I'm feeling all reflective.

2008 is just about dunzo. I'm spending my last day of the year in my favorite fleece pants from 10th grade, sipping coffee to keep me going into the wee hours of the morning, and eating pancakes while I watch 8 inches of snow pile up outside my window.

I'd say it was a good year. I made what turned out to be a good career move that ended up with me teaching 3rd grade, which is a goal I've had since I was 8. I bought a new car, and started on the long process of paying off car loans and grad school loans (not fun, but the sooner I start, the sooner I'm done!). I learned new words and phrases in two languages (including "wash your hands," "sit down," and "Do you have to pee?" in Hebrew for my days teaching at a Jewish preschool, and relearned a lot of Spanish vocabulary to help out at parent conferences at my new school). I ended a relationship that was not going to go anywhere, and felt good about it eventually. I officiated a wedding ceremony. I ran in my second 10K. I was more careful to use sunscreen. I read several really good books (and some really bad books).

I like New Years a lot, but this year it seems like it all of a sudden happened and I didn't even see it coming. We all procrastinated on making plans, and then I just got back from Florida a day ago and realized there were still no plans. We worked something out last night, and I think it will be fun.

Every year I make the same new years resolutions...exercise more regularly, eat less candy, talk to my brother more often, and be nicer to my parents. They're not really resolutions, I think, because it's stuff that I should be doing and I'm aware of it all year, but then another year goes by and I realize that I'm still going through a bag of mint M&Ms in under 3 days, and snapping at my parents on the phone because I'm tired and cranky. I suppose I'll still keep those as my resolutions this year because I think they're good things to do, but this year I have a new resolution: learn to cook one new meal each month. I think it's totally doable. I probably cooked more new things my senior year of college because it was the first time I had a kitchen, and because Losure was constantly cooking up weird concoctions. I actually even started on this goal a little bit early! I got a gift of a Greek cookbook and a cool apron last week, so last night I made some Greek potatoes and chicken with lemon. It turned out tasty...even Kate ate it! I have a bunch of other cookbooks that have sat in dust on the shelves for a long time and I'm sure I'll take them out soon, but I'm especially anxious to dive into my Greek cookbook because it has a bunch of recipes that the old Greek ladies on my term abroad in Athens used to cook for lunch!

Happy Oh Nine!

Ouch?

This is going to be embarrassing.

A little back story.
This weekend, Kate and I watched one of my top 3 favorite celebrity chefs, Paula Deen. I love her because she somehow manages to get 3 sticks of butter and at least 1 pound of bacon in every single recipe. Paula made some amazing looking Creme de menthe brownies, so Kate said I had to make them if I had a snow day again on Monday. Of course, Monday I had a snow day, so I shoveled and shoveled and shoveled and shoveled, then chipped away at ice with a dinky plastic shovel for an hour, and then I made two batches of brownies. Half of one batch went to a teacher I work with, and the other half of that batch went with Kate to work (for all I know, she ate them all in the car on her way to work). The second batch, the really good ones because Kate reminded me to mix in the Andes mints before putting the batter in the pan, and because they went in a smaller pan so they're really thick, stayed with us at the apartment.

I got home today, grabbed a shiny knife, and went straight for the 2nd batch of thick, minty brownies. Only I couldn't get the knife through. Muscles I didn't even know I had in my shoulder and arm were totally sore, rendering me unable to get the chocolately goodness.

I hacked it out with a fork instead.

Snow day Part 3?

I got my wish, and had another snow today today. It was pretty great, except for the 45 minutes in the morning, and hour in the afternoon, that I spent trying to break my car free from the ice cube it was stuck in. Last night the plows pushed a ton of slush all around my car, and since it only got up to about 20 degrees today, my car remained frozen in ice until some very nice man saw me chipping away with my plastic shovel and looking angrier and angrier by the minute. He had an ice pick with him, and in 5 minutes he had all of the ice chopped so I could shovel most of it away. I'm going to be sore tomorrow.

All of the cities around the city where I teach, including Boston, have already cancelled school for tomorrow, but mine still hasn't. I've become kind of greedy. It would actually be a good day to be at school...we have an assembly in the morning, I planned on playing a few games of vocabulary bingo and have awesome eraser prizes, and I have a writing project I wanted to finish up before vacation. I also got a bunch of wintery/Christmasy pencils to give them. Third graders LOVE fun pencils. And if i that's not present enough, I also have a ton of homework to give my kids over vacation. I kind of hate the thought of them sitting around for almost 2 weeks and forgetting everything they've learned in math in the past month if I don't get to give it to them (I'm not the only mean teacher! All of the 3rd grade teachers are giving the same "vacation math packet!") To top it off, I have a lot to do in my classroom and to pack up with me to work on over the break, so it would be nice to get all of that.

