And that was all she wrote.

It feels good to know that I may never be the butt of another middle schooler's joke again.

There's more to be said, but I'll leave it at that for now.

NO DRAGONFLIES

Dear online shoppers,

A few years ago I bought some colored bobby pins from Sally Beauty Supply. There were about 50 in assorted colors: red, blue, green, purple, gold. They looked exactly like ordinary bobby pins (and held just as well), only they were colored. You can sort of see them here. Needless to say, they are all gone, and I haven't managed to find anything similar in Sally's or drug stores. Internet to the rescue? WRONG.

The only bobby pins I can find online are hair-colored (boring), bridal accessories (rhinestones... cool, but not what I'm looking for), or embellished with stupid ladybugs, hearts, turtles, dragonflies, etc. I do not want dragonflies!! I just want plain, shiny, primary-colored bobby pins. You know. For people with very primary-colored hair.

Can anyone help me here before I break out the nail polish and do it myself? (Tried it before--nail polish peels.)

Folks, it's true...

My governor is a Jewish cowboy.

Kinky Friedman was in Houston last week, grand marshall-ing the art car parade (sorry, no pictures this year). His website lists five reasons why he chose Houston as the first official campaign stop:

1. It’s home to his favorite book store, Murder By Numbers.
2. His favorite restaurant, Maggiano’s Little Italy, is located there.
3. Friedman’s longtime friend and one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the state, Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, works in Houston.
4. The city is named after Texas’ greatest Independent, Sam Houston.
5. He “just likes the darn cars.”

This is like, the best thing since President Bartlett.

User Error

Dear Readers,

I've been neglecting you because I've been BUSY. I compose bloggettes in my head on the way to work or lying in bed at night, but they are soon replaced by a million other concerns which demand my IMMEDIATE attention. It's a good sort of busy: a five days left of school sort of busy; an interviews to be scheduled, travel plans to be made, theater to be viewed, music to be heard, beers to be drunk sort of busy.

And it isn't ending anytime soon.

Here's a list of things I need to do before next Friday:

1. Find/put together a writing portfolio (damn you, printer!!!)
2. RSVP to various wedding showers and festivities and buy plane tickets
3. Pack up my classroom while preparing to be an advisor this summer
4. Finish preparing school documents and submit to appropriate personel
5. Finish observation notes on my sample lesson; view and critique a first year teacher's sample lesson
6. Interview with three potential employeers
7. CLEAN MY ROOM

There's probably more. All I really want to do is finish knitting my first sweater, because I'm so close I can feeeeel it.

I was proactive in keeping a writing portfolio so that this sort of thing wouldn't happen last minute; but lax in keeping track of it. Maybe if I didn't move three times a year, I'd know where to find it. Maybe if I had inhereted my dad's organization gene and not my mom's packrat gene, I'd be able to easily access USEFUL documents rather than those old letters from camp (don't get me wrong, I love those letters) and random Houston phamplets.

Anyway.

Take Back the Walls!

Epilogue to yesterday's post:

Today I got over it, found some stickers and used them to reclaim my non-suckage status.

Now, the wall reads:

"Ms. D-----"

(and the sticker says: "Todo esta bien! It's ok!")

For some reason, this makes me giggle uncontrollably every time I pass by.
The bathroom bucket has been plastered with frogs.
The gang graffiti now reads, "Ready Freddy!"
I forgot that I have valuable resources, mainly the fact that I am no longer twelve.

Ms. Lesbow

(From an email I wrote earlier today... I'm waiting to be observed in my classroom for a potential job, but I've omitted names and organization details.)

I'm waiting to hear when this --- woman is going to observe me so that I can pack up my classroom. I feel I've developed a pretty thick skin in my three years here, but lately (and especially with the sub last week) there's been an epidemic of "Ms. D------ sucks" graffiti, and I'm getting sick of it. They wrote it on the walls. They wrote it on the Midsummer Night's Dream books. They crossed out "D------" on the bathroom bucket (yes we have a bathroom bucket) and wrote "Ms. Lesbow" instead. They wrote it on the personal white boards that I sometimes use for group work. They wrote it in the dictionaries and in the dust on my computer monitor. Just yesterday I was using the giant yellow pad to make posters displaying student work (in anticipation of this woman's observation for potential job) and sometime between the time I put it down and picked it back up again, some kid wrote "D------ SUCKS" on the top sheet.

