The toilet plunger

We have a bathroom off our living room. It's one of those deals that just has a toilet and a sink so that guest can use it but they are not subjected to your mess. My downstairs roommates use it as their bathroom. (They have a shower downstairs, but no toilet. A man designed these places.)

My roommates are very, very, neat people. Thanks goodess. Because I need to be led in that direction. Sometimes pushed kicking and screaming. But I want to be there. I want my house to be tidy and comfortable. I want to be that neat and organized person. But I've ranted about this before.

The rest of the house looks lovely. Not like my room . . . either my bedroom, or my classroom.

Anyway, I came home and there was a toilet plunger outside the bathroom door, in the living room. My first thought was, "Oh dear, the bathroom flooded." And then I went about my day, not seeing anyone drowning or even home.

The plunger has been there all week.

I'm just noticing today, because as I've stated before, I am not the neatest person. It's a goal. We should all be trying to achieve something. This is my dream.

Back to the plunger.

What are my neat, neat, roommates thinking? That the plunger is too icky to go in the guest bathroom? Thus, the perfect place is in the living room? It is just so outside of what I have come to expect.

Maybe I'll shock them this weekend and clean my room.

And maybe unicorns and leprechauns will fly me away for a weekend at a spa.

Parent Teacher Conferences

I know I just posted yesterday, and, please, feel free to scroll down and read that too. Autumn says it makes me sound like a geek so you will probably laugh.

But I had to share my preparations for SEP conferences, as we call them now. I always knew them as Parent Teacher Conferences. For the life of me, I don't know what SEP stands for, but that's what we call them.

Anyway, I have three of these conferences every year. The last ones were right around Thanksgiving. Spring SEPs bring out more decorations and student projects then any other time. Probably because we know we are not going to have to do this again until August and we are decorating. Like it is a party or celebration. You'd think the teachers were a bunch of seniors waiting to graduate.

Also this year, we have had an art special, who we have seen two times a month. In the entire year she has completed 2 art projects. I get that she only sees them a couple times a month, but she's a specialist. If she's not, they really should take that our of her title. She should be able to do better than that, right?

So not only did I hang up the quilt projects we did in our class . . . which were AWESOME, but everyone had to hang up the art specialist's stuff. In our case, we did self portraits. I am posting pictures of both so you can compare.

I did quilt blocks out of construction paper with my class. They had to use real pioneer quilt patterns, to make four 9-patch blocks. It required a lot of fractions and pattern recognition. They also had to choose colors that would work well together. Here are the results. I think most of them turned out pretty great (there's always a couple who do their own thing, like make up a pattern, or forget how to use a glue stick and scissors, etc.):

And here are their self portraits. They aren't bad but it took them 5 months to finish, and some still didn't finish. But who knows, I am not an art specialist. Maybe these are really good, and I am not trained to see it (they look nothing like my kids).

Mine are better.

Commercials

I have become addicted to TV on DVD primarily for one reason . . . there are no commercials. I could really care less about the bonus features and such. There are no commercials. Honestly, that's why we buy them.

This all started about 4 or 5 years ago when I started watching reruns of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Don't laugh. I had a good reason. Among the first three episodes I ever saw was the season 2 cliffhanger. And it was on a Friday. So I had to wait all weekend to stew about everything. I happened to be in Media Play the following day (it was that long ago) and I saw season 3 on DVD so I bought it. Why wait?

Since then I have purchased the entire 7 seasons of Buffy, and all 5 seasons of Angel. then I branched out and started buying West Wing seasons, one at I time. I didn't want to look too shallow. I have all 8 now.

Now I own all the seasons for Alias, The Office, Smallville, and Lois and Clark. I have the first 3 seasons for a British show called MI5. I'm not sure if I want the others because they kill off everyone at the end of 3 . . . EVERYONE.

and I have watched everyone one of them multiple times. I can quote the Office and the West Wing, I can tell you who Rambaldi is, and which seasons of Smallville you can skip. The can draw family trees for Angel and Spike, and tell you how many times Buffy has saved the world from being sucked into some hell dimension.

But that just makes me look very very sad. And shallow.

So back to my point about commercials and how they can drive you to drink.

I watch regular T.V. on Thursdays to catch new episodes of Smallville and the Office.

Last night, I settled in to watch a rerun of Smallville that I had missed when I was using my opera tickets in January (see? Depth.) After 10 minutes I realized I had seen 3 minutes of the show and 7 minutes of commercials. I almost turned it off. The season will be out in September. I can catch the episode then. (And raise your hand if you hate Lana's new hair . . . Was she thinking this would be the new "Rachel Cut?")

But I decided to start keeping track in my mind of commercial time and show time. There were far more commercials. And Lana's hair is really annoying.

I can't help but wonder . . . is the economy getting to be so rough that the CW can't afford one hour of TV unless it 35 minutes of advertising?

I actually missed most of the show, because I was timing commercials, so if anyone knows what happened last night . . .

Welcome!

For three weeks, I have been trying to mess with my room mates' heads. I have been really busy at work so this has been keeping me pretty entertained.

My room mate Kendra has a Welcome sign in our living room made of individual blocks, one for each letter of the word: W-E-L-C-O-M-E

Jessica and I thought it would be really funny to start messing with it, one letter a day, and see who would notice first.

First, we started to straighten them. Kendra had them kind of artistically staggered. Everyday, I straightened out one letter into a row rather than a zig-zag.

