Potpourri

I've been scribbling little notes to myself all week so that I would remember to share things with you, but I haven't had much time to post this week. So, you're getting a mixed bag here today. (These won't necessarily be in chronological order - just whatever order my very old brain remembers them!)


Yesterday morning, during small group instruction time, I decided to pull my darling TN and another little boy off by themselves to work on their sight words with me. TN has really been working hard on these lately. Who knows, maybe someone at home has finally stepped it up and started helping him. I know Ms. H. has been spending a lot of time with him, too. Anyway, he's finally starting to learn our words, and knows more than the other little boy, Pumpkin, does. I was going back and forth between the two boys, showing them flashcards with the words. If they knew it, I gave them the card. Well, there are 22 words all together, and after the first "round," TN had about 15, Pumpkin had 4. Second round, TN had about 16, Pumpkin had 5. The game kept kinda going like that, and the boys were making me laugh so hard, I almost couldn't catch my breath. I was wishing so hard that I had a video camera running. I actually almost got up and went to get my camera out of my purse, but I was afraid of losing the moment. Pumpkin was really making me laugh. When I would show him a word, he would say, "Think, think, think!" while tapping on his head. It was hysterical!! When I showed him a particularly "hard" word (I think it was where) he kinda guffawed, then with a sweeping hand motion, says, "TN!" like, 'here, you take it, I don't know it!' I was almost on the floor!! I suppose this is probably one of those things that you just had to be there for, since I realize it doesn't sound so funny to an outsider. But, trust me, by the time we went to lunch, my stomach hurt from laughing. The boys were cracking up at me, too, because whenever they read a new word, or read a word quickly, I would jump and/or make a really surprised face, which put them in hysterics. The more they laughed, the more I laughed, and it was just a wonderfully vicious circle of giggles!



Let me give you a little background on how Pumpkin got his nickname. He and another little boy in my class have very similar names. They only differ by one letter (the last one) so needless to say, I ALWAYS call them the wrong name. A-L-W-A-Y-S. I bugs the crap out of me, but they don't seem to care one way or another. However, they know how frustrated I get with myself, and the other day, after saying the wrong name for the 20th time in one morning, I jokingly said to them, "You know what, I'm going to make up new names for you that I can remember!!" My little friend pipes up with, "I know! You can call me Pumpkin! I like when you call me that!" (Pumpkin is just one of my little pet names for my babies, along with Honey Bunny, Angel, Sweet Pea, and many more.) It was the sweetest thing. Even funnier, the other boy later told me I could call him Squash! Bwah hahaha!



Oh, wait, let's go back to my little session with TN and Pumpkin. At one point, both boys were staring blankly at a word, neither one of them able to read it to me. It was about 2 minutes before we needed to start cleaning up for lunch, so I was a bit distracted when TN said something that sounded like "..eee...uk.." Immediately, Pumpkin says, "I don't suck!" which, of course, caught my attention. So I said, "TN, that's not a nice word, or a nice thing to say." He looked at both of us like we were nuts, and says, "I SAID 'we're stuck!'" Well, that was it, I couldn't take anymore. By the time we stopped laughing, it was time to go to lunch!



I jotted down a couple of DIBELS funnies last week. Actually, one was from Pumpkin. I was giving them the test where they have to tell me sounds in a word. After several words, I said to him, "Tell me the sounds in 'smile.'" He looks at me, and just busts out into the biggest smile I've ever seen. I almost spit in his face, I was laughing so hard. This kid is awesome!



That same day, when it was AM's turn to take her test, she gave me this little beauty. I said, "Tell me the sounds in 'kiss.'" and she proceeds to pucker up and blow me a kiss! Oh, so cute!



I've had an email sitting in my inbox for what will be a YEAR tomorrow. It's some funnies from last year's babies, and I kept leaving in my inbox so I could remember to share them. Well, hell, I sent it to myself March 6, 2009!! Here goes...



Overheard during centers - "...then, when you get to be 100, you die!"