However, despite all of that, I've kind of thought how nice it would be to spend another low-key day at home, even though I'll have almost 2 weeks of vacation after tomorrow. Plus, it's going to be really really cold again, and my pink fleece pants are just so warm. That little kid excitement of "SNOW DAY!!!!!!" when you find out the news is still in me too. Typical of my "I'll worry about it later" mentality, I can't really be bothered yet about thinking that I'll be making up all of these days at the end of June when I'm antsy to get to the beach.

I spent today in mourning.

In the morning, when I woke to about 9 inches of snow, I mourned over the fact that I no longer drive this beastly thing:



That picture of course is not my car.... but I no longer drive my Explorer because it...

A) Was purple
B) Had several big dents on the top and side from where a tree fell on it last year during a winter storm
C) Had a busted rear bumper from an accident last spring

So now I drive a little red Corolla, and I have no idea how to drive in snow without 4 wheel drive. And I hated the fact that I had to spend a long time actually shovelling my car out of its parking spot. After previous snowstorms, I could just half-shovel out my car, and the beast-ness of of car would get me out of any snow bank.

Eventually I got over missing my old car and went to get a hair cut. And then I spent the rest of the day mourning my hair, or lack thereof. I have pseudo-bangs now. And right before I head to Florida next week to see my entire family who hasn't seen me since I was 13 and again had bangs. Excellent.

More snow again tomorrow. Is it too much to wish for another snow day on Monday, to make this a four-day weekend?

Gross Out

There was projectile vomit in my class today, on my floor, during my math lesson. It was awful.

Just wanted to share.

The joints are getting achy.

There's nothing like being around children to make you feel old.

--When we studied place value in my class, the kids had to show the year that they were born using place value blocks (you know, like the small cubes to show 1, then 10 of those cubes in a line to show ten, then 10 of the sticks to show 100, etc?). As I gave them paper for homework I thought, "How fun! I want to do it too!" But then their homework came back the next day, and all but a few who were born in 1999 just drew two big squares, for 2000. Most of my class was not alive in the 1900s!

--One of my students was reading a biography of Rosa Parks, and jumped out of her seat to come over to me. "Ms. Gross! There's a picture of President Clinton giving Rosa Parks an award in 1996! That's before even my brother was born!"

--I told my class that I didn't have a cell phone until I was in high school. Their jaws dropped open. Despite the fact that I teach in a very low income city, more than half claim to have a cell phone.

--Today in the computer lab my class was looking at an historical society website for the city I teach in. There was a massive fire in the early 1900s that destroyed more than half of the city, so most of my students spent their time reading about the fire. I still have a lot to teach them about our city's history, so this was mostly brand new information, and they were fascinated. One of my girls came over to me, so excited to make a connection, and told me it was like when the Twin Towers fell down. She told me with amazement that her mom was actually alive then (like I had no idea...) and had told her how everyone was so sad.

My Sunday, in pictures

Christmas has arrived here in Charlestown. Kate came out of her room earlier than usual this morning, already dressed and showered and much happier than usual, so I knew today was the day we were getting our Christmas tree. We again took advantage of our tall ceilings and got and 8-9 footer. It's pretty. Kate says it's a boy and his name is Simon.

We took out our box of ornaments and decorations. Some of them are 4 years old already.



We listened to a Christmas playlist that Kate made. It included some of my favorites, like Dominic the Italian Donkey!!



Then Kate began putting on the lights.




Kate really got in the Christmas spirit, as you can tell. She didn't like me taking pictures.



After the lights, we made sugar cookies. While they were baking, we finished with the rest of the ornaments. It's one snazzy looking tree. Unfortunately, I still don't really know how to use all of the settings on my camera.



I took pictures of a few of my favorites.








By the time we were finished, our cookies were ready to eat!






The End

Whew.

Oh Thanksgiving. I'm glad you're over.

I don't remember the last time I ate so much for 4 consecutive days (yes, my family stretches the binge eating to last about half a week). I wasn't just stuffing my face with food either; I was stuffing my face with the unhealthiest food I could find. On Saturday, with 2 days of eating under my belt and 2 days left, I was too full for lunch and had to get ready for a giant dinner with more company, so I had a very nutritious lunch that consisted of garlic bread and stuffing. YUM.

