Gooseberries & Chocolate

Seat Belt Assignment

2012-02-04T13:55:00.001-07:00

My son had to complete a seatbelt assignment for driver's ed. He had to watch cars and record each passenger as male/female/child and restrained/unrestrained. He had to get in 30 cars. I took him errand running with me and he sat in the car while I was in the post office, etc... Final results? Just over 25% of the cars he saw had unrestrained people in them. Really? I never would have guessed that so many people didn't wear seatbelts. At least none of them were children.

We got down to the last car, we were in a Walmart parking lot and I parked next to a 20 something girl who had just gotten in her car. We figured he could watch and see if she put on her seat belt and he'd be finished. So we waited while she:
put her hair in a ponytail
put a headband on her head to hold back the strays that didn't fit in the pony tail
tried a different headband
did something that looked like change her bra (I wouldn't let my son look)
I think she slipped off some sweats that were over shorts, but I didn't want to look too closely (once again, I made my son look away)
change her shoes
fussed a bit with her make-up
And I'm not sure what all else because we were trying not to look too much. We spent a good 10 minutes waiting for her to leave so he could write down if she put her seatbelt on or not. She didn't, but was that because she doesn't wear a seatbelt or because she wanted to get away from the crazies in the car next to her?

Got Cheese?

2012-01-14T12:40:00.001-07:00

I'm feeling like having a good whine right now. However, since it's mostly of my own making (a complete lack of motivation is a major contributor), I'll skip writing up the details. I just hope it's the short days and cold weather that have me acting like a slug. That would mean it'll get better without any effort from me. (Spoken like a true slug huh?)

Fun Monday - Cold Weather Eats

2011-10-03T21:00:00.003-06:00

Sayre Smiles is hosting Fun Monday today. She says:

This weekend's cooler weather put me in a Fall state-of-mind and for the first time since last March, I wanted soup for dinner. I heated up some chicken noodle soup which the Boy and I shared for dinner. The Man had leftover pizza. That craving got me to thinking - what do people crave when the weather gets cooler? Sign up in comments, and I'll add your link to this post.

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My craving isn't always what to eat, it's what to cook - although of course I do plenty of eating of these things once they're made. When the weather turns cooler and I start to think of the upcoming holiday season, I get this irresistible urge to bake. Serious baking too. I want to make decorated and fancy schmancy cookies. I want to make every flavor of quick bread I have a recipe for, chocolate, pumpkin, cranberry, etc... And most of all, I want to roll pie crust. I have been known to make as many pies as there are people on Thanksgiving.

Is it my job?

2011-09-28T22:23:00.001-06:00

This is something I have always struggled with as a teacher. Whose job is it to get students to finish work they didn't complete before the deadline? In the old days I hunted them down like a sniper. Nowadays though, all of that assignment information is available online, easily available for parents to look up any time night or day.

So my thinking is that if the parents care what grade their students get, they'll get after their students to get it done. If they want my help, they'll ask me for it. I shouldn't have to harp on them constantly at school. I'm not saying I never talk about it. I give them lists of missing work at least once a week and there's a reward activity each Wednesday for students who have everything turned in. It's the chronic non-workers that are killing me. I have about 8 of them. Do I keep them in from every recess and hold them back from every special? Or do I figure their parents can deal with it and move on to other stuff? I want to let the parents deal with it, but I also know that they won't ever stand a chance of passing a test if they never do an assignment.

Everyone Else's Mother Said Yes

2011-09-27T20:01:00.001-06:00

Started off the day with six students absent.

I wish I could have been absent.

My husband just came in and said it felt like a Friday. How nice for him, it feels like a Monday all over again for me.

Ok, I stand corrected. He told me today that what he meant by it felt like Friday was that the two days felt like a whole week. We were in the same boat, so tonight we did some restaurant therapy and went out to dinner together.

What they understand

2011-09-26T01:31:00.000-06:00

Yesterday at church I helped out in the nursery for a bit. We sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" which was lots of fun. Of course this led to some discussion of noses and one little boy said to me; "My Grandpa says my nose is ugly." What a thing for a grandfather to say?!?!! I told him I thought his nose was just adorable.
Later on, I got to thinking, this child is 2 or maybe 3 years old, does he even know what adorable means? I wonder if he thinks I told him his nose was ugly too?

Kids Say the Darndest Things

2011-09-25T01:06:00.001-06:00

I was reading through some journal entries the other day. Yes, I read the journal entries of my students. They know it too so it's not like I'm invading privacy. They shouldn't have an expectation of privacy in an assignment they do for school.
One of the boys wrote something very interesting. The topic was "Things I Don't Like." What he said he didn't like was when people took his glasses from him, put them on and said "Wow! You really can't see." He compared it to someone taking away someone's wheelchair and saying "Wow! You really can't walk."
Good point. Not bad coming from the 12 year old.