When doing a Star Word (sight word) test -- word shown=for, word said="THREE!" (Hey, at least the kid knew it was a number word!) word shown=a, word said="one" (HUH? Well, it IS the first letter....)



OK, there are a couple more, but I'll save them for another day. I wouldn't want to spoil you! ;-)



One more little funny from this week. Tuesday night, as I was lying in bed watching TV, there was a 'tease' for the 10:00 newscast, and the anchorman says, "We may be putting those winter coats away. 40s are headed our way this week. Get the full forecast here at 10." I almost willed myself out of bed to post this immediately, because it was so damn funny! ONLY in Chicago would you hear that, right? And you guys thought I was the only one!! We actually have had a wonderful week. It's supposed to hit 55 by Sunday, so I guarantee there'll be people out in shorts and/or flip-flops. There may even be a few nutballs out trying to get a tan. Oh, no, I am NOT kidding!! Fellow Chicagoans, back me up here!! I haven't worn a coat all week, but I know you all think I'm nuts anyway.



Don't forget to accept my St. Baldrick's Challenge!! (See above) and if you can, click here to make a donation. Thanks!

Way to follow through!

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Oh my Lord, when is the new computer going to get here!!?? Oh, yeah, that's right, I have to go pick it up. Crap! I should be doing that right now instead of sitting here on Stud's computer for a few stolen moments. I have lots of tidbits to share when I pick my computer up, including a boatload of pictures from today's 100th Day Celebration.

I just wanted to quickly share with you (before I forget, cuz my mind just ain't what it used to be!!) that after all these weeks of dealing with AM and her mom, and the daily countdown ("Only 25 days til your birthday! Only 10 days til your birthday! Only 2 days til your birthday! etc...) her mother ended up NOT SHOWING UP! She came in this morning and reminded AM yet again that she would be bringing cupcakes this afternoon, "and if you have a bad day, you're gonna watch yo frens eat cupcakes wit ow choo." Then, she didn't come back! WTF?! I sure hope she doesn't think she's gonna be bringing them on Monday. It's over, Sista!

Wait, have I even bitched, I mean, posted about this mess before? I thought I did, but I'm not seeing it. Like I said, for weeks, she's been doing this annoying countdown in the morning when she brings AM to school. The biggest problem with the countdown is that she brings AM to school late every friggin' day. By the time they get there, I've already picked the class up from the lunchroom, everyone has their things put away, and every bottom is on a square, sitting "spaghetti and meatballs"* listening to our morning read aloud. Then, the tornado known as AM and her mom come barreling through the door in the middle of the story, and mom proceeds to stand there (while I'm reading, mind you!) and loudly reminds AM about how many days til her birthday, and how she better get a good report, yadda, yadda, yadda. It's been driving me INSANE!! And, as luck would have it, her birthday happened to fall on the 100th day of school, which means we were already going to have a celebration.

I informed mom weeks ago, when she asked if she could bring cupcakes, that AM might not even be at the celebration, because the kids have to earn the privilege. OK, she says she gets it, great. Next day, she has the balls to ask me if she could bring in cupcakes AND PIZZA!!! What the hell?!!? Does this look like the damn Chuck E. Cheese's!?!? I immediately put the kibosh on that, and told her the cupcakes could be brought in at 2, which is snack time, or she could drop them off in the morning, and I would pass them out at snack time. Ok, I figured it was settled.

Apparently, mom went to New Principal earlier this week to ask HER if she could bring pizza. Look, bee-otch!! I'M the queen of this here castle, and I ALREADY said NO!!!! Luckily, New Principal also said no. I don't think she would have considered saying yes without talking to me first, anyway.

Well, you already know how the story ends. Seriously?! You make a big friggin' deal about this damn cupcakes for over a month, then you don't bring them?! I don't get it!

(Now that I've done all this bitching, I pray to God I don't find out that there was some serious reason she didn't show up. Karma, be nice to me!)

