An acrostic for
Y - Y'all
O - oughta
U - uhm, be tired.

I - I
D - did
L - live
E - even
W - when
I - Idlewilde
L - lifted
D - deranged
E - entities.....
all around me.
(then-present company certainly not included)

OK, so that sucked. I'm not exactly a whiz with words.
Not that I need reminders.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

It's been a loooooong week.
A loooooooong week back to school.
And so I'm uninspired.
Even though Camden and Benjy have said cute things, adorable things, and posed for the obligatory first-day-of-school photo, I am too tired to find my camera and upload the pix. Therefore, I'm too tired to blog about anything taking that much thought. Hey, I went to TKD tonight. I have NOTHING left to give. Especially after the square block drill. Talk about a Jimmy moment.

And so, I give you this, for your blogging pleasure. An easy-to-fill-in Four Things topic.
Peace.


Four jobs I've had:
-- Hardee's "Would you like a Big Cookie with that?"
-- Life Guard
-- Editoral Assistant/Staff Writer - Roanoke Times
-- Teacher

Four places I've been on vacation:
-- Cozumel, Mexico
-- Camden, Maine
-- Seattle, Washington
-- Grand Cayman, Wherever

Four of my favorite foods:
-- Snack Pack chocolate pudding
-- ahi tuna from Red Star Brewery
-- birthday cake
-- pasta and fresh parmasan cheese and real butter

Four movies I can watch over and over
(I tend to scoff at ES when he watches a movie more than once...):
-- Gone With the Wind
-- The Full Monty
-- Christmas Story
-- Toy Story 2

Four places I've lived:
-- Norton, Va.
-- Roanoke, Va.
-- Delaware, Oh.
-- Greensburg, Pa.

Four TV shows I love to watch fairly regularly:
-- Burn Notice
-- The Office
-- CSI Miami (I know...bad train wreck...I can't help it.)
-- Law & Order - ALL of them

Four websites I visit daily:
-- Special Forces blogs
-- Pioneer Woman blog
-- Bye Bye Pie blog
-- Claudine Hellmuth (collage artist)

Four places I'd rather be right now:
-- on a tube on the Guadalupe River in Texas
-- on a beach. Any beach.
-- in the south.
-- in bed

Thank you, Princess, for giving me a reason to stay awake for another hour.........

(A) Attached or Single...Attached to Eaglescout since Sept. 5, 1992, Highland Park, Roanoke, Virginia. He was the one in brown cowboy boots. I was ravishingly, breath-takingly beautiful.
(B) Best friend... Eaglescout. 
(C) Cake or pie... It all depends on who makes the cake or pie. If it's cake batter that I make from a box, then I'll happily lick the bowl. If LL makes the cake, I'll eat it. If it's a blackberry pie from anywhere with vanilla bean icecream, then it's mine. So, I can't make a choice here. I'm undecided. Hopeless.
(D) Day of choice... In the summer, I'd have to agree with Princess. Now that school's started, I'd have to pick Friday just for the fact that I can look forward to the weekend.
(E) Essential item... A book. A new crime fiction novel by John Sandford would be prime.
(F) Favorite color... yellow.
(G) Gum or mints... Gum.
(H) Hometown... Norton, Virginia. A happy Mayberry kinda place. Even though I couldn't wait to get out when I was in college, I grew to miss it more and more with each year I've lived farther and farther away from it. :(
(I) Favorite Indulgence... hot cocoa with skim milk and caramel and a brand new book from B&N. Yes, it's 2 things, CTP, but it's 1 when taken as a single entity or experience. One indulgence. They go together. Like PB&J.
(J) January or July... January. Winter is the best time of the year. 2 words of explanation: Snow Days.
(K) Kids... 2 boys, 1 canine
(L) Life isn't complete without... a nap. Oh no, I mean, ES and the younglings.
(M) Marriage date... Sept. 5, 1992
(N) Number of brothers and sisters... 1 sister. Michelle. She passed away on April 9, 2008. But she'll always and forever by my baby sister. 
(O) Oranges or apples... chocolate Snack Pack pudding.
(P) Phobias... Crowds, People, the PUBLIC, HUMANITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
(Q) Quotes... "One time, at band camp............." 

"You'll shoot your eye out."