Every time I find a new love letter, I chuckle and remark "cute" or "real creative, guys" to whoever might be observing me, but there's an exponentially expanding part of me that wants to stand up and scream I GET IT. I SUCK. YOU WIN. NOW LEAVE ME ALONE.

You know?

It's just not how I wanted to end my teaching experience.

Six excerpts from six books: part 1

from On Love, by Alain de Botton:

8. Medical history tells us of the case of a man living under the peculiar delusion that he was a fried egg. Quite how or when this idea had entered his head, no one knew, but he now refused to sit down anywhere for fear that he would "break himself" and "spill the yolk." His doctors tried sedatives and other drugs to appease his fears, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, one of them made the effort to enter the mind of the deluded patient and suggested he should carry a piece of toast with him at all times, which he could place on any chair he wished to sit on, and hence protect himself from spillage. From then on, the deluded man was never seen without a piece of toast handy and was able to continue a more or less normal existance.

9. What is the point of this story? It merely shows that though one may be living under a delusion [love, the belief that one is an egg], if one finds a complementary part for it [another lover like Chloe under a similar delusion, a piece of toast] then all may be well. Delusions are not harmful in themselves, they only hurt when one is alone in believing in them, when one cannot create an environment in which they can be sustained. So long as both Chloe and I could maintain a belief in the infinitely precarious soap bubble of love, what did it matter whether or not the bus was really red?

'Ding Ding Ding Goes the Trolley...'

Pictures and narrative from the reading convention available here.

Too sick to write much else.

Mo Willems drew me a bunny!!!

I was a kid in a candy store at this week's reading convention. A very, very large, primary colored candy store:



Imagine that you're a nerdy kid, like I was, who at the tender age of ten (or so) swallows entire shelves of local library's young adult fiction selections. Now imagine being all "grown up" and everywhere you turn your earliest heroes are sitting behind a booth eager to autograph your brand new $10 copy of their book (and of course you're going to buy it because OMG IT'S FRANCINE PASCAL, SWEET VALLEY HIGH!!!! or JERRY SPINELLI!!! I F-CKING LOVED MANIAC MAGEE!!! etc etc.)

Highlights included Dave Barry,



Mr. Walter Dean Myers and his son Christopher, who is totally a catch,



and, not to disapoint, Ms. Julie Andrews (who looks a little irritated in this picture but was very graceful and lovely, really),



.

"But Mary, did you have any fun?"

Not to worry. Our room was honeymoon-worthy,



even though I nearly drowned myself in the jacuzzi tub (note to self: do not mix bubble bath with water jets)



and the overarching theme of the week was:



That's right. Young adult literature and beer.

Full photos to follow. And I'm serious about the bunny thing. That man's going to father my children one day.

Me and Julie Andrews Down by the Riverwalk...

I'm headed to San Antonio for the International Reading Association's Annual Convention (IRAAC). Odds of blogging: slim to none. Odds of meeting Julie Andrews and taking her out for tea: hopeful!

Ha. ha.

In searching for an appropriate writing sample today ("Does the Director of Communications really want to read my ten page paper on Venus and Adonis? Probably not."), I found this pre-blog-entry from before I had a blog. Probably written as a temporary mental vacation during the wee hours as I struggled through page seven, eight, nine...

Lessons Learned from Venus; or How to Get a Guy to Sleep with You:

The God of War wanted me and couldn’t get me, you should be honored:
“I have been wooed as I entreat thee now, / Even by the stern and direful god of war” (53).
“Yet was he servile to my coy disdain. / O, be not proud, nor brag not of thy might, / For mast’ring her that foiled the god of fight!”

