An Actual Conversation

I was arrested by masked vigilantes yesterday. I didn't remember until I checked the camera.



See?

I was just standing there, minding my own business, when my arms were grabbed and pulled behind my back.

Them: You're under arrest!

Me: Hey! You got nothing on me!

Them: You're going to jail!

Me: What'd I do?

Them: You beat a nun!

Me: I... whuh?

Them: And now you'll go to jail forever!

Me: Wait... a nun? What nun? Where...?

Them: *maniacal laughter*

Me: I'm not making masks for you guys anymore.

Them: Ok, you can go.

How four year olds got it in their heads to apprehend nun-assailants I do not know. All I know is it was hilarious. Nice to see they have their priorities in line too.

Good at Stealth, Bad at Hygiene

I've been watching too many cryptozoology shows on Discovery Channel.

Yesterday, it warmed up to 0 and there was no wind so I thought I would walk to the store. I didn't even need snowpants, but I should probably have remembered gloves. Oh well. I cut behind the senior center and since that was near where I saw the polar bear that one time, I became more cautious. Nothing ruins a nice stroll for some corn chips like ending up a red smear on the snow. Snowpants or not, I can't outrun one of those things.

So I'm in alert mode, and maybe my senses heightened a little too much because all of a sudden, I'm just about to gag from the stink. Just a terrible, oily, greasy, rancid, sickly sweet, rotten meat funk.

And the first dorky thought to go through my mind? It was: Isn't Bigfoot supposed to stink?

Like there was a Bigfoot hanging out behind the old folks' home. Maybe to meet women. I don't know. Then I realized that there were two skin boats being stretched back there and it was the skins I was smelling. (They stretch and bleach and other things for whaling season.) My second thought was a little more relevant. Would that reek draw in polar bears? I got out of there. I couldn't breathe and bears rate pretty high on my threat levels.

And Bigfoot is tricksy:


Heehee! I like his expression in the bottom one. I've made that face a few times. I don't remember if I had a bat.

Children Stories That We Hate (a rant)

Our book club kinda devolved into a open bar/buffet/bitchnmoan session, but we do still discuss books. Our last meeting got onto books we hate to read out loud. We’re all elementary school teachers, so we have to do this on a regular basis. We all teach different grades, so the list is a little varied. Charlotte’s Web is hard to read without crying. A Taste of Blackberries. Bridge to Terabithia. That sort of thing. Everybody had some they really dreaded coming around in the curriculum.

I deal with shorter children, so I read shorter stories. But everyone agreed that these were depressing and terrible to read to a class. These are my three.

The Giving Tree: OMG. I’ve heard a lot of different arguments about it. Some say the kid is thoughtless and selfish. Some say it’s a parable about unconditional love. Some say the tree is the boy’s by right of being made in God’s own image and would be useless if he didn’t make something out of it. Some say it’s just a tree and feels nothing for the boy or its own dismantling. I don’t care. I just hate the story. I think this should’ve happened on page 2 and saved me a lot of time.

The Rainbow Fish: What is the message here? If you want to be popular allow those who would shun you otherwise to tear the parts of you they envy from your flesh? That being special and unique means nothing if you don’t cater to the wishes of everyone around you? That your own happiness means so little that you are expected to mutilate yourself and call it ‘sharing’. Nothing says ‘good friend’ like letting someone who resents you pull a piece of your body off so they can pretend they are you! Buffalo Bill in a children’s book!

I’ll Love You Forever: Is this supposed to be heartwarming? It’s not. It starts out ok. Mom loves baby no matter how bratty. But she doesn’t seem to notice that baby grows up. Her obsession reaches the point where, in his adult years, she breaks into his house to hold and fondle him in his sleep. Two things I thought, even as a kid? #1. How does he sleep through this? I’m partially deaf and a heavy sleeper and I still wake up when the cat walks across my head. And #2. There’s a reason there’s no wife to also be awoken by Psycho-Obsesso Mom and her ladder. One encounter with that for a potential mother-in-law and a husband who has been conditioned to some bizarre midnight Mommy ritual and any girl with good sense and someone to call for a ride will be outta there.

Wow. I needed that. Apologies to everyone who actually likes these books, but I meant every word and writing them was therapeutic. Ahhh. Now I can sleep.

