Hail to the Chief

The news that Romney was announcing his running mate this morning definitely piqued my interest. Maybe it's our proximity to Washington that engages me in politics, maybe it's something else, but let's just say I was the only adult of five in our group today who had any interest at all.

I'm not sure what I was hoping for when I tuned in, but I don't think it was Paul Ryan. As a liberal, I think I should be happy: Ryan is polarizing, but substantive, his record will frame an interesting debate that I think will ultimately wind up in an Obama victory. We'll see.

It's much more of a gender thing that's beginning to irritate me, though. Why can't the United States elect a woman to the executive branch of our federal government? With the current tickets set as they are, we will have to wait at least four more years to join these countries:

Argentina
Australia
Bangladesh
Bermuda

Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzogovina

Brazil
Bulgaria

Burundi
Canada

Chile

Costa Rica
Dominica

East Germany

Ecuador

Finland
France

Gabon

Georgia
Germany

Great Britain

Guinea-Bissau

Guyana

Haiti

Iceland

India

Indonesia

Ireland

Israel
Jamaica

Kosova

Kyrgyzstan

Latvia

Liberia

Lithuania

Malawi

Malta

Mauritus
Moldova

Mongolia
Mozambique
Netherlands Antilles
New Zealand

Nicaragua
Pakistan

Panama
Peru

People’s Republic of China

Philipines
Poland
Portugal
Rwanda
Sao Tome and Principe

San Marino

Serbia
Senegal
South Korea

Sri Lanka

Switzerland

Tannu Tuva
Thailand
Trinidad and Tobago
Turkey
Ukraine
Yugoslavia

Cooperative Story Telling

By Evie and Jonah

Some flowers are different from each other. Some flowers are alike. Eyeball, eyeball, angry bird angry. Jonah and Evie ran to the angry birds and flowers. They saw a tooth fairy in a beautiful sparkly yellow flower dress. Her hair was orange and she was carrying prizes to put under the pillows in a pretty basket with pink silk roses all over it . "You are stupid children!" she yelled, and then they realized that she was the rotten tooth fairy. She changed into a blackish-grayish for a quick minute and then she waved her wand and turned back. AND she turned good accidentally. Her name was Rosie Kayons. She reached into her basket and pulled out a rotten egg. She held it up and pinched her nose. "Ew! Rotten, rotten!" she said and threw it down and it bounced away. Jonah and Evie laughed and ran away.

Adjust if Necessary

Yesterday I wrote about getting my head back into the business of teaching. Today, Heidi and Emily and I (teachers all) were talking about the pre-pre-service steps we were taking and considering taking to prepare our classrooms and our minds to head back to school in a few weeks.

"I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel," Emily said. "Summer's ending."

"Yeah," I agreed, "but I think what I'm seeing is the dark at the beginning of the tunnel."

I guess I better keep working on my attitude.

No Endless Summer

Over the last few days, I've had several chances to get together with friends and colleagues to start strategizing and planning the school year ahead. Each conversation was good in its own way, but my major take away?

I need to get my head back in the game.

Barefoot Girl

I usually wear my crocs when I go to water and weed the garden. It's nice that they are waterproof, but sometimes the way they squeak when my feet slide around in them makes me a little crazy. Wearing socks is not the solution-- they just get soggy and unpleasant. The other day, I finally just left my slippery shoes behind and stepped barefoot into the grassy pathway that runs the length of the community plots.

The grass was cool and soft, and I was transported back to summer days when I was a little girl and we never wore shoes to play outside. Why haven't I gone barefoot recently? I wondered, before remembering that I live in a condo without a yard. No worries, though. Now I just kick my shoes off the minute I get to the garden, and there they stay until it's time to go.

Not So Total Recall

We saw the remake/reboot/whatever of Total Recall today. (That's what happens when you hang with teenaged boys; although I confess, I kind of wanted to see it.) As it progressed, I realized that although I have definitely seen the original, probably more than once, ironically, I had very little recall of it. Sure, the first one had Arnold Schwarzenegger in it, and early on in this version, as I watched Kate Beckinsale beat the crap out of Colin Farrell, I remembered the old one had Sharon Stone in it as well, back in the day when she had the rep as a serious ass-kicker.

After the movie, Riley and Heidi assured me that the two versions were not much different from each other, with the exception of the setting, and Treat did a little digging to to find that neither one was much like the Philip K. Dick story they were based on. "I don't think the wife's character was quite as resilient in the first one," Heidi added. "I'm pretty sure she didn't make it to the end."

And that's when one more detail sprang immediately to my fifty-year-old brain. Arnold's inimitable Austrian accent deadpanning, "Consider that a duh-voorse," as he terminated his "wife".

Now, that, I totally recalled.

Degree of Difficulty

Cats have the reputation of being rather graceful. The elegant stalk, the arch of the back, the effortless leap-- these are feline markers. Well, that is true for every cat I've ever met, besides our own Penelope. That one is downright clumsy.

Perhaps we first noticed it the time she raced across the wood floor, and for no apparent reason suddenly attempted a full stop. Unsuccessful, her back legs kept going, passed beneath her, and flipped her ass over tea kettle in a full somersault. What did she do? She shook it off. It couldn't have been as novel to her as it was to us.

Since then, she has tripped numerous times; she has misjudged many leaps and several landings, including a few onto my lap, the latest of which was just a while ago, resulting in some pretty deep punctures to my thigh, and a bump on the head for Penelope.

None of it seems to bother her, though. It is what it is, and so she goes on.

I heard a piece on the radio the other day about human satisfaction. It was in conjunction with the Olympics and was, in part, addressing why most silver medal winners are disappointed with their achievement, while most bronze winners are satisfied. It seems that we rely on comparisons to help us figure out how we're doing. The silver winner is looking at the gold he or she lost, while the bronze medalist is feeling pretty happy to be going home with something, unlike all of the other competitors behind him or her.

Fortunately, Penelope does not get caught up in such head games. Maybe she's on to something.