Reading is FUNdamental (so says the poster in my school)

I'm a bit of a hypocrite. I spent two years getting a master's, focusing half of that time on getting certification to be a reading specialist. It was pretty much one year of hearing "Kids need to read read read read read read read" to become better readers. I feel like with that certification under my belt, I should be a huge reader. But I'm not. I have a "reading season," which is generally from about June through early September, depending on the weather--I like reading outside. So far, since I finished my regular teaching in June, I've read 6 books, which is considerably greater than the mere two or three books that I read for pleasure through last fall, winter, and early spring. The problem is that everytime I try reading inside, there are way too many other things to distract me, or the couch is too comfy and I wake up an hour and a half later. Another problem is that I was so totally turned off from reading during high school. I don't like being forced to read something.

Anyway. I know I'm not a ravenous reader at the time being. And I actually kind of thought I generally read less than a lot of people. Maybe I just have really smart friends? But this article completely shocked me. One in four adults didn't read a single book last year?! That fact alone made me think about how dumb our country is, but a few quotes in the article hammered that idea home:

"Fiction just doesn't interest me," said Bob Ryan, 41, who works for a construction company in Guntersville, Alabama. "If I'm going to get a story, I'll get a movie."

"I just get sleepy when I read," said Richard Bustos of Dallas, Texas. Bustos, a 34-year-old project manager for a telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would rather spend time in his backyard pool.


On another subject completely, I chugged an iced coffee at 5pm today, severely breaking my "No coffee after 12pm" rule, as well as my "Coffee needs to be sipped slowly through the course of several hours" rule. Around 6 tonight, my hands were shaking, I was sweating all over, and my legs needed to be moving to a rhythm that matched my heart rate. Bill and I walked to Harvard square and back so I'd be able to sit at dinner without looking like an antsy four year old. It was ugly. And, nearly 7 hours later, I have a feeling I won't be falling asleep anytime soon.

Ballz

Hooray for vacation! The weather's been lousy so far. But I always feel like I should be outside and active when it's nice out during the summer, so it's been really nice to be mostly lazy for a few days. I've been reading a lot, and it's making me feel really smart. I've also done a fair amount of shopping. I picked up new sneakers, which I think look fast. I'm going to test them out tomorrow morning. I'm hoping all of a sudden I can run a 19 minute 5k. They're magic shoes.

I've also done my share of drinking. I played Taboo in a bar, and Caitlin and I lost a beirut game to a pair of 22 year olds, making me feel very old and useless.

I went to what was perhaps my favorite Sox game so far last Friday. It started off great because it was a makeup game from the first weekend of the season, and it was a one o'clock game so I got to skip the last day of summer school. I told them it was a "family celebration." Which was sort of true, right? The whole afternoon was much sweeter knowing that I should have been working. The day was great. We had amazing seats on the third base line. The weather was perfect, sunny and not too hot. I got to see Manny up close:



And I got to see Papelbon pitch. He's southern, but cute:



During the 6th or 7th inning, I looked up, and the jumbotron even said "The Red Sox welcome the Gross family to Fenway Park." I know it wasn't us, but it was still neat.

But the best part was during the 8th inning. We were all hoping that we'd get some foul balls in the seats we had (my dad wanted to bring his glove, but I told him he'd look dumb. I had to have the same talk with my mom, who wanted to wear a fanny pack instead of bringing her purse). At the bottom of the 8th, David Ortiz hit a really high foul ball. It was up in the air, and seemed to be headed directly toward us. As it was racing back to Earth, I knew right then that was how I was going to die. So naturally, I ducked behind my dad and screamed "OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD." When I opened my eyes, it had landed on Caitlin's seat (she had also instinctively moved out of its path), so I grabbed it, along with two or three men. I yelled "I have it I have it!" and the other guys eventually let go, and I looked and realized I had David Ortiz's ball!

My mom took this picture right after I got it. You can't tell, but I shook for a solid 15 minutes after.



You can however see the big man in the red jersey behind me, who was pretty pissed that I got the ball. When the kids behind me wanted to hold the ball, he said that you could probably see his fingerprints on it.


And here it is!



