Mole Cat

This is NOT the cat referred to in the last post....this other cat likes to tunnel, so I found her in my bed the other day....weirdo.

I Hate Seattle for One Week a Year

It's freaking hot.

It is hotter in Seattle than in Phoenix for crying out loud. It is hotter than Miami, Dallas, and Los Angeles.

It was 103 here today, the hottest temperature before this point was 100 degrees. It is supposed to be this hot tomorrow too. My house is about 95 degrees and WILL NOT cool down. I have two fans aimed directly at me and I am getting crankier by the minute.

At least I'm not wearing fur.

Flickers of Hope

Last night the power went out around 7:30 or so, just as it was starting to get dark. Even though I am not supposed to do this, I did light some candles so I could read for the hour or so before the power came back on. Speaking of flickers of hope....there are only 40 more days of school left.

And....because I don't post pictures of the evil cats often enough, here is Emma's newest favorite place to sleep. No I am not happy about it.

Slightly Guilty Funny...

This totally made me laugh for the second time today. No, it was not a great day.

I laughed hysterically the first time when Emma (the quite overweight cat who lives at my house) attempted to jump on the bathroom counter, totally biffed it, and managed to only get her front paws on the counter where she hung awkwardly for half a second before crashing down onto the floor extremely ungracefully.

Then this clip below made me laugh hysterically again.

Library Cat Fight

First of all, an update. Remember on my previous post how Emma cried pitifully in her box down the freeway to my parents house? She sat in my lap for a while on the way home and we did make it home with quite a bit of accompanying whining.

It has been absolutely beautiful here for the last few days. I know those of you that live in the South enjoy sunny weather pretty much year round, but to have several consecutive days of sunny weather in Washington in February is very awesome. For that weather to coincide with a week long break from school is nothing short of miraculous, but that is what happened this week. The cats are enjoying the sun as well......

I got home from my parents house in Oregon on Wednesday afternoon, and yesterday the weather was just so incredibly nice that I decided to walk to the library. I needed to pick up a movie on the Renaissance that Clark and I are showing next week in class and I wanted to get some books to read, so I walked down there. It was a little brisk, but so pretty....spring is definitely on the way!!!

So while I am sitting at the computer looking up the call number for a book I wanted, I hear at the computer across from me, the following conversation/cat fight:

Small woman, late 40s, with overdyed red hair - "What did you just call me??"

Younger woman with her boyfriend - mumbling inaudibly

Red - "Did you just call me a slut?"

Younger - mumbling inaudibly

Red - "You can't just call me a whore like that!"

Younger - looks at her

Red - Stands up and fronts younger woman

Younger - says something else inaudible

Red - "You wanna get out of my face?" (ironic, since she was the one getting up in the other's face)

Short (barely 5' tall) male Library Worker - "You both need to leave the library"

Both women ignore him quite pointedly

Younger woman hugs boyfriend

Redhaired woman sits back down at computer, still muttering things about whores.

I laugh to myself as I think, "even when I'm not at school I see people fighting..."

And then I walked home. This has been a nice vacation and definitely makes me feel ok about going back to school. Having a break in February is nice and I feel ready to go back to school now and deal with the kids.

Home Sweet Home

Here in the Northwest, we don't get out of school very early. Late June is when we finally kick the kids out the door for the last time, specifically, June 22 in our district. But....to break up the loooooooooong stretch between Christmas break and summer break, we have a midwinter break in February (one week off) and a spring break in April, which is another week long break. So this week is mid-winter break and I am here for a few days with my parents in Oregon. Just to taunt you a little more, here are some pictures taken from the backyard of my parents house this evening.

Well, ok, this one below was actually taken out the window of the car. I may or may not have been driving at the time. Heh heh.In addition, I had to bring one of the cats down. NOT BECAUSE I AM A CAT LADY. But because this particular psychotic feline, if left to her own devices, will eat all of her food in 24 hours or less, then throw it up all around the house, lock herself in the bathroom, shred the toilet paper, and do all kinds of mayhem as punishment for me leaving her. So, I brought her down. And this was her contribution to the four hour trip:

No, I did not shoot this while driving. I stopped for gas before leaving Seattle and while waiting for the guy in front of me to quit maneuvering, I shot this. She did get louder and softer, depending on how rough the road was.

Have a good day everyone, while I enjoy home cooking and free maintenance on my car!