And something from Austin Powers, I'm sure. I just don't remember what.
(R) Reasons to smile... Having Camden and Benjy BOTH at recess this week when I'm on, of all the unsmiley things, recess duty. I love seeing my boys playing when they don't know I'm watching.
(S) Season of choice... Winter - snow, snow cream, snow storms, snow-covered roads, snow reports, snow days
(T) Tag... You're it!
(U) Unknown fact about me... Well, I'd like to think you'd find it extremely unusual that I was the last person chosen for every single gym team I was on. :(   But, I guess you possibly don't know that I am a National Board Certified Teacher which means that I once knew about what I am talking. I'm praying about the recertification process this year. A long and icky and pricey process, but one I'm feeling led to pursue. hmmmmmmm.
(V) Valentine's Day or not... I really don't care. ES and I tend to forget this holiday in spite of our intense and undying love for one another an all things hearty and chocolate.
(W) Worst habit... gas. Uh, I mean, cracking my knuckles.
(X) X-ray vision or invisibility... Invisibility. Think Harry Potter.
(Y) Your favorite food... Snack Pack chocolate pudding. This month.
(Z) Favorite Zoo animal... elephants. That's Camden's favorite animal.

I wanna be right brained so bad I can taste the haphazardly thrown together banana pudding with no bananas because of poor planning and eaten right out of the bowl because that's what risk takers do.

But, I'm a left brained bore.

Here's what a quiz I took says about me:

Brain Lateralization Test Results

Right Brain (20%) The right hemisphere is the visual, figurative, artistic, and intuitive side of the brain. Left Brain (82%) The left hemisphere is the logical, articulate, assertive, and practical side of the brain

Are You Right or Left Brained?
personality tests by similarminds.com

And here is what it means:

Left brain dominant individuals are more orderly, literal, articulate, and to the point. They are good at understanding directions and anything that is explicit and logical. They can have trouble comprehending emotions and abstract concepts, they can feel lost when things are not clear, doubting anything that is not stated and proven.

Right brain dominant individuals are more visual and intuitive. They are better at summarizing multiple points, picking up on what's not said, visualizing things, and making things up. They can lack attention to detail, directness, organization, and the ability to explain their ideas verbally, leaving them unable to communicate effectively.

Overall you appear to be Left Brain Dominant.

That's like a slap in the face. I wanna be visual and intuitive! I wanna summarize and pick things up and make stuff up that people wanna hear. And for once in my cotton picking life, I want to walk out of my house with making my bed.

It's hard to come up with topics for the blog, ya know? So after ES and I put the boys to bed at 8:00 - did ya hear that??? 8 PM ON THE DOT! - I got my bag of lesson plans and books and copies and letters to parents and homework assignments and Excedrin ready for school tomorrow and sat down to research blog topics. It's 10 o'clock now. Sad how I've chosen to spend my last moments of freedom. And to think I could have been watching the Hooters Swimsuit Pageant/Contest/Scholarship Extravaganza or whatever they call it. It's basically a booty call. Or booby call in this case.

So, there are a lot of websites called MEMEs out there devoted to helping us blog challenged peeps. And in these MEMEs are thousands of things we could be blogging about if we weren't so hopeless as to still be talking about our Fab Five. And Delta Dawn. (And to think I told SC today that she could be Tinnelle to Tightpants' Captain. Oh, I'm completely and totally an ugly duckling in a sea of cool fowl.)

These MEMEs are so proliferous that there's no way I could create a fresh list of blog prompts on a school night. So I'm gonna link to them here. And we can click away and decide what we'd like to blog about. We can make a list if we want. We can even make up some of our own. But since we're pretty much 0 for 2, I figure we need all the help we can get.

Here's what I found:

Daily Meme

Monday morning prompts 

Photographic projects

Surveys and quizzes and polls - oh my!

Questions to answer

Weekly random thought to blog about

There's a lot more out there, if you wanna check. I googled "blog challenge" and "blog topics". But it's a school night for me. sigh. But since you're still awake, I thought I'd leave you with this dose of fun. I'm sure the kids will be into this any day now.