I have a very exciting hump day planned for tomorrow. I think I might have a lunch date with Kate, and if so, I plan on stopping off at the Apple Store to touch an iPhone. I've also decided I miss having actual photo albums (that aren't online), so I'm going to get a lot of pictures printed out. I should get some rest. Tomorrow's going to be exhausting.

Remix

I've got this boy in my class this summer who I'll call Teddy. Teddy's 11, he's very cute, and he likes to have the back of his neck scratched. He likes Barney, Sesame Street, and he LOVES Teletubbies. He is crazy about meatballs and chicken. Teddy is definitely autistic though. He has a pretty hardcore obsession with watching people walk in flip flops, and he has just a few phrases that he says. This summer he's been working on things like counting how many spoons are in a pile, or sorting out pictures of girls, boys, and himself.

But Teddy is pretty amazing on the computer. Still, I was completely shocked on Monday when Teddy was using up his free choice time on the computer, and all of a sudden I heard a song that was not at all like the sesame street songs I usually hear him playing. I went over to find out what he was doing, and saw that Teddy had gone onto Youtube, and found this:




Teddy was extremely thrilled with himself, as were two other kids, who looked on, mesmorized, at the jackpot that Teddy had found online. Since then, all week, anytime Teddy earned computer time, he's been on youtube, searching out teletubbies. I've caught him finding Teletubbies videos that range from "YMCA" to "Shake That Ass Bitch," which sadly I had to ask him to turn off. It was awfully good though.

Annnnnd....

A very Happy Birthday to Ms. Caitlin Melia, who turns a whopping 25 today. That's a pretty high number, but I'm happy to report that Caitlin is aging well. Caitlin is one of the most dependable, trustworthy people that you could ask for as a friend, plus she can tell you which nuts have the most protein! (You'd never guess the answer...)

Happy birthday!!

There is freedom within

What a great weekend. I kicked it off by taking Friday off to go to a surprise "Ladies Luncheon" for my aunt's 65th birthday. And that kind of blew, but it was nice to get a day off from the biter trying to pull my hair. Doesn't she know it messes up the curls?

On Saturday, I went to Caitlin's dad's 50th birthday bash, which just reminded me how lame my family is. It was pretty nice sitting around, chatting with the Medway girls for hours, sipping on Sam Summers and chowing down on good bbq food.


We're a pretty hot group.

And Sunday I did a little reading in my pool lounger, and then headed off to a Pete Yorn concert! Pete was, once again, amazing. But it was way different from the other PY concert I went to, and it was all due to the fact that Pete Yorn opened for Crowded House. Don't know them? Sure you do. They had the 80s one-hit-wonder, "Hey now, HEEEEY NOW, don't dream it's over..." So, Kate and I were easily one of the youngest people, and enjoyed being in the company of people in their 40s and 50s who were thrilled to relive their 20s and 30s for once magical evening.

Here's Pete. Our seats were awesome, but my camera isnt:


Look! He's playing his harmonica in a song I really like.

Here's Crowded House, singing I song I didn't know:



We sat there in our chairs, drinking $8 beers during the Crowded House portion of the evening, while people that were our parents' contemporaries were standing up, singing along, and giving us mean glances like they wanted us to stop saying bad things about their favorite band, or at least use quieter voices. Oddly, they didn't seem to appreciate each time Crowded House began the introduction to a new song, which we of course didn't know, and Kate and I just started singing:
Kate:"There is freedom within..."
Me:"There is freedom without..."
Together!: "Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup."

I don't even get what the lyrics mean. But Kate tells me it's about the Berlin Wall going down?

Then the night changed when they played "Don't dream it's over," and we were definitely not ashamed to stand up and sing along. The Australian group of guys sitting near us, who thought that Crowded House, being that they're an Australian band, were just about the coolest thing ever, turned around during our favorite song and asked if we were huge fans. So we got a picture with one of them. His neck was thicker than my leg.



Here's Kate, singing along:



Don't laugh. If you were there, you would've sung along as well. It was pretty awesome.