Holy crap, I'm late to pick up Stud! He's at boot camp. (Something else I'll explain when I get my computer.) Hopefully, I'll be able to write some proper posts tonight.

*"Spaghetti and meatballs" is this Dago's version of "criss-cross applesauce," or indian-style. Their legs, when folded properly, are the spaghetti, then they fold their hands together, and place them on their laps, making a giant meatball! I love it!

I heart snow

Today was almost as wonderful as yesterday. Only 12 babies trudged through the 12+ inches of snow to come to class today. The only downside - AM came today. Late, as usual, by the way! Believe it or not, she actually fell asleep during rest time, which is truly amazing, since she NEVER is still or quiet. I know it's terrible, but we just let her sleep, even after rest time was over. She slept through calendar time, bathroom break, and most of math centers. It was heavenly. (it's already been established that I'm on the express train to hell, so just let it go)

Rest time is usually the roughest time of the day with her for me. I expect a certain level of "noise" throughout the day, given that my room is filled with 5 year-olds all day. But, rest time is non-negotiable. I demand quiet. Like I said yesterday, this is usually the only quiet time I have to do assessments. Plus, my brain needs the quiet so it doesn't explode! They don't have to sleep, they just have to be still and quiet. It's only 20 minutes, for Pete's sake! AM just can't do it. But, today, praise the Lord, she fell asleep. That makes me think she must have been up late last night.

I'll be enjoying a 5 day break from the little rug rats, thanks to a professional development day, Lincoln's birthday, and Presidents' Day. Yay! The teachers actually get a 4-day weekend, which is pretty rare. In the past, I always took the professional day off, too, because the Big Cheese didn't care. He never had anything planned for us, so it was a waste of a day. But, New Principal always has these days chock-full of meetings. I missed a professional development day in the beginning of the year, because I legitimately was sick, and I heard about it for a month afterward. It's just not worth the hassle. I really wanted to take a trip somewhere over this long weekend, but I guess I'll have to wait until spring break. Hell, maybe by then, I'll be able to afford to buy tickets somewhere.

I assume by next Tuesday, this week's blizzard will be a distant memory, and all the babies will be back. That's good, I miss them. (yes, I know I bitch about them, a LOT, but I love them. I can't help it!)

I'm still working on posting the pictures I mentioned. Here's my dilemma. I downloaded the photos to my laptop, which has been dying a fast death. I started getting a message about 3-4 weeks ago letting me know that death was imminent. It literally said "imminent!" (it didn't actually say "death" but it did say the hard drive needed to be replaced.) I backed up most of my important stuff (like photos) to an external hard drive that I had bought around the holidays. Jeez, I hope I did it right, cuz I really don't have a clue what the hell I'm doing. The past week or so, it's been going south rather quickly. I tried to upload the pictures last night, and couldn't get it to do anything. I'm afraid I'm going to have to go computer shopping this weekend. Maybe I'll get a great Presidents' Day Sale deal. I think it'll be almost as costly to replace the hard drive as it'll be to just get a new computer. Plus, mine is already over 3 years old, so it's practically obsolete.

I better do something, Stud is starting to lose his patience with having to share this (his!) computer with me. Thankfully, he can surf the web, email, etc., from his IPod Touch. As a matter of fact, I just found out the he wrote his last two essays for school on his friggin' ITouch. WTF? Today's technology just amazes me! He typed it out like a text message, using some program (app?) he downloaded, then he emailed it to himself, and printed it out at school. Amazing!

Why can't everyday be like today?

If you've been reading here for any length of time, you already know that Chicago Public Schools never, never, never, EVER have snow days. E-V-E-R!!! We are in the middle of quite a storm right now that started last night. The snow is supposed to continue until at least noon tomorrow, and they are predicting 12+ inches of snow.

You also know, if you've been reading for a while, that I am absolutely ape shit HAPPY about the snow!! I LOVE IT!! The only thing that pisses me off is when I have to drive on the same roads as the morons that suddenly forget how to drive the minute a snowflake appears in the sky! I mean, C'MON PEOPLE!! You freakin' live in CHICAGO!!!!!! Either learn how to drive in the snow, or stay in the damn house! JEEZ!!!

