in for a good read.

Magick- A. Sage- A boy is the seventh son of a seventh son and this changes the destiny of his world. The the plot is complex, the characters multi-dimensionally, and the pace surprisingly fast.

Midnight for Charlie Bone- J. Nimmo: A boy with special powers fights against the dark powers to find his father and save his friends. The characters are engaging and memorable.

Poetry:

House on Mango Street- S. Cisneros: A refreshing free-verse poetry book about growing up in the barrios. The writing and words are playful and celebrate life. Not all poems are appropriate for students so pre-read :).

Where the Sidewalks Ends- S. Silverstein: A collection of wacky poems that will make you smile, laugh, and shake your head in wonder at the odd creations of verse.

Adventure/Mystery:

Among the Hidden- M. Haddix: In the future the government limits the number of children a family can have and the "hidden children" fight against the population control. Every book is by a different third child and tells a different part of the story. You will not put this down until you get to the end and then you will immediately go to the library and get the next one in the series.

Chasing Vermeer- B. Balliett: A odd pair of friends solve a mystery of a missing painting using observation, pentominoes and good old fashion sleuthing. The following two books are also very good.

City of Ember- J. Duprau: Set in the future it's the story of a city whose foundations are being shaken by the unknown. A few kids set out in search of answers in a suspenseful, fast paced story.

Hatchet-G. Paulsen: A boy, a hatchet, a airplane crash in the Canadian wilderness adds up to a very good book that combines courage, ingenuity and sheer luck.

The Sisters Grimm- M. Buckley: The two sisters are descents of the Brothers Grimm and solve mysteries for the Ever Afters (fairy tale folk). It's interesting to find who are the heros, who are the villians, and who are the clinically insane. A great fractured fairy tale spin.

Field Trips

2009-04-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

Things to remember when going on a field trip:
-Your driver's license...especially if you are driving
-If a kid is absent you should recognize that fact before getting to the destination
-If a new kid is coming find out EXACTLY how to spell her name before putting in on a million and one things
-If previously mentioned new kid is starting on the first day we've had a field trip all year then maybe you should ask her mom if she has accidents often
-If aforementioned new kid pees her weight in urine on the field trip then it might be good to have spare clothes or a mop or a shamwow
-Sunbutter (peanut butter made out of sunflowers) is no substitute for peanut butter
-Do not carry even one kid's jacket or you will become the pack mule/coat rack for the rest of the day
-If you are the one setting the meeting time and place maybe you should have a map and a watch...eventually you may need one or the other
-When you go down stairs eventually you will have to walk up them again and usually when you are late to the meeting place
-If there is a switch, a flip, a pipe, a handle, a lever, a wheel, a toggle, a pedal, a knob then every single one of my 19 kiddos will touch, jiggle, shake, and bang it until it moves somehow or they are distracted by the next doodad
-Before listening to a playlist on the way home you should make sure the explicit songs are not included
-Always volunteer to carry the lunch basket on the way home...when it is empty
-If the butterflies are mating when you leave and still mating when you get back maybe you should cut down on the Viagra tablets you are crushing into the sugar water
-After all is said and done if a kid looks adoringly up at you and says, "Ms. A. you are the best teacher in the whole world and this was the best field trip ever!" then all the paperwork, lectures from the principal, and calling in favors is worth it

Mama Said There'll Be Days Like This...

2009-03-31T21:39:00.000-07:00

I woke up late today and found a shirt out of the dirty clothes (please let's not pretend this only happens once in a blue moon for me). Drove to school, forgot I had a meeting. You know the beginning to this story...like so many days in my life. I got to school and quickly realized that 2 of the butterfly caterpillars had escaped because some whirling dervish had knocked over a container. I also had thrown a mealworm pupa yesterday-I got scared and threw it while screaming like a little girl...but that's a different story. So there were a smattering of loose insects in the room this morning. I offered a reward if anyone found a caterpillar or pupa and sure enough we found all of them and it only cost me three jolly ranchers. So minutes after the first bell all of the insects had been found and we settled into the normal Tuesday morning, you know..."I can't find my library book.", "He said I was a hobo.", "They were looking at me."

At about 9:30, The Nanny (you know Fran Drescher) shouts, "Ms. A. a caterpillar is missing" and it is at this point in my life that I get to explain to 18 7-year olds that being ground into a carpet underneath a dirty sneaker is really quite a quick and painless way to go if you are a caterpillar. That silly caterpillar escaped twice and didn't live to tell about the second getaway attempt.