BUT. The best part of the weekend was finding out Saturday night that my brother and Katherine got engaged!! I am so happy for them, but wish that they would move up their wedding plans to like, September. That's not too much to ask now, is it? Anyway, congrats Eric & Katherine!! I need some updated pictures of you I realized.

Foaming at the Mouth

In case you're looking for a significant other to spend your life with, check out fiance.com.

Mail order brides from Russia!!!

Here is one of my favorites:

A lovely 25 year old who enjoys theater and doesn't like loneliness. I'm not sure exactly which of my friends she'd be the best match for, but I'm sure she'd make one of them very happy. Just take a look--




What a looker that Ekaterina is (really, that's her name).

As I was perusing my daily celebrity gossip, I also found out that the dad from TLC's "Little People, Big World" was arrested for DUI. So after chuckling for a minute at his mugshot, I took the quiz, "Which Roloff Kid Are You?" and found out that I am most like Zach Roloff. I thought it was pretty neat, because Zach is a twin, so we have that in common, even though I'm not a little person.




That's my counterpart on the left, and his twin on the right. I like playing on bales of hay too! This is so cool!

Today at work one boy hit me in the hallway as a 19 year old custodian looked on, and the biter (summer version) tried clawing me to death when I let me guard down for a minute to find scotch tape. It'll be a miracle if I make it out of summer without rabies.

Kwik-E-Mart & Lobster Don't Go Together

I'm kind excited to see the Simpsons movie when it's out, and even more so since I found out that the Somerville Theater will be serving beer ("and wine for the Marge-types") during the movie.
So in honor of that excitement, I jumped on the bandwagon (for something new and different) and simpsonized myself. Here's me:



Here's me as a Simpson

I had trouble saving it, because otherwise you could've seen the capri pants that I'm wearing, which are almost identical to pants I actually own, and I'm also standing in front of Springfield Elementary School. In my Simpsons world, I probably have a biter in my class.

Time to go pack...I'm off for a mini-vacation tomorrow!

Is it shiny? Then YES!

I like the iphone, and the commercials always get my attention. And just last Friday I saw some girl flashing it around in a bar in Harvard Square.

But for now, I'm pretty far away from getting my own, for two reasons. First and foremost, I love my phone. It's small, and it's the shiniest phone I've ever seen. I don't know why the Krazr never took off like the Razr did? The other also significant reason for not getting an iphone right now is that I like to eat nachos from Christopher's at least once a week, and I'm not sure if I'd have to cut that down to like once a month or something if I got an iphone. When I worked out my pay in preschool, I didn't work in enough of a nacho allowance. I didn't know just how much I needed the 'chos at that point.

(FYI if you haven't seen me in awhile, I didn't balloon up to a deuce and a half. I just like nachos, and I eat a lot of spinach to balance it out.)

But back to the point. This is the closest I'll be to flashing around my own iphone:

Book Review

I just started a new book today, The Average American Male. I'm almost halfway through, and I can't decide if it's written for men or women. It's written by a guy, and is fiction, but describes life from a male perspective. Anyway, it's funny fluffy summer reading (which I was pretty anxious to get to, after many nights filled with horrible dreams of being chased by the Taliban in Kabul while reading A Thousand Splendid Suns and dreams of savages roasting babies over a fire during The Road)... it's one of those books that as you're reading, you're pretty sure you can actually feel brain cells dying off. If you're like many of my female friends and have read "My Horizontal Life," then I think you'd like this, as it's pretty much the male version of that book, though slightly less well written (and you didn't think that was possible!). Oh, and another fun thing about the book is that it's one of those that was published with different covers, so you get to choose what color you want. I picked red!



And that is how Stacy does a book review.

Jigs and stuff

It seems I spoke too quickly the other day on the lack of biters in my class. The student I had initially dubbed "The Scratcher" can now also be called "The Biter," as she bit me yesterday. And this isn't a 4 year old, it's an 11 year old. I sort of wanted to bite and scratch her back, but I'm pretty sure they'd ask me to leave work, and it wouldn't work out well if I didn't receive another paycheck until September.