OK, it felt good getting that off my chest. Moving on...

Another reason I kinda dig snow days (get it? dig...tee hee!) is that lots of babies stay home on those days. Their parents call a personal snow day. Today I only had 16 little ones there. It was wonderful. AND, the best part is that AM, the biggest PITA I've had in quite some time, was one of the ones who stayed home. Thank you, Jesus!! I could have dealt with 35 babies without a problem with her not there!

Around 10:30, I had to go to the office for something, and one of the clerks asked me something about AM (this particular clerk had a BIG run-in with AM's mother last week, so now she's always asking me about her). I told her that AM didn't come today. As I was saying that, I realized that for the first time in a loonnggg time, I made it that far into the morning without being all tense and angry. Usually, by the time we clean up and head to the bathroom, then lunch, I'm just so ready for them to get the hell out of the room. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to explode if I have to be around them for one more minute. (And, sadly, AM is usually the main cause of this feeling. The past week or so, I've been resorting to sending her across the hall to Mrs. M.'s room, just so we can have some peace in our room. It's amazing how much more instruction gets accomplished when I don't have to spend so much time dealing with her disruptions.)

Then, during my extensive 15 minute lunch (ha! I live such a life of luxury, don't I?) I usually pull myself together. Plus, it really helps that we have a rest time after lunch. Just having the lights off, lullaby music playing, (mostly) quiet babies.... ah...it's heaven! It's during this rest time that I do my more formal and/or one-on-one assessments (like our favorite - DIBELS!).

Wait a minute, what was the point of all this? Oh, yeah, my GREAT day!! It was so nice to have such a small group. Plus, as an added bonus, it was a well-behaved group, for the most part. (There's one little darling who just came to me in the switch, who's gonna need a 'come to Jesus' talk real soon!) We even made a cute little project this afternoon after gym. I actually took pictures for you!! If I can get this goofy Blogger to let me upload them, I will share. Oh, and I also took some great pictures for you the other day during math centers. We were making craft stick patterns, and they just ran with it. I'm going to try and post them later.

I'm off to warm up some cream of potato soup for dinner. It's the perfect thing to have on a blustery, snowy night like this. Then, I think I'll raise the shades of my living room windows and then just sit and watch the snow. :)

Holy crap! I have the TV on for background noise, and the evening news just started. First thing they said - it has been snowing in Chicago for 17 hours now. We are expected to have "some rough hours ahead" with lots more snow.

Warning - This post may contain an F-bomb or two...

I haven't bitched about the Hell-Hole in a while, but there's some crap bubbling up right now that I need to spew, in hopes that my eye will stop fucking twitching!!!!!

First of all, did I mention I'm back up to 32 fucking kids?!? It was 33 for a day, until I realized that one of the new kids was actually supposed to be in 1st grade. Guess it was too fucking hard for the office to figure that out when they made a copy of her fucking birth certificate, huh? Thankfully, I've had, on average, at least 6 kids absent every day since we came back from break, so I've been able to squeeze them in at the tables. Today, however, all but 2 showed up, so I had to break down and set up a 5th table.

Latina Girl is lucky she didn't go home with my foot protruding from her ass today!! I tried to call her mother several times, so she could come get her, but of course, I couldn't reach her. God forbid there had been a real emergency! (You know, like needing a foot surgically removed from her rectum!) The final straw, that made me call her mom, was when she stole something from one of my little darlings. Two tables of babies displayed some wonderful behavior right before lunch, and each of those babies was given a treat to eat when they finished their lunch. Well, Latina Girl took one of the other girl's treats right off her plate and ate it!!! And THEN, she tried to say she didn't know it wasn't hers!! WTF?!? I wanted to punch her in her face!