To top off this weekend, I can't think of a time when I was more relieved to get back to my own apartment and routines. Eric and Katherine were visiting, so I was obligated to stay at my parents' house and take part in lots of family stuff (like meals and museum trips), and it was a lot of time together.

My mother. Drove. Me. Nuts.

After listening to her talk non-stop with E and K about their upcoming wedding, I've decided I'm never getting married. There's no way I can go through all of that.

After it all, I wasn't as sad to go back to work as I should have. But then my principal decided to kick off the Monday morning back by observing me, unannounced, for nearly 40 minutes. During which I have a really hard time making sense because all of the blood goes to my head and I can't concentrate. Oh and then? Someone in my class wrote "Carla is a bitch," with spelling mistakes, on the girls' bathroom wall. And since no one will confess, all 45 of them are missing recess until the culprit is found. Once the kids were gone though, I kind of had to laugh. Carla can kind of be a bitch.

Breaking News

I have just moved Thanksgiving up one place, surpassing Halloween as my new favorite holiday.

"BOSTON -- Tom Brady says he's doing well in his recovery from knee surgery.

The New England Patriots quarterback made an unpublicized appearance Wednesday with his girlfriend, model Gisele Bundchen, at the annual Goodwill Thanksgiving dinner in Boston where they served food.

He told Channel 5 that he's "doing well" more than two months after a season-ending injury to his left knee in the opener. He also said Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday."

Why did the police arrest the turkey?

It was suspected of "fowl" play.

Hahaha. I've got more.

Why can't you take a turkey to church?

Because it uses such fowl language...

I can't help it. I love Thanksgiving, just about as much as Halloween.

Can I do this too?

You may have already seen this, but Kate pointed it out to me and has been quoting lines from it for the past 72 hours so I thought I'd share in case you missed it.

What do you do when you don't want to pay a bill?

Bad Teacher

I changed my mind about what I was going to write about tonight. Last week I got an unusually large number of "You're the best teacher in the world Ms. Gross!!!" cards and signs. I'm not sure why the big increase, since I actually thought I was kind of mean last week, but my only guess is that we had a lot of indoor recess because it was so cold, and the girls got bored and made me pictures. Some of them were good, and flattering (my hair looks awesome in one...) so I thought I'd post a few of my favorites.

But then today happened, and I didn't feel worthy of posting all of the greatest teacher ever pictures.

My class went on a field trip to the science museum with the rest of the 3rd grade. We're only allowed to bring two parent chaperones, which is kind of lousy because I had six parents who wanted to come, and two who took the day off only to find out that I couldn't have them come. It is also kind of lousy because it means that I have to split my class into three groups of 8 kids each, which is a lot to ask a parent to do, especially in a place like the crazy museum. Luckily my kids are pretty well-behaved and I knew I wouldn't have any trying to climb up walls.

Well, shortly before we had to meet for a show with the rest of the 3rd grade, I was waiting for my little group to use the bathroom, when I heard/saw another group from my class screaming and running toward me down the escalator, with no parent in sight. As they got closer I heard, "A. is lost! A. is lost!!" The chaperone finally appeared, and didn't seem at all concerned which made me extremely upset. What made me more angry was that she also had not told any of the museum workers that there was a missing kid, and had no idea where she had actually lost the kid, and couldn't tell me how long ago. She speaks mostly Spanish, so her daughter translated for me when I asked the last place she had seen her, but her daughter told me it was the room with the computers (great, since every exhibit has computers...). It turned into a big hassle where I had 4 museum employees with me talking to the other guys on headphones, and then got her paged. Finally I took my kids to the show, where I found out that another 3rd grade teacher had found her wandering by herself (thank god for my school's uniforms) and took her. It was great that it all worked out, but I was angry for the rest of what had been a nice trip so far, and I was definitely not so nice to my kids for the rest of the time (and counted them every minute for the rest of the day). When I got back to school I had to tell the principal that I lost someone, and then called the student's parents, so it was all not fun since I knew I was the one responsible, but it was a bad chaperone who could have been a little more careful.

Let's see if I get any "Great teacher" posters during tomorrow's rainy indoor recess.

