School, A Pirate Toothbrush and TOO MUCH SQUASH!

You too can turn yourself into a hockey player. Just go to www.photofunia.com. Yes, when you should be doing something else, but you are too brain dead to do it - play around on the Internet and then write a random blog post.

It's been two days with students and I am not yet feeling organized at school. Tomorrow we're going to the library so they can browse through the stacks and also so we can have an occasional fifteen-minute read during the class period. I am ready to start inviting them to jazz up their journals and release all their brilliance on the page! I wish we could fast forward to the middle of the trimester, so all the kids were comfortable and relaxed. We'll get there and I will start to calm down and find my groove. Do you like my new toothbrush? It was on sale at the grocery store.

Next year, I am not planting yellow squash. For heaven's sake! I don't like them that much! Every time I go out to the garden there are MORE and if I don't pick them they get weird and BIG! Now that I've sort of lost interest in the garden, everything is looking BIGGER and BETTER!

When the seasons are about to change do you ever get kind of spacey and unsettled? I think I do. I have a million things on my mind and the "I don't have enough time" voice won't be quiet. I'm reminded to surrender, wave the white flag, and shout, "HELP! I can't do ANYTHING alone!" I'm glad HE is listening.

Watering Cement

Birdie loves the new watering can at Granny's house. She busied herself going back and forth to grandpa (who was using the hose to water my new seed plants) for more, more, more!

Birdie doesn't QUITE make it to the grass or garden.

Birdie is such a lovely little gardener! Do you like her new hairdo?

I am sore today from yesterday's seed planting. I planted nasturshims, hollyhocks, poppies, zinnias, mammoth sunflowers, small, red sunflowers, thumbelina zinnias, peppers, pumpkins, and two kinds of squash. Now, I am so eager for sprouts! I'm especially looking forward to the hollyhocks because we have taken a few years vacation from them due to their abundant production! They were everywhere for years after my intial seed plant over fifteen years ago! Today, the rest of the zinnias - my favorite little cut and come again summer flower- will be gently placed in the waiting dirt, after I till it up and make major messes of myself and the surrounding area. Oh, and the grading goes on. The multi-genre projects are works of art and I appreciate the students' hard work, but no matter how much I intend to speed up, I can't seem to! I talked to my neighbor over the fence yesterday and she is a first grade teacher bogged down with literacy files and portfolios, so I don't feel alone in my grading pit. Tonight, I'm going to buzz downtown and pick up an old summer staffer of ours from when we were coordinators at Young Life's Malibu Club. It'll be nice to see her. She's in town for a conference planning event. And tomorrow, it's back to school for LAST WEEK. I have goodie bags and goodbye notes to prepare for the eighth graders, too. I'll get through the pile . . . eventually.