Blessed

It has been a good week.








A really good week.

A good week of epic proportions.





Seriously.






I have been blessed. A lot.






Monday, this sweet little niece came to visit me. So did this one. I love this one.

It was so very kind of my brother and sister-in-law to give me such adorable and entertaining niblets. They make everything so much more fun!

And the week only got better from there.

President Sagers gave me a new group of mission prep-ers to tell my mission stories to.

This sweet family gave me two sacks of the most delicious vegetables I have eaten all summer.

And my most favoritest Burley cousins gifted me with the most beautiful washer and dryer I have ever laid eyes on. They hauled them over to my house, carried them up my stairs, and hooked them up in my kitchen, helping my laundry hookups to fulfill the measure of their creation for the first time since I moved in five years ago.

Kristi was kind enough to supervise the whole operation. She is always so good about letting me and everyone else in this town borrow her parents. I think she should consider charging some sort of usage fee, or maybe setting up some kind of rent schedule. Of course, she is too Christ-like to even consider that, but I thought I would throw the idea out there.

Seriously Kristi, you could make a haul!

Words cannot describe how happy and excited and grateful and appreciative and loved and thankful and indebted and overwhelmed and flabbergasted and touched I feel by their generosity. I know my mother will sleep better at night knowing that I am not frequenting the laundromat. I'll sleep better too... on my couch in the evenings while my my chalk-dust-saturated clothes enter the spin cycle in my kitchen.

Aren't they beautiful? Thank you, Joneses! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! I promise I will take very good care of them. I will even give these wonderful machines a nice little vacation each year...

...right around rodeo season. I'm sure the washer and dryer will have earned a break by then. And I would hate for all of those visiting rodeo cowboys to be lonely as they separate their whites from their colors. As the recipient of so many charitable acts this week, I feel like it is my duty step up and increase my charitable out-put as well.

And although my heart is always full of charity for rodeo cowboys, I think saving time and money by avoiding the Laundromat is going to increase my love for the rest of mankind.

In fact, my first load of white just came out of the dryer and I am feeling more kind and compassionate all ready!

Would You Rather....

My school district has a goal.

Their goal is to fill my classroom with children who bear names that defy the laws of both logic and phonics.

Wait.

Scratch that.

That would be the parents in my school boundaries goal, not my school district's goal.

My school district's goal is to have every student write in complete sentences in every class.

Now, that might not sound like a difficult thing to some of you, but those with any teacher-ish experience will tell you that proclaiming a lofty ambition like that is tantamount to the declaring that a small group of parking attendants is going to convince every bird in the state to avoid pooping on cars.

Not that I am knocking the goal. As an English teacher, I spend quite a bit of my time begging kidlets to write in complete sentences. The problem is that asking a middle school student to write in complete sentences elicits the same sort of reaction that you would get if you asked them to give up their wii for a month, or to dismember their grandmother: shock, then horror, followed by alternating waves of physical pain and mental anguish.

So I decided that the best way to get the kidlets to write in complete sentences would be to make sure that they were too busy thinking about WHAT they were writing to complain about HOW they were being forced to write it.

Enter Zobmondo.

My friend Brook sent me this book as a birthday gift a few years ago and, although I have loved it since I first cracked the cover, I have only recently come to appreciate it as a vital tool for teaching. You see, Zobmondo is a book filled with very strange "would you rather..." questions. It poses quandaries that are so weird and so random that the fact I am making the kidlets give their answers in the form of "evil complete sentences of death" is immaterial.

On the first real day of school, my English kidlets bell work for the day consisted of answering the following question:

After staring at the board for several minutes and finally electing a brave soul to ask me if that was really their assignment, the kidelts got right to work formulating answers. One thoughtful student concluded that, "I would rather have a see-though nose because I think it would be really cool to be able to see my brain, and if I had completely white eye-balls I would look like I was dead."

When they returned the next day, the kidlets were meet with yet another important question, and once again, I didn't hear a single complaint, whine, or scream of agonizing pain about the complete sentences part of the assignment.

Now, I wouldn't recommend running out and buying a copy of this book for your child. Those of you who know and love my generous friend Brook may have already guessed that not every question in the book is kidlet-friendly. The questions I choose to pose to my classes are carefully selected to insure that the kids don't get embarrassed and that the health teachers don't get blasted with a certain type of question before they are fully prepared to start the "Your Changing Bodies" section of the curriculum. Or, you know, get me fired.

