The Return of Miss H

School has officially started. You can tell because my desk is starting to acquire its protective layer of clutter. Domesticated desks have lost this defensive adaptation over time as they came to be used in less dangerous environments. Desks out in the wilds of public education, however, still accumulate piles of stuff in an attempt to keep the damage to a minimum when stressed out teachers begin beating their heads against any hard, flat surface they can find. Chalkboards will work in a pinch, but a desk is better because, besides being stressed out, the teacher is also usually too tired to stand. Hence, the desk has become the optimal head beating surface. But school has only been in session for three days, so I am no where near the head beating stage yet. My desk, being quite old and wise and having seen many teachers in its long years of service, is just preparing for the inevitable.


I am actually still pretty excited about the new year, although the grueling schedule, stress of the new year, and my stupid goal to ride my bike to school and back has left me feeling a little wilted...kind of like some of my classroom decorations.

Wilting decorations not withstanding, it has been a pretty darn good first few days. Of course, it's hard to imagine a week that starts out with an iron man T-shirt and a new green pointing noodle turning out anything other than good.
See, here I am on the second day of school, ready to shape the minds and hearts of the future leaders of our government, industries, and society.
Friday, however, was less about shaping minds and more about pretending to electrocute myself when I messed with the cords that connect my computer to the LCD screen. You should have seen those little seventh graders jump when I hollered. Good fun.
The one thing I don't really look forward to at the start of a new year is re immersing myself in the paper correcting ritual that immediately consumes every waking moment of my school year life. I managed to get noun reviews graded, 159 favorite words commented on, and 158 written instruction practices scored at school. That left only 145 one page friendly letters to read, score, and comment on this weekend. I was all ready to buckle down and get some high quality grading done when... My phone rang. It was the devil asking me if I wanted to sell my soul for the chance to become Obama's VP.

Just kidding. It was Elizabeth asking me if I wanted to use some of my limited correction time to go and watch Tony Stark weld metal while wearing a tank top. Being the dedicated educator that I am, I told her "Thanks, but no thanks," and went back to work grading papers. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!!! See the papers there on the floor by my feet? Sorry kids, but Miss H needed some quality time with Mr. Stark and that cute little robot that keeps dowsing him with the fire extinguisher (Seriously, how funny is that robot? They should give it its own movie).
I figured I deserved one more late night out on the town since the rest of my nights for the next 9 months are going to look a lot like this...
The strange thing is ... I'm kind of looking forward to it.

Back to School

For the past two weeks, I have been seeing the tell-tale signs of summer's end all over town. Sure it still feels like summer, but when you see the freshly painted crosswalks you know the buzz of the early morning alarm can't be far behind.

I really started getting excited when I saw that Kings had their school supplies out (pre-bagged neatly by school and teacher, how cool is that?). I have fond memories of school supply shopping with my mom, grandma, and siblings at our local (and now defunct) Kings. Picking out the pencil box was my favorite part. But can I pause in the midst of these touching recollections to point out that the back to school signs are in the shape of coffins? Does anyone else think that sends a negative message to the kids?


Here's another sign that the school year is about to start...the early morning masochist walking society has taken to the streets once more. Aren't Lacie and I cute?


You know it was very early in the morning because Liz not only posed for this photo, but she also didn't try to destroy my camera or kill me after I took it. She must have been very, very tired to have had such a HUGE lapse in judgment (By the way, Liz, I'm gonna save this one and have it put on matching t-shirts for you and your future stud muffin to wear on your honeymoon).


The kidlet's lazy days' demise is even more obvious in my classroom. The content and language objectives I wrote on the board today read like summer vacation's obituary.

And nothing spells out "Back to School" more clearly than a fully decked out bulletin board. Don't panic if you suddenly start to smell the scents of pencil shavings and Elmer's glue as you look at this picture. You're not having a stroke. It's just the effect a photo of a properly decorated bulletin board has on people. Keep scrolling down and you'll be fine.

Even my wigs, witches hat, and Mo-bats are out and ready for the first bell to ring. My sister Jenny made me this great sign for my room that plays off my "wicked witch of the west" persona that says "Don't make me get the flying monkeys!" so of course, I had to hook myself up with some(Sweetums is on the right and his girlfriend Pookey is on the left).


