Classic quotes, Vol. 37

Here's a selection of some recent notable quotes, this time (again) all from my very quotable 5-year-old daughter M-:

M- (apropos of nothing one day, after she'd been playing by herself.... possibly a sign she may have been playing with her older brother too much): I would be a great astronaut-killer! (asked to elaborate) It's a guy who attacks and fights astronauts!

M- (showing off her strength, before almost falling over a basketball her little brother E- had accidentally rolled in her path): I can carry this HUGE chair, Dad! ... As long as E- keeps his BALLS out of the way...

M- (coming breathlessly into our room one morning, after we'd ignored an automated call identified as coming from my wife's teacher union): It's an URGENT call, on the answering machine-- it's an emergency! They're attacking our pensions, and our rights, and we need to vote!

M- (referring to Silly String, in a voice like a commercial): Kids LOVE this stuff!!

Classic quotes, Vol. 29

Here's a selection of some recent quotes from my 4-year-old daughter M-, 6-year-old son D-, and wife J-:

M- ("agreeing" with me after being told she had to eat lunch instead of play with her favorite toy dog, Woof): Okay-- as soon as I'm finished with The Adventures of Woof, then I'll eat lunch.

D- (confused, then disappointed, realizing he accidentally got up in time for school all by himself): Is it a school day??

M- (sadly not yet accurate): ...It was a long time ago. I mean, not like when they used to fight WARS, and everything... I mean like a few DAYS ago.

J-'s student (transcribed, for later write-up purposes, without any context at all on a Post-It note stuck to my DVD J- brought back from school): Say my name one more time and this spoon's going up your ass!

M- (talking to me from the bathroom, as she's wont to do): So was that popcorn supposed to be an "appetite" before lunch?

Things my wife hates

The following is just a small sampling, put into list form, of the things my wife hates, as plucked from a recent conversation while pregnant AND sick with a stomach flu.

1. Stupid children acting like stupider children.*

2. Feeling sick just thinking about food.

3. Feeling hungry all the time anyway.

4. Stupid teachers acting like the stupidest children.

5. Pooping at work.

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* Ranting about our tender, young, innocent children? No, not this time. She teaches junior high in a special ed school for kids with behavioral problems. The kids who get kicked out of literally everywhere else they could go, end up on her doorstep.**

** A barbed doorstep made 18" thick of solid, pure, American-made Tough Love.

A conversation with J-: She could make that happen pretty easily

My wife and I have recently been looking wishfully at houses that are pretty far from Chicago, out where prices are lower and space is more plentiful. Being as disorganized as we are, we know that whenever this happens, it will mean a huge disruption in one or more areas of our lives.

For instance, if we bought one of the houses in a particular town we've been scouting before that $8,000 tax credit offer expires on December 1, J- would be looking at either a 3-hour daily commute each way, or some kind of other temporary living arrangement for 6 months, until the end of the school year.

After considering for awhile yesterday (on the phone during J-'s already long commute) all the many paths our lives might take in the coming months, I accidentally signaled the end of our discussion, as I often do, by clashing in tone with my much more earnestly speculating wife:

J-: I mean, it'd be really hard on both of us. You'd be alone with the kids all week, day and night... you'd basically be a single parent.

Me: Does that mean I could date?

J-: ... No.

Fellas, I highly suggest you try this one at home yourself next time you're tired of being taken so seriously as an adult having a serious conversation at the end of a long workday. It's totally worth it!

Guest Post: Tough love to start the year

No, my wife J-'s not getting drunk on attention after her debut guest post last week, but while I recover from this crazy topsy-turvy week, I figured I'd post something she wrote for her own first day of school this year*, her third as a middle school Special Education teacher:

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Dear Self,

You've been having a great summer. You have accomplished some of the things you wanted to, but overall, you have been lazy, forgetful, and self-indulgent. You have been eating on no particular schedule, you have been recklessly using the bathroom whenever you want to, you have been napping at all times of the day, and worst of all, you have been going to bed at crazy hours, well past your 9 o'clock bedtime.

You're in for a rude awakening in a day or two, and you're going to get your ass kicked by the clock. Please, straighten out your act or I will be forced to do something drastic about this situation. These measures will include things like dragging your butt out of bed to work out before leaving for work at 6am, or depriving you of your soul-saving caffeine. So shape up or prepare to be shipped out.