My main criteria for selecting a daily Zobmondo question is, "How painful for me will it be to read and grade 130 answers?" So far, it has actually been pretty fun.

"I would rather learn fire eating than sword swallowing because I could burp after I ate some and blow fire across the lunch room."

"I would rather eat fire instead of swords because once I got past the hot part it would probably taste kind of good."

"I would like to learn fire eating more than sword swallowing because it would be good to know how to do in case I got cold."

"I would rather learn how to eat fire because I didn't eat breakfast today and I am really hungry."

Thus far, Zobmondo has been a win-win-win situation for myself, the kidlets, and the district goal-setters. The seventh graders don't mind answering the questions, I don't mind reading the answers, and the district folks don't have to cough up the extra fundage it would require to send me for electro-shock sessions to cure the nervous tick I would have developed after having to listen to pre-teen sighs of annoyance every time I announced complete sentence writing practice.

Now, if somebody could just get to work on working toilet training every bird in the state, my life would officially be nearly perfect.

If You Were a 7th Grader...

If you were a 7th grader, you would have gotten up a little extra early on Monday morning. You would have put on the carefully coordinated outfit that you picked out three weeks ago. You would have sat with your friends on the bus, talking about how lame 7th grade was bound to be. And if you were a seventh grader, you would have stepped off that bus and walked towards the school doors with a slightly queasy stomach.

If you were a 7th grader, you would have watched the loud, happy 8th graders showing each other their freshly printed schedules. You would have sat with that fluttery feeling shifting from your heart to your stomach and then back again as you waited for the the principal to "sort" all of the assembled seventh graders into classes. And if you were a 7th grader, you would have worried about tripping on the steps when he called your name.
If you were a seventh grader, you would have walked into the wrong classroom at least once on Monday morning . You would have carried around a backpack full of books and binders and supplies because your locker refused to open. You would have listened to eight teachers tell you the same rules eight times, but really only cared about how much homework you were going to get each night. And if you were a 7th grader, you would have eventually had to walk through this door.
If you were a 7th grader, you would have panicked when the person you thought was your English teacher welcomed you to Advanced Calculus. You would have tried to look brave when she told you that your class was going to dress up in costumes and wigs to act out stories as you read them this year. You would have laughed a little when she pretended to cry as she explained how her dream of marring Vin Diesel would be destroyed if you called her "Mrs. H" in the hallways, at Wal-Mart, or anywhere else Mr. Diesel might overhear you. And if you were a 7th grader, you eventually would have began to wonder if she owned any grownup teacher clothes at all.

If you were a 7th grader, you would have jumped the first time your weird English teacher hit the chalk board with the green noodle. You would have giggled a bit when she sat on a desk and used the pink noodle to wack her computer that was several feet away to advance the "friendly letter" power point slides. And if you were a really ambitious yet sweet 7th grader, you would have come to class the second day with a ginormous orange noodle that you talked you parents into buying for a teacher you had only known for 35 minutes. (Thanks again Connor! And Connor's parents!)

If you were a 7th grader, you would have worked very hard all week. You would have had pre-algebra homework on Tuesday and Thursday. You would have written all of your science and geography work using complete sentences. You would have written a friendly letter, composed two poems, finished three worksheets, taken one quizlet, answered two "Zobmondo" questions, and interviewed two peers and one adult about their favorite word. You would have forgotten your locker combination twice and your bus number once. And if you were a 7th grader, you would have gone home on Friday feeling a bit more confident, a lot more mature, and maybe even a little bit taller than you did the week before.

But ...

If you were a 7th grade teacher, you would have been just as nervous as the kids on Monday. You would have felt terrible when you called Veronica, "Victoria", and confused Maree with Merry. And if you were a 7th grade teacher, you would have called Breana, "BreANNA" instead of "BreAH-Na" six times in one class period, even though the entire class kept correcting you over and over.

If you were a 7th grade teacher, you would have graded and written replies to about 120 friendly letters over the course of Wednesday night and Thursday morning. You would have scored and recorded grades on 360 worksheets, 120 quizlets, 240 "Zobmondo" questions, and read the favorite words of 480 7th grade peers and 120 adults. And if you were a 7th grade teacher, you would have spent all Thursday swearing to anyone who would listen that you are just going to show a movie the first week of school next year and save yourself the eye strain and the paper cuts.

