Kinda Like a Hippie

How many do I get?

By my calculations (Hey quit laughing. I can do basic math, which gives me the right to use the word calculations.) he has slept in my bed approximately 2,790 nights. He has been there almost every night since we first walked out of the baby home in Moldova in June 1999. Oh, in reality there are a lot of nights when he is not sleeping with me. When we are at The Boyfriend's house he sleeps in his room there (cable TV there ya know). There are nights when he is at a friend's house or visiting his Grammy, or at camp, or a variety of things. So I took off a few weeks worth for each year to do my calculating. It is not like he can't sleep alone or has any kind of sleep issues. It is just what we have always done. I believe in it. I believe in the great bonding it helped create when he first came into my life. I believe that baby and young things need to be with their mothers, as much as possible and especially at night. My other son, Will, slept with me from the time he came home from the hospital, and I regret that in the month before his first birthday I was putting him in his crib to sleep some nights. He never made it to his first birthday and I lost the opportunity for more.

So, haha! I made up for it with this one! Who knew? Who knew he would be almost 10 years old and still like to fall asleep in my bed? Who knew how much fun it would be to see him first thing every morning and feel his warm little boy body against my back? I had no idea how great it would be to hear my son's voice first thing in the morning telling me the first thought he has for the day. I had no idea the great conversations we would have at the end of the day and the silly games we would play as we lay there in the dark at the end of the day saying good-night. Now I have the wonderful memories.

I remember someone saying to me once, "It's going to be really hard to break him of that habit." I replied with "Who's gonna try to break him of it? He'll get tired of it long before I will."  And that still holds true. I often look at him and wonder... how much longer? How many more nights do I get before he decides no more, before something in his internal clock says he needs his space? 10? 100? 1000?

It will not be enough for me.

After the After

So, I stole 45 minutes from grading papers tonight and created a little woolen tree.

I have to say it is cuter in real life, and pinker. I will do a couple of things differently on my next one. I still have papers to grade and dishes in the sink, but I'm feelin' kinda Christmasy anyway!

Before and After

I'm all about reduce, reuse and recycle. Or I would be if I wasn't so much into hurryhurrygrabajuicebaglet'sgo.

I am also all about being delusional and thinking I live a life that has no relation to the reality which is my existence. You know, that one where I have time to bake and decorate cakes and grow my own produce which I will make into interesting centerpieces before composting them to add to my organic herb garden (hey I have a few herbs in with the weeds in the flower beds!). Yeah, that one. That one that also includes me making all sorts of useful and perhaps even marketable items out of everyday household cast-offs. The one that I still purchase for, because it does not count as over consumerism if someone else had it before or it is neccessary for sustenance (that's what the cookbooks fall under right?).

I now offer you the latest in my travels down a lane we will call "wow it is so fun to have a lot of free time to play around with things we buy at rummage sales and thrift shops." Or as we refer to it in these parts: Nonreality Avenue.

BEFORE:

5 used wool sweaters.

After:

5 felted wool sweaters.

Thicker, smaller and ready to be repurposed. I only wish I had a great idea for what to make. Oh yeah, and the time to do it.  (Ever wonder about the quality of this blog? That's because it is done in a very short amount of time after the kid has gone to bed, before I fall asleep- no rough drafts, no revision and very little higher order thinking. Sorry you lose.)

I'm thinkin' a purse/tote type bag and maybe trying to construct one of the cool trees that Vallen has on her blog, Queenly Things.

All ideas and suggestions will be accepted and considered and I will get started on them before Christmas (2009).

Too tired to title

I've been teaching in this town for 14 years and tonight was the first school board meeting I have attended. Seems hard to believe, even for me, so perhaps I've been but have supressed the memory.

Hey, it could happen!

I have decided that I will go to more of them, just to see how the excitement compares to this one. It was pretty interesting tonight. The populace was displeased with recent actions at one of the district's schools and also with the way it was dealt with by administrators.

In the good news arena... my student that is now in Alternative Education Placement for his infraction I wrote about in my last post is attending as sanctioned and doing well. I have visited and taken work to him twice and already gotten it back completed. He is making good grades too. I'm really proud of him. When I go over I sit down by him and encourage him and praise him for his effort ... and he will barely look at me. I really like this kid and he barely tolerates me! But ya know? You never know.

Really this is only here because I just have to move on from that last post. I really can't bear the thought of it hovering there at the top of the blog any longer. I used really profound words like asshead, which besides being kind of tacky, is an annoying mental image if you look at it and think about it for too long.

Why I Need a Rubber Helmet

Or The Walls Upon Which I Beat My Head.

OR  The Post Where I use BULLET Points Just to Make Myself Feel Better. Because I feel the need to use the word BULLET.

