Quite Well Indeed

List #1: Things I Can't Tolerate:

1. Danny and Melinda
2. Incompetent Adults
3. Apathetic People
4. How the WB Won't Put out Everwood Season 2 on DVD
5. Couples Who Put on the "We're a Couple Show"

List #2: Things That I Have True Love For:

1. Nick Hornby (please write a new book soon)
2. Having a Crush on Someone When You Are 24
3. Everwood (I'm totally naming my son Ephram, and I don't care if my mother says she'll call him Peyton instead. Also, I don't care that I'm not Jewish, since apparently Ephram is a Jewish name.)
4. Getting an Excellent Idea for My Classroom (Particularly when I know that I'm going to blow the pants off of my department when I share it at our next meeting, and they will all have to admit my superiority. Competitive much? I know; I can't help it. The older I get, the more I realize that there's a not so small part of me that is truly driven towards world domination.)
5. Being my Students' Favorite Teacher
6. Lizard's Thicket
7. My Sunday Morning Run
8. My Independence
9. Obese Kids
10. Buying New Pants
11. When the Blog Spellcheck wants me to change "Ephram" to "apron."
(11 is such a random number for list-making, isn't it?)

And now, a poem of sorts:

See, I figure,
as long as it's easier to make
List#2
than it is to make
List #1,
I'm doing quite well.

a not so triumphant return

ok, so it's been a long time. a long, long, long time. and you know, i wonder now if anyone even checks my blog anymore. i wonder if people, who maybe used to look at it from time to time, now just say to themselves, "she won't have updated it," and go on about their day.

there is know way for me to know if this happens or not.

it just gets really hard. one day, it's april, and then the next thing you know, it's october. and it literally is like there was an hour in between the two.

so, speaking of october, i've given the children an extra credit assignment to decorate a pumpkin so that it resembles their favorite fictional character, from any book they have ever read in their lives. i stressed the words "fictional character." FICTIONAL.

and here's what happened:
kid no. 1: oh! oh! oh! i'm going to do jessica simpson.
me: no, no you aren't.
kid no. 1: why not? i love her.
me: i realize that, but there is no book about her. she is REAL, not fictional.
kid no. 2: that ain't fair. she can't help that.
me: oh my god.
kid. no. 3: i think i'll do tom brady.
me: this isn't happening.
kid no. 3: i like him. his name starts with the same letter as mine. i like to make my t's bigger than the other letters.
me: somebody kill me.
kid. no. 2: no no no, why? what's wrong with you?
me: F-I-C-T-I-O-N-A-L
kid. no. 4: i know what that spells.
me: i would hope so. do we know what that means?
random kids: yes!! it means "not real."
me: ok. so if we are doing our pumpkins on fictional characters, and we know what fictional means, why are we talking about jessica simpson and tom brady?
kid no. 3: oh, i get it. they can't unfictional?
me: um...yes...that's sort of...well, i guess we could call living people nonfictional, but not unfictional, because that isn't a word.
kid no. 4: ok, well can i do that wack boy from punk'd?

jeez louise.