How Many Does it Take?

Tibby saw it first. Or was it Milo? Hard to say, but last night around 10 PM our cats were super-interested in the living room rug. It wasn't long before Lucy hopped off her bed and went over to investigate.

"What are they looking at?" Heidi asked with a bit of alarm.

I glanced over from the couch. In the light of the TV, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. "Who knows?" I shrugged.

Heidi was not as easily dissuaded. She turned on some lights and squinted at the pattern in the carpet. The cats were all perky-eared and swishy-tailed. Lucy was play-bowing. I still saw nothing. 

"There!" Heidi pointed at a crescent that almost matched the rug. On closer examination, we saw legs, a hundred legs.

"A house centipede," I identified the intruder, and, grabbing a tissue, scooped it up, and sent it on its way outside. 

Go, team!

Mother Duck

We took a late afternoon walk around the Tidal Basin today. The weather was fair and breezy, and the crowds were relatively thin, even more so the closer it got to that traditional American dinner hour; as many times as we have been down there, we knew it would probably be so.

As we set off, the tiny cherries on and beneath the trees took me by surprise-- could it be possible I've never been down there this time of year? Surely not! But it had to be, for I had no idea that our cherries, so famous for their ornamental blossoms in the spring, were of a fruiting variety. 

Around by the Jefferson Memorial our company was more avian than human-- a hundred or more ducks and geese swam and waddled on the beach formed from the crumbling retaining wall. There was only one mother duck: she was small and slim, barely an adult herself, but I admired the way she steered her two tiny ducklings firmly toward the water. She was young, but she was competent and resolute.

I was reminded of one of our family stories. When I was not yet four,  and my brother was just two, and my sister was an infant, our family moved to Philadelphia for my dad's job. Before our house was ready, we stayed a couple nights downtown in the Sheraton. My dad had been in Philly for a month or so, leaving my mother to pack the house care for 2 toddlers, and oh yes, give birth. 

My dad was at work when we arrived at the hotel, and my mother put us all down for naps. But who could sleep in such a wondrous place? My exhausted mother, perhaps, but not us! My brother and I got up from our beds, still in our t-shirts and underwear, walked past my sleeping mother, and opened the door. Outside there was a long hallway lined with doors, and we were eager to explore. Of course, the door locked behind us, and once we set off, there was no way of knowing which of the doors was ours.

A hotel maid found us and somehow knew which room to return us to. She knocked quietly and then used her master key to open the door. Inside, she found my mother, still sleeping. Mom woke up to the three of us standing over her. "Oh," the kindly maid was shaking her head, "she's just a baby and she has three babies of her own!"

Unquestionably

"Do you know Ms. W?" a student asked the other morning in homeroom. "She's my testing teacher and I want to know if she's nice."

"Oh, yes!" I answered. "I know her well! She's very nice."

"I don't know if I can believe you," the student replied doubtfully.

I tried not to be offended. "Why not? Don't you trust my judgment?" I asked, wondering why she had bothered to ask me at all.

"It's not that!" she said. "It's just that, now that I think about it, you're cool with everyone!" She shook her head. "I'm definitely not that chill."

"First of all, thanks," I laughed. "I'll take that as a compliment. But also, don't worry-- Ms. W. really is nice!"

Stacy Knows Best

"Stacy told me," one of my students remarked the other day.

"Who's Stacy?" asked the kid next to him. I was curious, too. I know of no Stacys in our school.

"Oh," the first boy shrugged, "she's my moral compass. Always has been."

"What?" said the other kid.

"She's the voice in my head that tells me right from wrong," explained his classmate. "Everybody has one. Mine's just named Stacy."

I looked carefully at him to see if he was joking. He didn't seem to be, and neither did he seem the least bit self-conscious about revealing this detail of his life.

"Why?" asked the second student. "Why 'Stacy'?"

"I don't know, she just is," answered the other kid. "She's an adult with two children of her own, so she has a good idea about what I should do." 

The student next to him nodded, seemingly satisfied with the explanation, and went back to his writing.

Snowball Effect

The plush snowballs I ordered to use as a brain break arrived right on time yesterday, and I couldn't wait to try them out today. Unfortunately, we had a testing schedule that only allowed for homeroom and a 4-hour testing session before lunch. Fortunately, there was no better way for 17 kids to blow off a little steam before going off to the test than winging 50 snowballs at each other for five minutes or so. 

At one point, the printer came to life and we knew someone would be at the door any minute to pick up their printing. "When they open the door," I suggested, "let's nail 'em!" 

We waited breathlessly for the handle to turn, and when it did? "Fire!" someone shouted, and we pelted the science teacher with the soft little balls.

She quickly recovered from her initial shock, and then picked up a few snowballs and tossed them right back. 

The kids' laughter alone elevated my mood, and maybe, just maybe, their performance on the test improved as well.

Bean There, Done That

When I was in fourth grade my mom helped me with a science fair experiment. We wadded up paper towels, dampened them, and then stuffed them in an empty peanut butter jar. Next, we carefully tucked dried kidney beans into the folds and then set the jar on a windowsill. What followed was miraculous to my nine-year-old brain: the beans sprouted, sending roots toward the bottom of the jar and emerald green shoots toward the top. I hadn't realized that beans were seeds, and seeing them grow was an awakening for me.

I hadn't thought about that experience in decades until last weekend. I was feeling bummed that I hadn't planted any shell beans. My students and I had several little plants growing on the window sill in our classroom, but I wasn't sold on just dropping a bean in a dixie cup full of soil. It occurred to me that there was a way to give them a head start, and so I grabbed a mason jar and some paper towels. Next, I pulled the yellow-eyed beans I ordered from Maine from the pantry, and just like my mom and I had done all those years ago, I placed my beans in the damp folds of the paper towel.

I brought the jar to school and placed it in the sun next to the little plants. By Friday? The beans had swelled and opened, tiny roots clinging to the paper towel. I carefully placed each bean in a cup of soil, watered them, and went home for the long weekend hoping for the best.

Oh my! The six-inch plants waiting for me this morning surpassed my wildest dreams! They were actually ready to be transplanted into the garden this afternoon. Where two weeks ago I was beanless, today I have the promise of several quarts to shell, if the garden gods will it so. 

As It Flies

We were playing pickleball yesterday with friends when a crow swooped down and landed on the baby stroller. Thankfully, their 15-month-old was occupied with Heidi and the dogs, because the bird pecked around in the diaper bag and then flew off with a protein bar that had been in the pocket. Stunned, we watched the crow as it landed first on a nearby chimney, and then next in the shade of a tree off to the far corner of the court.

"I can get it!" promised another friend, and he took off running toward the crow. 

Overconfident, perhaps, or possibly preoccupied with getting its prize out of the wrapper, the big black bird had no defense, and AJ nabbed the stolen snack back just as quickly as the crow had grabbed it a few moments ago. 

The game was, of course, at a standstill as we laughed about the turn events. "Who wants it?" called AJ, jogging back to the court.

The answer was no one-- everybody was just a little skeeved about eating what we had to start calling "the crowtein bar".