Speaking of Blasts from the Past...

I think our recent homecoming theme threw me into a nostalgic mood. I've been going through pictures and scanning them into the future. All kinds of interesting things have surfaced. I particularly enjoy looking at the expressions of faces that were too small to see before. For instance, here's a couple of pictures that show how my children really felt about hiking...one of our favorite family past-times.

 And here are a few that demonstrate what I'm sure my neighbors knew all along--they kept the whole street lively.

They played a game in the evenings called "kidville" Carina, my oldest, was the script-writer and manager, and there was no lack of kids to be the players. The swing set was sometimes a pirate ship, sometimes a star ship.

The street was not usually busy with cars, particularly when my children set up road blocks on both ends so they could practice bike jumping in the middle.

No. They weren't dare-devils; they had just put in a lot of hours practicing on an old balance beam we had bought from the gym, so when we visited other places they were always finding rails to walk.

My daughter, Carina, once again, used her camera and some black and white film to capture the neighborhood...a kind of pre-facebook gallery of attitude poses. There would have been more pictures, but the camera got left out in the mud. Years later, I found an undeveloped roll and took it in to discover these.

Here's Elijah and a neighbor who lived at our house most days. And shy little Claye, in an oddly futuristic French art post. I'm sure we would have had a slide show with narrative if power point had been invented.

 Rain puddles were the best. Thankfully, our street and ditches filled up after every little shower.

Incognito

Homecoming dress-up days are enough to fulfill the actress in me. We only had four this fall--"blue and white day", (not pictured because, aside from a little gold glitter on my face, all I did was wear blue and white clothes)"blast from the past "( so...I represented the collision of Tardis with a DeLorean ), "favorite app",( I was the embodiment of Words with Friends) and "geriatric day"...for which I really had an advantage over my students, having the wrinkles already and the right clothes in my wardrobe. The wig did throw a few people. One of the other teachers saw me in the the teachers' workroom and was a little embarrassed that the students were all dressed up as old people on the very day we had an elderly person visiting our school.

I'm So Spoiled.

Every teacher should teach students like mine sometime in their life.
This particular class is extraordinary.

  They listen. They work. They learn.

Today I'm watching while they do a review puzzle.

















They are delightful, even if they do occasionally ask a question that shows they are really seventh and eighth-graders after all.














One little girl (We'll call her Bobbie) just meandered back to my desk, turned in her assignment and asked me if she could work on some homework for another class.
Can you imagine me saying "No. I'd rather you find some way to disrupt the others, who are still finishing their work."


Oh no! They've suddenly all finished and are turning in their work.  I'd better do something quickly before they form a line and start singing about....what?

They are singing "lunch, lunch, luuuunnchhh".  And,while the cafeteria ladies are being lauded here, and goodness knows they deserve it, I can't stand it for long. I've just time to play a hastily-improvised review game with them!

See you later, Bloggies. This is an emergency.

I Love Oklahoma

Stunning blue skies
Grasses and grains

 Red roads and rains

Then sunset flames
In the west

on an Oklahoma evening.

Baby Blaze

It's been a busy year and we can hardly believe this little guy will soon be one.  I've taken a few videos over the last few weeks and managed to string a few of them together for a birthday post.

American Proverbs

When we study the book of Proverbs I like to test the knowledge of my junior high students concerning some famous American proverbs. Rarely have they even heard of a third of the proverbs I pick, which says something. Maybe I'm just picking obscure proverbs; maybe nobody uses proverbs anymore, or maybe all their slogan knowledge comes from movies and television. Hmmm. Anyway, I ask them to finish the proverbs however they wish if they don't know the original version. Then we go over what the real proverb says and what it means. Here are a few of their responses.

1. There's no time like......

..."party time"
Or, from someone quoting the algebra teacher, "math time"

2. A stitch in time.....

..."is a thread in history" (which adds a different dimension to the saying, I think)

3. Don't throw the baby....

..."ever"..."too far"..."away"



4. A rolling stone....

..."bites the dust"
.."will keep rolling unless acted upon by an opposing force"





5. Don't count your chickens...

..."or they will peck and scratch you"

6. Don't make a mountain...

..."if you can't climb a hill







7. Power corrupts;...

..."democracy prevails!"
..."peace" (I think that's pretty wise, actually)







8.  If you lie down with dogs...

.."use noseplugs"
..."you will bark"
..."they will drool on your shirt"



9. A watched kettle...

..."never blows up" (His kettle must be a pressure cooker)
..."makes good popcorn"








10.  The love of money....

..."ain't the same as true love"

11.  Early to bed, early to rise....


..."work all day" (must be a farmer's son)





12.  Speak softly...

..."so you don't wake up Grandpa"
..."act nacherly"






13.  One rotten apple...

..."equals one sick kid"
..."ruins the whole meal"
..."ain't as good as a fresh one"






Now, for those of you who don't remember the original proverbs, here are the originals:

1.  There's no time like the present.
2.  A stitch in time saves nine
3. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
4. A Rolling Stone gathers no moss.
5. Don't count your chickens before they hatch
6. Don't make a mountain out of a molehill.
7. Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
8. If you lie down with dogs, you will wake up with fleas.
9. A watched kettle never boils.
10. The love of money is the root of all evil.
11. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.
12. Speak softly and carry a big stick.
13. One rotten apple spoils the whole barrel.

