Follow your heart, follow your head...

...I'm following my stomach to BigMama's baked french toast tomorrow morning.

Here's the deal, ABC. Your whole "Bachelor" finale and "After The Final Rose, Part 1" and, lordamercy, "After The Final Rose, Part Freakin' 2" adds up to four hours of my life that I will never get back. And honestly, I would have been better off with a Lifetime Movie Marathon. Even there I would have found better life advice than "Follow your heart...I just had to follow my heart...I think America will understand that I just had to follow my heart."

Ugh. Gag me. Cry me a river and move the freak on.

And so I am.

Last week I did a two day sub job for a 2nd grade teacher while she took her family to Disney World. Clearly, she had the sweet end of the deal. It was an interesting experience, one I will not soon forget and one I hope to never repeat. This was a very challenging group and I have no idea how this particular teacher does it, day in and day out, ninety days a year.

There were two boys in particular that were quite a handful. That's being generous because one needed massive amounts of Ritalin, STAT, and the other was on the verge of heading to juvenile hall any minute. On the first day the both lost the majority of their recess time for a litany of reasons. I couldn't keep them in their seat, couldn't keep them from talking, couldn't keep them from butting into everyone else's business, couldn't keep them from tattling on one another, couldn't keep them from breaking pencil lead after pencil lead. And the only pencil sharpener in the room? Behind the teacher's desk and the kids aren't allowed to touch it. So guess who spent the majority of her day sharpening Wild Thing #1 and Wild Thing #2's pencils all day? Yes ma'am, moi.

Honestly, I would rather have sat in a room and listened to Bachelor Jason justify his bonehead, classless swap. Even if that meant hearing the phrase "follow your heart" again. Not kidding.

I don't really like the idea of physically sitting kids out at recess because they probably needed the activity to begin with. So I had the two Wild Things run/walk laps around the courtyard during their time out. This worked pretty well but I knew I was headed for trouble when they used the two minutes of recess they did have to pick a fight and bully another kid.

Awesome. Can't wait for Day Two.

Day Two comes and I decide to pull the Wild Things over to the desk for a little chat.

"Okay guys, yesterday was not a good day for the two of you and you ended up losing most of your recess. I really want you to have all your recess today but that's going to depend on you."

"Yeah," replied Wild Thing #1, "Ah gotta shut mah mouth."

"Well," I answered, "Yes, you need to make good decisions to obey me the first time I ask you to do something whether that's to not talk or to get out your books or to leave someone alone. If you make those good choices, I won't have to give you the consequence of taking away your recess time. And you want that, right?"

"Uh huh," said Wild Thing #2, "Ah gotta be good so's ah can see mah girlfrien' this weekend."

"Thas rat," replied Wild Thing #1, "And ah gotta do good or ah ain't gonna be able to work on mah race car."

Honestly, I was fully anticipating the fist pound and a resounding cry of "Shake and bake, baby!" to follow that little revelation.

Thank you, Baby Jesus, for helping me to keep a straight face and for the principal who came and took little Ricky Bobby and Cal Naughton, Jr. to her office for the last hour of the day.

The Substitute

Admit it- when you walked into that classroom as a kid, only to turn the corner and see a sub, you did a little happy dance. A substitute teacher meant deskwork or a movie or something less intense than usual. Or maybe it meant the chance for you to goof off and see what you could pull over on that poor unsuspecting sub.

Not this sub, suckahs!

Teaching the fourth grade for five years prepared me for many roles- nursemaid, drama queen (and I got paid!), educator, mama, dictator, song leader, historian, comedian...And it prepared me to be a kick butt sub.

In the last few weeks I have taught second grade, 8th grade English, middle school Bible History, pre-K, 7th grade inclusion and served as an aide in the elementary multi-handicapped classroom.

But tomorrow? Tomorrow, the dream is realized: I'm going to be a middle school band teacher. I knew that being a band geek through middle and high school would pay off someday.

I wonder if I should take my flute with me...

Back in the Saddle

I'm back from NC with lots of pictures and more knowledge of childbirth than I ever really wanted.

No, seriously, no more information needed.

Anyhow, I'm subbing today and here is the lesson for all you teachers out there:

BE YE PREPARED AND ALWAYS HAVE A SUBSTITUTE LESSON PLAN READY.

Because if not? Your fellow teachers might rat you out to the principal. And that's really embarrassing when that consortium you were supposed to be at (and how long have you known about that and you still don't have a sub plan ready?) gets cancelled and you have to show up at school to do paperwork therefore facing said principal, fellow teachers and your now disgruntled sub.

I'm just sayin', is all.

Be back soon with A Tale of Two Baby Showers.