Emo Vampires

My thoughts exactly. Sort of. "I'll be back when the world grows a pair...of fangs." *snerk*

Pumpkinheads

You can tell it's fall (even though it's 90 degrees here) because suddenly, everything in the world is pumpkin-flavored. Lattes. Bagels. Cream cheese. Cheesecakes. Beer. Pancakes. Coffee. Breakfast breads. You name it, it's pumpkin.

All I can say is "blech."

Not a fan of pumpkin. Never have been. Can't understand why people get all fangirl-squee over the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving when there's a perfectly good pecan pie right next to it on the sideboard. Give me a sweet potato pie any day over pumpkin.

Am I just weird, or is anyone else baffled by pumpkinmania?

No, No, NaNo

Alas, mimi has come to the devastating decision that she will not be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. This is where mimi's latent OCD rears its ugly head because now her three-year streak has been broken. Plus, this year's icon has fun colors instead of last year's barf brown, alas.

However, it's still a barrel of fun, so if you've been pondering, hie on over to the WriMo website, sign in, and dive in. It's fun, you get tons of writing done, and you get a cool web badge like this one to display when you "win."

But not mimi, not this year. She has to stop listening to the siren call of the new hot idea and finish the dang rewrite already. Pray for her. The siren at Chez mimi is awful loud.

Slackerville

mimi has been a very naughty monkey about keeping up with her blog lately. At least twice a week, she has a brilliant idea for a blog topic, and then whammo! Craziness at home or school and it flies out the ol' ear nary to return. Now that the pile of grading is no longer casting a shadow so long she believes she lives in permanent shade, mimi should be better about updates. But you know what they say about "should."

Divided by Five

Big doin's today. Tonight at exactly 9:08 pm (CST), mimi hits the 4-5. I am officially in my mid-forties. Amazingly, it feels not unlike mid-thirties, except I spend a lot more time in the car driving Frick and Frack to music lessons and baseball and softball and what have you. I could stand to lose a few and have ridiculous snow on the roof for a Florida gal, but the wrinkles on my face are earned and basically tell the story of someone who smiles a lot. Not bad for this point, huh?

Cripes, Tallahassee!

Today was the first day I attempted to foist the new state-mandated testing on my students, and let me just say that there are military terms that aren't for mixed company that perfectly capture the essence of today's fun. Terms beginning with the word "cluster" or expressed with the acronym FUBAR.

Needless to say, when the wizards in Tally tell the entire state to hold off on testing until later, then open the floodgates to a small window of completion, they're asking for trouble. They're asking for more trouble when they--knowing that the opening sequence will be accessed hundreds of thousands of times--advise the districts to purchase and maintain cache servers to make things run more smoothly. Um, clue. These are the same districts that have been laying people off right and left, but they have money to blow on purchasing, installing, and maintaining special servers just for your new brainstorm of a test?? Let the people say DUH.

I got my kids almost through second period, roughly 9 am, when things started to bog down (the Panhandle's awake!). By third period, the entire network crashed and didn't come back up until close to the end of the day. Brilliant planning, idjits.

So we're not done, and now the teaching part is equally FUBAR. Testing is, yet again, holding learning hostage. Data-driven my...

Hugging a Porcupine

DH brought a book home from the library about being the parents of an adolescent the other day. It had a perfect title: How to Hug a Porcupine. And since, more often than not, I'm getting a faceful of quills when trying to deal with Frick these days, it's proven to be sound advice, more often than not.

I always thought I'd be a better parent of a teenager than a young child since I have so many years of experience with teenagers at school. I love younger kids, but some of their habits (especially the whining) drive. me. up. the. wall. I was suuuuuure I'd be so much more effective once they started to creep up in the double digits, age-wise.

What's that old proverb about wanting to make God laugh? Yeah.

Anyhoo, Mr. Frick is becoming, more and more, Mr. Prickly. Everything's cool until I suddenly cross some unseen border, then WHAM! Quillface. Case in point, last night's homework. I'm trying to deal calmly with him, and he gets nearly apoplectic. And doesn't finish. So now I need to wake him up early so he can finish. Never mind that he asked me to wake him early; I'm sure to get zapped for trying it. Open House was last night, and I can see clearly what needs to be done, but he's not hearing it. He knows better (even though he's trying to make algebra do things that are mathematically impossible). He's offloading all his issues on a different issue that even he admits isn't the issue. It's maddening.

And then he turns around and is the most generous, hilarious, wonderful tween in the universe. It's enough to drive you crazy.

Someone who's survived these years, please let me know my face isn't going to be permanently perforated. I'm all for patience and forbearance, but let's face it, they don't sell those qualities at Targét. At some point, the tank'll be dry, and I'll still be in a faceoff with a bristling little rodent. Help!

Bringin' the Heat

'Scuse the baseball analogy, but I'm fixin' to make it do double duty in a sec. Today was opening day of fall ball for both Frick and Frack, since Frack's softball opener was rained out Thursday night. So it's been a loooooooooooong day at the ballpark. BallparkS, that is. Up early to take Frack to her away game, then 1-1/2 hours in the growing heat. By 10:30 we'd already reached the high 80s. Thankfully, the girls won, 9-2, so those hours of sweating it out in her polyester triple-knit uniform--with pants, no less--were worth it. Took her sweaty self home for some lunch, then off to our home field for Frick's baseball opener at 1. By then it was 92 degrees in the shade, with humidity of 63% or more, so the heat index was 101. Since Frick's now in junior baseball, we're talking seven innings of slow poaching. Thankfully, we had hitters and they had weak pitching, so we got called after the third batter in the sixth because of the ten-run rule. Yay!