I need a prompt.
Without a reason to post, I'm lost. I'm almost ready to write a haiku. That's getting desperate, don't ya think?
I do have this to offer up, though.
It's hysterical. At least in my dweebish world.
And this is all I've got.
(Well, except an exceptionally runny nose from allergies. Yes, ragweed season is upon us.)

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

I don't know what put this song in my head the other day, but once there, I couldn't think of anything else till I'd downloaded it from itunes and burned it to a CD. Delta Dawn. Worth every penny of the 99 cents I plunked down for it. Er, I guess we don't exactly plunk down change in itunes. More like one-clicked it.

So anyway, as I was saying, I've got this terrific CD with a track of the Helen Reddy belting out Delta Dawn, and I'm listening to it as I drive over the mountain today to school. And honey, let me tell you, I had the window down, the cool breeze blowing on my face, and it was quite a chilly morn so I had the seat warmers on, too, for balance. Balance is important like that. Well, I was singing to the top of my lungs with Helen. I wasn't just a back up singer for her, I was her understudy. The boys weren't with me, so this was OK. I typically don't do my singing in front of people. Even in church. 

And as I was Delta Dawning my heart out, I was having the sweetest flashbacks to the 70s, growing up on Poplar Street with my childhood BFF Kim and her sister Karen and my own sister Michelle. Growing up, we used to play Show. Oh, we'd do little ditties from Donnie and Marie, Sonny and Cher, a few disco tunes from the BeeGees, and even a little Elvis because he was King. And we'd always, always, without fail, sing Delta Dawn. We didn't have a clue what it was about, and of course there were no Friday Night Videos to help us figure it out, but we knew all the words by heart so we sang it A LOT. And to this day, I still know every single word, and I can sing it to you if you give me a lot of money. 

Got a little visit in with SC tonight at the TKD Karate Kids testing. My favorite part of talking to her was when she came up to me and ES totally cracking up. That's all I'm gonna say about that. You'll have to ask her.

I will tell you, however, that Camden passed his testing tonight and earned his red belt. It's so red. Crimson red. A glorious shade of the reddest red I've ever seen. ES and I are so darn proud of our baby. He really wanted this when it came right down to it. Can't you see the pride in ES's face? And the determination on Camden's?

And so, we are a family of two red belts, one yellow belt, and one brown leather belt. Emma has no belt at all. Her clothes fit her perfectly. 

Camden asked me today, "Mom, is the Flagari real?"

"Welllllll, I've never actually seen them," I told him, ducking into the bathroom to think.

"You'll have to ask Dad," I quickly added.

Great day in the morning. He's questioning the Flagari.

Next it'll be the big kahuna, Santa Claus. To be followed by the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and the Halloween Witch who trades candy for a surprise toy. 

My other baby is growing up.

Months ago I walked in on Eaglescout having a conversation with his boys about the Flagari. 

"When you go to bed at night, the lights go out. The Flagari come out of their little cracks and hidey holes to play with the toys." insert question from Encyclopedia Camden

"Because they don't have toys." insert question from Encyclopedia Camden

"Because they're small little creatures they can't get into toy boxes or into containers or on shelves either, so any toys left on the floor that they can reach they take care of. And they play with them for a while and enjoy them. Because any toy should be taken care of."  (lesson to be learned)

"And because the Flagari love their toys so much and they really do appreciate the fact that they have toys at all, they often take the toys and share them with other children who would enjoy them. So remember, you should always clean your toys off the floor and put them in the toy box if you'd like to see them in the morning."

The kids listened to this bit of nonsense, completely spellbound. 

Except for Encyclopedia Camden. "What do they look like? What do they do? Will they take Star Wars toys? Can we get them back?"

Benjy is so taken with the Flagari that he has begun naming they tiny Ninjas that he wins at Seabase Flagari Guys. And now Camden is wondering if they're even real. I can't say that I blame him. There are so many nights when we go to bed that toys on the floor of the playroom are still there in the morning. And while the toys on the floor do give me fits, I don't bother to pick them up and put them away. That's work. If the Flagari want them, they can have them. Have at it, you little monsters!

"Mom, pwease don't stand wight there. I just need some awone time."

That's what Benjy told me at the fair today when he climbed up on a zebra before the carousel began to spin. I laughed but realized in an instant that he was serious. So I resigned myself to a bench two rows behind him and watched as he welcomed a little girl to the horse by his side. Ah, my little guy is growing up.

