Hmmmm...

Returned home from being out of state and found something very curious on the dinner table:

Bag Balm.

It's in this really cute square tin decked out in holiday colors, though upon closer look it's the green of clovers and the deep pink of clover flowers. 

I'll be honest.  I wasn't sure what Bag Balm is supposed to be for.  I have heard there are several parts of the body that may be referred to as bags, and any of these parts--accurately referred to as such or only in slang--didn't deem this kind of thing something to be out on a table.  Upon closer look, though, I realized it is truly intended for the delicate utters of dairy cows.

Last time I checked, we didn't have any dairy cows milling around out back.

Why on the table?  Evidently it doubles as moisturizer for human hands.  Hence why it is on our dining table, a catch-all for dinner plates and anything else that needs a temporary storage place, like Bag Balm.

ACT: The Remake

When one of my former colleagues asked me to assist with an ACT prep session, I figured that the best way to become familiar with the ACT again was to, well, take it.  The practice one, anyways.  At least the sections I was responsible for presenting.

I found that, as a high school English teacher, my ACT English score was pretty fantastic.  I'm sure it would have been absolutely perfect if I hadn't been watching TV at the same time as taking the test.

And as a person who hasn't had any math since the first year of college, my ACT Mathematics score left a little to be desired.  (Really, who expects us to remember the quadratic formula and how to solve equations with matrices?)

I find myself often reflecting on our system of doing things, and it sometimes annoys me both how much I am a product of our system and how much it influences my thinking.  So much so that acing the English part and not acing the Math part even now, as an adult, still gives me an alternative feeling of superiority followed by shame (and then a little pride that even so, it wasn't that low).  And I take a step back from the picture and...ridiculous.

Maybe, then, that's the advice I ought to take for myself and leave with the kids at some point during the session: the ACT may be your ticket to college and scholarships, but don't rely on it to define who you are. 

[There it is, that intangible catch phrase--who you are. I'm not sure which is better: the clearly defined path where you just go and do the next thing and it's there--high school, ACT/SAT, college, job--or this nebulous concept of doing those things to succeed in society but paradoxically superseding them to become who you are in spite of them.]

I'm dreaming...

Can dreams get any weirder?

During one of my 12 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours, I dreamed I was in a delectable bakery where every bread and cookie item was covered in chocolate.  White chocolate, dark chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate.  Oh, the choices!  I couldn't decide which two to pick to put in my basket.

And in a new twist on my recurring dreams of making painstakingly careful revisions to the blueprints of familiar buildings (most notably, the building for Christian Tabernacle and the house of family friends I used to dogsit for), I rearranged geography last night.  I was in search of Estonia.  I zoomed in (Google Earth style) on a country I was sure to be it.  A little later I realized, no, I was wrong, and that Estonia was on the other side of the body of water.  Hmmm, I thought.  That's an odd shape.  Which was when I realized Russia had moved all of the population of Estonia to the other side of the continent.  Why?  I don't know.

Weird, I tell you.  Weird.  But I'll take these over dreams that prey on my fears.

Ice Storm 2009

Wow! An entire week out of school. What a life! How, do you ask, have I been using my week? Besides glancing out the window every hour or so to note the change in the thickness of the ice on the trees, watch the fat snowflakes tumble down, see if the green garden hose has yet disappeared, or observe the sun converting the glass-like ice to prisms of color, I've been relaxing. Grading papers, drinking chai, reading books, hanging with friends. My former roommate and her husband lost power, so they stayed with us for two nights. They had to go to work, unfortunately, unlike my roommate and I. However, it was fun to eat dinner together and watch movies and TV.

I finished reading the first book in the Mark of the Lion series by Francine Rivers. If you love Christian historical fiction, you'll love this book. Not too cheesy, interesting, spiritually challenging in its own way. I'm on to rereading book two--yes, rereading because I read book number 2 before book number 1, a big no-no in trilogy reading. Oh well, se la vie.

Last weekend I saw Slumdog Millionaire. Fabulous. Definitely recommend it. Storyline is creative, using the questions the protagonist answers on the Indian version of the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? as the catalyst for flashbacks to how he learned the answers. Within those flashbacks, though, are harsh memories of a childhood filled with people who are looking out only for themselves or those who want to take advantage of homeless, poor youth. In the movie's superb storytelling, then, lay barbs of cold reality that will stick with you long after the closing credits. Regardless, a must see.

Purple Pens & Staplers

I have a fetish for purple pens. I use them to grade, mostly, but I also use them to write letters. If I can't find the right pen, it seriously hinders me from getting started on my work. I feel this intense sense of loss; I feel imbalanced, and it is a good half hour before I acquiesce to using a different colored pen than the one I had hoped for.

The pen deal is quickly fading, though, thanks to the supply I received for Christmas. Thus, my new crisis is my stapler. I think I'm on somewhere around stapler #10 over the course of the past 2 to 3 years, and I'm about to go crazy! Over Christmas I bought a brand new, super duper handheld power stapler--the kind where you barely apply any pressure and it Bam! shoots the staple through 15 pages. Low and behold, the first day I allowed students to use it, since I couldn't find my student-friendly version, they broke it. So, I bought a brand new red stapler for students, and a translucent green super-powered one for me. They have survived one week, although it became touch and go awhile for the red one. It apparently has an innate ability to jam that can easily fool one into thinking it's dead when it's not.

I'm starting to understand Office Space much better.