Also, you have been doing things in preparation to organize your stupid behind, and I swear this time you must follow through with it! This year you must stop staring off into space while mold slowly over takes your desk. You need to remember that if you leave your lunch out all day, it will no longer be something you should eat. You should, however, remember to bring it home before too long after that happens.

Also, please stop losing important paperwork and putting it off until the last minute: this is your year to shine.

Don't embarrass yourself in front of your new Para[professional]: she's old enough to be your mother, instead of your little sister like the last two years. You can do better. I'm expecting to be impressed!

Love you,
Me


P.S. Okay, okay, I won't really take away your caffeine, but I will use it to torment you if you aren't careful, Missy!

---

* Editor's Note: Her first day was actually this past Wednesday, but clearly this was written on Monday.

Guest Post: J-'s School Supply Fever

Well, here's a treat for those who've asked for a guest post from my wife J-. She was so overjoyed at her haul at school supply sales recently, both for her and my 5-year-old son D-, that she felt like expressing herself in print:

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This is my time of year. God do I love the fall and the rush of going back to school.

Mostly, I love school supplies, and I don’t mean that in a healthy, “Golly gee willikers, these are neat!” kind of way. I mean it more in the way some women describe shopping at huge designer clothes and shoes sales, where people will claw your eyes out for little or no reason. This was bred into me a long time ago, so I simply can’t help it.

If there's only one left of the item I am looking for, you had better believe I will do whatever it takes to make sure it becomes mine. A few days ago, I was out shopping and some lady was reaching for the last box of sheet protectors just as I was, while she complained about how expensive they were.

I was forced to take evasive action, asking her if she'd gotten the same 20%-off bag in the mail that I was holding. She stopped reaching to rub her chin as she considered the question, and while she did, I deftly put that last box in my cart.

I know, I know, I should be ashamed, but sadly I am not. She was unhappy with the price, so I relieved her of the problem! But you don't have to thank me: my new sheet protectors are their own reward.

A big part of the reason I have this great love of school supplies is my almost total lack of awesome school supplies as a kid. Back then, school supplies often doubled as birthday presents, and because we were so poor, even then I never had any of the cool things I was ogling in the ads.

Nope, I always had the “functional” supplies that generally kind of worked, but were certainly never the envy of anyone else in class. They usually lasted just long enough for the teachers to note that my mother had indeed sent in my supplies as ordered.

For instance, I think all my non-Ticonderoga pencils were created solely as an offering to the pencil sharpener gods, to provide a year's worth of blessings for my classmates' pencils. The only exception in those years of school supplies, possibly even coveted by others than myself, were my pens.

My mother felt this splurge was necessary mostly because she loved pens as much as I did. I never went for the girly, decorated, crazy pens, but more for the ones with the best grips, most practical sizes, most vibrant colors, the endurance of the ink, and how nicely that ink flowed. I have since grown into an addiction that is not limited to the beginning of school, which I have a constant excuse to feed now that I'm a teacher.

Ask my husband: if there is a good pen in a store, I know everything about it and why I need one. I can’t help it. Each pen writes differently, and with each new day, my hand requires different pens for the various moods I find myself in that day. This year's pen new set is an 8-pack of assorted colors of the simple Papermate Profile ballpoint pen:

So, with that, along with the rest of what you see below (some of which I got free from a store giving a tote bag of goodies to teachers), my inhuman demand for school supplies has been satisfied for this year. I think.


A. Pink is always better than Not Pink.

B. The aforementioned sheet protectors.

C. Between D- and I, Costco saved me almost $20 on pencils.

D. Pay no attention to the crap in my house I'm not able to Photoshop out.

E. These good-smelling dry erase markers are hard to find, but now I don't have to worry about my new whiteboards killing me with marker fumes in my dank basement of a classroom.

F. I probably don't even need these, but I just love them so much. They're great markers, and they double as air fresheners.

G. I've waited two years for these things, so I don't have to pile up folders in my filing cabinet drawers.

Not goodbye, just see you later

I figure I should let you all know that tomorrow, I'll be checking out of this northwest-Chicago-suburban popsicle stand for a few weeks to drive all the way out to Northern Maine to visit my wife's family and some old friends from the mean streets of Caribou and Presque Isle.

During this time, I should have posts popping up on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as usual, but my e-mail responses to comments will be spotty at best, or nonexistent at likeliest.

So while I'm off today desperately packing for our long, long, long 1400-mile drive in a Camry with a 5-year-old and 2-year-old, I'll give you something to discuss amongst yourselves.