I have mostly happy, but a few mixed feelings of melancholy about my baby going to kindergarten in one week. The kids brought their backpacks to church this morning for the "blessing of the backpacks" service. That's when it hit me for the first time. Benjy's not my little preschooler anymore - the cute cherubic face that never got into an ounce of trouble (well...) is getting a little leaner, a little more unruly, a little more five. That backpack's blessing will be put to good use this year. Thank you, Jesus, for watching over my boys.

On other fronts, Princess has reintroduced me to Pioneer Woman's blog, and now I'm knee-deep into her memoirs of her romance with Marlboro Man. That's what she calls her husband. That's some sweet, hot reading. And completely PG rated, mind you. No smut for me. Anyway, I have to say Pioneer Woman has inspired me to want to write like her. She has the gift for it. Oh, there's no chance I'll ever amount to more than the speck I am on the blogosphere, but I at least want to live like a writer, to notice the things that make my life so blessed. To be an observer, a recorder, a candlestick maker. Oh wait a minute.

Back to today, at the fair: I'll preface this observation with the confession that I had been dreading this fair thing since I got volunteered to participate in the janhg bong routine for TKD. And while I do feel icky nervous about performing in front of any number of folks, that's nothing compared to the sickness that wells up inside of me at the prospect of walking around the county fairgrounds with untold numbers of gazillions of people and carnies shouting at us to come play their games and win cheap stuffed fuzzy animals made in China (where, of course, I've visited in recent days).

If you know me really well, you know that my once big fat E on the Myers Briggs personality test has inverted into a bigger, fatter I. I'm an introvert. My energy comes not from others, but from being alone. (Ah, I getcha, Benjy....) The more unknown people that I'm around, the more exhausted I get. (I could have said "freaked out", but that makes me sound like a wackadoo.) I don't like malls. I don't like big cities. I don't like to call and order take-out or deal with yard sale shoppers or the women in Bath & Body Works who follow me around spritzing me with smelly stuff. I just want to be left flippin' alone in my bubble. Don't touch my bubble if you are a stranger. Especially if you are a strange stranger.

OK, so, we get to the fair and I have this surprising little inkling of excitement. Of course, I did. It's like a picture from my childhood. Going to the Virginia-Kentucky District Fair was THE ticket in town. Why, I remember when Dottie West performed there. It was a BIG DEAL. My memory began to fade, however, as we closed in on the entrance. The little man behind the ticket window took our money and waved us through. We were immediately ushered to the lady under the tent to get purple stamps that would let us ride the rides. OK, so far so good.

And then. Oh mercy me, the crowd. The rides. The smells. The noise. Who the heck has their radio turned up so dang loud? And then the kids. "IWANNARIDETHEBUMPERCARSIWANNARIDETHEFERRISWHEEL

IWANNARIDETHATTHINGWAYUPTHEREIWANTSOMECOTTONCANDY!"

Oh my painted aunt, they didn't shut up for days, I mean hours. I spent a lot of time looking up.

And while it took some doing. A lot of doing, I did put my anxiety on the back burner enough to enjoy the ride, so to speak. There was Benjy's face hidden behind the mound of spun sugar, chocolate milk from lunch still staining his cheeks. Camden's glee at riding the twister thing backwards and upside down with ES. (ES? Not so gleeful.) Eaglescout's knowing way of keeping me nearby, close enough, watching to make sure I'm OK (translation: not freaking out). 

You know, I don't say this enough, and perhaps Pioneer Woman's way of telling stories has lit a fire under my butt, but that ES husband of mine is truly amazing. He manages to be with the boys - not merely watch them but to be in the moment with them. He gets us all water bottles, spreads out on a little square of grass, and makes his family happy. He snaps pictures of the demo, even catching me mid-jump just so I can prove that I can do something remotely related to TKD. That my talk is real to some extent.
And he gladly goes to ride with one child while I ride with the other, which happened a lot since Benjy lacks four inches to ride most of the snapped-together-in-a-minute rides there. So thank you, ES. Thank you for understanding me. For living with that understanding. For getting me through my own bubble weirdness so that I could enjoy this fair thing. (You should know, that while I did survive and even smile and laugh and have fun today, I came home and immediately took a hot vanilla bubble bath to wash the scum off my body accumulated in 3 hours of walking around the fairgrounds with the very humanity I've come to, well, not enjoy. I'm just sayin.)

