my sun and stars

I'm reading a silly book where a character calls her husband "my sun-and-stars." Kind of cute. This little one just cut his first tooth (bottom left) yesterday.

refrigeration blues

I hope the clanking downstairs by the stranger in my house means that we'll be able to store more than just crackers and apple sauce in our house again soon. Today is day 8 without a functioning refrigerator. When I last checked, it was 78 degrees inside. On top of that, our mail delivery person broke the key in the lock of our communal mailbox, which explains the lack of mail over the past two weeks. Wasn't it nice that they posted a notice on the 6th day, letting me know that the bills I've mailed are all now overdue with little hope of reaching their destination in time? While stopping at the post office to pick up my mail, what do I find buried at the bottom with a postmark of March 7? An offer to extend our refrigerator's warranty for another year.

mother-in-law stereotypes

You think mothers-in-law-from-hell stereotypes must be mostly exaggeration, and then you hear a story about some poor woman whose mother-in-law is visiting for six months. Months. 6.

On top of that, she's enforcing her strict religiosity on the family so that one member of the household (who shall remain nameless) couldn't even go out to lunch today because of fasting. Fasting for what? you may ask. "I have no idea; my mother-in-law says we're supposed to fast today," is the reply. It would be comical if it weren't so horrible.

giraffe

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Notice how he does his best crawling when no one is watching.

L

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homecoming

A little boy from Guatemala will be going home in the next two weeks to two very lovely people who can't wait to be his parents.

In other news, our refrigerator quit working. It is now hotter inside it than the outside temperature in most of the U.S. right now. The evil people at an unnamed department store who sold it to us stood us up for the repair appointment. To quote Mojo Jojo, "Curses!"

Last but not least, I'm called to jury duty on Monday.

pink slips

The tree in our front yard is abloom with pink flowers.

Rumor has it that a handful of teachers in our district were let go. I am not among them. It's a wonderful feeling to be in a stable job. Even better that it's a job I like.

The mountains were unbelievable today. They must have worked their magic on the students, too. We've been studying folktales the past week, and I ended the week on a happy note with "The 3 Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig" by Eugene Trivizas. It's not often you get to talk about pneumatic drills and blowing things up in English class. Such a good story.

time for a beer

I'm so glad my husband doesn't work this late every night. He just called to tell me to go to bed. Work is winding down and he's heading out for a beer with coworkers. It's well deserved. Nonetheless, I'm lonely. J is beginning to wimper in his sleep.

sleep

I should be sleeping. Dreaming about kayaking.

A teacher I met tonight drives to school with a boat strapped on top of his little car. He leaves just after the last school bus and spends the next two hours weaving between mountains and water. That's the way to do it, I think.

Napolean Dynamite is alive and well

at my high school.

Picture, if you will:

It's "rally" day; 1200 sweaty teenagers packed into a gym.

A slightly-pudgy kid with a dorky haircut, dressed all in black, with suspiciously-looking ballet-style black shoes walks out onto the stage floor. He's holding two sticks attached with a wire, on which he juggles a giant yoyo.

A giant yoyo.

There was silence in the gym. That kind of awestruck silence you hear in your dreams when you've shown up to work and forgot to put on pants first. Even the collective thrumming of four hundred not-so-surreptitiously worn iPods stops.

Then the hip hop kicks in, and the kid starts dancing. Couple steps here, point a toe there; it wasn't really dancing by any stretch of the imagination. So then he tosses it into the air -- does a friggin' somersault -- and catches it. Wild applause.

This continues with great success for four minutes. Afterwards, I asked my students what they got out of it, and they all talked about "that kid with a yoyo" with a kind of respect few people at the age of 15 ever give.

Oh yeah, in case you're wondering the rally was not a talent show, nor a pre-election show-down. It was a multicultural rally to culminate Black History Month celebrating the achievements of 8 phenomenal African-American athletes and also to show off their own talents. The guiding theme was a bit weak (somehow they also fit hula-dancers into a description of Karim Abdul-Jabar), but who really listens to a high school rally anyway?

p.s. Not that it matters, but the juggler was white.

ode to oral vaccines

I was pleasantly surprised
to be leaving
the doctor's office only fifteen minutes
after I arrived--
the baby still
happy.