As I began last night to assess the unbelievable volume of little bits of crap my wife has let pile up in the car over the past school year, I found a notable scrap of paper I'd dropped* a few weeks ago.

On it I'd recorded an amusing conversation opener from the lady herself while we were driving somewhere, after she'd had yet another in a chain of is-it-summer-yet long/violent days with the generally lovable 7th-8th grade Special Ed. students/gang members she teaches:

"I have a feeling quite a few of my students are going to get the s*** beat out of them [at home] tonight, and to be honest, I don't feel too sorry about it."

Negative-three days till summer break! Am I right?

When I get back, we'll all be more than two weeks closer to me pathetically hanging around downtown trying to meet random BlogHer attendees. If you'll be one of them, let me know!

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* To be fair to me, it is HER paper and I had picked it up off the floor of the car to start with. So, in essence, I was subconsciously putting it back where I found it, 'cause that's the kind of person I am. I put things away and take care of my immediate area so I never HAVE to formally Clean The House/Car.

So now thanks to this footnote, we'll have something fun to discuss in the car tomorrow. Wish me luck!!!

Classic quotes, Vol. 14

Here are the latest quotes from my 5-year-old son D-, 2-year-old daughter M-, my wife J-, and me:

J- (after awakening me with a confused snooze-button smack to the face when her alarm, on the other side of the bed, went off at 5am): Oh, I didn't know you were there.

D- (as if he's proposing something fun for me): Dad, you wanna watch a kid movie? It's been a few days since yesterday when we watched Curious George with Momma.

J-'s student (after J- removed her glasses to rub her eyes): Geez, Mrs. --, you're really pretty without your glasses!*

D- (as Spider-Man, while holding a cordless phone to his ear): Dad, you've got to feel my muscle... (remembering the game he was already playing, turning toward the phone) Hold on, Batman.

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* Explanation from J-: "This happened in a moment of much-needed relaxation, as I was pretending the children and the rest of the world don't exist, but then they once again interrupted me rudely to prove that they do."

A conversation with M-: Some call me the Gangster of Nonsense

To continue my court-ordered hours of community service, I'm here today to offer any future parents out there a helpful glimpse into the life that awaits them, this time in the form of the kind of surreal conversations you can expect to have several times a day.

Note: The lines of my 2-year-old daughter M- here can be read with a tone similar to that of Johnny 5 from Short Circuit.

M- (apropos of nothing, heading for a toilet break during breakfast): I like ducks.

Me (not yet awake enough to offer a more dynamic response): Good... They're nice.

M-: I need to wash my handseseses... (looking up from her hands) Gaaannngsterrrr. A "gangster" is a bad-guy. [Thanks, Tintin.]

Me: Yep. (picks a piece of oatmeal from her hair and flicks it into the bathroom garbage)

M- (with panicked outrage): Why did you throw my hair clip into the garbage?!?!?!

Me: ???!!!?!?

In her defense, oatmeal does tend to function as her most effective hairclip, staying in place for days at a time between baths.

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Editor's Notes:

• "Not yet awake enough to offer a more dynamic response" should probably be my life's motto, and tattooed somewhere visible on my body.

• Congratulations to my sister Katie, who graduates from the great University of Illinois this weekend, joining my wife in the ranks of America's educators.

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You may enjoy my previous M- conversations, (5YO son) D- conversations, and (wife) J- conversations.

Put on a happy face

Consider today's post a solicitation for moral support for my wife, who very early this morning marched slowly down the Death Row that is the 26 miles of highway between home and work, at a school in a neighborhood outside Chicago that is beyond underprivileged.

The air around the young teenagers of this town normally courses with a manic energy so desperate that it often devours even the kindliest hand seeking to calm it, which makes every day for my wife a wonderful new adventure.

She's uniquely suited to this job, though, so even on days when she comes home completely spent and incredibly frustrated, the latter is far more often caused by the incompetent administration above her than the special-needs students around her.

Given that this is always the case, you are undoubtedly wondering what brings it all up today. Well, next week is Spring Break at her school, which you may remember from your days as a student being a very happy time.

The reason you remember it being so happy is because you and your classmates had the strength in numbers to just check your brains at the door each morning and spend the rest of the day doing pretty much whatever irritating little time-wasting activity sprang to mind while the frantic teacher was amusingly attempting to capture your attention.

Now that my wife is that teacher, it is no longer funny.