I was going to take tonight off, but I forgot I took another trip to the Olympics today and saw Capt. Tightpants himself in the Cube Pool. As opposed to the Oval Pool or the Septagon Pool.

Speaking of which, my uterus is killing me tonight. I asked ES why, oh why, if women had been subjected to mass misery and internal warring going on in their very own personal bodies since the days of Eve, how come men start wars? He wisely replied, "Because if women started wars they'd have to take a break once a month to turn on their heating pads." He speaks the truth, ES does. Wise he is, like Yoda.

Did you here the news? McDonald's has Clone Wars toys in their Happy Meals. We got Darth Vader and one of his ships today on our surprise drive through adventure. The kids are wound up to go see the movie tomorrow after our yard sale. This yard sale has had absolutely no advertising save a green sign I made with the most ginormous sharpie marker I've ever seen. It's bigger than sidewalk chalk. The yard sale may flop, but at least I have the world's greatest Sharpie now. 

OK, it's bed time. Night night.

Lookie who I ran into today in China.

Before I went to TKD tonight, I played a round of beach volleyball in China with some friends from other countries.  Now I have a fresh batch of bruises and an aching back, so I'm resting on a heating pad here in the USA. It's good to be home.

After talking to Princess tonight at tkd, I realized the special forces are starting to stir, sort of like before a full moon. Something about needing to know who my fab five are or they'll likely break off to form their own republic. The Spar Republic of Wanna Be With The Fab Five. I certainly don't want to cause a mutiny and add to our already crowded slate of ineffective countries, so I'll add my 5 here. 

Let me preface this, however, by letting you loyal readers know just how hard I've been working today on all things literacy - reading workshop, writing workshop, reading curriculum, writing curriculum, the education blogs and message boards. It's all rather mundane, but it has to be done. And secretly, I'm enough of an dweeb to enjoy it. Go Reading!!!!

OK, without further ado, and with apologies to the celebrities mentioned here, this is my list of crushes right at this very minute.

Rob Lowe 

He's always been a hottie, and I was mad about him when he was on The West Wing. 

Loved the suit, the self-importance of his character. 

He can write my speeches any day.

This is Spy Michael Weston on Burn Notice, but IRL, he goes by Jeffrey Donovan. 

That smile is the clincher for me. 

Like a nice bow on a pretty package. 

You know he's got a crush on me, no?

GROWL

Ah, another pretty smile. 

Tiger Woods. Where's ES? I need him to do the growl. I'm starting to get it now. :)

Bono.

It's not the smile.

Or the receding hairline. 

It's his heart for doing good. Sometimes that's enough.

OK, so that man isn't the Lucas Davenport, 

but he is the author of the books that star this detective 

who has taken my heart by storm. 

Lucas. 

Davenport. 

Just say it.

His character is so real that there are actual posts out there on the 'net 

guessing his top 100 rock songs.

Go figure. 

Lucas.

Davenport.

And finally, just to make up for lost time, and so that we don't give birth to a new country tonight, I offer up number 6 in the Fab 5. .................

Earl.

Gotta love a man with a conscience.

And a list.

Oh wait a minute. 

I have one of those.

:)

I made this little pip of a scrapbook tonight. I did not check spelling.

Make a Smilebox photobook

And I was surfing the proteacher boards and found this. If you read it aloud, it's even funnier.

In response to President Bush's
Federal "No Child Left Behind Act"
(NCLB), it is proposed that
students will have to pass a test
to be promoted to the next grade
level.

In the hope that this proposal
will be uniformly adopted by all
of the states as well as North
Carolina, the new test will be
called the Federal Arithmetic
and Reading Test, or FART.

All students who cannot pass a
FART in the second grade will be
re-tested in Grades 3, 4, and 5
until they are capable of passing
a FART score of 80%. If a student
does not successfully FART by
grade 5, that student shall be
placed in a separate English
program known as the Special
Mastery Elective for Learning
Language, or SMELL.

If, with this increased SMELL
program, the student cannot pass
the required FART test, he or
she can still graduate to middle
school by taking another one-
semester course in Comprehensive
Reading and Arithmetic Preparation,
or CRAP.

