With child

Poor baby Blaine had to go back to the hospital Sunday night, after spending a sleepless night at home. I guess he had jaundice pretty bad, and the hospital has better equipment to take care of it. As you can see in the picture, he already had some sort of E.T. like tube hooked up to him. My mom said something about a light being attached to it.

I'm not sure how the light works, but it helps to do something in the blood. I suspect it's something like photosynthesis, although I said that at a dinner party last night and was laughed at.

And here are the proud parents, my brother and sister-in-law. I think Blaine looks like a much more reasonable size in this picture. He looked gigantic in the others, but maybe because he wasn't to scale.

Also, I think my brother and his wife look really young.

Maybe I'm just feeling old since I'm in my late 20s now.

Regardless, the baby is adorable. Now I'm just waiting for him to open his eyes.

Can't sleep...

After staying up late last night, enjoying every last minute of my birthday bash, I am wide awake at 11:40pm on a Sunday night. And so, as with most nights when I can't sleep, my mind is busy. I've been thinking about Donna and John's plans of possibly moving to South Dakota for a while. I have this love/hate relationship with the idea of moving back there.

There's something really good about knowing the people you live around, and having everyone be interested in your life, but there's also an oppressive side to that. It seems that it can shift quickly too from neighborly interest to nosy busybodies just wanting to keep an eye on your comings and goings.

Kathleen Norris seems to have a lot of wisdom on small towns, so I picked up "Dakota" again, a book I've probably read 7 or 8 times through. Here's a passage I stumbled on, that seemed apt, and able to put into words what I can't:

"But hospitality to the stranger does not necessarily translate into greater love for the people you live with every day, and the small town of both the heartland and the monastery are often stereotyped as either paradise on earth or backwaters full of provincial and self-righteous hypocrites. The truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in between.

I have observed that in the small town, the need to get along favors the passive aggressive, those for whom honest differences and disagreements pose such a threat that they are quickly submerged, left to fester in a complex web of resentments. This is why, whem the tempests erupt in the small-town teapot, they are so violently desctructive. This is why, when the comfortable fiction that we're all the same under the skin, is exposed as a lie, those who are genuinely different so often feel ostracized and eventually leave."

Blaine's Arrival

He's here! The baby's here! This is Blaine Douglas. Actually, I'm not sure yet how they're spelling Blaine. Hopefully the right way. ;) It's weird though how babies all sort of look the same...just baby-ish. It'll be fun when he gets his own "look." Hopefully it's not like Gabe as a baby though, he had huge eyes that make him look rather like an alien.

He was 7 pounds and 7 ounces, and looks like he's got a good head of hair. He's not yet wearing his "My auntie loves me" onesie, but soon....very soon.

Today is my "day of birth," as Dave put it. Once again, my kids and school have been overwhelming. The 7th grade class, or at least my room mom, gave me a dozen green roses, like the ones in the picture. Actually, the 5th grade sister of one of my students brought them to me, with a Mango-a-go-go Jamba Juice, and said "Hi! N picked these out for you (the brother in my class) because he knows that green is your favorite color. Isn't that the sweetest thing you've ever heard?

Another teacher brought me flowers from her garden, which smell amazing. At lunch one of the office staff brought me a Starbucks Carmel Macchiato, and she gave me a basket with Harry and David stuff and a Barnes and Noble gift certificate.

Wow. What an amazing place to work.

All Things Good

Wow. Yesterday, after waiting for nearly a year, I received an offer on my condo! Hooray! It was a good offer, more than I expected, so I took it. That is definitely a weight lifted off my shoulders. Now, hopefully the buyers get their financing...

Also, it's my birthday this week, and the baby is overdue and should be coming any day now. What a fabulous week.

I ended up helping Amy and Josh paint sets yesterday at school while I faxed back and forth with my realtor. I was amazed at Josh's abilities...He research and designed all the backdrops for Annie Jr., and supervised all the painting. The pictures are just a few of the backdrops. I helped on the one with the buildings. :)

This is going to be 5th Ave., during the song "NYC." Josh says there's a Power Point slide that will complete the top of the building.

This one is for the inside of Daddy Warbucks' mansion. It's difficult to see, but there's a fireplace on the right.

More Quiddie Pictures

Pretty Blue Eyes

The party animal at his best.

Partying it up in a gift bag

He took it off all by himself!

I love it

Crazy psycho cat.

Back from the O.C.

My weekend in the O.C. was stupendous. Friday night Amanda and I went out for dinner and caught up. Saturday was busy with bringing Quiddie to the vet, going out for a birthday lunch (yum!), shopping, and going to the show. Jason was fab-u-lous in Kiss Me Kate. I didn't get any pictures at the show, but there's one of him with his make-up still on. I was so impressed with the show...it was amazing. Oh, and Quiddie loved his Party Animal T-shirt. He actually managed to take it off himself. Now, if he could learn to put it back on, that would be fabulous.

Rambling...

Tomorrow I leave for the O.C. Yea! I get to see Amanda and Jason, and a performance of Jason's Show. And I know Amanda will appreciate most that I called it Jason's show. So tonight it's laundry and packing.

I've been thinking about baby niece/nephew almost daily now. I'm trying to guess where I'll be when I get the call that the baby is being born. I think in school would be the most dramatic, and I'd probably be tempted to give the kids frequent updates, which could only gross them out. Although, after the other 7th grade teacher's wife just had a baby, I think they're pretty well-educated on the topic.