And the first bullet goes to

* The asshead mom whose son flunked my class for the first grading period because he failed to complete any (not one iota) of the required outside reading, who then proceeded to defend his lies and make excuses for him while lying to me about my classtoom practices, thus blaming me for his failure.

* Oh, a double winner, she gets another bullet. This time for being a total bitch when I called to let her know that her son had a test the next day that he refused to take notes for during the review, and also that he had left an important flyer on his desk with information that she would want to know. I, erroneously, thought she would appreciate the heads up so that she could help him be successful. Foolish, foolish me. I should have known that she would blame me, after making multiple excuses and informing me that he was off his meds that day. They were out of them and needed to go back to the doctor. Uh, yeah, I think I figured that out when he was bouncing off the walls, was rude and belligerant, answered everything I said with a smart ass remark and tried to stab another student in the arm with a pencil. According to her it is not his fault and I must not be meeting his modifications corrrectly and he didn't have his meds. Um, yeah, you said that. Well, guess what? I can't give him his meds. If you know he can't function without them and you don't give them to him, how is his failure my fault? Really? Sounds like parental neglect to me?

* How about the dad of the two brothers that have missed several days of school, most notably Mondays? He deserves his own bullet --- point that is. (I have one brother this year and had one last year. The student this year is a couple of years older and a grade behind the one I had last year. Last year, Johnny ended up in the alternative placement of our school where he sat and refused to do any work and then was withdrawn to be "homeschooled". A few months later he returned to AEP where he sat and refused to do any work. I am not exagerrating. I took work over, explained it to him and got no completed work back. We socially promoted him to the next grade. This year's brother, David, is easier to tolerate and he is trying and completing his work. Now, if I can just get him to stop yelling out random and somewhat inappropriate things in class in response to my questions. "He's getting his wife an abortion!" was in response to "What is the character getting here that makes him happy?" The correct answer was extra rice.) The vice principal went to make a home visit on Monday at 10:00 am. The boys and a younger brother were all home. Dad was eating breakfast. VP gives the boys a ride to school. Youngest boy asks if they are still in time to get lunch because he is so hungry. He didn't have breakfast. VP says, "Your dad was just sitting there eating breakfast, why didn't you eat?" Elementary age child replies, "He just made that for him, not for us."

*This one would go right into my foot I guess. (Or perhaps my heart.) A kid with lots of issues, modifications, low reading level, chip on his shoulder, and god only knows what else going on has been making steady progress. I have been so proud of him, and I thought he might make it and see some real success. We have built a tenuous, shaky, cat and mouse rapport and after much stress and coming to terms with who was running the show (me) have been working well together. My emotional and time investment was accruing at a rapid rate. Against all odds I liked this kid. Then he brought his friend MaryJane to school. I didn't see it, and in fact didn't know about it until I saw his name on the suspension list the next day. I cried. If he comes back after suspension and time in AEP I know we will be back to square one. This is not a kid who will see just punishment for a major infraction and broken law. He will only become more out of sync with the school world and more behind for being gone. Really, it won't be back to square one. We'll be dealing in negatives here.

* One for the bat that decided to hang out in the hallway across from my room 6 days late for Halloween.

OMG! It's a blah blah mommy blog.

I can't help it. Today I am overcome with momness. I have lost all sense of reality and expect you to be as interested in my kid and his Halloween costume as I am. And the reality is I am interested in your kid and his costume, because I am a Halloween junkie. I love that stupid holiday. It was hard for me for a few years after Will died,and I still avoid graveyards (they have a different meaning to me now), and I don't think about ghosts. Somehow I look past all that and just enjoy the silliness of it. The kidness of it. I like it that it is an American folk culture tradition. We have so few of those.

Mine is the astronaut.

Halloween is one of those times that I am glad that I live in small town America. Halloween is still a big deal here. Even high school kids go trick or treating, or just walk around in the streets with everyone else. It is a very social occasion.

This is at the Methodist church.

I think I had as much fun as the Hippiekid last night. And thanks to him I have enjoyed it for the last 8 years. It was a beautiful evening, not hot or cold and not raining (that was an interesting year).

They've added this new walk to an old house.

It is interesting to see our town from a different angle. I pass house above almost everyday. It is very near the middle school. I always think it is cool looking and very historical, but I never knew what a unique walkway it had until last night. All the squares have a  raised scene on them of Texas type things. It was really pretty. I wish I had taken a close up.

I think Boo Radley lives here.

Little Neil Armstrong picked his costume up last summer when we passed through the Houston airport. (And I bought the helmet online as a surprise. I love the internet.) So it's over for another year, but he told me yesterday that he has already decided what he is going to be next year. He has it all designed in his head. He's going to be a "hippie ghost", with a sheet painted with hippie flowers and peace signs in neon colors. God, he makes his mother proud.