If by age fourteen the student
cannot FART, SMELL, or CRAP, he
or she can earn promotion in an
intensive one-week seminar known
as the Preparatory Reading for
Unprepared Nationally Exempted
Students, or PRUNES.

It is the opinion of the Department
of Instruction for Public Schools
(DIPS) that an intensive week of
PRUNES will enable any student to
FART, SMELL, or CRAP.

This revised provision of the
student component of the House
Bill 101 should help "clear the
air" as part of the "No School
Left Standing" Act.

And, finally, I had such a great evening out with the taekwondo girls Friday. We ate at this fantastic Italian restaurant that I drive by every day on the way to school, and it was yummo! I had tuna with artichokes and began a list. More on the list later. The tuna was excellent-o. But tuna FARTs SMELL.

So, Eaglescout has decided to take the KICK ME design idea to the Westmoreland County Blind Association where they do embroidery stuff and get some quotes or whatever. I dunno, though. Do we want embroidered tee shirts to spar in??? Won't they feel, oh, I don't know in my wee yellow belt way - HEAVY? Would we rather have them printed? Or, do we care? Don't we all, as Princess' neighbor would say, just want to be noticed?! What do you think?

And, oh yeah, fellow janhg bongers, I need some serious lessons on this form if I'm to show up at the fair with you guys. Just what in the world have you volunteered me for???!!!

And now, I leave you with this, sent to me from pal Jodee in Delaware, Ohio. Thanks, Jodee! This is fun. (Note to Mom, DON'T, WHATEVER YOU DO, CLICK THE TRIANGLE TO PLAY THIS. IT'S A SNAKE. YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THIS.)

I am only a yellow belt

but I will be a camo belt on Aug. 20.
IF I remember my form.
AND I remember my one-steps.
AND I don't vomit on the floor when they call my name. I still can't get over that fear of testing....

I have big hopes for being a camo belt. Namely, the chance to play with the big kids in the Thursday night sparring class. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to get hurt. And I wouldn't dream of hurting another soul. (Not that I'm capable of such ruthless behavior. How UNSouthernly can you get?)
But I hear so much about the fun (if not pain) that my friends have in this club that I feel a tad left out being only a yellow belt.
So, without further ado, I give you my entry fee into the club.



This would be on the back of the Tee shirt these people - my friends - dream of. In fact, I feel sure they haven't gotten a single iota of sleep since the concept of a sparring club tee shirt was conceived. On the front of this wardrobe essential, the whole ATA GREENSBURG shabang. Maybe something about the Thursday Night Sparring Club. Whatever.
So, what do you think??

Ok, Ok, OK, I know I'm behind. It ended yesterday with no fanfare from me. Frankly, I'm a bit tired of computing. I've been on the laptop all day long doing school stuff - curriculum planning, welcome letters, searching for downloadable things to print so I don't have to waste time driving around looking for stuff to buy. Turns out, I'm spending twice as much time doing on the computer!

Yummy!

Anybody need any squash? We're swimming in squash in ES's garden. What the heck do you do with this stuff? I can only think to cook it with butter. Free squash for a recipe!

And the other day I missed....

Way to Go!

We had quite a way to go to get home

Tiny

This is the TINY badger eating rat dog that left Emmalemmalimabean petrified for a week in Virginia. Yes, this face is the face of a monster dog. A minus-8-pound monster dog. 

This is the 375 pound Golden Girl. She didn't try to scare Emma the Dog, but she did just by associating with the above-mentioned Monster Dog. 


And this is Emma Louise Dawn, a happy and pooped pooch tonight. As soon as we were 5 miles from home, this GOOD DOG, WHO'S THE GOOD DOG, WHO IS THE BEST DOG IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD literally howled with relief. 

That said, I miss home, and Mom and Dad, and Brandee the Gentle Giant Golden Girl, and even the badger eating rat dog, Hokie. I miss them all. Thanks for the wonderful week with you, Mom and Dad. I love coming home.  :)

Me, driving home after 7 hours. With the dog. And the boys. None of which was in the trunk. Yet.

As for today's word. It's in the trunk. But the kids and the dog are NOT. Cause that wouldn't be right.