She spent this weekend dreading going back to school like I have never seen before, after her students, who are as a rule very kind and extremely loyal 80% of the time, spent last week acting out for her an unbelievably detailed preview of what they have planned for this week.

The only reason she isn't spending Day 1 (at least) huddled under a blanket coughing and wheezing away the best Fake Germs she can manage is because her lousy, ungrateful hip ate up all her sick days months ago.

Furthermore, her cold-hearted bastard of a husband, seen here hiding for his own safety behind a mysterious blue tube, expressed a curious aversion to unpaid work days.

So what I need from you, especially if you are a teacher, is some reasons why she should keep showing up to work each day this week, and, if possible, some really good reasons why she shouldn't kill me or make me suffer even a little bit for making her do so.

Keep in mind when suggesting things* that I've already: 1) made her two fun lunches to choose from today; 2) found her some magazines she likes at the library; and 3) told her she could nap guilt-free even longer than usual when she gets home.

Actually, I didn't tell her that last one until now. But my promises of a lazy, super-fun Spring Break have done nothing to shake her steadfast dread or insistence that this will be a week from somewhere below Hell, and that nothing else matters, so I've got to keep raising the stakes.

Or maybe I should quit before she holds out for too much more. I have a feeling it's going to be a long week for all of us.

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* Since I'm clearly a saint, feel free to suggest that she work off her stress and anger each day after work by polishing my sneakers (I insist it must be possible!), cooking dinner, or writing blog posts.

A note upon Inauguration 2009

I needn't point out that today is a special day. We all know my preference for president, so I won't go on about that.

I just want to state for the record how disappointed I am that this inauguration is taking place in the middle of the week, and that I am not able to be there. I know that as time goes on, life will leave me even less flexible to accommodate last-minute schedule changes for opportunities like this, so I had really hoped to make it happen somehow.

Alas, J- will be left watching with all the students in her school, I'll be watching with the kids until we have to take D- to preschool, but I'll do everything I can to make sure the kids remember this day even if only in some small way (such as vague memories that I wouldn't stop yammering on about it during Duplo time).

I won't do this because we've elected "a black president" but rather because we've broken the centuries-old mold of what a president must look like, and we've started chipping away at least a bit at who he or she has to know and be indebted to.

And possibly even more important than that is the fact that even though we elected yet another candidate from our democracy-choking Two Parties, it feels like we all cast aside the many safe, easy choices this time and went with someone whose fresh ideas (at least for our current age) we listened to and specifically responded to, one way or another.

How many people were genuinely inspired by John Kerry, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, or either of the Bushes? These are people, among others, who benefitted from either "seeming presidential", having the right connections in a shallow pool, or just not screwing up enough to lose their party's nomination.

So for better or worse, we'll turn our back (at least for a little while) on the willfully irresponsible and damaging Bush years, and try our hand at shaping our own future. Even if Mr. Obama does nothing but speechify and Propose Big Things for four years, as long as he helps keep this momentum going, I think we can help ourselves just fine.

We can all tear down the duct tape and plastic wrap (for longer than it takes to hit the mall for the latest Thing We Don't Really Need), slide our Terror Alert Level down from Orange - Convenient Generalized Fear and Pliability to the never-before-seen Green - Commonsense Vigilance with Personal Freedom, let the sun shine on us and all our affairs, and then really start digging ourselves out of the many messes we're in.

It may make for a long few decades, but at least we can get through it with a smile and a lighter load on our shoulders. So here's to that!

Let's call this an adverb-filled do-over

I've had a taste of life not posting religiously, and I must admit I liked it.

But that doesn't mean I don't like blogging anymore-- I'm just a lazy, procrastinating shell of a man who can only function within the framework of compulsive habits.

So, not unlike a car --say, my stupid car-- stuck in a little rut of slush and ice, I got complacent and couldn't get back over that hump since the Pinko-Commie calendar insisted I acknowledge its existence in some way.

I briefly thought about not noting the, shall we say, recent collapse of my Previous Posts drop-down menu, but every time I sat down to write, I found myself either blathering about things more boring than usual or writing amusing bits that weren't worthy of being the Last/First Post of the Year.

So instead, I'll sum up: 2008 was a crazy year, but a great one overall, and 2009 will likely be more of the same, though under the guise of more unsettling numerals. Life's like that.

Lastly, though I've never been one for resolutions on an arbitrary timeline, I'm a big fan of arbitrariness in general (I think of it as an homage to my pagan god, Nature), so I'll allow the following statement:

During the next year, I may perhaps be more than gently urging my life into a more stable and at least slightly more conventional form, so I will most definitely be posting somewhat less often as a side effect of that effort.