If you were a 7th grade teacher, you would be spending your weekend reading 120 poems that are all titled, "I can't write a poem!" and an additional 120 noun poems, most of which are about chainsaws and/or cheese. You would be exhausted from the first full week of entertaining and educating kidlets while trying to memorize their names, allergies, I.E.P. accommodations, favorite books, and their pets' names, both living and deceased pets in some cases. If you were a 7th grade teacher, you would fall asleep in your school shirt and casual day denim capris by 7:03 p.m. on Friday night.

And if you were a 7th grade teacher, you would wake up sometime Saturday still in your school clothes, hands stained with white board marker and/or yellow chalk dust, and a pencil still tucked behind your ear. And you would be thinking about what a great first week you'd had, and what a great year it was going to be.

And then you would toss the pencil on the floor and go right back to sleep.

Back to School Preperations, Part II

Believe it or not, teachers have to do a bit more than decorate their classrooms and run a bunch of copies before declaring themselves "ready" for the first day of school.



Teachers also have to prepare emotionally and spiritually to start the new year.



Some teachers prepare by spending the weekend at a spa .



Some teachers prepare by spending a day at the temple.



And some teachers prepare themselves by watching and re-watching the first ten minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" over and over and over.
Over the last five years, I have established a kind of routine for getting my self "ready" to go back to school. I spent this last weekend savoring the final moments of summer, and preparing for the always exciting adventure that is a new school year.

I reread some of my favorite books (If you haven't started reading "The Ranger's Apprentice" series, shame on you! The honors kidlets got me hooked two years ago... thank you, honors kidlets! I apologize for every time I made you sing silly grammar songs to the lunch ladies. Really. I do.), I ate a spicy chicken sandwich from Wendys, I sang along with the "Newsies" soundtrack as I did my laundry, watched my DVR-ed episodes of Top Chef and Project Runway, and I went to the $2 movie theater where I saw Star Trek... and several of my former and future kidlets.

I also straitened up my apartment so that I would have a nice comfy nest return to after Monday's marathon first day. My couch has been fluffed, a Vin Diesel DVD is in the machine ready to go, the remote control is at arm's reach, and my fridge drawer is fully stocked with Strawberry-Peanut butter M&M's.

I spent Sunday afternoon making key lime pies to give away in return for sweet boating-related service I have received in the last few weeks... and to keep here to munch on as a reward for returning to my 4:45 a.m. wake-up time.

Then a major rain storm rolled in. As I sat on the front steps, listening to the dripping and splashing and tinkling, I remembered perhaps the biggest "back to school" change of all:

I will no longer be able to go to the bathroom whenever I need/want to. All of you teacher-folks out there in blog land know what I am talking about, right? That is what I will miss most about summer vacation. My bladder aches just thinking about.

But I was eventually able to put my aching bladder out of my mind and focus on the beautiful downpour.

It was as if the rain was cleansing my cute little cow town in preparation for a bright new year. I sat on my steps, legs stretched out, and let the rain beat down on my feet. I breathed deeply (the wind was coming from the west, so the air was wet horse manure scented instead of wet cow manure scented... always a nice change) and enjoyed the zen-like moment.

And when the streaming rain turn back to a drizzle and the thunder and lightening had moved on to the far end of the valley, I took one last deep breath, stood up, walked back inside...... and went to the bathroom.

Not because I needed to, but just because I could.

I'm gonna miss that most of all.

Back to School Preperations, Part 1

This past Monday signaled the start of the new school year for the teachers in my district.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were filled with meetings and inservice classes. Lots of meetings and inservice classes, including one in which the school nurse warned that the safest course of action for the year was to treat everyone in the school like they had a communicable disease. That was probably not the best thing to say right before a team building trust-fall exercise... unless she wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon treating blunt force trauma injuries, that is.

