Sunday, April 10, 2005

New Projects

Mom introduced me to decoupage this weekend. Actually, she didn't do the introducing, she just knew the stuff to get when we went to the crafts store. I had been saving the little tins that mints come in - my husband has a thing about always having mints in the car, kind of like one of those things his mother did that he now needs to carry on with. This evening I decoupaged decorations onto one of the tins. I saw somebody do this several years ago and turn it into an emergency travel sewing kit. It looks nice.

As I was typing the previous sentence I heard The Toddler's voice from the other room where she's been sleeping for the past hour. I went in and she looked up at me and said, "Mommy, I'm asleep, I'm asleep." I said, "You are," and popped the binky back into her mouth, whereupon she closed her eyes and was out again (still?). Cute.

She was pretty cranky all day. We took a walk this afternoon and found a basket in a pile of stuff that a neighbor had left out for "free" on the curb. She insisted on carrying the basket for the rest of our walk, and picked up garbage along the way and put it in her basket. The walk didn't last long, however, because she started insisting on going another way than I was going. I carried her home and a minor tantrum ensued (from her, not me), "Mommy, more walk, more walk." Then we came in and she was asleep within five minutes. Mommy told you that you were too tired to walk more.

Friday, April 08, 2005

All in a day's work

I am a public school teacher. I teach at a fairly large middle school in Oakland, California. My classroom is a double-wide portable building, so that makes me trailer trash.

Every time it has rained this year (and that has been quite a bit), I get water pouring in at one side of my classroom where the seam is between the two trailers. See, the seam runs the length of the room, but on one end there gets to be a pool of water where it doesn't drain properly when it rains, and so we get to experience the rain forest.

And now I've got a skunk family living under my classroom, too.

So I stepped out a few minutes ago to scamper across the courtyard to relieve my teacherbladder. Right outside my classroom door (but fortunately off to the side and not right on my porch) was Flower, sniffing and gnawing on something on the ground. So I closed my door quietly and scampered off. When I came back there was an entire classroom of kids coming back from the library walking by, and they all had to react to the skunk's presence in an age-appropriate manner, which is to say either scream or try to approach it. All this while I was waiting for them to go back to class so I could follow my PLAN.

My PLAN was to make a lot of noise and scare it off before it got startled by my presence. It worked! I even got to educate a kid who was trying to get past the skunk to get into the art classroom in the Sopisticated Way of Dealing With Urban Wildlife (ie; make a lot of noise and yell).

All in a day's work for -- PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER!

Friday, April 01, 2005

My Crazy Brother-in-Law

Mike Coronella & Joe Mitchell Hayduke Trail Adventure

It's good to have people like this in the family. And he mixes great drinks, too.