Story A Day

The snow that has fallen over the last week is perfect, sticky snow.  Perfect for snowballs.  Perfect for snow sculptures.  Perfect for plopping.  Just ask a third grader – they know.  So, of course, animal tracks become less exciting when there is snow to be formed into a nice round sphere.  So today we went with the urge to get those globs of snow to stick together.  I was teaching a class about classification of animals.  So, instead of building snowmen we built snow creatures.  Each group built a creature that had the necessary features for that type of animal – ie: one group made a creature with three main body parts and six legs – a snow insect!  They had fun and I was relieved to be teaching some content while still letting them play in the snow  

After returning from our trip via the germ tube (ie: an airplane), I am experiencing a bit of under-the-weatherness.  Or perhaps I am catching the nasty cold that a few of our traveler partners had.  However, I am hopeful that after a good long nap and a good nights sleep I will be feeling better   As a result I am not going to be able to post all of my photos yet, but here is a preview.  I took this photo along the boardwalk area of downtown Puerto Vallarta.  There was a guy carving these enormous and incredibly intricate sand scultpures.  This thing was about 8 feet tall.  The man carving the scupltures had only one leg and somehow made his way around these things with crutches, without wrecking them…amazing.  We gave him a good tip in his box for a job well done   More photos to come… 

Tim and I are back from 4 days in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  We had a great time, along with all the other folks from the company Tim works at.  I’ll post some photos of the trip soon, it was full of sun, beaches and relaxation.  And the homecoming was great too because a rockstar friend of ours shoveled for us while we were gone, so we didn’t even have to worry about shoveling a foot of snow to get in the garage when we got home late tonight!  More to come soon, for now, time to sleep!

Predictions by local meteorologists note that winter, in it’s snowy form, may be deciding to make a big appearance this weekend.  It started out as a “maybe” and now a few of them are predicting a snow storm bigger than we’ve had in 8 years.  I have to say that I am a bit disappointed with the timing.  A few weeks ago I was begging for snow.  But now that we have had a taste of the warm temps, frankly, I am ready for spring to begin its arrival.  But, I guess winter has to go out with a bang right.    We’ll see what happens over the weekend!  I’ll be taking a break from my daily blogging for the next few days but I’ll be back to it next week!

Yesterday I blogged about dancing raindrops.  I noticed them again today as I arrived at work.  The warm weather lasted another day – yippeee!  I call my blog “dancing” third graders because I think those raindrops from yesterday are a bit of a metaphor of my work with the little ones today.  See, those raindrops fell randomly and quickly.  I was never quite sure where one might land next.  Today my kids were all over the place, I was never quite sure where they’d go next!  A hyper bunch.  The good thing was that although they were hyper, they were completely engaged in the moment.  Learning something at each hyper moment, I think.  Whether it was crouching down and exclaiming LOUDLY about the snow fleas, or whether it was RUNNING to try and see a wild turkey closer, or whether it was SLIDING gleefully over a shallow, iced-over pool of water, they were learning something.  They loved it. 

I walked out the door today without my hat and gloves on, rejoicing in the balmy weather!  Balmy as in over 30 degrees for you out-of-staters!  Wow.  True bliss after the previous two weeks of painful cold.  I taught digital photography to a group of fifth graders today and had a truly enjoyable time.  Unfortunately, I can’t always say that about my groups, so I am grateful when I can   Today’s group was a fun bunch of kids who were really interested in the task of being photographers.  I was struck at one point today when a girl in the group said “I want to take a picture of the dancing raindrops.”  I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I asked her to tell me more.  She pointed toward the building where large drops fell of the roof onto a line of water on the deck.  Indeed, the rainsdrops could be described as “dancing” as they each fell unpredictably at different points along the roof line.  Each fell onto a standing puddle of water so a splash erupted with each hit.  It was almost hypnotic to watch, and quite enjoyable.  I could see why she wanted to try to capture it in a photo.  I don’t think any of them fully succeeded in that task since the location of the drops was so unpredictable but if f you’d like to check out their great work from today you can visit: http://valleybranch.spps.org/gallery/photos/saari07/index.htm

Enjoy!  And may the raindrops dance on with continued balmy weather!!

This is my new nickname for Napoleon (the dog we are watching for a month or two for those who have not read previous entries).  He has this fuzz addiction.  He licks fuzz off the carpet, he eats the dust bunnies that he finds in nooks of my house, he pulls fuzz bits off his stuffed animals.  I think it is fairly humorous   though I try to make sure he doesn’t consume too much fuzz in one day.  This evening was especially amusing because I gave Tim a haircut and as the hair fell to the floor Napoleon was perched like a cat about to pounce.  He was very good though and obeyed our commands to stay away.  I just couldn’t help but laugh as I saw him perched there, watching every clump of hair fall to the floor like most dogs watch food their owner’s hand.  Silly dog

I have to admit that today was a pretty depressing day.  I spent all day in real estate continuing education classes, one of which focused on fraud in the industry.  The packet of case studies was sad and anger-inducing.  I felt quite bitter and upset by the end of the class as I pondered how these white-collar criminals sleep at night knowing that they are screwing over vulnerable people.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.  The saddest part of it all was that the title company owner teaching the class estimates that over half of the transactions that cross her desk would fall into her definition of predatory lending.  Again, Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.  It never ceases to amaze me how the privileged and educated abuse their power and knowledge at the expense of those who are more vulnerable.   Personally, I have no problem watching well-educated, power hungry, greedy, white-collar criminals head to their jail cells.  No sympathy.  They know exactly what they are doing.  This is not exactly in the tone of my normal blog entries, but I am really mad today.  I know I will wake up tomorrow with my perspective back…I cannot save the world, I can only influence my small corner of this big, crazy world.  But my small corner can be an honest place, a caring place…so, for that I will strive.  But for tonight, I’m just going to be mad

The flip side…
Tim knows I’m crabby tonight so he just called me in to watch a story on Jason Davis’ “On the Road.”  “This will make you feel better,” he said.  Jason Davis ”went on the road to Truman, Minnesota to learn more about the remarkable teenager who saved the town’s last remaining grocery store.”  There are good people in the world too.

My mom invited us over to her house this evening for dinner and a doggy play date.  Her boyfriend recently got a new dog – a GIANT one, it’s a Samoya (not sure if that’s spelled right), it weighs somewhere around 95 pounds – yowsers!  My sister and her husband were also there with two German Sheperds and a Cocker Spaniel.  Plus, Sadie, my mom’s Springer Spaniel was there.  In case you’re counting the grand total, including Napoleon, was a whopping 6 dogs!!!  Let’s just say not a whole lot of sentences were completed without a dog command in the middle somewhere.  Surprisingly, they all got along quite well.  But I will say it was pretty wild!!

I am looking forward to next week for a couple of reasons.  First, my cheeks hate me.  It’s been friggin’ cold here lately!!!  And next week the temperatures are supposed to rise to a relatively roasting 30 degrees!  See, my cheeks are the one part of my body that I can’t do much to cover when I need to talk to kids while outside in the frigid air.  So, I’ve surrendered to the sad fact that I will probably age faster than my peers   My face gets abuse in the winter and no matter the amount of face cream I lather on, I think it still hates me.  And today the kids guessed my age as 24, they used to always guess 18, I guess that means I am looking older   Aside from the warming temperatures the other reason I am looking forward to next week is the conclusion of the cliffhanger episode of Grey’s Anatomy – oh my gosh!!!  For those of you who are avid veiwers out there – oh my gosh!!!  They can’t kill Meredith – the show is named after her!!!  Hmmmm…we’ll see what happens next Thursday!