Turns out I'm STILL not 19 anymore

I'm in a fantastic mood. I only have two days of school this week (and Monday is a field trip all day to the Museum of Science), and then it's Thanksgiving, which is my second favorite holiday. Also, this weekend I got a cable box in my bedroom after a year of having 8 channels in my room, so it's amazing (what's even more amazing is that I'm completely inept when it comes to hooking up anything TV, VCR, or DVD related, but somehow I hooked up the cable box at 3AM last night while wasted, and it works). Aaand, we got a DVR in our apartment at the same time. I haven't really fooled around with the DVR aspect of it yet, but that's because we got like 300 (literally) more channels somehow with it. I have a feeling we'll have them for about a week and then Comcast will pull them out from under our feet and Kate will cry for days because she misses her 90210 marathons on Soapnet. Anyway, it's enough little fun things to make a Sunday a lot better than usual.


This little baby equals a whole lot of lazy mornings in bed from now on.


I had a crazy Saturday night yesterday, which was not at all planned to be that way, but always seems to happen when all of us get together with Jeff's friends. After a fancy birthday dinner (where I was the classy one guzzling Bud Light while others enjoyed their wine and margaritas), I joined up with Kate and Caitlin at BHP. We hadn't been there since July!! I ordered the first round of Bud Lights from a new bartender, but not draughts like usual. The old bartender walked over and said, "What prompted the change?" and explained to the horrified new bartender, who thought he had screwed up, that we always order Bud Light draughts. Anyway, Caitlin, Kate, and I enjoyed some girly talk for a little while before joining up with Jeff's crew, where the night turned sloppy due to our regretful decision to play Shoulders and Never Have I Ever. I'm not sure how we ended up playing both, or why we didn't seem to care that we played Never Have I Ever for a solid 2 hours in the bar. It's clear some of us lack social skills.

Anyway, I again realized I'm too old to have nights like that. I slept until 10 today (hours later than I can usually sleep on a weekend), and spent the entire day horizontal on the couch, with a nap for half of the Pats game.

Happy endings, like at Friendlys

Sometimes I find myself believing that as I'm watching a movie, the events in the movie will be different from the last time I saw the movie. The first time I realized that I did this was when I watched Titanic for the second time, and Jack was clinging to the chunk of ice. I had a faint glimmer of hope the ending would be different, and that he was going to get rescued, and then he and Rose would both get on some boat and get back to dry land and marry and have babies. But he froze to death on that ice cube, again.
This weekend I watched The Break Up. I saw the movie a year ago and it made me sad because I thought it would be a fun cheesy romantic comedy and Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston would finally get together in the end. And then the don't. And then they meet up at the VERY end, and they STILL don't get back together. So, when I watched it this weekend, I couldn't help but feel optimistic when they run into each other in the last minute of the movie. I thought, "Hooray! Maybe this time they'd realize they were both right for each other! They'll move back in together! They'll make babies! They'll be happy!" But that didn't happen this time in the movie either.
Am I completely crazy? Does any of this make sense? Is there anything else I can find to do to put off doing all of my work for school any longer?


I have a big crush on Vince Vaughn in this movie.

Bicycles

I'm sort of in love with the Obamas. I kind of want to be in their family. I have a little bit of a crush on Barack, and I haven't felt this way about a president since I was in fourth grade and had a crush on Woodrow Wilson. Yeah, I'm not sure about that one either.

Many of you may already know the website Barack Obama Is My New Bicycle but while I procrastinated writing this week's lesson plans tonight I found a whole bunch of other "bicycle" website that exist.

My favorite is Michelle Obama Is My New Bicycle because she apparently read Good Night Moon and tucked me in, but John McCain Is My New Bicycle and Ron Paul Is My New Bicycle are pretty good too.

The arthritis makes it hard to flip quickly.

This weekend I pretended I was 19. Only it was very apparent that I'm not anymore.

I got signed up to be on a flip cup team and play in a flip cup tournament at a bar. It seemed like a fantastically horrible idea.

The day started early. We had to be at the bar by 2 on Saturday. Getting off the T I knew it would be a bad situation, when we ran into a group of people, who could barely pass for 21, in uniforms. Head to toe fluourescent pink. Black sweatbands. Logos on the front of their shirts. Names on the back. One had was designated the captain with a "C" on his shirt. And then we saw another team, wearing matching t-shirts, and again with sweatbands. Kate and I had been considering wearing t-shirts and sweatshirts, because it seemed like that's what you do when you start drinking at 2 on a Saturday.