Green and Growning

Due to recent rains, the grass is green and growing,
so even though it's August--Guess who's still mowing.
The dusty Deadwood Forest has turned into a jungle
And Tomato Garden Tangle is a topsy-turvy tumble
There's dew-drops on the crabgrass that lines the Eastern Heights
And the Southern Slopes resemble those slippery water slides.
I bogged down briefly in the mud on the level Cedar Flats
And the Western Front was deadly due to run-off ruts and tracks
But I sang my way through mowing as I chopped each grassy lane
It's a small price to pay for a summer full of rain!



p.s. No, that is not my yard. That's somebody's farm. My yard only FEELS that big when I'm mowing. I did name all the sections of my real lawn which looks more like this.

The Prettiest Little Doll in the World....

When I was a child in elementary school, I had two favorite toys. Every day, they sat on my perfectly made bed, (Lest you think I was a freakishly tidy child, the daily making of my bed was strictly enforced by my older sister who was a freakishly tidy child.) and at night they slept in the doll crib--with mosquito netting made from an old window sheer.
One was a stuffed Cocker Spaniel named Dandy, a Christmas present from my maternal grandparents, and the other was this little baby doll. He had been salvaged and pieced together by an elderly woman in the church. I loved him from the first, and named him Timothy William.

Years later my daughter, Carina, played with him, re-naming him Melissa and dressing him all in pink and ruffles.  During this time, at least once, he was submerged in a bathtub or a pool. I'm not sure who the culprit was, but, unbeknownst to me, the metal mechanisms that operated the eyes began to rust and the doll began to go blind. He was relegated to the attic, where his condition worsened by the year. When I re-discovered him, he was in no shape for bequeathing to any heirs. 

I removed the eyes in pieces with a hemostat, hoping I could buy new eyes and pop them into the front. That proving impossible, I cut open the back of the eye-pouches inside the head, took out the rusted mechanisms and glued the new eyes in with a glue gun. Then I cleaned the skin as well as I could and offered him to my grand-daughter.

Mimsy decided he was a girl--at least that was the "closest anatomically". She named him Nancy and smothered him with kisses. I think he's in good hands. Now I just have to find Dandy.

Repainting

I can't believe it has been five years since I painted the cabin. Well, since I painted three fourths of the cabin. The west wall--this one--was deemed too awful to paint. The siding was wavy where a year of rain--unheard of in this part of Oklahoma--coincided with a vacant, un-mown lot next door. Anyway, two things happened at the beginning of the week that made me want to paint again: the weatherman announced cool temperatures for the entire week (highs in the eighties and low nineties), and a friend gave me four gallons of paint that were too red for her tastes once she got them home. Paint is expensive.

I decided the time had come for me to finish the cabin. Of course, Turtle had to be involved, especially since the well pump had expired last summer and we were waterless. (That's a long story...but it involves a long string of less than competent people we hired to drill and set up a well, and one very good Samaritan neighbor who helped Turtle put everything right again and restore an abundance of good well-water).

Here's that offensive wall when we started: Only the little white eaves have been painted.

We had to replace about half the siding, and it took a full morning of looking to find a match, but Turtle persevered and was able to replace the worst part of the wavy and deteriorated wall.

 We had to scrape away all the loose paint, then prime all the bare spots and the new siding. Then came the fun part--blue.











The results were so drastic, it gave me an incentive to keep painting. 


 I began to look around the cabin for more touch-up jobs and discovered that I had neglected to finish the south wall as well. Twenty eaves. Yes. It took all morning.

 Wherever I saw a faded or chipped spot, I touched up, knowing, but not really caring, that this would lead to painting the entire wall.

 I kept painting on the cabin, while the guys worked on the well.

 The next day I bought a couple more gallons of blue and white so I could touch up the front.











Somehow...the well took a long time to fix. I ended up re-painting almost all the cabin, before I turned to my original plan, which had been to paint the shed out back. 








It needed a little scraping and a lot of washing. Turtle was through with the big water project, so thankfully, just in time for the celebration of independence, with fireworks in the background, we began to add red to our blue and white paint- speckled work clothes...and hair...and faces.

Sadly neglected, used as storage, the little building deserved something cheery...or cherry as the case may be.

 Roshelle's four-gallon gift was perfect. Thanks.

 What might have been too bright for a house looked amazing on the drab little shed.

Only one building remained: the well house. 











We scraped and primed and primed and primed. In fact I think the paint is what's holding this little shack together.











Unfortunately the red, white and blue week ran out before we could paint it. I'm reserving one more day of this busy summer to finish it as well...what do you think? Mary Ann blue, soaring blue (white really), cherry red like the shed, or imaginary day--a deep blue? I wonder?