I'm hoping the baby holds out until my birthday, but I know that waiting for 5 days is a lot to ask of an unborn fetus. Perhaps though...And I found out that my brother and sister-in-law were planning to name it Owen if it were a boy, but her boss just had a baby boy and named it Owen. Doh. So now I don't know...Owen was pretty solid though. There's Owen Wilson, and that book about the Owen Meany kid. Could be worse. Could be Tatum or Tater or something.

My birthday has also inspired me to think about getting a tattoo. It's something I've thought about a lot, but never really said much. Seeing as how I have little idea what I'd get or where, it probably won't happen. Becky's been making fun of me for looking through books at the library for ideas. Hey, I heart libraries.

Speaking of which, I can't sing the praises of my new branch library enough. Come on, they have a glass sculpture suspended from the ceiling, and a fireside reading room (yes, with a fireplace in the middle). And, I just realized that I can borrow CDs from them, and copy them to my computer. I think Donna and John have known this a long time, but I just figured it out.

In school news, one of my kids had an odd prayer request. I said "Any prayer requests this afternoon?" And he raised his hand and said "Um, it's my birthday tomorrow, and so that I don't die." Uh.....okay....is this something I should be concerned about? He ran out before I could talk to him. I think it was just one of the weird-o things he says, but I'll have to investigate tomorrow.

I made a girl cry today, which sucks. But, I felt better when I found out she's crying in other teachers' rooms too. So, technically, it probably wasn't me that made her cry.

Wow, that took a sad turn quickly.

Back on the rambling side, tomorrow I will deliver Quiddie's "Party Animal" t-shirt to him, and take pictures. I've promised Dave that I will post them here soon.

Funny kid highlights

1) We're reading Flowers for Algernon, and one of the kids (balls boy) says to another "Hey, are you crying?" And I look over, and he's got a napkin held up near his eye. He replies with "No! It's a pimple that's bleeding." Ugh.

2) I can't really take credit for this since it didn't happen in my classroom, but the same boy (pimple boy) held up his hand in my friend Becky's class and said "I can see a shadow and it's daytime!"

3) From yesterday: We were reading Flowers for Algernon and in the story Charly has this part about how confusing it is that "through" is pronounced "threw," while "enough" is pronounced "enuff" and "tough" is "tuff." The pimple kid was reading this part out loud, and stops and looks up and says "I used to think that too!!!"

Now we call him Charly.

It's raining and

indoor recess suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkksssssssssssssss!

Surreal

It's very bizarre to be here in CA, and to see Sioux Falls, SD on the national news, and be able to identify the intersections.

What are the soul sucking creatures in Harry Potter called?

I attended possibly the most mind-numbing and dull workshop of my entire life today. The premise was good, hinging on Biblical worldviews in teaching. There were so many things wrong though I hardly know where to start.

First, they used the term "integrating Biblical truth into curriculum." Sorry, but it's not a question of integrating. Integrating implies that there is neutral material, just waiting for the Bible to be applied to it. Already we were off to a bad start. My colleagues were more patient, but by noon we were all bored to death. The presenter had also asked whether or not any of us had taken a course about Biblical worldview in teaching, and the only people to raise thier hands in the auditorium of maybe 200 people were about 12 people from my school.

So this guy told us all why we need to have a Biblical worldview, then proceede to introduce us to a 2 page planning document that will help us to integrate our Biblical worldview into curriculum. Not a terrible idea....but, there are about 8 or 9 steps you have to go through, and it's all very artificial...there were five categories of Biblical truth you could choose to connect your curriculum to: God, mankind, creation, purpose, and this nebulous category called "moral order." Apparantly, truth is equal to moral order. I never quite figured out what it meant, but it somehow included all the fundamentalist stuff.

My mind shut down after about 4 hours of his droning on, but there was one interesting moment. He was showing us an example of how to do a lesson using his planning document, and one of the questions he thought was a good example of integration was "Does the Bible teach that we should use 2-step equations for good instead of evil?" People laughed out loud, and the guy actually said "What? Is there something funny about that?"

My colleagues and I were sure it was a joke setting us up for the examples of how NOT to do integration. It wasn't a joke.

I picked up one good quote too. We had to watch these horribly produced video clips (jumpy transitions, distorted sound, etc.), and on one there was a Pre-K teacher doing a lesson on plants. She had this weird felt-covered apron on which she could stick pictures of the story. Kind of like a wearable felt-board from Sunday school. Anyway, as she put it on, she said "This is my story smock and I like it because it fits me." Hilarious.

There was something so life-sucking about the workshop, as if the man and his methods had sucked all color out of the world. I was trying to think of the name of the creatures in Harry Potter who suck out your life so that you'll never feel happiness again...that's exactly what I felt like when I left today.

I wish I had a Petronus.

Signed and Sealed

Today I put pen to paper and committed to one more year at my current job. This is a big deal for me since it will be my first time having a second year at a school. I felt remarkably peaceful and happy about the decision.

I know I've said it many times before, but I feel so blessed by my current life, and especially my school. Yes, there are those days when kids are doing just asinine things, and their parents are a pain in the rear, but overall the administration are just amazing in their support. The principal actually came around and physically handed out the contracts. I even got a little side hug and a "We really hope you come back next year." So thoughtful.

And so, in honor of signing my contract, I've decided to make a list of the best things about where I am right now in my life. And, I'm using Firefox so I can use bullet points:

• Having extraordinary friends very close, and only half a state away instead of an entire country
• Outstanding public resources, particularly the new library in my neighborhood. There's a hanging glass sculpture, and a fireplace!
• A job that I can not only tolerate, but actually like most of the time. Added to this is colleagues that I really appreciate
• Almost anything I'd want to do within an hour's drive
• Becoming part of a church that I think I can call home
• Finally feeling like I am content