We got into the bar and realized that the average age was about 22, which was a solid 8 years younger that the majority of our team. Naturally, there was a team of guys from Union. And naturally, the wore their Springfest t-shirts, and they were loud, and they were good. There were 32 teams in all, and we found our competition listed on the brackets. We had about an hour to wait until our first round game, so we enjoyed a few pitches of PBR to settle our nerves. All we could drink until 6 PM! What a great idea!

We finally got to play our game, and luckily we played against the team that was closest to our age. They all wore fake mustaches for some reason, and matching t-shirts.

We killed them. Each round was best of 7 games, and we won handedly 4-1.

By that time we were feeling a lot better. The beer was kicking in, and we were feeling more confident and a whole lot less nervous. Then I went outside while Kate smoked and realized, it's sunny and 3:30 and I'm drunk.

We played our second game against another team that barely looked 21, and again had matching t-shirts with their names on the back. They killed us, but they weren't good. The girls, Kate and me, held our own. The boys looked like they learned to play flip cup yesterday. We got swept.

But we still had two hours left in the competition, so we enjoyed our "free" pitchers of cheap beer and became just a group of people getting wasted in the middle of the day. We stumbled out of the bar at 6 and found the closest place with nachos.

I passed out shortly after 10 o'clock. I'm definitely not in college anymore.

I'm feeling patriotic today.

What a day. I was excited about the idea of having our first black president, but hadn't quite realized how powerful it would be to see it actually happen. Two years ago, I never thought we would see a black president "this soon." For the first time in awhile (with the exception of every 4th of July when I get a patriotic spike), I felt really good about our country today. It's good to finally elect a president that I voted for.

Yesterday I gave my kids a homework assignment of finding out who is elected president. Before they were even in my room this morning they were yelling out who was chosen (of course, some were too excited about this, and neglected to do their actual spelling homework..). I hadn't talked too much about the election with them because it's not something that's covered in the 3rd grade curriculum and I have zero time to teach anything that's not in the curriculum. Surprisingly though, they knew a lot about it and were really interested. So, I shut my classroom door and deviated from my planned literacy lesson, and we had a great ten minute talk about when Obama will become president, why we have government, vice presidents, why other countries have kings, etc. We talked about why he made history, and why it's important that our country has its first black president. Because I teach in a city with a gigantic Hispanic population, I'm not sure if my class realizes that they're all minorities. But with their knowledge about the election's impact I'm guessing more than a few parents have emphasized their happiness at finally getting a president other than an old white guy.

Oh, and good job to Massachusetts voters for not getting rid of the income tax. I'd like to keep my job next year.

Obamaaaaaah!

Wait! One more post!

I went searching on youtube for a video I saw on Molly's facebook page about a baby chanting Obama at a rally.

But while I was looking for it, I found a whole lot of videos of babies who are big supporters of Obama. In fact, there's a whole "Babies for Obama" world out there.

Here's one of my favorites.




Followed closely behind by this one:

Getting the little people pumped up

Have I mentioned recently how excited I am that Halloween is so soon? Most teachers dread Halloween, but I'm really looking forward to it for a few reasons.
1) I've spent two years teaching at a school where Halloween wasn't celebrated or recognized. I wore my Halloween socks to school the second year when I was feeling braver, but hid them under my longest pair of pants.
2)I love the holiday, so I love that my kids are excited! I'm kind of feeding into it by reading Halloween poems with them on Friday, and buying them Halloween pencils for a special treat. We're not allowed to have food in the classrooms, and pencils are a hot commodity for some reason (they get stolen constantly), so I figured some ghost pencils would be really fun.
3)We're having a pumpkin contest at school! My school has some of the lowest test scores in the state so we don't get to deviate much from the curriculum and do fun stuff, so I'm happy that I get to do something that helps make school fun. Granted, we'll be staying inside during recess to decorate our pumpkin and write a biography, but it's kind of chilly this week anyway. But the biggest reason is...
4)Halloween is a Friday night. I won't have to see my kids until 60 hours after the initial candy rush.

Pilgrims and Pirates

My monday got off to a funny start. I was teaching writing to all 46 kids, and surprisingly had a good conversation going about writing captions to go with pictures in non-fiction. We were looking at a picture of a Pilgrim family having a meal, and we were brainstorming ideas to write for the caption. The end of conversation went something like this.
Boy #1: "The family is eating dinner."
Me: "We need to be specific. Look closely, what are they eating?"
Boy #2: "Turkey!"
Girl #1: "There's pie!"
Girl #2: "The Pilgrims are eating guacamole!"

