Girls Cross Country '98, All the way to state!

That's what we chanted when I was in high school. Unfortunately there's not anything quite so catchy for 2005.

Yesterday, my cross country team qualified for the state meet, our big goal of the season! We came in second in our region, beating out our big rival for the second time. Last year the team was in 5th place of 6; this year 2nd! It was a great day!

Next Saturday--Sandhills Park at the Clemson Extension, Columbia, SC will be our big day!

To Do List

Today's version:

1. Email lesson plan and post to Lex Connect
2. Turn in homebound assignments
3. Turn in book order form
4. Turn in colorguard reccomendations
5. Turn in field trip $
6. Make copies of reading logs
7. Email student update


My life is so boring. That was my to do list of extras...that's all. Seriously. But I taught some Nikki Giovanni poems and had the kiddos model "the drum"

"the drum" goes like this:

daddy says the world is
a drum tight and hard
and i'm going to
beat out
my own rhythm

or something like that. Kids are funny they wrote:

daddy says the world is
a box of crayons
and i'm going to
be the brightest
one in the box

Oh I have more, a kid just walked in to do a "mind puzzle" with me. Hmmm...should be neato

Pumpkin Moon

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you are trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must--but don't you quit.

My grandmother wrote that on an index card. It's one of those things that you have, but don't usually think about when you are actually trudging and end up sighing, even though you probably should look at the index card your grandmother wrote so that you can keep going. It's nice. I like that my grandmother wrote it down from somewhere that she read it.

This morning on the drive to school the moon was so huge and low. I was listening to Patty Griffin and it was cold out. I was driving down this winding road that goes by the back of the airport and this great big cemetery and the moon was hanging down in the trees and I pictured a cartoon Linus with his dirty blue blanket sitting in the pumpkin patch awaiting the Great pumpkins and felt sad for my childhood.

warp zone

today i worked for 11 hours to prepare for an interview that will only last for 1 hour at the most, but probably only 30 minutes. i sat in barnes & noble, took a break to eat dinner at chilis next door, went back to barnes & noble and then sat through desperate housewives and grey's anatomy, all the time typing or writing notes. i felt like mario. i went down below in the blue world, level 2 of super mario brothers, and then i climbed up on top of the blue brick bar at the top of the screen, ran ran ran over to where the warp zone tunnels would suck me down right over to level 5, then through the world where that sun threw out spiky turtle and beetles became deathly sliding across the brick laden ground, all the way through to where i'd climb up a vine into the sky jump past the clouds that had faces, and into another tunnel, which i think took me to level 8, the ship. the ship is college. today i felt like i went back there. i'm still typing & i have to stop!

stick your fingers in your ears

i want to scream out loud next to someone's face & then just turn and walk away

nonsense in the brain

for the last 2 days, i've been dumb. it all started earlier; i just realized yesterday

1. i let a kid compete in a XC race. the kid wasn't exactly eligible. i was so excited that she qualified that i put her in there. that can be a problem. dumb.
2. i lost a stop watch that the school loaned me. i had one already, but life would be easier with 2.
3. yesterday i forgot my real watch; therefore had to borrow one from another kid to make up for the lost one and so that kid had no watch which could have helped her run intervals.
4. today i wrote on a kid's essay "this is much a better." he said, "you wrote, a better. are you ok?" a better, a butter, a nutter, a gutter.
5. today i took a 5 minute nap. i am not exaggerating. at all. 5 minutes. i am now wide awake again. i made the coffee, the pbj, cut a cantaloupe, i'm on the blogger. 5 minutes. dumb.
6. today i let children lie all over the floor with markers & big paper. this is a lovely idea in an education class. in reality, it is mostly just lots of markers whose tops have been lost crumpled paper, alien looking drawings, but possibly some fun. dumb is perhaps debatable.

that is all i can think of.

on a smarter note. i am reading the book, Margarettown or Margarettowne or Margaretown. i do not feel at all confident about how many t's are in the title. it is hilarious. as quirky as Curious Incident of the Dog minus the autism and Wellington. Wellington? Is that it. Just dawned on me, that's similar to beef wellington.

About Clouds

Yesterday the Sixth Wilbury posted a quote from the greatest book ever written, The House on Mango Street. She pulled out the part about Darius and his clouds, which made me remember that I had written this little poem about that same kid, Darius and his clouds, about 2 years ago when I read that book. Here goes

Darius

A boy was named
Darius
because his mother
liked the sound.
We learned on the playground
that he knew God.

Darius was the boy
who chased us
outside of school,
who pulled our hair,
but ducked away
before we reached
for him. Darius.

On Friday, he stood
on the blacktop, easy
with his hands hiding
in his pockets.
He looked away from us
and we felt our breath
slip into ourselves,
just before he pointed up
to a single cloud.

He’d pulled
a single cloud
from that piled air
and called it God. We looked at Darius,
noticed his eyes
for a first time,
heard the deepness
in his voice,
and believed him.