Besides Latina Girl pissing me off all day, AM was really pushing my buttons, as well. (How do I NOT have a label for this PITA on this blog? It's not possible that I haven't bitched about her yet! Oh, well, there's a first time for everything, right?) She has been a HUGE PITA since the very first day of school. When her mother brought her to school this morning, she came to me and asked if I would send a note home at the end of the day to let her know what kind of day she had. Apparently, it's AM's little brother's birthday today, and if she had a bad day, she wasn't going to be able to go out to celebrate tonight. Well, of course, I figured I would sugar-coat the report so she wouldn't miss the party. Yeah, well, that lasted about 20 minutes!! Between her and Latina Girl, I don't know who was making my blood boil more. (When her mom came to get her at the end of the day, I didn't sugar coat a damn thing. Then mom tells me that she already was having a bad day before she came to school. I guess she shoved her baby brother - the birthday boy!- off the bed this morning. But, apparently Mom wanted to make ME the bad guy, cuz she didn't have the backbone to just tell her she was going to have to miss the celebration. Her mother's shitty parenting is exactly why this child acts the way she does!!!)

When we were coming back from our afternoon bathroom break, Ms. H saw us in the hall and asked if I wanted her to take a couple of them off my hands for a while (since I had 30 freakin' kids by myself all damn day!!) I didn't even have to say anything, she knew which two to take! About 15 minutes later, she comes to the room with the two brats, and says that New Principal said they had to come back to the room. WTF??! She said they couldn't be out of the room missing instruction. Yeah, well, when they're IN the room, there's very little instruction going on, because I spend all my fuckin' time dealing with their bullshit!! ARGH!!!! In the short time they were gone, we were able to do an awesome lesson about graphs that was tons of fun, and had the rest of the babies on the edge of their seats. Whatever! I put them in opposite corners, and tried to just trudge on with the day.

I was seething, though, on the inside about New Principal, and the stupid statement she made about them missing instruction. I haven't bitched about this yet, but there's no time like the present, right? Almost every fuckin' day, I have at least one 8th grader sent to my room, so that I can babysit. And 99% of the time, these kids have been kicked out of their rooms for being out of uniform. Seriously?!? Not because they were disrespectful, or disruptive, or any kind of discipline problem. No, they have on jeans!! Have you ever heard anything so fucking ridiculous?

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm glad she's actually enforcing the uniform policy. That's always been a HUGE problem at the Hell-Hole. So, yes, please enforce it. However, how does she justify making an 8th grade student, who is supposed to graduate in June, miss an entire day of instruction?! Make these kids stay after school for detention, or come in early for morning detention, or some other appropriate consequence. DO NOT keep them out of class for a whole day. And DON'T make ME babysit them!!!! She's under the delusion that it embarrasses them to have to sit in kindergarten. Yeah, right!! They love it. And, it's one more body I have to be responsible for, one more kid I have to keep busy all day. The day I was out for Bestest Friend's mom's funeral, there were THREE of them sent to my room. Apparently, the sub paid them no mind, and they played with my computers, messed up my games, rearranged my books, ugh!!!!!!

Did it ever occur to New Principal that these kids purposely come to school out of uniform so they WON'T have to go to class? DUH! These kids aren't stupid, ya know!

Ugh, I could go on and on, and I definitely have more to bitch about, but I'm going to stop for tonight. I'm going to make myself a yummy cup of hot cocoa (sugar-free Swiss Miss with a shot of sugar-free hazelnut syrup. YUMMY!) and curl up on the couch. I'm sure there's some mindless TV I can watch for a while to lower my blood pressure. Man, I wish Glee was on...oh, wait! I just remembered it's Wednesday, and I love the line-up on ABC! Modern Family is one of the most hilarious shows on right now. I love it! The Middle has some pretty funny moments, and I love Cougar Town. Then, one of my all-time favorites, Ugly Betty, has just moved to Wednesday, so that'll round out my evening of mindless TV. Yay! Good thing Stud went with CSJ, otherwise I'm sure I'd be ignoring him tonight. Oh, wait, isn't that what teenagers WANT their parents to do?