Yesterday one of my students bit me.

And then he kicked, hit, spit at my face, and ran around the classroom for me to catch him, at which point the biting, spitting, etc. repeated.

I don't get paid nearly enough to deal with that one. The family better give me a very nice present this December.

In other situations that I don't care to be in, I had another confrontation with the crazy guy who lives upstairs. Here's my question to you....if you go downstairs, not once but twice, and knock on the door, and immediately hear the talking inside the apartment stop, would you take that as a hint that the people don't want to do anything with you? Would you then hunt down each member of the apartment, and ask why they don't want to be friends with you? Would you ask for their phone numbers or email, even though they've told you "no" before? I walked in the apartment at the same time as him tonight, and said a polite "hi" and then "see you later" as I started to close my door. But then he asked, "Well, when is later?" Uh, that was my nice way of saying I'm done talking. Then the akwardness continued for a few minutes, during which he asked why we're ignoring him, and do we want to be friends with him, and can he have my email or phone number, and would we hang out with him if HE made the plans. It ended with me getting his email, and closing the door on his face because he doesn't leave when you say bye. I need to learn to be more blunt, but come on.

No more maple pie.

It sounds odd, but I sometimes don't like having vacations because it makes it so much worse to go back to work. Don't get me wrong though, I'll still happily take my vacations. I've been enjoying not having to make lunch, or iron clothes, or wake up to an alarm clock (though my body has decided--without my consent--that 7:30-8 is a good wake up time on vacation).

For Thanksgiving, we had a big international fest. We had people from Thailand, Taiwan, Germany, and even Texas. Almost half of the people at the dinner table had no idea what "pilgrim" meant, and couldn't even appreciate the Pilgrim hat desserts I made:

But I bonded with them anyway when I realized that the three girls from Asia and Europe enjoy the same teenage dramas as me, including but not limited to The O.C., Gilmore Girls, and One Tree Hill.

This weekend I got a cool new phone. It's so shiny. I'm definitely in love with it. It even slept in my bed the night I got it (I like the new electronic smell).




My body's going to be in for a shock at lunch tomorrow when I feed it carrots and a sandwich rather than stuffing and mashed potatoes along with brownies and trifle and pie.

Post-Thanksgiving

I'm so full I want to die.

The important stuff, like lollipops.

I love Thanksgiving. Not quite as much as Halloween, but it's right up there. What's not to love about getting together with a bunch of people, and being expected to stuff your face with stuff like mashed potatoes and turkey and gravy and stuffing and cranberry sauce. Not to mention, dessert.

It's a fun time to be in school too. It's the first little mini-vacation of the year, and from here on out it's an easy slide into June (or so I'm telling myself). Since more than half of my kids are from Israel, some are going to be celebrating their first Thanksgiving this year, and it's kind of neat teaching them about it.

Today in school I talked with them about what it means to be thankful, and I had everyone say one thing that they were thankful for so that I could write it on these Pilgrim faces they made. I was extremely impressed with a few of them, like Eitan, who said he's thankful for going to Israel on Wednesday, and Sam, who said he's thankful for playing with Grandma Joyce on Thankgiving, and a few that were thankful of their moms and dads or sisters.

But then, there were a couple who had no idea what I was talking about...so I got a kick out of writing that Abby is thankful for lollipops, and Edan is thankful for Batman, and Andrew is thankful for trains.

What are you thankful for?

Oh, and happy thanksgiving. Don't drink too much wine and wrap pants around your head as you puke. I hear it kills the day.

I found this and thought it was funny. Don't let it kill your appetite...

Don't get the black lung, pop

When did it get to be the middle of November? I feel like it was just Christmas and all that stuff. I'm very excited for Thanksgiving, and very excited for snow soon. Though it's hard to believe that it will be cold and wintery soon since it was warm enough to get outside for a few runs wearing shorts this week. This morning I saw sleds for sale inside Shaws, and it seemed weird.

Over the past week, I neglected to mention the fact that it was Ms. Gillian McCabe's 24th birthday. Kate and I made her an absolutely gigantic cake. And no, that's not orange poop on top of it...it's a cheesy poof, to commemorate the time(s) when Gillian housed an entire back of artifical cheese snacks herself.