I Have Found This To Be True

And without the one, the other would not exist.

Be that as it may, guess which kind I seem to have the most of in class?

TGIF

The Beast What Stares

Formed from an unholy combination of orange and purple play-dough, this creature was given shape during a crumb pick-up from under the tables. Too contaminated to ever be allowed back in the bucket with the clean play-dough, but still malleable, it was granted eyes from the bead box. I'll let it dry and if anyone asks, I'll say it's a tailypo.

We had a huuuuge (by preschool standards) debate over what a tailypo looked like after I told them that story. Some thought it was a dinosaur, some thought it was a fox, some thought it was more like a tiger. The fact that we stayed on subject long enough for that is incredible for three and four year olds.

a waste of good suffering

This is hilarious to me…

I have to write a comparative paper on different psychologists for my Social/Emotional Development class and first up is E.L. Thorndike.

So far I’ve learned that he locked cats up into puzzle boxes to see how they escaped. Kind of a Schrödinger meets Hellraiser kind of a thing. Kind of. That image was funny enough by itself. Add to that how often the general chaos of working in a preschool is referred to is ‘herding cats’ and boom! Insight! Why bother keeping them in a herd when I can just funnel them into some sort of maze?

I can set up a lawn chair at a good vantage point and call down hints to the ones that can count to 20 or know their colors. They’re safe, active, and involved. It could work!

I haven’t read far enough to find if Thorndike suddenly disappeared and became a new paradox of his own. (Is he inside the cats? We won’t know unless we open them, but we won’t because every time we think it, all their yellow eyes focus on us and just burnnnnn…Has anyone else read Felidae?)

Speaking of focus, back to work.

Is that a rabbit over there?

In other news, I have given up working around the three year old attention span and am now making it work for me. A bus went by the window and you would've thought it was a Macy's parade float shaped like a unicorn with Hannah Montana's face, ridden by Transformers firing pixie stick cannons the way they screamed and flocked to the glass.

"A bus!" they screamed as if every wish of mankind had been suddenly, beautifully granted. "Teacher! A BUS!!!" Just like the ones you ride twice every day, I considered saying, but sarcasm is wasted on hysterical K3s.

"Uh-huh," I said. "Wow," I said.

"You're not even looking!" despaired one. Eternal rapturous joy had come and I wasn't even paying attention.

"Sorry," I said. "Doing this right now."

I was suddenly faced with the most belligerent of the flock, who was glaring at me.

"I can't BELIEVE you missed it," he growled. I had offended him, all his ancestors, and all future descendants. How dare I even have eyes if I was to so shamefully waste them.

"There's a picture of a cat on the wall," I said. His head whipped around like Linda Blair's.

"Where??"

"There by the calendar," I said, pointing, He forgot me, he forgot the bus, he probably forgot the rest of that day, but he did lure the herd away from the window to stare at the picture of the cat I got off Google images for Pet Week. Gotta love Google.

A Sure Sign I Stayed Up Too Late

I decided BPAL needed to make a line of scents for the Lost Boys, and since they probably weren't going to by tomorrow, I went ahead and made up some of my own. (Please note, I know exactly squat about mixing fragrances and some of the things I picked might be able to knock a wolverine off a month old moose carcass when combined. No disrespect to the folks at BPAL who actually know what they are doing. I'm just passing the time before morning.)

David
The leader of the Pack. Leather and night winds give form to the monster, blood, musk with a taste of wine, and Chinese spice.

Marco
Bright-eyed, brightly colored as a bird. Golden musk, citrus, and vetiver,

Paul
Leonine ferocity. Sandalwood, amber, and heavy musk with a touch of motor oil.

Dwayne
Still waters running deep and dark. Pennyroyal, moss, and cedar, over cool notes, like rare, deep laughter.

Laddie
Little child lost on the midway after the lights go off. Just a lingering taste of cotton candy over light pine, and rich orange.

Star
Brightness fallen into darkness. Lemongrass and white musk, with an almost forgotten whiff of innocence like peony.

Michael Emerson
Big brother with a reckless streak. Cedar and musk, with windblown tangerine.

Sam Emerson
Cedar and pepper, with some homesick vanilla stirred in.

