Pitfalls of Technology

I haven't had a land line phone in years, and let's face it, I'm not the only one. We all live and breath by our cell phone. And most of the time this is fine...it's always with you in emergencies, it makes it easy for people to keep in contact with you anywhere, etc.


Cell phones are great...until you leave yours at your boyfriends house.

It's a fun feeling when you suddenly realize that the little device you depend on more than your own mother is not in your pocket where it is supposed to be.

And to make matters even more fun, I was home alone and I couldn't borrow a roommate's phone. And I had to act quickly because Cory was supposed to leave for work in about 30 minutes.

So this is how I ended up on my neighbors front porch, asking if I could borrow her phone, much in the way people used to ask a cup of sugar. Luckily she was home and found the whole situation quite funny.

So in the end, phone was returned to my pocket and I feel like I'm connected with the world again...at least until my next ditzy moment.

Life's Simple Pleasures #2

Skinny Mirrors

Every woman in the world would be a lot happier if there were only skinny mirrors.

If you have never experienced a skinny mirror, you really should.

They may be technically lying to you and making you look better that you really do...

...but I'm okay with that kind of lying. :)

Life's Simple Pleasures: #1

Maybe I'm just "special" but I get a small sense of joy and accomplishment watching my wipers and defroster win the battle against the frost/ice on my windshield.

This is probably mostly due to the fact that I hate the cold so much/am too lazy to do a thorough job scarping in the first place. Most of the time, I only seem to get a good one foot square to see through.

When I'm about 5 minutes from my house, the battle begins. I love when I can see a spot that I know is going to get knocked away by the next swipe of the wiper.

The really sad part is that I get a little sad and disappointed when the battle is over and there's nothing left for my wipers to do.

Creepers in the Night

This story happened a few months ago but it's just too awesome not to tell...enjoy...

It's a well know fact in my house that I have what is called "the pharmacy" in my bathroom. One whole (big) drawer of my sink is full of stuff for when you're sick (cold medicine, cough drops, Tylenol, thermometer, etc). This comes from being a teacher of snotty-nosed children that sneeze on you all day: I get sick fairly regularly. Everyone makes fun of the pharmacy...until they need it.

Carlee, my cool, former-beauty-queen roommate was not feeling so good one night. In her own words, her "insides wanted to be on her outsides." After suffering through most of the night, she thought that maybe some drugs might help and figured that her hypochondriac roommate (ME) would probably have the right ones.

However, by this point it was about 3 AM.

Now I need to back up a bit to help set the scene just a little bit better. When I went up to bed around 11 PM, I could see Carlee's door open and her reading light, which gives off an eerie blue/white light, was on. I figured she was reading or had fallen asleep with the light still on. I thought nothing of it, closed my door and went to bed.

Back to 3 AM...

I wake up in my dark room and can't figure out what woke me up. While trying to sort things out in my half-asleep brain, I notice that my door is open.

Another needed point...I never, EVER sleep with my door open, for three reasons:
1. To keep out unwanted light and noise.
2. If you grow up with brothers, a locked door is your only shoot at keeping them from torturing you.
3. I was very of my bedroom in the dark as a child and keeping the door shut was one way to keep Mr. Boogedy (childhood terror from a frickin Disney movie) from getting me.

So noticing the open door, I also notice a light coming from down the hall. I got up to investigate and saw that it was Carlee's reading light still shining. I was just making up my mind if I should see if she was okay (or turn her light off for her) when it happened.

From the dark bathroom behind me, I hear in the creepiest, whispery, sickly little girl voice, "...Cindy?"

My ninja-jumping-spin-preparing-for-battle-but also-hanging-onto-the-doorframe-for-dear-life move was quite impressive.

Carlee had decided it would be better to not wake me and just "quietly" go through my medicine drawer.

EPIC FAILURE

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE A TEACHER?

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE A TEACHER?
by Jeff Foxworthy

1. You can hear 25 voices behind you and know exactly which one belongs to the child out of line.
2. You get a secret thrill out of laminating something.
3. You walk into a store and hear the words "It's Ms/Mr. _____" and know you have been spotted.
4. You have 25 people that accidentally call you Mom/Dad at one time or another.
5. You can eat a multi-course meal in under twenty minutes.
6. You've trained yourself to go to the bathroom at two distinct times of the day: lunch and planning period.
7. You start saving other people's trash, because most likely, you can use that toilet paper tube or plastic butter tub for something in the classroom.
8. You believe the teachers' lounge should be equipped with a margarita machine.
9. You want to slap the next person who says "Must be nice to work 8 to 3 and have summers off."
10. You believe chocolate is a food group.
11. You can tell if it's a full moon without ever looking outside.
12. You believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says "Boy, the kids sure are mellow today."
13. You feel the urge to talk to strange children and correct their behavior when you are out in public.
14. You believe in aerial spraying of Ritalin.
15. You think caffeine should be available in intravenous form.
16. You spend more money on school stuff than you do on your own needs.
17. You can't pass the school supply aisle without getting at least five items!
18. You ask your friends if the left hand turn he just made was a "good choice or a bad choice."
19. You find true beauty in a can full of perfectly sharpened pencils.
20. You are secretly addicted to hand sanitizer.
21. You understand instantaneously why a child behaves a certain way after meeting his or her parents.

Dealing with the Technology Generation

I've gotten pretty used to explaining "older" technology to my second graders, with each year getting worse.

I've explained those square things that we used to put into our computers...

I've explained what that curly thing coming off that old phone did...

But I was not ready for this one. My students were completing a Christmas crossword puzzle and I thought I had gone over all the "tricky" clues.

The clue for 15 Across (six letters) reads: "You might mail Santa one of these."

More than half of my students wrote:

e-mail

Nightmare

You can ask most teachers and they can tell you about "back-to-school" nightmares. Mine usually involve scary parents, destroyed classrooms, or huge 15-year-old students in my second grade class.

But all my dreams had one thing in common: I didn't actually know any of the people in them. When I have my class dreams, the kids have always just been random dream-children. Well...not anymore. I had the craziest dream about my class that I am teaching right now and it was unbelievably vivid. If you haven't heard, I only have 17 students in my class this year and they ROCK! They are smart, well-behaved kids and I love them.

Not so in my dream!

They were EVIL!!! They just seemed to hate me and were trying to make me made. I was yelling and screaming at them and they just ignored me. The part that I can not get out of my head is that I was yelling at one of my little girls, right in her face. She turned to face me and bit my cheek, hard enough to rip the skin!

This is when I woke up with my heart pounding. And I know perfectly well that it was just a dream, but when that little girl walked into class to day, my heart skipped a beat. :)