This week it rained every single day. It made my class crazy. One day, the rain had slowed down to a slight drizzle, but the playground was way too wet, so we got the kids in their raincoats and took them out to the pavement and I chased them for 10 minutes just to get them to run and get some energy out. Yes, I'm pretty thrilled to have a master's degree and spend my mornings chasing (literally) 18 three year preschoolers.

It's 6 months until I turn 25.

Lost, and probably gone forever

The thing about my kids (my students, not future biological) that irritates me 65 percent of the time is their parents. I think some kids send their kids to preschool thinking they're going to get the love and attention that they do at home. Newsflash: preschool isn't home. I like your kids, but I have 17 others, and at least 2 are crying.

The biggest trend lately in my classroom is bringing in things from home to show, or to show only to a select group, resulting in crying by the other two-thirds of the class. There's no doubt in my mind that some of the kids spend a good 15 minutes every morning choosing one of their most prized possessions to bring into school. And while it's sort of irritating to have to spend so much time in circle saying, "And now let's see what Isaac has! Stand up and show it to us, Isaac!" it is nice for them to get so excited about showing their things to their friends.

But, inevitably, these valued items get lost somewhere in the room, or pocketed by another kid with the child put it down for a minute to play with something else.

And then the parents complain:
"Edan brought in two old cell phones, and now we're missing one. Do you know what happened to it?"
"Ellie has a special ribbon that she lost, and we miss it. Where is it?"
"Abby brought in her pink pig yesterday, and I don't know where it went. Can you look for it today"

Sure, right after I deal with Oliver, who's pooped in his pants for the second time before 10 o'clock this morning.

I ate nachos twice today!

I decided I like voting...it makes me feel all happy and American, but not in the "we're obese and want to take over the world and george bush is our hero" sort of way. Today was my first time voting in Scummies...I finally gave up the absentee ballots and registered in Somerville. And it was so much more exciting than in Medway, where everyone just went to the high school gym to vote. It took me until yesterday to figure out where to go, and it turned out my area got to vote in a fire station! And the sirens went off while I was there! It was pretty exciting.

I ate a pomogranate today too, which was equally exciting.

Last week I started going to bed by 10, and I got a solid 8 hours of sleep a few nights that week. Two mornings I even woke up before my alarm clock, just before 6AM, all set to go. I had too much going on in my head this week to fall asleep before 11:30, so I must be off to dreamland to reaquaint myself with my bed.

BIG NEWS

There's a pretty good chance that the next time you see me, I'll be well on my way to morbidly obese. It seems I've made it my personal mission to finish off the Halloween Butterfingers in our apartment. And after that, I'm already pretty sure my next mission will be the Almond Joys (minus the almonds--I pick them out). I seriously love candy.

But, the big news of the day is that after 2 years and 3 days of living in this apartment...drumroll please....

WE HAVE A FULLY FUNCTIONING PORCH!

I plan to take a picture of it soon. I only wish I had taken pictures of the entire month and a half long process. It's hard to imagine, but our apartment actually went from looking the crappiest on the street, to looking the crappiest times 14 on the street. It seems our landlord decided halfway through the construction to have the guys tear off the siding on part of the house (yeah, just part) and replace it. So you can probably guess how the apartment looked, with slabs of wood sticking out of the building as the porches went up, part of the siding off, and trash and other work materials scattered around.

I'd guess that our apartment is still the ugliest on the street. But, I'm curious to see next week when it's all done (supposedly, though I'm skeptical since it was "getting done" 2 years ago we were told), and all of the materials that are blowing around are cleaned up. I don't know for sure, but there's another house on the street that might be able to take the prize from us.


I realized I have no pictures of the old porch, except this one, where you can just barely catch part of it on the very far right. It's obviously the one that looks like it's 4 seconds away from falling over and ruining our fun playing in the snow.

Happy Halloween

I'm so stuffed with candy and pumpkin seeds and apple cider.

But in honor of the most fun day of the year, I'm giving you the gift of dogs in costume.

Check out this, for some really good costumes:


And these, for some pretty funny ones...











And I promise I'm going to try so hard to refrain from the costumed dogs for awhile.