I had a hard time not laughing. Sometimes I forget that almost the entire class comes from a family from Central & South America, until one suggests that the Pilgrims feasted on guac.


Thank you god for Squanto, and for our tortilla chips and guacamole.


Last week I changed my mind about my Halloween costume. I was really, really excited about the mummy idea. But then Kate told me it's going to look bad. And since Kate clearly knows all there is to know about Halloween, I decided to look for something different.

I headed out to iParty. The costumes there are ridiculous. The women's costumes were so slutty (I didn't really want to be a sexy convict in an orange mini-skirt), and the men's costumes were just rauncy. I actually looked in the teen section thinking they might be a little better, but they weren't. I don't think costumes were this bad when I was little, but maybe I don't remember. My mom made all of our costumes (the best was the year when my brother and I were a frog and a penguin), and once I got too old for full-body costumes to look cute, I still made my costumes by piecing together stuff I already owned or buying individual parts.

Anyway, I eventually found a pirate costume I liked. Except they had it in two sizes, and both seemed like they'd be too big. So I continued wandering, until I found the same costume in the girl's section, right between two costumes from High School Musical. Minus the fact that it shows a bit more of my belly than I'd like if I'm not at the beach, the costume is great. I headed over to target and picked up a "pirate pack," which includes a hook hand, sword, earring, and eye patch. Now the question is, do I bring the hook or the sword? I'll need one hand for a beer.

Dilemma

Every once in awhile I see stories on the news of those bad, bad teachers who have bad, bad relationships with students. Now with Facebook and Myspace and everything, it gets even trickier because teachers are friends with their students on those sites, and lines get all blurry. Everytime I see those stories I feel thankful that I am never planning on teaching people older than 12, and should therefore never run into this problem.

But yesterday I got a Facebook 'friend request' and then a follow-up message from a name that sounded familiar. I then realized it was a former summer school student. This student is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, and was 13 when I taught him 6 summers ago. This past summer, he attended a summer program at the school where I was teaching summer school. I recognized him immediately, but didn't know if he'd recognize me until he walked right up to me and said, "Hey Stace!" He has an incredible memory, so it shouldn't have been that surprising.

So. Yesterday he sent a nice facebook message telling me how he graduated from high school, and about the lifeskills program he's attending now, and how he enjoyed summer school. I'm certainly not going to accept his friend request, but I can't decide whether or not to send him a message back. I want to tell him that I'm happy to hear that he's doing so well, but I don't want to cross that line by sending an email to a former student, even though I know there's no chance of being his teacher again. Can you do that? Is it a bad idea? Am I better off ignoring him, or is it harmless to send a message back?

Costumes

I love love LOOOVVVVE Halloween. And I don't understand people who don't like the holiday. You get to eat lots of candy for weeks before and after the date, you wear costumes, and you have fun, crazy decorations like spider webs. Also, you can do the "fun" kind of scary things, like the Simpsons Halloween special, which is scary but not really scary, so you can still fall asleep at night and not worry about someone climbing in through your window to get you.

However, when I reached the age of adult Halloween parties, I realized that I never got the memo that girls are supposed to dress...differently. I finally got the hint when I watched "Mean Girls" a few years back, and Lindsay Lohan set me straight. Even so, I've spent the past two years arriving at Halloween parties and then realizing that I had the most clothes on our of all of the girls there, with th exception of Caitlin, because she and I had planned our costumes together. There was a few years of dressing up in a gigantic whoopie cushion costume, then my 4th/5th grade girl scout uniform, and then last year I topped it all by being a nun.




Yes, I'm standing with an abortion doctor in the 3rd picture.

So last November 1st, I decided that my goal for the next Halloween would be to wear less clothing. I stressed out all Sunday trying to think of something good, and I think I came up with it. I'm going to be a mummy, but not one of those mummies that's wrapped up head to toe. I got what I think is a good idea here:



I like it because hopefully I'll be the only mummy at the party (I had been planning for months to be Sarah Palin, until I heard there was going to be another Sarah Palin there, and that the girl had dressed up as Tina Fey last year). And I think I can make the whole costume for $20 or less, depending on what I find for a skirt/shirt to go underneath the wraps. Oh, and I get to use a glue gun to make my costume!

What do you think? Any other ideas???