No one said anything and within a week, the whole word was straight as an arrow.

So, then I started jumbling the letters around, one letter a day, until I had spelled "welcome" backwards.

Seven letters, seven days.

No one said a word.

Then, I started turning them upside down, one letter a day. I got to the letter "c" (with it spelled backwards) when I found out that everyone had noticed and they were waiting to see what I would do next.

I believe the real joke was on me.

So were they laughing with me or at me?

Valentine's Day

At BYU we used to call Valentine's Day "Single Adult Awareness Day." Because when are you, or anyone else for that matter, more aware of your marital status? It used to bother me when I was home alone, or babysitting for someone who had plans, on Valentine's Day. I used to try and make plans with friends so I could say I had plans.

And then I started teaching and let me tell you, the glamour has worn off. After a class party you don't want to do anything other than go home with your xerox box of candy and valentines and homemade goodies, and crash. Also, when you're suspicious about which little germy fingers have been on your valentine candy, it takes the fun away from eating it. In fact, I eat very little of my valentine candy. Especially when it has been taped to a valentine card with three pieces of finger-printed scotch tape. But the candy that's wrapping has been overseen by someone responsible like a parent or the FDA, and not tampered with . . . I'll eat that.

(I do, however, read all my valentine's. Those are cute.)

And this year one little girl in my class who bought me flowers with her own allowance money . . . . ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! They are on my dining room table right now.

But back to my plans.

Because our class parties were on Friday the 13th (I love celebrating any holiday at school if it's on a Friday), I actually forgot today was Valentine's Day until a friend texted me. By then I had been laying around reading for a couple of hours. So I took a shower, put on some clean pajamas, pulled on some blankets and watched T.V.

Yep. That's what I did today. I was going to go out but that got canceled, so I didn't even get into real clothes until 5:00 when I wanted my Diet Pepsi.

I have finished two books, watched two made for T.V. movies, and typed this blog. And I am not in the least upset about a lack of plans. And I will tell you why:

Both movies featured Dean Cain. As I watched him I figured, I am not an actor who once played Superman and is now making movies for Lifetime. Things could be worse.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Blessings

I know I just posted yesterday and I encourage you to read it. Mainly because I like to toot my own horn.

I just got finished reading my friend, Sarah's, weekly "Thankful Thursday" blog. Every Thursday she blogs about something she is thankful for. And I love to read them. Who wouldn't? It makes you feel good. I also just finished reading possibly the 100th "25 Random Things about you" list that someone was tagged with. And I got inspired. Rather than 25 random things, I choose to list 25 of my blessings. Of course I have many more. But these are the ones off the top of my head. If you want to be tagged, go ahead.
So here they are, in no particular order (how could you order blessings?):

1. The Church
2. The Saviour
3. my scriptures
4. My Dad and Mom
5. My sister Erin (also my best friend)
6. Katelynn, Brittanie, Mary, Lizzie, & Holly (My nieces)
7. Orion, Raiden, Jacob, Seth, Draken, Sam, & Max (my nephews)
8. Autumn and Emily (my favorite cousins and best friends)
9. Kathi, Scott and Valeri
10. a good education
11. a job I love
12. food to eat
13. a house
14. The temple
15. books, books, books, books, books
16. weekends
17. clean laundry
18. a good night's sleep
19. a funny joke
20. my room mates . . . all of them from BYU to now
21. Sarah, Rebecca, Praveena, Connie and Chris . . . extraordinary teachers and colleagues
22. my kids
23. my health . . . that includes my medication and my VNS implant, which keeps me healthy
24. a good movie with good company
25. a fresh, cold, fountain, diet Pepsi

Books

I am an avid reader. I usually finish a book a week. But this week, after going to the bookstore with a gift card and spending more money than I should have, I can't seem to get started! I choose to blame Twilight,

I finished the Twilight series back in December, before school got back from Christmas. Then midterms and a new nephew kept me too busy to start anything new. But I was getting real antsy because that stupid story line kept going through my head.

I do that a lot too. I replay the plot of a book over and over in my head. If the book was fun to read, its a pleasure. If it was a really good book, I will just keep playing right on to that imaginary next scene, that happens after you've finished the book. (You know, "they lived happily ever after" and then they bought a dog and moved to Canada. Or something like that.) I started doing this when I was just a kid and my parents were reading the Little House books to Erin and me. It came in useful when I was a janitor at BYU, vacuuming offices from 4:00 am to 8:00 am. Anything to keep you awake.

And sometimes, I fix things I found wrong with the plot.

In the case of Twilight series, I was busy rewriting entire books. I've already mentioned my feelings about Twilight in my blog cleverly entitled "Twilight."

But still, the dumber the plot the easier you would think it would be to move on, right. Apparently not.

So, Saturday, I bought 5 books. I love bookstores and libraries. I love the smell and the quiet, and all the books! (I love bookstores just a little bit more because they let you keep your books). I can seldom wait the full drive home. There are exactly four lights between the closest bookstore and my apartment. Its the only time I pray for red lights.

I got home and started in.

Sadly, I have started all of them. I have made it to page 5 . . . of all of them. I just can't move on. They can't all be dumb and it wouldn't matter anyway because I've finished dumb books before (Breaking Dawn, for example). I finally came to the conclusion that if I reread the first book in the Twilight series, I would be over this slump. Most of the plot points that irritated me were later on in Breaking Dawn anyway.

I'm on page 5 of Twilight.