Not less often than the past week, mind you, but just not five days a week on average, I'm sure. Furthermore, while my newly mobile and freshly independent wife weans herself back into the world (starting with going to work today for the first time in six weeks*), I will likely be back visiting many of your blogs more frequently than I have been recently, though I'm sure I won't be commenting nearly as much as I used to.**

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* Where, by the time she's reading this, she'll likely be praying already that they had just cut the leg off and replaced it with a shapely peg, with which she can create the Greatest Legend of All Legends of Scary Teacher Biographies Passed by Fearful Whispers at Recess.

** I'm almost as sad as you are, I'll bet.

A conversation with J-: Manic Monday

To give you a sense of how a quite-anxious J- and beyond-tired I passed the time while waiting for her to be wheeled into surgery two weeks ago, please enjoy the following conversation I later recorded on a notecard I just found in my coat pocket:

Me: You know, you'll be sleeping the whole time-- I'm extremely jealous.

J- (immediately, giving me a blank look): I'd trade places with you in a second.

Me: I would, too ... (makes Movie Magic sounds while wiggling fingers between us)

J-: (just blinks in confusion and resumes fretting)

Me: We'd better make sure not to touch any potentially magic inanimate objects at the same time. If we do, though, we definitely can't lose it, because I do not want to have a period. Or teach special ed.

J-: Whyever not?

Me: They both involve a lot more involuntary bleeding and discomfort than I'm willing to accept.

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Click to read past conversations I've posted with my wife J-, my 4-year-old son D-, and my nearly 2-year-old daughter M-.

Then again, those who can't, teach, right?

The other day, someone arrived here from Greece through a Google search for "stop a child from eating off the floor," and all I can say to that is you, my friend, definitely came to the wrong place.

Sorry about that. I'll let you know if I ever become able to help you on that front.

It's hip to be timely

I know I haven't had too much to say about my wife on this blog, but it's not for lack of amusing stories or anything else. I just tend to procrastinate when it comes to writing about important things, and on many occasions I've let opportunities pass by where J- would be revealed as the amazing and funny person she is.

After a month or two of procrastinating, things start to feel stale and tedious and they pile up in my Drafts folder.

Take our fifth anniversary over a month ago-- wouldn't you expect some sappy post with a scrapbook of pictures and such? Or, knowing me, some sarcastic post with one picture, two at most, and a handful of tangential footnotes? I actually have more than a few pictures and a ridiculous story to tell about that day, but there it sits, and probably will for a while longer yet.

But that's not what this post is about.

Since I haven't said all that much about her, you won't mind me completely mischaracterizing her in your minds by way of introducing the subject of this post: almost six years ago now, she violently ripped the lining of her right hip socket while kickboxing.

She has limped along ever since on her remaining hip, which wasn't so great to begin with, trying and failing for various reasons (including lovely insurance debacles and poorly timed pregnancies) to have the problem surgically corrected. As you can imagine, the pregnancies made that hip sing like a finely tuned machine.

She's sleeping as I write this, as I should be, but today at noon she will fall asleep again. While she's sleeping, she'll be sliced open and have her femur yanked out of the socket, to allow the doctors to scrape out the remaining shreds of labrum and grind into oblivion the pesky bone spur on the end of her femur that started all this mess.

Then, assuming all goes well, they'll stitch her back up and send her hobbling on her merry way, to slowly recover over the next month and a half as she avoids putting any pressure on that leg so the bone doesn't shatter before it's completely healed.

Such is the fun she's bravely facing this holiday season, starting with a Thanksgiving spent as the immobile centerpiece for my extended family's celebration at my parents' house.*

Why is this happening now, you ask? Because she wanted to be sure she'd miss as few school days as possible, while not passing up another chance to get this done once and for all by waiting till next summer. She fills me with faith that this world is not completely lost, as she slogs through everything life throws at her without wasting too much time regretting paths she might have taken.

In the last few weeks, she moved from Drone to Zombie mode in continuing to get up at 5AM while staying late into the evening planning* and preparing everyone around her for her absence at this crucial stage of the year, making plans and more, all to be sure that her extremely underprivileged, forgotten students don't stop the unprecedented (and thankfully, quantifiable in enough areas to buy her some leeway) progress they've made since she took this school by storm last year.