Back home to find--instead of blessed air conditioning--a HOT house. The fan's blowing, but nothing's cooling. This happened the other day, too. Yegods. Flipped the breaker back and forth, praying that it'll start blowing cool, and hightailed it out of there for a Panera Bread. Free Wi-Fi and unlimited iced tea refills. And they've brought back blondies! Thanks to the Lord for tiny mercies. I may survive until bedtime after all...assuming the air kicks on.

Band Geek WIN

Tonight was middle school band night at the high school where the denizens of Chez mimi are zoned to attend. Since I'm a proud graduate of that same school, I was especially interested in having young Frick, my aspiring tubist, attend. You see, he plays in a wonderful middle school band. The problem is, most of the kids at his middle school go to a nearly lily-white suburban marquee high school--let's call it FooFoo High School, just for funzies--with a small slice going to Frick's future alma mater, which has a much more diverse population. As a result, his band director is all over whatever happens at FooFoo High and totally neglects OUR high school. Or so it seems (mimi does admit to a bit of touchiness and snobbery when it comes to OUR school vs. FooFoo High, which is populated with teens who drive far nicer cars than the teachers and have the attitude to match*). So Frick has been hearing all about how WONDERFUL and FABULOUS FooFoo High is and bubkes about his own school.

Until last night. I bring him to the band room--which was the library when I attended--sign him in, and he disappears into the tuba section. They bond immediately over his cool mouthpiece and he turns on the Parental Ignoring Beam and I leave. I know when I'm superfluous. Still, I worry. He's only in seventh grade. He's very very small compared to those big high school kids and their humongous Sousaphones. So an hour later I text him: Having fun? Glad you went? Do you want one of us to be there while you're at the game? He texts back:

Yes, yes, and no.

Ooooookay then. We leave him to his fun. DH goes to pick him up at the end of a very long night, and he arrives home brandishing a sheaf of tuba arrangements for things they played in the stands, a grin wider than a bass drum, and total excitement about AlmaMater Band. Yay!!

The moral of the story? NEVER underestimate the power of music.

*DISCLAIMER: One of mimi's partners in crime, the Bed Bandit herself, has a daughter attending FooFoo High. Mr. and Mrs. Comic Book's son goes there as well. I personally adore these two children and their younger siblings who will be attending FooFoo High because they live on the other side of our lovely hometown. But that's all the love FooFoo's getting from me. So there.

What Is It With These People??

I don't know what they're drinking in Tallahassee, but apparently now there's yet ANOTHER test we have to administer our kids to find out what's up with their godforsaken reading scores. This one's computer-based, though, and will take up two day's worth of class time that I now can't spend instructing them. Yeah, that makes sense.

You see, apparently the right TEST is going to be the key to unlock why teen readers don't score well on standardized reading exams. Get the right test and the right spreadsheet numbers and presto!! Scores miraculously soar. Right? I mean, it's not like my professional judgment can do anything to pinpoint what they have issues with. You know, by assigning reading and asking them to write things that reveal what they comprehend. It's the almighty SPREADSHEET that will cure all. I'm sorry; I didn't know that you needed a minor in statistics to be a competent English teacher, but whatever. I can play along. But it won't stop me from wondering whether the people drinking that funky Tallahassee Kool-Aid have ever been in a classroom with actual children. Because, after all, children respond so well to more tests when they're having issues with a test. You try convincing a teenager who's figured out that the only scores that matter are the ones that tell you you get a diploma when you graduate (FCAT) or get you into the college of your choice (SAT/ACT) or college credit (AP) that he or she needs to buckle down and work on additional test number 5,297 because THIS IS IMPORTANT and YOU SHOULD TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. Those benchmark tests and Edusoft assessments and yes, our new silver bullet, FAIR (Is there a job in the Florida DOE just for making up acronyms?) are the keys to data-driven instruction. Which soon will be all data and no instruction unless they knock some of that testing crap back down to a manageable, sane size.

Plus, to add insult to injury, the mandatory training sessions were held on the day before and the day progress reports were due to be submitted. Into a new online-based system, no less, so it's the first time we'd ever used it to post grades. The same day the increased server activity crashed the server. The same day some brain trust at the county office wiped out the student/parent database, so none of the kids could check grades online and were freaking out because why worry about your grade until the day it's going in?? Sheesh!

If I were in charge (and that would never happen, because although I have lovely party manners, I do not suck up well), I would put a cadre of really smart teachers in charge of all these new state mandates. Anything the legislature suddenly believes is a good idea would be required of them before they can require it of Florida's students. Plus, legislators would be required by law to work for a minimum of one week per year as a substitute teacher before they would be permitted to introduce legislation which governs how I do my job. You know, the one I've trained for (two degrees!) and have twenty years' experience doing. With an army of successful college graduates to back me up, thankyouverymuch. Otherwise, shut your piehole. And take your freakin' test with you.