Happy Mother’s Day

To all the mothers in my family:

• Amy
• Jenn
• Julia
• Lisa
• Lynda
• Marijke
• Rachel

And to all you other moms out there.

I hope you have a great day!

Funny School Stuff.

We each got an apple strudel from the PTA this morning, in our boxes all wrapped up with this label on it. Personally, I’m a little disappointed with myself, because when I innocently read “Here’s a strudel for using your noodle”, and one of the English teachers started laughing, I was totally baffled.  It took me a full 30 seconds to get what was so funny to her.  When it did dawn on me I walked back into the room and said “Congratulations, in 17 years of teaching you are the first one to beat me to taking something the wrong way.”  Maybe not completely true, but pretty darn close.

At lunch one of my students came up to me, his hands kind of grasping his own face and said to me “Mind meld yourself, what a paradox.”  An 8th grader that knows what the word paradox means and can even use it that way.  Probably learned it from that English teacher.

And finally: this box was sitting on the floor right next to the front office.  I don’t know about you, but I just hate it when my Diet iCoke goes on the fritz. 

Appreciate me!

Teacher Appreciation week.  Boss Appreciation week.  Secretary Appreciation week.  Mother’s day, father’s day, Grandmother’s day, Grandfather’s day.  Left-Handed Single Non-Parental Hospital Worker’s Appreciation weekend.

Will it ever stop?  Now, I’m not going to lie to you, I do like getting those little goodies in my box and all those positive notes, like “We are so grateful for all we see, we’d love to send you all to Paris.  But since we can’t afford Paris…”  It’s really nice.

Smaller classes, less testing, more time to collaborate with other teachers and maybe, just maybe, more of the parents who hold their kids accountable for their behavior rather than making excuses.  That would be nicer.  But, that’s never going to happen, so for now I’ll just settle for the bag full of fortune cookies I got in my box today.  (And I really do appreciate that the PTA does appreciate us, they show us with all kinds of stuff all year).

Anyway, happy Teacher Appreciation week.  And Happy Cinco de Mayo.

Vote Carroon

So I got scooped.  I was planning on writing something about Pete Carroon and his run for Governor, and Pedro beat me to it.  So I’m not going to go over it all over again, you can read his post and pretty much have what I’d say, except this:

There is no time since Gov. Scott Matheson that we have more needed a Democratic Governor to balance out our loony Legislature than right here and now.  Period.

Vote early. Vote often.

P.S. I have no idea why Pete Carroon is standing there in front of a picture of Captain Kirk, but being a Star Trek fan, I obviously HAD to use this picture.

JonBenét Ramseyfest Revisited.

Years ago, when I was doing Stage Crew at my first school, every year we had an auditorium rental that made me a lot of money, but somewhat disgusted me.  I can’t remember the name of it, but it was for some big dance school that had their annual recital/awards program at our school.  We spent from right after school until about 10 PM on Friday setting up, and all day Saturday (like from 6 AM to 11 PM) doing the show and cleaning up.  I got paid something like $20 an hour, and other than helping set up and clean up, all I had to do was run out for lunch one time, and check in on my (paid) stage crew kid every hour or so.

The problem with it was that it involved (mostly) girls, starting around 4 years old, all dressed up like Barbie Dolls, makeup, bright red lipstick, doing dances that the teenagers pulled off well, but were kind of creepy when done by 5 year olds.  I called it the JonBenét Ramsey Weekend.  There were about 500 kids involved, which also meant 500 stage moms.  You know all the rumors about stage moms?  Well, there is a reason for those rumors; they’re all true.  Not for all the moms, but a big chunk of them.  Fortunately I spent most of my time in my classroom, the control booth or the Principal’s office, so I could keep contact to a minimum.  But despite having a trash can every 10 feet or so, we always ended up with an orchestra pit full of trash we swept down to the front of the auditorium.  And not a single year went by that I didn’t find at least one dirty diaper stuffed under one of the seats.

Anyway, there must have been something like that going on at one of the schools nearby, because I saw at least a dozen or so JonBenét-wannabe’s coming into the Chevron tonight.  I looked at my co-worker, who has a 3 month old daughter, and asked him if he would ever dress up his daughter like that.  I won’t quote his response, but rest assured it ended with “NO”. 

Sometimes, Memory Lane should be closed for repairs.