I'm bad with this blog thing lately. By lately, I mean the last year and a half.

But I'm writing because I have big news. You know how some people all of a sudden have a huge enlightening religious moment? Like, someone accepts Jesus? Well, last week, I reached my own enlightening moment. I accepted fall into my life. I spent almost 26.5 years (yikes...someone asked how old I was the other day and I said 23) thinking that I hated fall. And I did. I hated that summer was over. I hated to put away summer clothes. I hated being cold all the time for about 6 months, and having numbs hands and feet constantly. I hate when the leaves change color because it means they're just going to fall off. I hate that summer vacation ends. I hated saying goodbye to flipflops.

But last Friday, I walked to downtown to meet up with Caitlin and Jeff for drinks and Sox. I liked that it was cool, but not too cold and I was comfy in my fleece and not getting sweaty for once as I walked over the Charlestown bridge like I did all summer. And I was thinking about the fact that I had just bought pumpkin muffin mix, and had a bunch of apples to make applesauce with. And, I was excited that I was heading the next day to Philadelphia to essentially kick off Halloween season by going to Molly's sister-in-law's birthday costume party. I had also just bought a lot of candy corn and broke out the Halloween candy bowls. And, I was really excited that I was going to watch the Sox in a playoff game. There's something especially cozy about seeing sox fans all bundled up at Fenway like they're getting ready to hibernate after a hot season. Plus, if Sox fans are all bundled up, it means good things for the Sox and the length of their playoff run. All of a sudden I though, "Wait, I like fall!" I was excited about lots of things happening, and not freezing, and I decided that fall isn't so bad.

It also helps that it got into the 70s today. I'm off to watch game 1 of the ALCS...go Sox.

2 down, 178 to go

So today was the second day of school, and it's great so far. With the exception of one boy and one girl who I think will drive me crazy by next week, my class is awesome. Someone even picked me flowers/weeds at recess this afternoon. My lessons have mostly been going well, and with the use of some minor threats, I managed to keep all 23 of them absolutely silent for five minutes as they waited in the hallway taking turns at the bathroom today. I've made a huge deal about how great it is to be in third grade because you're so grown up, and so they're all excited about the planners I gave them to write their homework in, and even about the fact that I'll be giving them homework every night and on weekends. Being 8 or 9 is just about the coolest thing ever.

The only little glitch in today was when I was collecting my class on the playground after recess, and all of a sudden my sandal broke. I felt just a wee bit unprofessional about the idea of walking around wearing only one shoe even in my own room, so I hobbled around for the next 3 hours trying to grip the sandal with my toes. It wasn't pretty. I tripped on the rug twice during my math lesson, which led to gasps from my suck-up table of girls and "Are you ok Ms. G???"


Even Miss America falls. At least I stayed on my feet.

Eats leaves and shoots

I can't stand when people older than 12 make silly grammar mistakes. At the top of my list is when people add an apostrophe when changing a word to plural form. But I also get irritated when people mix of your/you're, their/there, and its/it's.

On the other hand, I LOVE finding typos in published stuff that's supposedly edited, like books and things like that.

So, I found THIS pretty amazing. These guys are pretty cool, and one is from my old (and Obama's old) neighborhood!

This post isn't going to be interesting to anyone but me.

I've been very sad that summer is ending. It means getting back into a regular routine (for some reason I treated summer school as a pretend job--going to bed late a lot, and getting a little lazy about my teaching), and it also means the sad goodbye to warm weather and summer clothing. Today was my first day back at work, filled with new teacher orientation and training and meetings up until next week's first day of school. While I was getting ready this morning all I could think about was "Oh goddddddd how can summer be done??!?!" (I whined a lot in my head). And I wasn't excited about going back. But then I got there, and hadn't really thought about the fact that I'd see some friends at work who also got new positions over the summer, or the fact that there were a few new teachers at my school that I hadn't met yet. So it turned out to be a lot of fun! Plus, I'm kind of a sucker for corniness, as are many teachers. The superintendent of course realizes this and began his speech with some inspiring message and stories and quotations, and so now I'm all eager to get my students in the room and start changing the world.



But wait. The day gets even better. I decided to do a little bit of work in my classroom after the meetings, and when I got in I found that a brand new rug had been delivered to my room for meetings on the floor (and it's so clean and pretty...) and all of my classroom supplies had been delivered. I had a gigantic mess of brand new dry-erase markers and erasers, pencils, pink erasers, pens, crayons, staples, tape, and all that other fun stuff. Plus a big pile of 3rd grade composition notebooks (they're red!) and math workbooks (which smell amazing, like new workbooks do).

