A meme is a cure for "nuthin' to say"

The Rules:

should be broken.

The Eight Facts:

1. I have a knack for killing plants. After surviving all year in my windowless classroom, an idiot-proof Rhododendron died in my hot, stuffy car on the way home. I kept it in my kitchen, hoping that it would revive. Unfortunately, the leaves turned black and fell off. Better luck next year.

2. I read a lot of very little and a little of a lot. This morning, I breezed through the headlines of the LA Times, but only read 3 articles start to finish. Magazines, websites, blogs, even that incessant ticker on the bottom of CNN--I flit through it all without reading the vast majority. But every now and then, I'll comb through a book so thoroughly that I know the city it was published in.

3. It's 95 degrees outside right now. I have a sunburn across my neck, arms, and a small, embarrassing space across the small of my back where my shirt rode up as I worked on the weed garden yesterday. Very flattering.

4. My son is a biter.

5. 300 people are stuck today between Gaza and Israel, trying to get to the West Bank. Remind me never again to complain of cabin fever.

6. I'm trying to relearn Spanish. Or rather, to learn it for real, this time. I took one of my former students to Starbucks for the first time in her life in return for some stories about her sister and her upcoming trip to Mexico. Am I making a little progress? Creo que si.

7. My grandmother has an empty spool of thread nailed to her front screendoor so that I could open it as a child. She called my last weekend to tell me that she was repainting the door and replacing the screen, but she kept the spool on it. You never know when a little child might need to open the door and not be able to reach the doorknob.

8. I'm making the ridiculous decision to take my kids with me to a 3-day conference this week. I'll get up very early in the morning, drive to their standard daycare then drive back for the conference in the opposite direction of my house. It's insane, but I'm still looking forward to a mini-mini-vacation in a hotel with the kids. Here's hoping they don't cry too much and we all get a little sleep.

The victims:

I don't believe in tagging. I don't believe I know 8 bloggers to tag (who would still speak to me) even if I did believe in it.