Thank You.

It's Veteran's Day here in the US.

The Mental Floss Blog has collected some wonderful videos of soldiers being welcomed home by their dogs and kids. It will make you smile.

To every veteran; thank you. I hope for each one of you a welcome home like these.

Soldiers coming home.

Oooookaay?

"Hey mom! Hey mom!"

"Uh, yes?"

(9 year old holds a half-peeled tangerine under my nose)

"What does that smell like?"

"What?!"

"I SAID: WHAT DOES THAT SMELL LIKE? YOU KNOW, SMELL! SMELL IT! WHAT DOES IT SMELL LIKE?"

"Er. Citrus?"

"NO! It smells like citrus!"

(9 year old stalks away, chewing on tangerine sections and muttering)

Right. Of course.

Midterms Suck

I'm buried again in grading for my classes (almost done!!) and for my co-teacher's classes (not nearly done! whoo!). If you're counting, it's 14 classes I'm responsible for, at the moment.

So, please to enjoy:

(click to embiggen it and read the text)

Back! Back, You Evil Germs!!

I stayed home today with GameBoy. The rest of the family ventured out to church and running errands. MangaGirl wasn't feeling very well, but she's had her eye on a pair of really cute purple pumps and was promised them this weekend. They're her first pair of real heels, and there was no way she was passing those babies up.

I've alternated between laundry, playing Cafe World and Farmville on Facebook and avoiding the last of my grading. I'm teetering on the edge of a cold, so I'm hoping a day to rest and relax will kick it in its ass and send it on its way.

So to speak.

Busy Work

The last week has been more than a little nuts at work. Home, thankfully, is currently trending toward "calmer". Thank goodness.

At work, the search for a new teacher or teachers to cover my co-teacher's classes appears to be drawing to a close. We've got one enormously strong candidate and another less strong one. And one that did her best but was so tremulously frightened that the she scared the students a little.

However, with midterm grades due next week, it's falling on me and the principal to get all the grades together for the classes which are in limbo. This week I helped make lesson plans for those seven classes and my own six classes. I'm trying to find a parent to come in and grade the objective, multiple choice type tests so I can just enter the grades into the electronic gradebooks.

Thank goodness we've found the attendance/gradebook for those classes...one of the subs accidentally took it home.

Today we had a major behavior problem in every single class of every single grade. Nightmarish. Yet the potential new teacher handled the situation involving her students with aplomb and wisdom.

I REALLY hope she takes the job.

English Types, This Is Cool!

Everyone in the world probably knows about this, but go here and play with this thing!

Here's my PicLit:


See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

Maybaby Appreciation Day

I had a whole other post ready to go, but today's events have hijacked my train of thought.

The past two weeks have been...fraught...at work. With my co-teacher leaving, no new teacher in place, students coming unglued and a classic "mean girls" scenario with the ninth grade girls, I ended up last week feeling as a bit wrung out.

Various things ensued which had been making me wonder if I'd done something or said something that gave an impression to one set of parents or to the "mean girls" that I'd taken sides in the dispute. Since I'm quite at pains to never get involved in student drama, I was discouraged and disheartened. By Friday morning, I was beside myself with all the emotion and drama swirling around.

Our headmaster made the time to come over and talk to me about what had been going on, and was at pains to make sure I felt supported and appreciated. I told him at the time how much of a difference he'd made in my outlook; and I did, really. He's been dealing with a lot of difficult issues and situations and it meant a lot to me that he'd come over to this campus and talked to me about it. I felt reassured.

Today, kids kept wishing me "happy anniversary!" all morning. Since my anniversary was on Oct. 15th, I was a little confused, but accepted their well wishes. At lunch, Biker Hubby marched into the secondary lunch room, with a wicked gleam in his eye, trailed by GameBoyjr's entire 4th grade class. Since Biker Hubby takes over lunch and recess for the 4th grade every Tuesday and he often brings me little treats, I didn't think too much about it. Then he whipped out a HUGE card, made by the students and signed by ALL the teachers, staff and middle school/high school students. It said "Happy 20th (and two weeks and six days) anniversary!" I was speechless and I blushed tomato red, instantly. Then Biker Hubby presented me with a little gift bag, saying "This is all from (principal) and (headmaster). I had no idea!" The gift bag contained movie ticket vouchers and a gift card to the local Coldstone Creamery ice cream store.

Then it got better. "The real present," announced Biker Hubby, "is that (headmaster) got you a substitute for the afternoon. You have the rest of the day off!"

You don't have to tell me twice. I got my sub settled with some plans (she's a former English teacher, so I didn't have to pull out the emergency plans, yay!), I took off with Biker Hubby. Unfortunately, our afternoon was full of stuff like driving kids to therapy appointments, but I managed to get in shopping for new work clothes, and we went for ice cream.

Gotta hand it to the headmaster...that's the most meaningful gift he could have come up with...time off! I definitely feel appreciated and much, much more relaxed; my amazement, though, will not wear off for a long, long while.

Weird, But Cool

I have a whomping headache. It's so bad I can't finish my grading and I'm going to stagger off to bed and try to sleep it off before getting up for school tomorrow.

In lieu of a post, please accept this recording of the electromagnetic particles around Jupiter interacting with solar wind. It's amazing.