Things I Notice At School.

I have figured out one of the problems with my 6th period. There are 18 boys and only 7 girls in that class. 18 boys. 18 fifteen year old boys. EIGHTEEN. That's almost a 3-1 ratio. In fact, each of my classes (except 5th period) has around a 2-1 ratio of boys to girls.

The normal ratio of men to women in the US is like 54% women to 46% men....so this is odd. Four of my five classes are weighted heavily with males. The kids are randomly assigned to my classroom, split between myself and Clark, so while I know he has one class that is heavily weighted with females (preAP world History), his other classes look like mine.

statistical anomaly or government coverup? YOU DECIDE. =)

(SWITCHING GEARS)

While waiting by the school door the other day, I noticed that the extremely ugly railing by the door has quite a bit of graffiti on it, understandably, since it is a writable surface, but then I looked closer. Do you see it? Someone has put the key of the railing on each section. And they really do sound different. Very cool. I was going to sing a song, but then....I didn't.

AND this..........is quite possibly the BEST definition of "ironic" EVER. The last line was smudged out but someone wrote on the bathroom wall - making fun of people who write on the bathroom wall.

And no....it wasn't me.

And finally, this is not school related, but I tend to keep my house kind of chilly (55, to be precise) and Emma's favorite place to be is directly in front of the heater while staring longingly into the vent. See below.

Happy Weekend everyone....

Thoughts on Kids and Cats

You should know by now that I teach high school. Sophomores, to be specific. And I live with two cats. I would say "own" but if you have cats, you know that's not possible. They own me. My cats do NOT get along and many times when I come home from school, I feel like I am STILL dealing with teenagers. Here are some ways that cats and teenagers are a lot alike:

they smell funny
they groom incessantly, especially the females
they have to have id around their neck
they eat constantly
they only barely tolerate the people they live with
they demand constant attention some of the time
they hide from objects of cleanliness, such as water, vacuums, and brooms
they nap all day
they run around all night
they fight with each other
they feel their own needs are more important than mine
they don't work very hard
they whine a lot
they spend a lot of time just chillin'
they are weirdly fuzzy
they bite
they aren't all that interested in listening to instructions
they mess up the furniture
they make no secret of their disdain for others

And yet I love my job and I love my cats. It's like it's meant to be. Happy weekend everyone!

FRICKIN' CATS

One of my cats prefers to use the litterbox with the door closed, and since it is in the bathroom, I usually come home 1-2 times a week to find that she has locked herself in the bathroom. She puts her paws on the door and pushes it shut and since she's somewhat chunky, she is able to shut it completely. While she does like her privacy while using the litterbox, she does NOT like to be locked in there and generally shows her displeasure by tearing up something. Today, I came home several hours late to find this:

You will notice the artistic draping of the shredded toilet paper over the litterbox, and the large pile of shredded toilet paper on the floor. It is shredded through to the cardboard, and the roll was new this morning.

Anyone want a high maintenance cat?

Evil Roommates

So....as you may have figured out, I teach high school sophomores. I am not married and I don't have any kids, but I do have two high-maintenance teenagers in my house that I share living space with. Their names are Emma and Sophie, and while they may lure you into thinking they are cute and fun to hang out with, like teenagers, they are mostly just moody and demanding. I have had Emma for 5 years. She doesn't like very many people, and really dislikes men, although if my dad holds his hand out, she will deign to approach him and sniff it...but he BETTER NOT TOUCH HER.

If something happens to annoy her, for example if I look at her wrong, if Sophie is in the room somewhere, or I try to pet her when she is not in the mood, she will hiss and growl until you run away in terror. Inexplicably, she loves male veterinarians. She does NOT like Sophie at all, she gulps her food like she hasn't been fed in weeks, she has a sensitive stomach so I have to feed her special food, and she gets hairballs and throws up on the floor. She doesn't so much meow as trill in the back of her throat, she has an obsession with feet....especially flipflops, which she hugs to her chest and falls asleep on...and she doesn't mind riding in the car - as long as you play Karen Carpenter (she doesn't like Johnny Cash, and if you play something she doesn't like, she will start grumbling louder and louder until you change it...).