I went to see an outdoor concert downtown tonight. Which got partially rained out. The opening band sang two songs, and then the main act went on and sang three, but at that point there was no power (it was pouring) and so they did it acoustically. On my way there, I was walking past the common, and these two guys with a camcorder stopped me and told me they were filming a documentary (and their friend was laughing hysterically at this point) and told me they needed three people to do a leprachaun dance. One of the guys was trying to get a homeless man to do it. And when I said no, they told me I had to do it because they were going to give that man a quarter if three people would do the leprachaun dance. I politely declined, right around the time the homeless guy stormed off and one of the guys yelled, "But we're gonna give you a quarter to do it!"

The scarier part for me though was that for just a half second, I thought, "Well maybe I could do it if a leprachaun dance is like the 'midget dance' I used to do everytime I rode the elevator with Kate going to psychology department at Union." I can't help it. I get excited with cameras.

Have I mentioned how much I love summer?

I missed a couple of weeks on here. The weather got nice, and I have a thing for sitting outside, walking outside, eating outside, drinking outside, etc.

Here's what's going on, in my faux-photo-essay.

To appease a roommate, I made good use of my free time and made rice krispie treats. But I didn't stop there. I carved them into a special shape, added some frosting, and voila--Shrek rice krispie treats!




Charlotte came to visit. I think her English accent got worse. Another reason for her to move to this side of the pond.



Charlotte gave me a really cool piggy bank for a belated birthday present. His name is William.




Kate wanted people to see a "classic" movie from the early 80s, "Against All Odds." Based on the DVD's menu picture, you'd think that it was porn, but that's only part true.



Not everyone was as excited for the movie viewing as Kate was, so we turned it into a drinking game. Pete especially liked having to drink whenever Jeff Bridges had his shirt off. I liked drinking best whenever there was a shot of Mayan ruins. Here's Caitlin with her first beer when we started the movie shortly before 5 on a Saturday afternoon:



I started teaching summer school. I have a little class of four autistic middleschoolers. I don't have any biters like in preschool, but plenty of other behaviors to keep things interesting, like an aggressive 240 pound boy. I've also got a scratcher, so it's been quite fun to have scratches all over my hands for the past few weeks, rather than bite marks. I don't have any pictures.

Last night Caits and I went to the Sox game.




I got a new t-shirt earlier in the day to celebrate the fact that Dice-K pitched!



My camera can only zoom in so far.
But here he is in action:


Following the game, I drank a bit too much, and made one of my more interesting drunk purchases shortly after 1 AM. While out last night, Caitlin and I made plans to go to the beach today, so I decided after getting home last night that it would be a good time to buy some beach chairs in the 24 hour CVS in Porter Square. I ended up being that girl who's drunk shopping. Beach chairs are hard enough to manuever when you're sober, let alone making your way through the store aisles after a night out. Then I couldn't find my credit card, and then when I did, I dropped it. Then I realized how ridiculous I must look to the people waiting in line behind me, so I started laughing, but ended up snorting. I don't have any pictures of the CVS disaster either.

Anyway, I need to cap off a great summer weekend with turning on the AC and heading to bed before 9. I'm reading a dark, kind of scary book, and I'm anticipating that I'll wake up sometime around 3am with dreams about being chased in the woods, so I might as well get an early start to bed.

I hate it when Bon Jovi songs get stuck in my head.

Well, I'm back from an only mildly painful trip to Florida to visit family. There was enough familial gossipping and bickering to keep me north of Washington DC for at least 16 months. I did spellcheck and can assure you that I have the correct spelling of gossipping, despite how funny it looks.

I ran my third 5K race this morning, which was exciting for me, who refused to run a mile during the fitness tests in high school, and instead walked the track with my friends. Granted, it's only 5K, but now I'm starting to think about bigger and better things. We'll see. It starts to get hot in late June, and I start to slack off on running. Oh! And Bill Rogers ran this morning too! And I finished before him! It's partly because I ran in the 5K part of the race, and he ran in the 7.5 mile part. But it's also partly because I ran like the wind. (On a just slightly breezy day.)

