Fun Conversations You Can Have When You're a Teacher

The other day, I thought one of my kids had snuck off to the bathroom to get high, and I didn't have time to check it out. I picked out a student that I knew was honest but probably had been to a party or two. "Hey," I asked him, "do you know what pot smells like?"

He froze. It was the funniest thing I had seen in a long time, watching those gears grind: Why is he asking me? Do I look stoned? No, I'm not stoned. If I say yes, will he think I'm a stoner? Will he think I'm stoned? Oh, crap! Am I stoned? No, I'm not stoned. Am I in trouble?

"It's okay if you say yes," I say, as reassuringly as possible. "You're not in trouble."

He nods quickly, as if I had asked the most obvious question in the world.

Things You Don't Know 'Cause You Have to Go to Work

Rumor has it that when Wrig wakes up, she streeeeetches her arms way over her head, pulls her shirt up to her chin (ensuring full belly exposure, which, I'm sure, is painfully tempting to the Zerbert Monster), and gently rubs her tummy.

She does this every day, I'm told.

If a=b, and b=c, then a= ...

So we're at the park on Sunday, and Wrigley's swinging away on the swing (which has been amazingly popular this week), and I'm pushing away on the swing, and Wrig announces as only a 2-1/2 year old can: "I'm having fun."

I reply, "Are you having fun? That's great!"

A brief pause. Swing swing swing. "This," she says, "is like the firetruck video."

"Really?" I ask, arching an eyebrow to the best of my limited eyebrow-arching ability. "How is this like the firetruck video?"

Another pause. Swing swing swing. She kind of licks her lips a little. "Well ... they're both fun!"

Who am I to argue?

Well, Alright...

Our friend Rosemary has had a blog for several years. Sometimes a game will come up, and so here I go diving into my first little blogger's game:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

1. "He served home cooked food at a small dining room table in the back, later opened a popular restuarant and motel, sold them to pay off debts, and at age 65 became a traveling sales man once again, offering restaurant owners the "secret recipe" for his fried chicken." Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation

2. "They will also, in all likelihood, push all our buttons, evoke all our insecurities, test all our limits and boundaries, and touch all the places in us where we fear to tread and feel inadequate or worse." - Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings, The inner Work of Mindful Parenting

3. "The left fielder had a good arm, and he got the ball right in to the second baseman, but when the dust settled Jennifer T. was safe with another double." Michael Chabon, Summerland

4. "All quick breads contain chemical leaveners (baking soda and baking powder) that are speedy and reliable." Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine, Baking Illustrated.

(That was surprisingly disatisfying! It would have been much better if we did the 6th sentence.)

At least somebody is

I took my fist leap into political phone calling last week. I know that all I've done is become a little checkmark on my senator's tally sheet of issues, but hopefully the phone call tally mark is a little darker than the email or even snail mail tally mark. I've done both emailing and snail mailing politicians to make my little squeak of a voice be heard, but I've never called.

When CSPI emailed me about contacting my senator about S1392 to improve foods in schools (it kills me that Ed's kids subsist on Mountain Dew, candy bars and Taco Bell throughout the school day every day), I wanted write off to my senator. But really now, I'm fairly certain they don't care about the emails, and it takes so long to address and stamp envelopes that I procrastinate writing Thank-you cards and mailing pictures to family. So what the heck, I decided to make the call. As an added bonus Working Assets, my long distance company, gives me a couple free calls to my congresspeople every month.

I figured I'd get an answering machine, so I wasn't really prepared to give a little speil about how I am a parent of a toddler and I want my kid's school to be free of junk food. But I got through to a person! I didn't even have to hold! I asked for the aide that the email told me to, and the receptionist asked me for my name and who I was with. I told her, "I'm not with anybody, I'm just me." Again waiting for the tally taker voice mail, I was surprised to speak with the aide. I introduced my self and told him I was calling in support of S1392, and asked what the senator's view is on it. He told me that the senator supports a similar bill and hadn't really worked much on this one. As we are wrapping up, he asks me who I'm with and again I explain I'm just a single voter and I'm not with anybody.

Wrigley, who had been drawing on the floor next to me the whole time, tells me after I hang up, "I'm with you Mommy."

Oh yeah! That's what it was!

So we're walking along, the three of us, loaded down with goodies from a "Bake Sale for Democracy." We're having a nice conversation when we see a headline from The Oregonian: "Judge hears gay marriage arguments."

I say to Christie, "Man, talk about special rights. When you and I have a fight, we have to work it out by ourselves."

Chris says, "You should blog that."

And you know the rest of the story ...

