Visiting Cats

So one of the things I do at/for church is visit some of the women. There's a group of us and we try to visit particular women - those who haven't been in a long time, those who are single, the new people who move in, etc....

Last week we went to visit a new family that has moved here from across the country. We went into an "interestingly" smelling house and within moments of sitting down, I found a cat in my lap. The owner exclaimed her surprise, this cat hates everyone. I smile, nod and say most all cats love me.

It's true. In that contrary way that cats have, they can just tell how awfully allergic I am and so they climb into my lap and curl up. It's not the first time a cat as come to sit with me, surprising its owner because it hates strangers.

I was very careful not to touch my face at all and as soon as I got home I changed my clothes and washed my hands and face. Usually that would be enough, but my eye is still a bit sensitive from all the stuff that's gone on and it was pretty pink, even the next morning.

A Day in the Life

This weeks Fun Monday is being hosted by Mama Rehema. She says:

Your Day: please describe to us your typical weekday, from when you wake up until when you go to bed, what do you do to get you up and going, how do you wind down in the evening and what happens in your life in between those times. For some of us, the drama is in the mornings and evenings and for others, it is during the day.

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I'm typically out of bed some time between 6:0-6:30am. I head straight for the shower, get dressed, hair, and all that personal stuff. On MWF I stay home until shortly before 8:00, when the 4th grader goes next door to wait out the last half hour before he leaves for school. On T & H I leave at 7:15 and drop off the 8th grader at the Jr High.

Regardless of day, breakfast is a Rich Chocolate Royale slimfast shake. Also regardless of day, I hit up the Chevron down the hill before school. I'm on a first name basis with most everyone who works there (one of them has even subbed for me in my classroom). I get a diet pepsi unless it's all foamy, then I go for the Diet Dr. Pepper.

School is school pretty much no matter what the day (except Tuesdays when we have a meeting at 7:45 and Fridays when I have bus duty). My prep time is 11:30-12:00 and lunch is 12:05-12:45. I'm rarely out of there before 4:00pm. My 8th grader walks over to my school after his bell and plays around on the computer in the back of the room until I'm ready to go. Sometimes I put him to work sorting papers or making copies.

After I get home, I try to start something for dinner right away. It's the commitment to eating at home that I need, we've been eating out too much. While it's cooking, I'll come in and download my podcasts and then listen to the Archers and sometimes another one or two, but ALWAYS the Archers. I catch up on email and Facebook and my virtual farms/cafe. I usually check with the boys about practice time and homework and get after them to do either if it needs to be done.

Evenings bring a variety of activities. The boys are both scouts, my husband I have meetings for church, sometimes there's school stuff for me and events on campus my husband has to go to. Friday is usually pizza/movie night. Sometimes it's all four of us, sometimes it's just the two boys here while my husband and I have a date. Our dates are often dinner out because it's a chance to talk uninterrupted. We also like to go to Borders and he's on an email list for coupons so we can purchase stuff and feel all virtuous. :)

Onions

My hands still smell like onions, especially under the fingernails. I know there are at least a dozen remedies to fix this and if I were to but google "getting onion smell off hands" I'd see at least one I had the "ingredients" for, but do I? No. I just keep noticing that my hands smell like onions. Hope it doesn't transfer to the keyboard.

Fun Monday

This week's Fun Monday is being hosted by Ari:

http://www.beyondmyslab.blogspot.com/

She asks:

If you could click your heels three times, and change lives with any character from any film, who would it be and why?

This is a hard one, I'm not a big movie watcher and most of the movies I've seen lately are children's movies. Can I change places with a character from a book? Cuz I'd love to go live in a Village called Fairacre. I'm not sure I'd be too picky about which character I traded with either as long as it wasn't Mrs. Pringle. Not only is she cranky, she's the school cleaner and I really don't want to be the school cleaner. I'd love to be the teacher or the Vicar's wife there though.
Fairacre sounds like a beautiful place when it is described in the book. It's a small English Village with lots of farms around it. Although they sometimes get in each other's business a bit too much (because it's a small village), when times of need arise, everybody comes to your aid. You're truly watched out for.

Ok, time for fair play. A movie . . . . . . I'd like to change places with one of the women in that Holiday movie - - 'The Holiday' is it called? I'd like to be the American who got the chance to trade houses with someone from England. Being married, I don't know as I'd care for the romance part, but I wish I had the guts to try and trade houses like that and I wish it would work out so well for me if I did. If everyone in the world were kind and honest, we could all trade houses like that with others from all over the world. What a great way to vacation that would be.

Study Groups

Actually I think we call them Focus Groups this year. There are 5-6 different ones at our school. Topics are math, literacy, the Arts, science, behavior and speech. I'm on the science one. About half of these meetings actually take place outside of contract time - as in we're not getting paid to do this, but it's required nonetheless. (Work w/out pay, welcome to the teaching world.)