AND, in other big news, I start my summer job tomorrow. Tomorrow I have teacher orientation and meet the assistants in my classroom, go over some lesson planning, and read some paperwork for my kids, and then the first day of summer school starts for my four autistic middleschoolers and me on Tuesday. I'm nervous though, because I'm the teacher this time (with my own desk!), and I'm worried it'll be pretty obvious, pretty quickly, that I have no clue what I'm doing. Whatever, I wasn't the one to hire me.

I can't get Bon Jovi's new song about making memories out of my head. It's a pretty bad song.

Burning a hole.

I was googling pictures of screwdrivers tonight because I have a mental block against which kind of screwdriver is the Phillips head one, and I came across this horribly disturbing picture:



I know it's not real, or the man would not look so calm, but it definitely looks real, and is gross.

When did it get to be mid-June? This is crazy. I have some gift certificates that I got from the kids in my class, and I'm trying to figure out what to buy with them. One is a mall gift certificate, so the opportunities are endless. I'm thinking some new summer clothes? I just got a few new bags for my birthday, and I'm not really into shoes much, but especially not during sandal/flip flop weather, so clothing seems like a decent idea. And another big one I have is for Target. Part of me thinks I should just use it for my next trip there, so I'd end up spending it on boring stuff like contact lens solution, but then I think that it sounds a lot more fun to buy myself a present. Today I eyed a chocolate fountain in the appliance aisle.



That seems like a bad idea, for so many different reasons. I also thought about a coffee maker. I don't think that's in my best interests either.

Who's got ideas?

It's Summer!!

I'm on vacation! It's summer! This afternoon I said a sad goodbye to most of my kids (and just pushed a few others out the door), cleaned up my classroom, & took off for the summer.

I'm off to enjoy many Coronas on Pete's roof deck.

I need money.

It's no secret that I like toys, and I like my pool, and I like toys that go in my pool.

Pete gave me a heads up about the most incredible toy, although I'm pretty sure it won't fit in the pool.


14' Inflatable Iceberg

• Splash in and cool off on those sunny summer days on this gigantic floating iceberg
• 20W’ inflatable provides enormous fun as kids and adults climb to the top and slide 14’ down to the water
• Chill out on top or play all day long; great for groups or fun with a friend

I'll let you play on it if you'll cough up the $5999.99. Thanks.

Old

Crazy couple of weeks. I got a teaching job for the summer, and my summer is going to kind of blow, as it's going to be hard and it's also a long commute. But in two months I'll make what I make over the course of about 4 months of preschool. So I'm excited that I don't have to move home quite yet. I also had a job interview in a decent school system. I took the day off for the interview a week and a half ago, and told them I got an eye infection from my contacts. Since my eyes looked perfectly fine, I decided to wear my glasses to work for the remainder of that week. It was awkward. I was asked back for a second interview & to teach a lesson, and had to go into work about 4 hours late during the next week. I told them I had a follow-up visit with my doctor. Luckily, the antibiotics I was on really seemed to do the trick, and I can wear my contacts again.

I turned 25 this weekend too, and I didn't cry. Mostly because I pretended that I was turning 22 and made everyone say that, and I think that after 3 glasses of wine, some girly shot, and a few Miller Lites, I started to believe it. I got the coolest t-shirt ever from Molly, and (inappropriate or not) I wore it out downtown last night.

There are only three weeks left of school for me, but with days off it works out to only 11 days with kids, and one of those includes a full-day field trip to the farm. My class has been absolutely nuts lately though, so if a few of them don't shape up in the next week, I'll be feeding a couple select children to a goat.

I have to go clean up the mozzarella sticks & nachos that seemed like a good idea around 2:30 last night.

Fun with Swedish

It's been a busy week, but I'm all done with parent conferences this week, so that's nice. I finally put together my new IKEA bookshelf, named Flärke, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, though I skipped a step and Kate had to walk me through a few other steps. I don't like that the directions are all in pictures. I need the words.

My room's a total mess since my old bookshelf is still in here, and all of the junk I had tried hiding in piles on either end of the old bookshelves now has to sit in the middle of my room until I figure out what to do with it. But it makes me uncomfortable to have to get ready for work in the morning when my room is a disaster. So this morning, as I was sitting miserably in my room eating yogurt, I noticed I had yogurt on my hand. I didn't have a napkin, so I licked it off.

