And I pity any girl who isn't me tonight!

I think I may have to change my name to Maria, this award makes me feel so pretty!



I am so flattered – thank you so much Pseudonymous High School Teacher!





Here are the rules:

1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.

2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you've newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Okay (she cracks her knuckles and hunches over the laptop in serious concentration), here we go:

1. The Secret is in the Sauce.

2. Cookie Girl Creations (yum).

3. Uncovering Foods. (hmmmm I'm seeing a trend)

4. Joan of All Trades.

5. Bumps in the Road.

6. Bakerella.

7. A Form of Therapy.

8. Jam Jar Boogie.

9. Apron Goddess.

10. Momversations. I realize this isn't technically speaking a blog BUT I'm a rule breaker, ya know?

11. Two Under Two. Whew! (no kidding)

12. Candid Carrie.

13. detention slip (I'm not letting them know they won this award - they would laugh at me.)

14. The Dark Side of the Chalkboard.

15. Pioneer Woman.

Yay!

ah, crap.

Remember in Romeo and Juliet, when Juliet realizes that Romeo is a Montague and laments, “my only love sprung from my only hate!”? No? You weren’t paying attention? That happens. A lot. BUT, if you do remember that, my mistake was exactly like that … only the complete opposite.

When I was five months pregnant with the Peanut, I was in my glory. My husband treated me like a queen and I felt like a goddess. Everything was sensual: Cool breezes stopped me in my tracks, my face turning into it so the wind’s fingers could trail through my hair. My husband’s worn cotton shirts caressed my skin, the smell of him lingered and sent me drifting away into delicious daydreams. But all that paled in comparison to food. I loved how cool milk spilled in a silky flow down my throat and swoosh heavily in my stomach. I could taste every cleansing salt crystal as it danced a swinging Mambo on my tongue with chilly lettuce and a medley of spices as I crunched on tacos. The smooth cream of chocolate sent shivers down my spine. Ice cream, oh my, how that velvety coolness enveloped me from the inside out, encasing me in a cool smoothness as rich as the heaviest silk. I loved being pregnant.

The hate part? The mistake part? While the Peanut is not my only love, she is one of my dearest loves, and from my pregnancy with her sprung my only hate: my body. Just because I loved reveled in what I was eating, didn’t mean the calories and fat didn’t dance off at a quick tempo. I got fat. I still struggle, and the Peanut turns 8 this summer. *sigh*

Want to read more lamentations? (it's such a fun word to say) Head on over to Sprite's Keeper!

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax. ~Arthur Schopenhauer

If, in my fantastical possible future, Hoda Kotb, as she is interviewing me in part three of a four-part series on "Awesome Teachers, Awesome Moms," asks what is the one thing that makes my family successful, I would have to answer "love." the second? Manners.

The third? Hockey.

The irony is thick.

Manners are tough to teach. My 17-year-old daughter and I were watching "Gilmore Girls" when the Peanut brought her entire bucket of Lincoln Logs out to the living room and dumped the whole thing. She needed to start with a specific piece, so she tumbled and rumbled through the clanky logs. With the sigh only a teenaged girl or a saint stuck with arrows could make, the dvr was paused.

I gently asked the peanut to take the logs to another room, since we were watching TV. Because she is seven, she asked "why?" The teenager said "BECAUSE when YOU are watching tv, I DO NOT PLAY WITH NOISY TOYS."

The peanut looks over her glasses at her and says, "I'm not watching tv."

Apparently, sarcasm is not the best teaching tool for children in first grade.

As a teacher, I will admit that there are children who I know, in the depths of my soul, must have been raised by wolves. There is simply no other explanation.

They will interrupt without even blinking, no hesitation, any and all conversations. They will fart in the middle of class discussions. They will blurt out rude comments and come completely unhinged if someone even looks at them sideways. But, quite wonderfully, these children are not the norm. The majority of my students are as polite as ninth graders can be on a steady basis and contrite when they slip. We have had to have class discussions about manners (like how saying "no offense, but..." is NOT an ollie-ollie-all-come-free pass to then say something completely offensive) but what surprises me is how well they can do, how mature they can be, discussing man's inhumanity to man in one breath and calling the kid next to him "gay" in the next.

*sigh*

I guess it's all about the baby steps.

Thank you, Jen at Sprite's Keeper - this was an interesting topic!

In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. - Douglas Adams

True story and a perfect synopsis of my week:

Imagine, if you will, a study hall. One of my students (student #2) is working, and so is an upperclassman (student #1), on vocabulary. Student #1 has just learned the meaning of the word "Agnostic."

student #1:

"Is anyone in here Agnostic?"

student #2:

"Not me - I haven't been sick for awhile now!"

I wish I was making this up.