Today, four groups spoke a minute or two at faculty meeting and guess what they all said? "We want you to do this, we want you to do that." Two of the other groups are planning evenings for families to come to the school and they expect all of us to show up for these as well.

What has our group been doing? We've been trying to figure out how we can make it easier for the teachers at our school to include science in their classroom. Collecting resources, ideas for how to use them, how to get more hands on opportunities for the kids, how to integrate science and other subjects, etc.....

We didn't know we were supposed to be coming up with jobs and assignments for everyone. I guess we got it wrong.

The President's Speech

When rumors of what might be in the speech Pres. Obama was giving to school children came out, several parents began to call schools around here and the district office.

Heaven forbid anyone, parents, schoool board, should show a little restraint and find out what the speech actually said before deciding to ban it in our district. Thus, we all managed to look a little foolish when the final copy of the speech was published. Then the school board had to back track and eat a large amount of crow and make apologies.

Today, thanks to a bunch of parents who fussed, whined and complained before finding out the true facts of the situation, almost every single child in our district watched the president's speech. HAD TO watch the speech. I had no choice but to give up academic time to go watch that speech. Parents were sent forms in the mail and students brought home forms so parents could opt them out of watching the speech for their child. There were maybe a couple of dozen children who didn't see the speech because of this, attendance was mandatory for everyone else. Don't misunderstand, I don't think there was anything wrong with the speech, I just resent being forced to give up class time during a week when we're so overscheduled, I'm already not doing spelling.

If those original parents had just kept their dang mouths closed, I don't think hardly any students in our district would have seen or even heard of that speech. Maybe a few government or social studies classes in the senior and junior high schools would have watched it, but nobody in our school had planned on it. I hope those parents feel a little foolish now and remember this the next time they want to go off on something before they have the facts.

I wish I knew which gods to light candles to

Had one student stay home sick yesterday and another went home right after lunch clutching his stomach. Many stories from other teachers and other parents about sick children. I try to get enough sleep, eat a halfway balanced diet and wash my hands whenver I think about it. A few prayers never go amiss, but I can't think of anything else.

I really am a nice person most of the time

There's a woman from church who, a couple of years ago, got divorced, lost her job and so as a result of the financial problems this brought on, moved in with her son, DIL and granddaughter. She began going to our church when she moved into the neighborhood.

She's finally reached the point where she can move back into a place of her own, but evidently she pretty much sold everything (partly for lack of storage at her son's house) when she moved in with them. Therefore, she needs darned near everything. People from church have been donating furniture and other items to help get her set up. I myself have a loveseat, a mattress and some sheets she can have.

Someone suggested she would need a shower curtain rod so I emailed her and said I have an extra if she needs it. She emails me back and says there's one there already, but she'd be happy to have mine as an extra.

Excuse me?

Ok, here's where my stingy self comes in. This is my extra rod and while I don't mind giving it to someone who doesn't have one, I'm feeling a bit . . . . . . . . put out??? used???? that she wants me to give up my spare rod so she can have a spare rod.

Is this petty or what? (feel free to say yes) I mean we're talking about a $10-$20 item here. I ought to be able to spare that without a grudge. Sometimes I need a light whap upside the back of my head.

The picture for all the world to see . . .

On my facebook page I've got a profile picture of myself that was my school picture taken 2 years ago. School pictures are much the same everywhere, blue background and I'm wearing a blue shirt. I also look much the same as I did two years ago. It's been on the school website for almost 2 years now and I've had it on FB since sometime last spring.

Just now today I realized that you can see white smudges on the shoulder that is turned towards the camera. Those white smudges? Deoderant. I keep many of my pants in crates on the closet shelf and when I reach up to get a pair before I put a shirt on, I sometimes brush the shoulders of the shirts with my underarm. After I realized what all those white smudges on my clothes were, I started paying a bit more attention to things when I get pants down (and put a stool there for the top row of pants). However, obviously this picture was taken before that realization hit me.

Oh well, it's a school picture so people will probably just figure it's poor quality stuff, not deoderant.

Farm Town

So I admit it, I'm a bit addicted to that Farm Town application on Facebook. I've got 9 large fields that are 64 squares each. I like to plant them in patterns, stripes, diagonals, checkerboards, etc... I was on the last field and trying to think of something different and did a few L shaped blocks with squares in the middles. It can be very hard to see the pattern at first when they're just seeds, but today when I looked, the plants were all growing enough that the patterns showed up very well. Other people can come look at your farm and you can hire others at the marketplace to do your harvesting/plowing for you so I've had people from all over the world looking at my fields.

Oops.

Those L shaped blocks and squares in the middle? Made that field look like I'd tried to put in a swastika. I harvested what was ready and deleted the rest that weren't and replowed and put in what I call the crazy quilt pattern which is just random stuff all over. I hope nobody's been visiting me today.