Deep Fried Butter.

Happy Sunday, dear friends and readers,

My favorite and least favorite day of the week. The day where it is OK to not have plans, and sit in front of your TV at 9am with a big mug of tea and a stack of coupons in front of you. And I suddenly sound 80-years-old. Awesome.

The last few days have been filled with peril for my relatively calm and sheltered life. There has been drama with cell phones, downpours in which the delineating lane markers were not visible on a highly busy street, bouts of hunger and tears (both taken care of by one very patient boyfriend who insisted on feeding me, rubbing my back, and loving me even at my grumpiest. Have I got it made or what?), and general back pain.

I will relate two stories from my weekend: the story of the pantry, and the story of the mouse (the rearmost of which just ran past me in broad daylight! Ick!)

The story of the pantry:
Background information: John has a Big Lots near his house, I do not have one near my apartment. I am a coupon clipping weirdo, and have turned John into a man who is now scanning his flyers more frequently and saving up to 50% on his bills at the store. I have been searching for a pantry for my kitchen because my kitchen does not have sufficient storage.

Actual Story: While sprawled all over John's comfortable furniture, being unusually quiet, and freaking John out because of it, said boyfriend gets his weekly bundle of store circulars and begins the weekly ritual of seeing what is on sale. He opens the Big Lots ads, and, lo and behold!, a pantry on sale for $60! Hooray! Being the sweet guy he is, he suggests that we go to Big Lots and check it out, and we'll take my car, that way I can take it home with me that night, and when we come back he'll make ravioli and tomato sauce (both of which we bought on sale last week). I agree. We make it to Big Lots and locate said pantry. We wait patiently for the only gentleman working in the furniture section to finish helping a woman with her TV stand and come back and wait on me. He locates the pantry in the back (not the full pantry, but the pieces in a box which will have to be assembled later), wheels it out, almost knocks it off the cart, and then rings me up. I swipe my card and am approved! The pantry is mine, muahahahahahaha. Only.... I can't just take it. He needs to hold onto my receipt and wheel the box to the front of the store himself to sign it out of the building. If he had said this to me it would have been cool. What instead occurred was this:

"OK, honey, I have to take this to the front of the store. So why don't you just go meet me up there, and have your hubby bring his car around, and then we'll do all the lifiting." Said man in back brace wheels off, again almost dropping the pantry.

John immediately cringed and tried to make a joke about being my 'hubby.' I walked shocked, my feminist nature seething. I asked John if I should drive MY car to the front of the store where he could wait for me. He agreed and reminded me that he didn't make the comment (he should have also reminded me of his traditional-gender role reversal of cooking for me the night before, that morning, and when we were to return from the store. See? I have it made.). John saved my pantry from almost falling again when being removed from the store (seriously, if this guy had just put the box on the long side instead of the tiny bottom part there would have been no issue), and we loaded it into my car. John didn't think I'd be able to carry it into my apartment by myself since it was very heavy. I fumed a little more and we dropped the subject.

Later that evening, I carried the pantry all by myself from my car to my apartment. I then assembled said pantry using my tools. It is now sitting nicely in my apartment, filled with food.

So suck it, Big Lots Man.

The Story of the Mouse (Ick!)
I have a mouse in my apartment. While this is to be expected in apartments no matter how clean the place is, it is still unnerving and gross to see a tiny little fuzzy creature run right in front of you. This mouse is a genius. I have traps set up in my apartment. Traps with big globs of yummy peanut butter. This mouse runs right past the traps. It runs from under my heater in the living room, to behind my refrigerator, and to my bathroom. I think in the bathroom he goes through the heating unit on the wall and into my neighbor's apartment. He then runs back about 20 minutes to an hour later. This mouse is bold. he gets withing 6 inches of me. And runs past me in broad daylight. This is war, mouse. This is war.

Any advice you may have on combating sneaky, intelligent vermin would be vastly appreciated. IT JUST RAN PAST ME AGAIN.
WAR!

It's been a while

Between the start of the school year, moving into a new apartment, Phillies postseason madness, and general life occurrences (babies, engagements, looking to go back to school, and police boyfriends - only the last two being mine), I have been severely neglectful of this blog.

So in this moment I will leave you with this brief story:
One of my students is fixated on curse words. He will find any way possible to work them into his school work, artwork, and computer programs. One day he was in the library with his homeroom class and was flipping through a rather large dictionary. He found the braille alphabet and proceeded to write one word over and over using braille. Below is what he wrote:


The ingenuity of children fascinates me. Especially when used to do something naughty that they know will get them a whole lot of attention and reaction from adults.

So I leave you with 2 tasks, dear friends:
1) Do your research and find what my buddy wrote. It isn't that hard to do.
2) Think about how you would react to such a thing. It was all I could do not to laugh. We in fact had to take away the paper (although it really could do no harm- the 'braille' he wrote was with a pencil), but don't you want to just reward the kid for his out-of-the-box thinking? Ah, the conundrums of being an educator.