Clearly I've been on vacation for far too long if this is the kind of stuff that makes my day.

Mishmash

I haven't blogged in a long time (again) because I've had 80 thousand thoughts going through my head and couldn't decide what to write about, so I wrote about nothing. So, I decided it was time to get my thoughts out, only it's going to come as one big rambling mess right now.

Kerrin's wedding was this weekend. And it was weird, because it was Kerrin! Becoming a wife! And I've known her since we were 7, and I went to her 8th birthday party, which was a "tea party" theme and we had to come in our mom's dresses. Her wedding kind of felt like that--dressing up and pretending and having fun while doing both. But Kerrin looked amazing and the wedding was beautiful and my dress didn't fall down and expose everyone, so I'd consider it a success. Plus, I stayed away from beer all day (minus one in the limo from the church to reception), and I managed to drink steadily for almost 12 hours. I think I'm on to something.


I like this one because it looks like I'm a stunning 5'9". But Caitlin and I are actually the same height--I was just standing on a step with the other two.






Around hour 5 of drinking, a ride on the playground airplane was just about the greatest thing ever


In other news, I feel like I'm bipolar these days, or maybe have multiple personalities. I have different thoughts about my new job going through my head about 85% of the day lately. But I go back and forth between "Ohgod-ohgod-ohgod-ohgod-ohgod-ohgod-ohgod-ohgod" to "I think I can do this." But during the "Oh god" stretches, it's a pretty awful feeling. I keep thinking of stuff--some big, some little--that I hadn't even realized I had to do before the first day of school. Like, I should probably put the kids' birthdays up on a door in my room to make it look a little more homey because I'm keeping most of the bulletin boards naked for the beginning of school. And that's easy, but it'll take a little bit of time to write down 46 names and birthdays. Or a bigger project I realized is to sort through all of the books I'm putting in my classroom library and categorize them by content and difficulty. I'm not that familiar with a whole lot of 3rd grade chapter books, so that's going to take way more time than it should.


Finally, I'm so stressed out, and when I get stressed out I don't pick up after myself, which only makes me feel more stressed out.
In case you forgot, I did the same thing during the end of each semester of grad school, as seen below:



Now ordinarily I might make an effort to clean up a bit more so as not to make my roommate jump out the window, Swiffer in hand, but my roommate is off in China for the week. Just like the old pictures above, I've created piles all over the apartment. I've got a pile of books the principal left me about teaching English language learners, another pile with binders of the 3rd grade curriculum in my city, and piles of mail I need to sort through, plus a bag of veggies from my parents' garden, and stuff I haven't unpacked yet from this past weekend. It's a disaster. But I figure that Kate will be so tired from a week without pima, that she won't even notice until the middle of next week. Just as long as the piles don't creep down the stairs to her room.

Choo Choo

After almost 8 months away, I've decided to get back on the blogging train. I can't say that I know it will last, as I tend to start lot of activities in the summer when I feel ambitious (puzzles, avid reading, exercise) only to drop them in September. But I hope to write at least more than once every 8 months, if just to ensure I don't become illiterate.

I was mostly inspired by Molly to start writing again, because in my hiatus, Molly started her own blog about what's happening in her life. And Molly is pretty influential in my life. Like the time she asked if I wanted to wear her nicotine patch, and since there was that one time when I took a few puffs of a cigarette, I said yes. You can't be too careful when it comes to addictions, afterall.

Last week I got a new job. I'm going to be a third grade teacher in less than a month, which is completely exciting and completely horrifying at the same time, and my brain doesn't really know what to do with it. I was ambitious with my teaching in what I wanted to do in the classroom while student teaching and shortly after finishing grad school. But then I spent two years (cough, preschool, cough) realizing that I was working in a place where I could do little work and get by, while still looking like an ok teacher. So I'm trying to adjust now to the idea that just "getting by" doesn't exactly fly in a public elementary school. Nevermind a public elementary school where 80% of the kids don't speak English at home.

I'm also thinking back to my elementary school days, when third grade was my all-time favorite grade because I loved my teacher. And I wonder what my class would think if they knew their teacher was spending her summer with nights like this:








July has, for some reason, been filled with an unreasonable amount of flip cup, beirut, and nights that end with pictures like these.