Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Came home from work in full panic mode today--my student teacher quit rather unceremoniously this morning and it threw off my whole day. Am I a terrible teacher? Am I mean? What?

Fortunately, good sense won out and I called Michelle who made me laugh until it felt like Friday again. There's nothing like having a conversation in which you discuss the terrible and the mundane, reassure one another, have a horrible realization, and end it all in hysterics.

Random questions of the day: Why are people who sell cheese and fish called "-mongers" but no one else is? And what makes some fish sashimi grade?

P.S. NaBloPoMo is over. My forced Bataan Death March of blogging, as my friend Bernie so wittily called it, has come to an end. I did it! Again.

Random Monday Stuff

From my site meter today:

WHAT DO GONZO BEANS LOOK LIKE?

Like this:










But I think what you were looking for was:










In other interesting news, I was accosted by a panhandler yesterday. In general, I don't mind being panhandled. I grew up outside Washington, DC, and it was a fairly regular occurrance. I'm used to it. I don't, as a rule, give anyone any money, but as long as I can walk away, it doesn't bother me. What does bother me is being panhandled at red lights. I am deeply discomfited by being cornered in my car with no place to go.

Wilmingtonians may know the person I am talking about. She stays at the corner of Dawson and 5th Street, tapping on the windows of all the cars waiting at that (nortoriously long) light. This woman is ALWAYS out there. I've been seeing her there for 3 years at least. And she's very, very pushy, the type who, if you refuse her money, will start asking for the things she can see in your car. My mother-in-law reported to me that she ran into the woman at Burger King and the woman was demanding water from a kid's cup.

I've been very clear with this woman in the past. I asked her to please look at me and look at my car (you know the one: covered in polka dots). Remember me, I said. I'm never going to give you anything. Leave me alone. And she has, for almost 2 years now.

Yesterday, as I was driving home, I was sitting at the light when the woman emerged from the shrubbery and came toward the car. I calmly reached over my left shoulder and hit the automatic locks. And she just freaked, beating on my car and screaming that I'd better watch for that light to change, that I had better hope that light changed soon, etc. Oddly, she called me "baby girl" as she shreiked at me. In my loudest and most authorative teacher voice I yelled, GET OFF MY CAR. She backed up, still screaming, the light changed and I drove away. But it scared the crap out of me. I don't want to go through that intersection anymore.

So, anyway, my dad is here, and he came to visit me at school today and met my kids, which is great, because no one has ever met my kids before. He brought pictures of me so that they could see what Miss Meg looked like when she was a little girl. They loved it.

Day 2: Electric Boogaloo

So it's only day two, and I'm already like, uh.....

uh.....

Because life hasn't been much fun lately. Not too much to blog about in ye olde blogosphere.

But I will say that since the fake quitting debacle of June 2006 I have been absolutely, 100% in love with my job. Maybe it was that I needed to go back to an office for three months to realize what a pleasure it is to be around a bunch of insane elementary school kids, or maybe it's that last year I had an assistant and this year my class size is beyond reasonable...but today I stood out on the playground, playing tag with my kids, and thinking, I love the shit out of every single one of you. And who gets to go to work and actually love the people that they work with?

There's nothing like the feeling of that little hand reaching up to nest in yours, even when you're leading that child to the principal's office for telling a teacher he had a great big butt.

Think what a ball of craziness I'll be when I have my own kids.

Tomorrow's post is going to be a big one. But I can't talk about it yet.

edited to add: when I got home tonight, an orange adirondack chair that sits on my front porch (behind a table!) was placed directly in front of my door. What can it mean?

Glory

Still totally loving Heroes....what an awesome show. Really excellent storytelling and pace. It's everything I hoped Lost would be but isn't--actually answering a few of the questions that it raises.

In other news, for the first time in years, I'm not reading anything. There's a big stack of books beside my bed, but I haven't cracked a spine in two weeks. But this is the thing: I'm writing. You all!!! I'm writing!!! Which means I can fill my blog with exclamation points!!!

I'm almost 100% sure it's a novel, and those of you who know me know that I thought that was impossible for me. I'm blazing through 10 pages a day, on average, and I haven't taken a day off yet. Lately, I find it hard not to talk about it. In line at the grocery store, I want to tell the cashier lady, "No, I don't have an MVP card, but did you know I'm writing a novel?"

I was talking to Awesome Lauren (she's been promoted from Good Lauren) about this the other day, and she made me realize that this probably happened because I'm so damned sick of thinking and writing about myself. I bored myself into writing about other people. Perhaps I'll try to be more boring all the time.

The thing about all this is, what I'm doing is not particularly publishable, even though I think it's good. It's very derivative among other things. But I kind of just don't care. I feel like what I'm doing is teaching myself how to write a novel and loving the hell out of it. And let me tell you: there are days at school when I'm very happy to have my lower-brain busy composing, while my upper brain says, "Shhhhhhhh. Get back in your seat. Shhhhhhhhhh. Get back in your seat," like 300 times. Which is what happens when your class is predominantly made of 6 year olds.

Last week a 5 year old gave me the finger. I'm not kidding. Thomas asked me if I gave it back to him. It almost would have been worth it, just to see the look on the kid's face.

In the History of Weeks that Suck

This has been way up there. I don't want to bitch and moan about it endlessly, but dude. Interpersonally, professionally, and in the backyard cat-eating arena, things have been better. Also, for the record, I am currently suffering the second illness of this school year.



I would like to wish a very happy birthday to Miss Gert E. Girl, 14 year old beagle extraordinaire. Gert has consumed an alarming amount of cheese today, and also a gift from one of my students, because oh my god that's cute.



Cheesy school anecdote of the day (please god let no one else compare me to reader's digest): This morning, a bunch of little boys were singing the song that goes "Boys go to college to get more knowledge. Girls go to Jupiter to get more stupider!"

One of the little boys, in some fit of political correctness, said, "You guys are saying that about Miss Meg and Miss JC!" Another little boy looked over and said with great disdain, "Miss Meg and Miss JC are women. They didn't go to Jupiter to get more stupider."

Peddling Misinformation to Today's Youth

One of the greatest things about working with the kids all day is the hour before school starts in which I get to talk to them as little people instead of little students. They tell me all about their lives (sometimes alarmingly so) and ask me questions about anything they can think of.

One of my favorite discussions with them in the mornings is the "What have you eaten?" discussion, which usually goes something like this:

"Miss Meg, have you ever eaten brains?"
"Miss Meg, have you ever eaten a squid?"
"Miss Meg, have you ever eaten an alligator?"
"Ewwwwwwwwww!"

A few years back, one of my students started playing little league baseball. One morning, he asked me who the guy was who wore black and white and said, "You're out!"
I told him that was the umpire.

Several days later, I had totally forgotten the conversation and in the midst of fielding 35 other random questions, the kid asked me, "Miss Meg, where do the vampires live?"

This puzzled me, but it was really no different from any of the other weird questions I get asked on a daily basis, so I thought about it for a minute and said, "Well, maybe they live underground."

The kid stared at me for a moment. "Underground?" he asked.

"Yeah, underground."

"The vampires live underground?"

"Well, you know, honey, it's dark down there. And the vampires don't like light."

His eyes got wider. "The vampires don't like light?"

"Well, the light kills them."

His eyes got huge. "The light kills them?"

All of a sudden it dawned on me that he thought we were talking about umpires. UMPIRES!

"Miss Meg is so silly," I said, "Don't listen to what she says. The umpires live at home, just like you and me."

He went back to his desk, still looking vaguely alarmed and I wonder if to this day he looks at the umpires askance.