Even when I'm organized, I'm not

2011-09-24T18:06:00.001-06:00

It's hard to remember, but there was a time when I made lists of everything that needed to be done and crossed them off as I did them. I actually belonged to an online group with 8 other ladies and we posted our lists, talked about what we were able to accomplish during the day and our kids, etc... The online group started as a yahoo group, went over to a message board, but pretty much died when facebook was born. We're all friends on facebook, but we don't interact as much there. You don't say the same things on such a public place that you might say on a private message board. I miss that. I have things I'd like to say that I don't want to post to the whole world.
Must be time to have breakfast with the girlfriends, but the date we were talking last wasn't until October. <sigh>

Sixth Grade

2011-09-15T18:50:00.001-06:00

So far so good. Actually, (shh, don't tell anyone) I think I'm kinda starting to like it. There's a lot more prep involved and not just because I've changed grades. However, I can get a bit done during the day because once I launch them on a project or assignment they can work on their own for short periods of time. I can see how some people think that this age ought to be in a middle school instead of the elementary, but from my viewpoint, I can see so many little things that say they're not quite ready. Certainly by the end of the year most of them will be more than prepared for the shift into jr. high. For those who argue we're holding back the ones who "are ready" I'd say that we'd be doing far more harm to advance the non-ready kids than we do by keeping back the ones that are ready.

The Big Wind

2011-08-17T22:15:00.001-06:00

Or perhaps it was the Great Wind? Or the Big Storm? Most likely it was the Mighty Gust.

My husband was awake in the night and heard something hit the house. I think that sound is what woke me up. What I heard was metal scraping on concrete. I told him the grill had blown over. It's happened before. However, we went out back and the grill is fine, the yard looks fine, but there's a cat made of either plastic or fiberglass about two feet high. It's lying on the ground not too far from being under the bedroom window. We wondered how it got there. It was too hard to imagine the wind blowing such a thing. It was also hard to imagine the neighbor kids being out at nearly 4am throwing things like that into the yard.

All questions were answered the next morning when I saw the trampoline that used to be next door in a crumpled heap in the driveway across the street. I returned their cat and the neighbor said that the cat had been on their patio table, the trampoline (which had a net) must have picked up the cat and flung it over in our yard during its flight across the street. It broke their glass table top. I'm glad it didn't hit our window.

Getting Ready

2011-08-12T20:25:00.002-06:00

Taking out Sundays, I have 7 days left to prepare for the first day of sixth grade. Big shout of thanks to my friend C who gave me all kinds of ideas. I think I might make it through the first week.

Official

2011-08-05T21:41:00.001-06:00

I have officially crossed over to the dark side and will teach 6th grade next year. I'm good with this. I think I was actually reaching the point where I was hoping it would happen. I've had the idea of switching grades on my mind since Christmas, but when we all moved over to the new school, my principal put me in fifth where I've always been and that was fine. The numbers have drastically shifted though and so it was either sixth or fourth and I chose sixth. (They'll hire a new 4th grade teacher from somewhere.) I'm excited about doing something different, but I've got two weeks to "cram" my new curriculum. So of course my first course of action is to get on facebook and announce it to everyone and then talk to my friend on the phone. Now I'm over here blogging about it and I'll probably send an e-mail to another friend next. Tomorrow we'll go over and shift books around and Monday I'll dig in to the new stuff.

Up in the Air

2011-08-04T14:09:00.001-06:00

So things are still very uncertain with numbers the new school. Will I be crossing over to the dark side and teaching 6th grade next year or will they scrape up enough students (and/or FTEs) for me to stay in fifth? I really am ok with either one, but we're getting down to the crunch time and I need to know!

Freezer Cooking and the Dogs' Day

2011-08-02T15:46:00.002-06:00

At the end of each summer, I mark the coming new school year by spending a day or two cooking for the freezer. (I was going to insert a joke about the freezer getting hungry, but I think that's just the caffeine overdose talking.) Ever since I returned to full time work 5 years ago, I've done this, except for one year and I regretted it from August till Christmas. Our one constant and ever present family goal is to eat out less. (We have plenty of other goals, but nothing shows up as often on our list as this one.) The reason we eat out so much is lack of preparation. Freezer cooking is my attempt to keep us all at our own dinner table in the evenings.

So today I've spent the day boiling lasagna noodles and cooking up red or white sauce. There are 6 lasagnas in the freezer and I'm working on number seven. There are also two pans of a spinach/sausage/noodle bake, one of which I would love to give to a friend, but a pan of frozen food doesn't mail very well and the distance is a little much to drive for a pan of food.

The dogs have not enjoyed today all that much. The small amount of time I've spent sitting, I've done at the kitchen table. They are unhappy that there has been no nap on my bed while I fritter away time on facebook or playing solitaire. They tried going outside several times, but the smells in here were too good to resist so they'd come back. Maybe there will be something on TV tonight that I can get hooked on watching. The girls would love that.

Meanwhile, back to the bacon.

Humidity

2011-08-02T07:12:00.002-06:00

I live in a dry climate now, but grew up in a very humid part of the country. I love humidity. It helps take away that raspy dry feeling you get in your skin, but most especially, it makes my eyeball work better. Today is nearly perfect at 82%. I know, I'm a minority.

A Fresh Start

2011-08-01T22:53:00.003-06:00

I love a fresh start. When I started having problems with my last blog, I finally gave up and started over. I wasn't happy with it anyway so I didn't post much. When it comes to cleaning I'm most likely to take everything off of or out of whatever I'm cleaning, scrub the empty spot and carefully choose where to put things back. My favorite fresh start is a new school year. I go back in two weeks, the students return in three. I'm sure there will be plenty of "cherubic tales" in the future.