The Sad Truth About Not Working for a Month

To some people, having a month off of work may seem like a great time. I'm going to tell you the sad reality of having a month off between jobs. After 3 weeks of not working, on most days I lack motivation but I've had a pretty productive day today. I was up and showered before eleven in the morning. Pretty good start right? I worked on a painting of my favorite cat for about an hour or so. For about another hour or so I hung out on mySpace. And, the most incredible achievement of my day so far... I sent prank phone calls or e-mails to several friends and relatives from the "Snakes on a Plane" website. (Go to www.snakesonaplane.com and you can send them too!) Good day so far, right?
If you consider some select days from the past week or so, I've gotten a lot done today.
About a week ago, I called my Aunt Rosie. She's a veteran school teacher and was able to empathize with my situation. I called her probably around noon. It was a day where I was probably up since 7am, but had not left the house much less showered. I was waiting to shower because I planned to walk the dog and you know how sweaty that can make a person! So, as I said I had been up since about 7 or so. That may have been the day that I learned all about bedbugs on the Today show. Scary stuff! After they scared you with the enlarged pictures of a disgusting bug that had just sucked the blood out of someone, they kindly demonstrated how to find them on a bed. Did you know that they're usually near the head of the bed because that's the warmest part? Now I bet your head is just itching! Well... back to my conversation with Aunt Rosie. I had big intentions on walking the dog, but I watched a little Today show and maybe some Martha. I definitely got lost online for a bit. When I walked downstairs with walking shoes in hand, I found that I had left the TV on and there was a really interesting infommercial on the channel I had been watching. The Time-Life Collection of the Superstars of Country CD collection with songs such as Coal Miner's Daughter and Elvira. With clips of the starts singing their well-known hits. And Kenny Rogers with a plastic surgery altered face that I kept looking out to figure out why he looks so freaky. Good stuff. When I realized I wasn't ready to leave the house, I figured I better skip ahead to what I was going to do when Maya and I returned from our walk - call Aunt Rosie. So, Aunt Rosie and I chatted about eBay, computers and teaching for a little while. Then I confessed about my indulgence with this particular infommercial. She admitted that she had also seen and enjoyed it as well. We both agreed that although they make it sound like such a good deal, "4 Easy Payments of $29.95 plus shipping and handling" was probably not a good deal. She continued to tell me about how fabulous some of those infommercials about vacuums that pick up pet hair seem. I have to agree, an infommercial about a vacuum that will effectively suck up all the pet hair in my house would interest me greatly. Unless you have several pets of your own, you just can't understand how frustrating inferior vacuums can be. Even the more expensive ones only last a year or two at our house. The motors just burn up in the face of all the pet hair that our dog and three cats can't seem to keep on their bodies. This would be why the last time I went vacuum shopping I stood in Target and then Home Depot staring at the Dyson Animal for at least 15 minutes at each store. I just can't bring myself to spend $500 on a vacuum that may or may not live up to its claim of incredible engineering. Well, I could go on endlessly about this, but do you really care? Fortunately, Aunt Rosie is a patient woman used to listening to stories from 1st grade children which usually cover several topics with no point to the whole story, but the kids think they're pretty informative and funny.
On to another lively day! On Friday two of our friends came over to pick me up to go swimming. Unfortunately for them I had drank two cups of coffee that morning. Two cups of coffee in a short amount of time gives me the superpower of being able to speak (about absolutely nothing) at a rate faster than Superman can fly. So, Cori and Jared got to hear about how my favorite part of the morning was that Martha said that she really liked the TV show "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" and that I definitely saw butt crack on the "Price Is Right" (I swear I did... this boy was flipping because he's a professional tumbler and he was really excited to win a prize and meet Bob Barker. He was one of those boys who believe the waist of your pants should hang several inches lower than your actual waist and as he was flipping through the air, I swear I saw spinning butt crack!). I'm not really sure what else we talked about, but they didn't get the opportunity to talk much.
So, I think it's time to go back to school. I've applied to sub at two schools so far. Hopefully it will get me out of the house and talking to other people enough that I don't drive crazy Dave or anyone else who I spend more than an hour with.

Summer job

For the month of July I taught art to children of migrant workers. It was an awesome experience! The students were children going into 1st grade through high school age. A lot of the kids speak Spanish, many speak both Spanish and English, and some only speak English. The kids who are going into 1st and 2nd grades were the most helpful in my attempts to learn Spanish. There was a little boy, Ivan, who decided he was finished with art for the day and had cleaned up enough and was ready to line up at the door. I was standing in front of him in the hallway watching for the girls who had gone to the lav (usually there is a student worker in the art room who escorts them because there are all sorts of odd people walking through the halls of the school in the summer, but she was called to help somewhere else so I needed to stand where I could see the kids in the classroom and the girls in the hallway). After a few minutes, several other kids had lined up behind Ivan. At this point Ivan decides it would be fun to make noises with his mouth - you know, the kind of noises that involve spraying the person in front of you with spit. Well, I happened to be the person being sprayed with spit. After saying "Stop!" several times with no response from Ivan, I asked some of the girls in line behind him how you would say "Stop" in Spanish. One of the girls told me the word is "para" except I heard "bala" and that is what I repeated. So she said, "No, para". I tried again with "bala". Being a good teacher at the age of 6 or 7, she exaggerated "para" as she said it again and pointed at her mouth so that I could maybe figure it out better. Sadly, I am slow and her efforts didn't help me to learn to say "para". As we gave up and Ivan was still spitting at me and I was still trying to watch for the girls coming back from the lav who forgot one of their friends there and had to be sent back to get her, my student worker came back and I immediately sent her to go supervise the girls who were now skipping up and down the hallway and singing. Earlier in the morning the photography class had stopped by our classroom and Frances, my student worker had put streaks of yellow paint on her face for a picture. When she stopped back at the classroom and I sent her on, she still had the paint on her face and the little girl who was trying to help me say "para" asked why Frances had paint on her face. I told the little girl, "Frances es la loca" (for those of you who don't speak Spanish - "Frances is crazy"). The little girl's response was "Very good!" which of course confused me and caused me to ask,"What?!". Her response to my befuddled question and look was, "You said that very well!". So, apparently I can speak a sentence in Spanish, but if I am being sprayed with spit, I can't stop that!