Now, I am not usually a fan of meetings and inservices, but if we could have more sessions like the one I attended Tuesday afternoon titled, "Yoga Stress Release for Teachers", I would sing praises to the heavens every time an inservice day rolled around. For a brief minute or two, I considered scheduling in some yoga time between classes, but I quickly realized that the sight of me in yoga mode would startle any of the kidlets who might be walking by. And when kidlets get startled, the quite often piddle on the carpet. Of course, they also often piddle on the carpet when they laugh, cry, and sometimes when they sneeze. Kidlets are a lot like puppies except for... wait. Scratch that exception. Kidlets are a lot like puppies. Period.

But moving past the piddle....With my body and soul aligned, I felt more than ready to jump head first into Thursday's scheduled teacher work day. My goal for Thursday, and then again on Friday (for some strange reason I get a lot more work done on the days when I don't have to be there and am not getting paid) was to get my classroom prepared for the kidlet invasion that will happen on Monday.

But before I could prepare my room for the junior high experience, I had to prepare myself for the junior high experience. So I tossed my other musical selections for the week aside, broke out the Ace of Base, and felt the flood of pre-teen angst return as soon as I heard the first strains of "All That She Wants" start to play.

By the time my computer speakers were pumping out"Don't Turn Around", Mug Obama was in his place, filled with new writing utensils, and Rufas the burping naked mole rat hall pass had reported for duty.

Soon I was multitasking.

Writing the first day schedule on the board as I rocked out to "The Sign."

Then I was lip syncing along with "Cruel Summer" as I attempted to make the movie posters in my room more educational.

By the time the "Happy Nation Remix" started, my signs were up...

...and my lesson plans and copy runs for the whole first week were finished.
I should sleep well this weekend knowing that my syllabi are prepared, my class rules are posted, and the Wall of Shame is ready to host any and all no-name papers that appear in the turn in boxes.
With my room thus prepared, I no longer needed audio assistance from my 2nd favorite Swedish pop group. The smells of duct tape, copy toner, and cafeteria floor wax charged my teacher batteries and soon I was warming up the noodles...

... and harassing my other school district friends via Novell instant messaging.

I left school early this afternoon secure in the knowledge that my classroom was ready for the first day of school.

Of course a "prepared classroom" and a "prepared teacher" are not the same thing. So here's hoping I can power through my non-classroom related back to school preparations so that I can get a few nights sleep minus the walking into school in my underwear dreams.

Fair Play

Well... fair week has come and gone, leaving behind a bunch of tired but happy country folks in its wake.

But I couldn't let the past week pass on without extolling the many virtues of our cute little county fair just one more time.


One of my favorite parts of fair week is getting so see the various and sundry 4-H projects that my former and current kidlets worked so hard on. From giant sugar beets, to hand sewn clothing, to baked goods, to heifers, to pigs, to tractor maintenance, I am constantly amazed at their skills and talents.


And it would be near blasphemous to write a post about the fair without mentioning all of the delicious fair food. Corn dogs, cheeseburgers, corn on the cob, scones, funnel cakes, and the all-important maple bars taste better during fair week than during any other time of the year.

One of my other favorite aspects of the "county fair experience" is that no matter when you go, you always end up seeing 75 to 80% of all of the people you have ever met in your life. They are working in booths or showing animals or just walking around enjoying the unique ambiance created by dirt, manure, and fried food residue. Everywhere you look, friends and neighbors are visiting and getting caught up on everything that has happened in each other's lives since last year's fair.

Lets see... 4-H, fair food, long-lost friends... it feels like I have forgotten to mention something.

Oh, wait.

There is also that little rodeo thingy going on that week.

I guess I should probably mention that too, not that I am all that in to that sort of thing.

Cowboys. Sigh. Real ones. Double Sigh.

And now that the carnival rides have been hauled away, the stables mucked out, the 4-H pigs baconized, and the food booths boarded up, the time has come for me to think back on all of the many wonderful fair and/or manure related experiences of the past week and select my favorite; the memory that I will carry with me until next year's fair week rolls around.

Huuuummmmmm..... I wonder what it will be.....

Drum roll please......

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Kylie spray painting her heifer!

Where would someone come up with the idea to spruce up their showcow, preshow with a can of black spray paint? Only in a town where people of different religious beliefs, political persuasions, and socioeconomic backgrounds are all united in heart and spirit once a year in betting on GPS-tracked horse poop.

Have I mentioned lately that I love it here? Cuase I do.

Thank goodness fair week '10 is only 257 days away.

I can't wait!