This might have been really funny

So we're walking along, the three of us, loaded down with goodies from a "Bake Sale for Democracy." We're having a nice conversation and I make a good joke. Chris says, "You should blog that!"

I reply, "I will!"

Since I have the memory of a flea, I have no idea what we were talking about. But I bet it was hysterical.

A Passion Play

A cozy backyard in Vancouver, WA. Late afternoon on an outrageously warm and sunny Easter Sunday. Two young girls, Lily (3) and Wrigley (2.5), are painting eggs. A dad, Ed (33 but still looking 12), looks on.

Lily: I'm going to paint mine greeeeen.
Wrig: I'm going to paint mine bluuuue.
(The two girls vigorously paint away. One egg each. Two eggs each. Solid green and solid blue.)
Ed: Look at all those colors. Why not try the red? Or the purple?
Lily: I'm using green.
Wrig: I'm painting mine blue.
(The girls begin work on a third egg each. Brook, another dad, enters.)
Brook: They're pretty consistent, huh?
Ed: Yeah. I've been trying to push the purple, but no dice.
Brook: Can I paint one girls?
Lily: You can paint this one. (She hands him the last egg)
Brook: Thanks. (He reaches for a paintbrush)
Lily: You can paint it green.

Everything's Coming Up Tulips

Last week Wrig and I went off to the Tulip Festival. Since we live in the NW, we were required to do so several years ago. Ed didn't go, so he is still not an Oregonian in good standing. As we were leaving, I said to my friend, Ali, who drove us, "Hey, I had a GREAT time." You must be thinking, "Tulip festival - great time???"

The tulips were pretty cool. Seeing long row after long row of tulips was fun for about 20 minutes which, coincidentally, was about the same amount of time the kids enjoyed running up and down the long rows. Our picnic lunch was the usual struggle of trying to get the kids' to eat enough food to keep them from coming back every half hour grumpy complaining, "I'm hungry," (Well, kid, if you'd eaten the lunch, which, by the way, consists of all your favorite things, I packed you..... Sorry different post!).

After lunch we wandered over to the quaint little children's garden, sandbox and playhouse. My friends and I stood around for a while watching the kids and intervening occasionally to keep sand out of hair. Eventually, we found a bench. When the bench was taken over by other people on one foray to protect the cute miniature windmill from being destroyed by our lightening fast super-destructo 2 year olds, we just sat in the sawdust.

Eventually, the kids wandered over to the empty pony ride (whew - pony rides are just about the most depressing thing) which gave them far more pleasure than a 3 minute ride on a pony could have any day. 2 HOURS later, we finally left. Those kids ran around and around pretending to be ponies, rode on the bars, crawled in the hay, and entertained themselves forever. The older kids took care of the younger - first spinning slowly, then guiding them out of the pony area and playing with them in the hay so the others could go fast. Ali only had to lift herself up from the sawdust a couple times to take her kids to the Port-a-Potty (the one time I am thankful that my kid is not potty trained!) and once to get an Elephant Ear.

We took a 3.5 hour trip to the tulip festival. Any 3.5 hours where we barely had to lift a finger parenting constitutes a GREAT time!

How ya gonna do it if you really don't wanna dance?

When was the last time you were running so fast you practically skittered past your turn on one foot? Okay, when was the last time you ran in excitiement and enthusiasm or even to get somewhere more quickly (jogging for excersize and protecting small children from the street don't count!)? Wrigley does this every hour of the day. This morning, in classic Bugs Bunny fashion she over shot the stairs and skittered on one foot on her way to watch Dad do the mundane chore of shaving. This morning as Ed and I are begging for 5 more minutes in bed, Wrig is racing upstairs and pounding across the ceiling above our heads to get her ambulance. You know, the one she hasn't seen since last night at 7:30. Yesterday, as we were setting up a project where we paint with our feet, Wrigley is doing the dance of joy saying "I'm excited, I'm excited!!" Do you have a dance of joy? I think we all need to get one.

I Swear This is True

While having breakfast with my cousin Evan and his 17 year old daughter (who was checking out colleges in the northwest), he interrupts our conversation and says, "Lon, look!"

We all turn and what do we see? A combination of 8-10 bikers and joggers moving down Hawthorne Blvd butt nekkid. That's right. Naked as they day they were born.

Chris says, "Huh. I wonder what that's all about?"

All I could say was, "Welcome to Portland!"

Misheard

(my cousin) Evan: We appreciate that.
W: Wha ... what did he say?
Me: Who?
W: Him ... about ... about a ... about a piece of cake?
Me: Oh! He said "appreicate," not "a piece of cake." Appreciate means to be thankful for something.

I don't think Wrigley was very thankful, though she probably would have appreciated a piece of cake.