Carpe Diem:
“Make use of time, let not advantage slip; / Beauty within itself should not be wasted.”

I’m not ugly!
“Thou canst not see one wrinkle in my brow…My flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning; / My smooth moist hand, were it with thy hand felt, / Would in thy palm dissolve, or seem to melt.”

Don’t be like Narcissus:
“Is thine own heart to thine own face affected?”

It’s your DUTY!
“By law of nature thou art bound to breed, / That thine may live when thou thyself art dead.”

Why NOT?
“What were thy lips the worse for one poor kiss?

You’re not a REAL man:
“Thou art no man, though of a man’s complexion, / For men will kiss even by their own direction.”

When all else fails, faint.

Snip snip snip SNIPPY!

"Caesar's wife, Calpurnia, is very psychic."

Is it possible for someone to be VERY psychic? Isn't it just, you are or you're not?

*

Today in class, C----- pointed out, "Miss, you're chewing gum."

(In any other circumstance, this would not seem out-of-the-ordinary; however, any of my students can tell you that NO ONE is allowed to chew gum in the classroom, and as a general rule I HATE GUM. HATE IT WITH THE PASSION OF A THOUSAND FIERY SUNS. This goes back to my first year "gum in the hood" incident.)

"Yes." I said. "I'm going to be chewing gum for the next couple of days. If you want, you can chew it, too. But I don't want to see it or hear it."

In the midst of the resulting excitement ("YESSSSSS! We can chew gum!"), no one asked why. I was prepared. I was going to say, "I am trying to get over a highly addictive habit by developing new habits," and leave it at that. If they asked, I would have told the truth. As it turned out, they were too busy passing around sticks of newly legalised juicy fruit, their minds distracted by the brittle bars dissolving into sweet rubbery pulp, chomp chomp mmmmmmmm...

Cinderella Complex

How I spent my standardized test day

The new rules for proctoring say: No internet, no walking around, no reading, no knitting (unfair!!); just sitting and staring at test-takers.

Ok, I said. If they can test for five hours, I can surely manage sitting.

Hour one started off HORRIBLY. No further comment except that I love my job and I especially love my co-workers. So hour one consisted of staring at my unsigned contract and working up the courage to sign "declined," thus forcing myself to find a new job.

Hour two I started writing. I decided, rather than dwell in the negative, to document my favorite/most memorable experiences teaching. I wrote on white legal paper using a Chase bank pen (whoops). I will share later.

Hour three I asked to be relieved for a minute to go get more coffee. I ate two snickers bars and a pack of animal crackers. I collected trash. I moved J---- because he kept hitting A---- in the back of the head.

Hour four I tossed an apple back and forth and shined it on my jeans. Shiniest apple ever. For the second half of hour four, I built a log cabin out of the popsicle sticks I gave them as bathroom passes.

Hour five (post-lunch) I glared at the students who were starting to get restless, transmitting via ESP "Don't you dare even THINK about talking I will hold you in detention for the rest of your life oh and by the way I know where you live."

The students came up with their own means of entertainment. My favorite was "drink all the water and then knock the water bottle over to produce that satisfying hollow sound as it rolls across the room." And so for the second half of hour five, I collected all the water bottles.

More tomorrow.

Love Letters from the Internet

I asked Googlism to write me a poem. You can, too! Mine was in need of editing, so I kept my favorite lines and cut the rest...

mary is thinking
mary is busy
mary is committed
mary is a devil
mary is hot
mary is the last thing i own
mary is the girl i love
mary is a gem
mary is no wonder woman
mary is a bonny lassie
mary is arrested for giving brownies to suffering patients
mary is smiling
mary is a chicken
mary is still there after all these years?
mary is the first creature to enjoy eternal life
mary is no hoax
mary is weeping
mary is 100 years young
mary is coming
mary is clever
mary is rich and positive
mary is contrary
mary is for everyone
mary is extemely likable
mary is barely even mentioned in the bible
mary is driving to work; so mary is driving
mary is not the whole story.