Do you remember, back when you were a kid, organizing all your cool new school supplies in your awesome new backpack? How big of a nerd does it make me that I still do that? Wait, don't answer that. I had a good reason for doing it, really. You see, I am planning on riding my bike to school while the nice weather holds and I had to make sure my backpack was evenly balanced so as not to impair my already iffy equilibrium. That's a serious adult reason, right? RIGHT?!?!?

Another vital day-before-school-starts-activity for youngsters is going through your school clothes and picking out the perfect back to school outfit. As a teacher, I like to make sure that the students first impression of me really sets the tone for the school year. This ensemble, for example, makes it absolutely clear to the 12, 13, and 14-year-olds that...


...their teacher is a total dork.
Now, please excuse me while I go sharpen my pencils and repack my backpack for the umpteenth time. SCHOOL STARTS TOMORROW!!! WOOOO WHOOOOOO!!!!!

I love Iron Man and Snow Cones....and Jenny's Kids

Look! Three of my favorite things in one picture...Iron Man, Snow Cones, and small children that I am related to, but not closely enough to have to worry about sharing my kidneys with them!

I have been kind of obsessed with the fabulous new movie Iron Man for the past few weeks. The movie is rated PG13 so I couldn't exactly take Jenny's toddlers to it. Instead, I tried my best to help them have some kind of an Iron Man experience without giving them, or Jenny, nightmares. We listened to the soundtrack on my IPOD and I found this fun book to read them.

Maxwell and I hit the stores this afternoon to hunt for Iron Man toys. I wanted to buy myself an action figure to put on my desk at school, but Maxwell wanted me to buy action figures for his entire household. We compromised by buying a set of four tiny Iron Man toys and a bunch of cheap water guns.

I thought I was loaning the other three toys to the boys to play with while I was here and would take them home with me at the end of the week. I was quickly informed, however, that the boys had annexed the toys and would be keeping them forever. I do get to take one of them home, but I am pretty sure Bentley will be charging me a weekly fee of some kind. Here is the Utah chapter of the Iron Man fan club, with our snow cones (I settled on half peach/half raspberry, all three boys got watermelon). Poor Jenny and Ruby didn't get any Iron Man toys, but we did hook them up with a Raspberry Lemonade snow cone. They don't look like they feel too left out, right? Oh, I guess I have one more favorite thing to add...double rainbows appearing as a grand finale to Family Home Evening. How cool is that? Hummmm.....all those delicious looking colors are giving me some interesting ideas for tomorrow's snow cone run!

My Baby Brother

My parents passed through my little town on the way to Boise Friday and dropped something off...
my baby brother Greg.

The last time Greg came to visit, we went to the rodeo. Here he is with my friend Danielle. He must have been good luck because the next night Danielle was crowned rodeo queen.

I loved having Greg here, but I know that he comes to visit me for the same reason my other brothers drive anywhere from 2 to 4 hours to see me...

There are not many things that my little town has that my brothers' big town doesn't so I made sure he got to eat at the other two "restaurants" he likes but doesn't have access to back in civilization.
But while eating was the highlight of the trip (I know that is what he and our brother Warren will discuss at length when Greg gets home) we also did some other things.

We went to watch Iron Man (good flick!),
our movie theater had his favorite treat...dippin' dots,
we revisited our childhoods by shopping in the toy department at Kings,
we unloaded some quarters at the lemon aide stand down the street,
he even got to take a private, after-hours tour of my haunted school.
Greg is a great house guest to have because we have the same temperament(translation...we are both lazy) so we sat around and TV (I introduced him to Joel McHale and The Soup) played computer games (he is great at free-cell, and whatever it is he is playing on that little thing, and I am improving at solitaire)

He also fits perfectly on my couch (but not for much longer if my parents keep insisting on feeding him on a daily basis).
It was a little sad to give him back to my folks the next afternoon, especially since I didn't get time to force him to do some big-strong-guy-gardening.

Oh well. Maybe next time.
Thanks for visiting Greg!
p.s. the cows miss you too.