She also prefers to use the litter box with the bathroom door closed, and will go in the bathroom, put her paws up on the door, and close the door to use the litter box. Then, she puts her paws under the door, and as long as it hasn't latched shut, she will pull it towards her until it opens. She is a total drama queen. Sophie on the other hand, is a little sister. She picks on Emma, chases her around, and totally wants to hang out with her. She does things like let Emma get settled on the back of the chair (her preferred hangout) and then she will jump up on the chair, so Emma growls and flees, and then Sophie can have the prewarmed chair. One of them, and I don't know which one, has decided that if I do not get home on time to feed them, they will then proceed to shred the toilet paper to varying degrees. I am pretty sure Emma is doing this with her teeth...So when I got home today, this is what I found: Emma had locked herself in the bathroom and the toilet paper was mysteriously shredded all the way down to the little cardboard tube. Stupid roommates.

Old AND Single...

Highlights from today include -

a kid in my first period thought I was 40
a kid in my 4th period thought I was 22

I like 4th period better than 1st period

My emergency contact information was rejected because I had only put my parents down. When I pointed out that I had no one else in the area that I was related to or really close friends with, I got an unsympathetic "um...find someone." REALLY? Thanks for the suggestion - I'll get right on that.

my new principal came in to observe me randomly... positives, I was assidiously helping a student at the time, negatives, there were 4 kids talking and not working (I had told them to get to work twice already)

Last night, I was making the bed and Emma came in all excited because she LOVES it when I make the bed. She's pretty sure that's her favorite time of the week. So she laid all over every layer, spreading her fur all over the place, and then refused to get up when I was putting the blanket on. Believe me, she just LOOKS cute and innocent...she's pretty feisty.

I also tried to get pictures of this spider web for like 10 minutes today. I could not get the angle right to get the spider, the web, and the shadow without getting my hand or shadow in the picture. Argh! But it still looks kind of cool, especially after I played with it a little bit in photoshop express. I am obsessed with getting a good picture of a spiderweb. It is much harder than I would have expected.

Bordering on Crazy Cat Lady

So I have two cats, and those of you who know them, know that Emma is the crazy one and Sophie is slightly more normal but still somewhat psycho. Emma prefers to be on the backs of chairs, as she does not like Sophie at all, but when Sophie decides she wants something, she wants it. So...today, she kicked Emma off of the back of the chair. You can see the smug look in her eyes...

Drama Queen

I forgot to post this...my cat Emma has some boundary issues, and felt that S was invading her space on the back of the chair. So...Emma tried to push S off the chair by pushing against the back of S's head with her back feet. Punk.

Um...

So I told you about how Emma sleeps on her face a while ago, and now that I have a camera I finally captured it....

No, I don't know why.

Home is a nice place to visit

I have been needing to get my eyes checked (yearly contacts exam, fun times), my eyes are really dry and my contact are about a month overdue to be changed, but my eye doctor is in Oregon and this is the first chance I have had to come home when there was an available appointment, so I drove down early this morning...thanks to the cats, who still believe that 5:15 am is the appropriate time to play "Wake the human." Punks. As money is particularly scarce this month, my dad kindly lent (lended?) me some money and filled my car with gas. So sweet of him....

Cats

Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with teaching - I looked outside today and saw my cat climbing up the railing on the balcony. It is wooden with crossed bars that form squares about 4 inches square. She likes to get up on the railing, but I have never seen her get up there. But apparently, she climbs up like a ladder instead of jumping. Weirdo.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes.....

This is always the time of year when I have big ideas about what I am going to do better next year, or even next week. (It is also the time of year when I need a mental health day, but there is no way to squeeze one in this week or next.) So, on my top ten list of things that I want to do better next year: 1. (the perennial presence) better contact with parents~ 2. more streamlined and focused unit plans~ 3. better use of prep time~ 4. better way of communicating due dates to students~ 5. stay on top of kids grades better~ 6. plan ahead better/take stuff to print shop earlier~ 7. get student website of some kind set up~ 8. use more art in my lessons~ 9. find enough alternate sources that I don't have to use the textbook anymore~ 10. figure out a way to make my classroom more hands-on without eliminating the need for more traditional learning. If I can accomplish two of the things on this list I will be happy, but I will try for all ten. It is weird, most people feel that the new year starts in January and they make all kinds of New Year's resolutions. I usually feel that way in August and September, but I usually start planning for this feeling in April and May. =) In other news, I just had to rescue Sophie from the balcony where she was attempting to fling herself off the edge in pursuit of a rabbit in the garden. I never had this problem in Texas.