Grandpa
Mellow, but deceptively so, with sharpness underneath. Cedar and clary sage, bergamot and sassafras.

Lucy
A boy’s best friend is his mother. Clean linen with yellow apple and green tea and sweetened with vanilla.

Nanook
The Protector. Oakmoss and cedar with undertones of musky leather.

The Frog Brothers
Edgar and Allen. Dry pages and midnight oil mixed with the scent of fresh wood shavings and chocolate.

Santa Carla
The Murder Capitol of the World. Warm and windy, the carnival atmosphere is all that holds back a primal fear of the dark. Dry, airy notes with black musk, festive cherry and orange highlights, too sweet candy, and bloody sawdust.

Max
King of the Wild Things. Mild-mannered dry pear and a lonely light musk with hungry undertones of blood and vetiver.

Thor
The Hellhound. Sharp musk and brimstone masked in a soft amber to hide its bite.

How did I get on this? Oh, yeah... I was watching the new Nightmare on Elm Street trailers and that got me thinking of the first scary movie I had ever seen which I think was Lost Boys (the first movie to make me hide my eyes was Raiders of the Lost Ark. I didn't want to see the big man get filleted by the airplane propeller and I was like, three. Maybe four. Little. But the first actual movie that was maybe meant to be scary and I watched by myself was Lost Boys and then after that I saw where BPAL had made a Hellboy line and I said "Why not a Lost Boys one? T'would be awesome!"

Ok. I have no excuse. I'm going to bed now.

Excellent use of a snow day:

Not that I’ll ever get one….



I need to bring Totoro in for my class on the next movie day. I didn’t see it until college, and that’s a shame. And more people need to see it so I won't have to explain things like "Why did that giant rabbit eat the smaller ones??" and "What's with that grin?" and most often, "What IS that??"

Does anyone else have conversations like this?

Mom: (completely out of nowhere) Will you be good to me when I’m in a nursing home?
Me: Uh… I guess…?
(there’s a pause where we both laugh)
Me: I always assumed you wouldn’t go to one.
Mom: What, you’d kill me before then?
Me: Wha?
Mom: I don’t think you or your sisters have it in you to smother me with a pillow.
Me: (giggling) Ohhh, I don’t know… We might summon up the strength, along with some bad memories from childhood…
Mom: (also laughing) Nope. You don’t have the guts.
(we’re both hysterical for a minute)
Me: Have you had this conversation with Dad? Questioned his stomach for killing?
Mom: (still laughing, shakes head.)
Me: Maybe if you were a skunk!* (and then we both howled with laughter.)

*My poor father has been under siege from the local skunk clans. Not as stealthy as ninjas, but in their own way, just as bad.

The Fan Fiction Personality Test

Silliness to start a Thursday.

Your result for The Fan Fiction Personality Test...

The Mindgamer

Everything is possible, nothing is ever really over.

Fanfiction is a creative outlet for you. You don't intentionally write it, it just happens. You find inspiration in several fandoms, but are not obsessed with only one.

You like to explore "what if" situations. What if this character had never made this very choice? What if this event had taken place sooner, never, elsewhere? What if these people had never met?

You are likely to write Alternative Universes, fan seasons or sequels and just follow your (sometimes pretty strange) plot bunnies.

Take The Fan Fiction Personality Test at OkCupid

"Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it."

Stumbled over this whilst bloghopping.

It has David Tennant frolicking around as the most adorable Ghost of Christmas Present ever. I would now like to nominate Samuel Elliott as the Ghost of Christmas Past, and Ron Perlman as the Ghost of Christmas Future. Yes.

And a random thought: Why wasn't Paranormal Activity in 3D? If they can do crappy horror movies in 3D, why not one that's actually supposed to be scary? Why not Alien? Facehuggers in 3D could damage me beyond all repair.

On the other hand, Invader Zim would be so fun in 3D! Or Dark City! And in other 'wouldn't it be cool?' thoughts, I think Pixar's next movie should be The Underneath by Kathi Appelt. It's got everything, sweetness, bittersweetness, cute animals, scary animals, beauty, humor, awe, heartbreak, history, mystery, promises that will not be broken, and the bonds of love and family. Throw in some songs and it's magic!