While this drama is going on another caterpillar has attached itself to the side (not to the top, like they are supposed to!) of the cup and is now swinging precariously. Gabriela, in all of her well-meaningness, showed everyone and in the process detached the chrysalis from the side of the cup so now the poor thing is rolling around in caterpillar chow and little poop balls. I googled what to do in a crisis such as this and the answer was to hot glue, YES HOT GLUE! the chrysalis to a piece of paper and attached it to the top of the enclosure. After looking at several detailed instructions, pictures and even a youtube video I felt confident in my chrysalis gluing skills. I valiantly took out the hot glue gun and girded my loins for a triumph over gravity. I put the glue dot on a post it, waited exactly 15 seconds and then tried to push the tip of the chrysalis (which I learned was the creamster in all of my googling) into the hot glue. As soon as I touched it the chrysalis started to wiggle and I yelped in surprise. I reviewed the pictures and directions and steeled my self for another try. I once again put the dot of glue, counted to 15, and stuck that chrysalis into the glue with confidence. As soon as I did it started to have convulsions so I again freaked out and tried to take it off convinced that I would find some other way using dental floss, double sided tape, spit, and a prayer. Instead of taking it out of the glue which was my intention I pushed it in and it stuck in that glue sideways. In essence, this lifesaving event now looks like a preschool art project. My hope is that it turns out ok and that I don't have to pay for post-traumatic stress therapy for the butterfly or myself!

The next encounter with the physical world that was shocking and unexpected was that a bird flew into the classroom and as you would imagine every child started to shriek like the world was ending. The bird in response flew out of a window...or at least tried to fly out of a window. Instead it hit a closed window and was stunned, then it started flopping around like a seizure patient. At this precise moment in time, all of the first graders came tromping back in and were surprised by a bird in their way. The poor bird finally made it out of the classroom but it was an exciting few minutes before anyone could focus on math again.

At the end of the day, driving home, I was reflecting about my poor luck with living creatures. All day long I had been fussing because my shirt just didn't feel right. I looked down and noticed the my shirt was on backwards. I thought that I had gotten lucky and picked a clean(ish) one out of the dirty laundry but alas no I just had the dirty side in the back. Like the title implies, "There'll be days like this, my mama said."

The "J" Word

2009-03-31T21:34:00.000-07:00

A short glimpse of a conversation held today:

Tuesday, 3:45 pm (10 minutes past the bell)
Ms. A.: So are you riding the bus today?
Sharpay: No.
Ms. A.: So is your mom coming to pick you up?
Sharpay: I don't know.
Ms. A.: Ok, well I guess I will just stand here and wait with you...(awkward silence) Do you have any plans for spring break?
Sharpay: We are going to visit my aunt.
Ms. A.: Really, where does she live.
Sharpay: In the "J" word.
Ms. A.: The "J" word?
Sharpay: Yeah, the "J" word...you know JAIL.
Ms. A.: Oh, that "J" word...(again awkward silence).

Pooh-pahs

2009-03-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

How is it you may ask that a single, good-looking, witty, commitment free individual such as myself becomes an attached, still good-looking, and highly committed individual in ONE DAY. Well let me tell you...it begins and ends with 2nd grade life science and the insects that are the focus of my instruction and my life for the next 3 months of my life. In one day, ONE DAY, I became the proud parent of 200 meal worms, 50 silkworm eggs, 50 milkweed bug eggs, and 9 butterfly larva (yes those are caterpillars). As I am writing this I am resisting attaching pictures of my newly acquired and much loved progeny as proud parents are want to do on blogs. I know that experiencing the world around them is a huge piece of a child's development...however as I sat with cottonballs, twigs, tubing, egg cartons, vials, plastic baggies, sachets of sunflower seeds, hideously smelling butterfly food, a syringe, a hole punch, and a pea green powder called "Silkworm Chow" (that I have to cook and press until it is a tofu like texture !?!) I thought maybe I am experiencing my world way more than my precious 7 year-olds. So after several weeks of preparation and teaching, re-teaching, and re-re-teaching the life cycle of insects, one of my students is showing his mom around the science center during teacher conferences and keeps saying, "These are mealworms next they will be pooh-pahs" Tomorrow's lesson: Pronunciation of the life cycle starting with pupa.

Statistically Speaking...