It was lotion that hadn't been rubbed in. And it tasted really, really gross.


Blech.

Tomorrow's a stressful day. But I get to call in sick.

I'm wearing one white sock and one pink.

It's been a long week, and somehow it's only Wednesday? This week I'm holding parent conferences, which I'm very mixed about. It's nice to have another teacher cover my class for the first half hour of the morning, but the downside is that then I head back into the classroom to start the day, and the room has been torn to shreds and at least one child is trying to climb the wall. There are two particularly challenging boys in my class: The Biter, and another little boy. I had back to back conferences with their parents this morning, and it was a killer of a way to start the day. The only exciting part was when the biter's parents began to argue with each other during the conference, because one wasn't letting the other talk. After those lovely conferences, I headed back to my room to be observed by this woman who is getting my school ready for its re-accredidation. She stuck around for three and a half horrible hours, and every time I actually paused for a minute, she pounced on me to ask me things like which areas do I think are strengths of my classroom, or how did I think my morning meeting with the kids went? Meanwhile, the Biter used my moment of distraction to sneak over to Noah's cubby and steal his Batmobile, resulting in shrieks from across the room. It was the second observation of the week, as the assistant director had already spent the first half of the day in my room yesterday. And I know that it's sort of part of my job, but I'm pretty sure there's no other job where you have to sing and dance while being observed by your boss.

No wait, I take that back--maybe if I were a showgirl I'd have to do that.

But it's pretty humbling having adults watch as you do the "Super Scary Monster Dance."

G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S

Hmm it's been awhile since I've written. I'd say it's because I've been so busy, but I'm not sure that's it. I had to go back to school this past week, and the week after vacation is always rough. The kids were a bit nuts, my classroom was a mess after the vacation teachers used it, and a parent felt entitled to be a brat one afternoon.

I saw Blood Diamond last night, which absolutely horrified me. It's made me pretty depressed about people in general, too. Then today I saw The Departed. Another good pick-me-up kind of movie. Too long though. I checked out about 6 minutes into it, once I saw that the movie was two and half hours long. Together, those two movies I'm sure will spark a long string of nightmares, as my biggest fear in life is people chasing me with guns.

One more week until the 20 mile Walk for Hunger. Who wants to donate?

A recent IKEA trip left me with a chair and a bookshelf in 84 pieces, and after the chair took an hour to assemble, I've decided to leave the bookshelf in Kate's car until she gets sick of it, takes it out herself, drags it upstairs, and puts it together for me. I don't like that IKEA directions are in all pictures, and no words. Knowing it's sitting there in the box waiting for me is stressing me out more than you'd imagine.


Oh god.

Our weird neighbor has pounded on the door on and off for the past hour and a half tonight...

I finally entered 2007 this weekend after I purchased my own DVD player. I had been living off of VHS and other people's DVD players for a good 24.5 years now. I was so excited about the fact that I have my own now, that I popped myself on the couch on Sunday and watched 3 movies. Three! That's a huge record for me. It also helped that I drank way more both nights of this weekend than I have since senior week of college 3(!!) years ago. There was even a power hour thrown in one of those nights. Who does that after the age of 22?

I'm on April vacation now, and I'm SO enjoying watching movies with my fancy new DVD player (I picked out the sleekest and shiniest one). I've never actually LOVED watching movies, so this is exciting. I went out and got three more, and have been watching some that are already in the apartment. I'm up to 4 and a half movies so far (I fell asleep yesterday during Pursuit of Happyness). Then, this afternoon, I discovered that it can also play cds, so I rocked out to two CDs while I cleaned the apartment from head to toe. It was great, especially when Phil Collins came on (thanks for the mix, Kate!)


I very lately decided to do the Walk For Hunger again in about two and a half weeks. It's 20 miles of fun on a Sunday morning, so how could I not? If you feel like you'd like to thrown in 5 dollars, let me know, or just do so online--and thanks!



http://www.projectbread.org/site/TR?px=1012980&pg=personal&fr_id=1070





Here's my very first walk during high school...we did a lot of sitting that year.