All this leads up to her, a person about as averse to even the idea of surgery as you're likely to find, getting carved up with only the hope of feeling better at some point next year, even without that last little bit of handy buffer between the bones of her hip joint.

We may be back here some day down the road for the other hip, but hopefully it will hear enough horror stories from this one to shape up all by itself.

As for the kickboxing, no matter how successful her recovery is, I don't think she'll be dropping into any Thai cage matches or ill-advised college P.E. classes any time soon.

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* Thanks to my parents, she has a place to stay that isn't up three flights of stairs, and thanks to them (and my sister), I'll have a little help managing the kids during J-'s recovery.

** Fifteen special-needs teenagers in one classroom equals 15 separate daily plans.

Origami es mi amigo?

One recent evening, my wife J- was rigorously preparing for a lesson in origami, which is tied to a book her class has been reading, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. She's got to earn that big-time teacher's salary, with its infamous golden parachute and "consulting fees", somehow, right?

As she happily found out, gone are the dark days when you had to rely on boring old written steps to work magic with paper. No, folks, now we have the wonder of full-motion video at our fingertips 24 hours a day.

So now, whole fractions of an hour later, J- is a largely self-made expert in this ancient art. I know she would be more than happy to know I am passing on the lessons I learned by watching her study under her master sensei.

I've decided it's most appropriate for me to impart my learning in a format as cryptic as a 7-minute video called How to make an Origami Crane in five minutes.* So without further adieu, here are just a few of the pearls of wisdom that my wife was so gracious to hand down to me:

• Alright, I'm starting over.

• The f***???

• Wait, what??!? How??

• Fold this, a**hole! Slow down!!

• This... is not a crane.

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* In all fairness, I think the extra two minutes were the pumpkin pie breaks and requisite loud chewing, and since the value of those moments is unquestionable, I won't push my critiques any further for fear they might get edited out.

That'll learn 'er

Well, she made it.

As of today, my wife J- has 80 days of shore leave before she ships out back into the war zone that is a self-contained special education classroom at a junior high in a, shall we say, less fortunate area. If only she had the time, she could sure write a heckuva blog about her day-to-day experiences.

Instead, she spent the past 9 months waking up at 5 o'clock in the morning to make it to school by 7 during rush hour, and another hour or more in the car on the way home each day, frequently after a couple hours of afterschool meetings. Needless to say, there isn't much time left over, hence she doesn't figure into many of the wacky stories of my antics with the kids during the week.

I can assure you that the stories would be crazier and funnier if she did, because at times she manages to somehow be even more hilarious and more sarcastic than me, and as we all can tell from this self-glorifying blog of mine, I obviously think I'm just the funniest thing since my daughter attempted to murder me slowly via a plastic-snake-induced eye infection.

I must say I feel partially responsible for J-'s lack of involvement, because she often stayed up way too late to spend time with me, so she was even more dead on her feet each morning and in need of a nap once she somehow made it home without falling asleep at the wheel. "Shhh, Momma's sleeping" became a common refrain at our house in afternoons, on Saturday mornings, and on precious sick/personal days.

Sometimes she'd stay up too late not watching movies or playing Nintendo with me, but instead writing up Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), her required daily lesson plans (covering each kid in her class separately, since they're all at such different levels that they're each essentially a class unto themselves), and other various documents needed from time to time for her to be ready again bright and early (or dark and dreary, during fall/winter) the next morning.

So if, like I used to, you're ever tempted to wish you could be a teacher and just work from 8 to 3 and have the whole summer off, you have to realize that teachers instead pack a whole year's work, plus overtime, into 9 months of the year, and then they get a couple frantic months to try to unwind and recharge in time to do it all over again. How someone could take doing this for 45 years is just beyond me, though I can only hope it does get easier as the years go by.

One thing that most, if not all, teachers will tell you is one big thing that would make the prospect of a lifetime of teaching (at least in the U.S.) much easier is the complete repeal or tear-down-and-rebuild of the so-called "No Child Left Behind" act, but that's a whole separate story. With any luck, our new president will hire some competent, qualified people for the key policy-making positions and we can get some realistic laws in education and other areas.

But at least for the next 2 and a half months, we don't need to worry about that. And so, after being way more excited about the end of school than any of the kids, little J- sleeps as we drift on a cloud of humidity towards noon. I'm thinking of tiptoeing over to the bed and ringing a bell sharply while shouting expletives and running around the room with the kids.

You know, to help ease her transition.