2009-03-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

When 17 out of 18 kids listen to directions it is an excellent percentage...statistically speaking. However, even when 94 percent of the kids listen there is a margin of error in direction following. It seems as though that one kid who doesn't listen really doesn't listen. After a day of St. Patrick's Day word searches, nacho cheese, and science projects I was doing some self-reflection walking about in a daze around Home Depot. I thought of my day and realized that it would have been a little less chaotic and a lot less exciting if every kid had listened. I don't know how to be more clear and I don't know how to make my directions any more followable. I only know that one kid (and unfortunately not always the same kids) just doesn't listen. So a great big thank you to the kid who did not hear my directions when I said, "Please do not cut the computer cord with the safety scissors.", "Please do not empty your milkshake into the recycle bin.", "Please do not shake the ant farm.", "Please do not spill the mealworms all over the floor and then scream like the world is coming to an end.", "Please do not glue your face to the table.", "Please do not lick your foot or shoe.", or "Please do not eat the graham crackers out of the science experiment." Like I said an exciting day in Room 15...statistically speaking.

Sometimes in life...

2009-03-11T20:33:00.000-07:00

As the title begins, sometimes in life you have a chance to reflect upon the reasons you do things....I had such an opportunity today. I was searching throughout all of my classroom cabinets at 7:15pm for a plastic baggie. I realized that I had been at school for 12 hours and now was getting close to frantic looking for a baggie and to what end you may ask....well...this baggie was ABSOLUTELY necessary because I ABSOLUTELY had to save the tiny pieces of confetti from the bottom of the three hole punch. Not only did I have to save these little circles, I felt compelled to find all the three hole punches and diligently collect the chads. I was filled with a sense of excitement (I did just use the word excitement in relation to bits of paper) when I thought of the goofy rectangle bits in the binding machine in the work room, I was gleeful as I planned all the things I could hole punch that would produce multiple colors and shades of small cirlcles. Yes, I know. Crazy! It was after I had ransacked my cabinets and dug through about 3 drawers that I stopped suddenly and thought, "Why in the world am I so desperate to save these colorful bits of joy?" I realized that this need to collect for the somedays, the next years, and the unknowables is what separates the primary grade teachers from the rest of civilized society. So here's to all the people who have bought Christmas craft supplies in April, spent more than 10 dollars at the Target dollar spot, have a tubbie labeled "Future Crafts?", have reclaimed something from a trashcan in someone else's room (Hey, I needed those magazines for collage project), or have gone through with their half baked idea to save used bottle caps, crayon bits, aluminum foil pieces, fabric scraps or even the paper bits from the three hole punch for the next great craft project, the next Mother's Day gift, or the next unknown.

Please Do Not Pee on the Fence....Again.

2009-03-10T21:27:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog. Or should I say...my both awkward and amazing adventures documented on this very blog. I teach 1/2 grade at an awesome school and a lot of the posts will be about my observations and wonderings about time spent there. I have noticed a trend in the young married (and usually babied...that's not a word!) people starting blogs which star their new families, new homes, new progeny, new pets, and new revelations....seeing as I only rarely have new revelations and none of the other things then this should be a great way to pass the time between avoiding college work and the next episode of Cash Cab.

Since you have already read to this point I assume that you want to know what the title of this inaugural blog is all about....so here goes.

One day I returned from recess in my usual post-recess bliss (ok more like....pre-math fog) and I saw Mrs. Gorf, the recess monitor, standing by my line. As soon as I see Mrs. Gorf a litany of oh-no's start running through my head because I know that if Mrs. Gorf is standing by MY line then it must mean that one of my precious little bugs have committed some grievous and unforgivable crime. I slowly trudge towards my impending fate and as I make that long walk across the ball strewn blacktop I see Mrs. Gorf scribbling furiously on a canary yellow piece of paper. I know from past experiences that those dreadfully bright pieces of paper mean referrals and that I will spend the next 10 minutes of my life determining who stole who's ball and what Troy (you know from HSM) did or did not say to Sharpay (giving kids nicknames in my mind helps me pass the time between 3:25 and 3:30). So I walk up prepared to take the referral like an adult and not shirk under the glare of Mrs. Gorf. She hands me the canary paper and it says Reason for Referral: Banditos was peeing on the fence. I took it with a straight face assured Mrs. Gorf that I would take care of the problem and it would never happen again. On the trek from the blacktop to Room 15 I asked my dear Banditos why he peeded on the fence and he looked up at me in all of his 7 year old wisdom and said, "Ms. A. I peed because I had to and I didn't want to stop playing." And to this I said as I say over and over again.... "Please go wash your hands" and then as an afterthought I shook my head in wonderment over 2nd grade logic and said "Please do not pee on the fence....again."