from the porches

3 blind mice

                     

                                            Three blind mice

                           

                                                         See how they run

                           

                                      They all ran after the farmer's wife

                           

                                    She cut off their tails with a carving knife

Excuse me.  That would be Punky and Roger.  Bad, bad cats.  Do you suppose they ate the tails?

                               You never saw such a sight in your life as

                                Three blind mice.

          

sad

Are you affected by SAD? (Seasonal Affective Disorder). I know I am sitting here in sunny North Florida with gray, gloomy skies, misty rain and 52 degrees at 5:00 p.m.  I read an article about Seasonal Affective Disorder and realize that I need SUN, not SAD.

I knew this all along in my life.  When I lived in Louisville, Kentucky I remember becoming really sad and depressed during the winter months, about six of them.  I longed for sun, spring, and flowers.

Somehow, divine intervention led Truett and me to Florida, the "Sunshine State."  My parents followed us here, and I know my mother loves the easy Florida life.  No snow.  No gray gloomy skies.  No bone-chilling weather.  Life was easier for my dad's arthritis, and my mom's.

However, today is a SAD day.  All I want to do is curl up with a book and read.  Soup.  That sounds comforting.  The weather forecast predicts we will have three more days of this and then back to sunshine and 78 degree weather.  Thank you God.  Amen.

If you are from the North, please understand not all of us can handle "your weather". 

background knowledge

I tell the children they all walk into my classroom with an imaginary suitcase.  They look at me like I'm losing my marbles.  And in this suitcase is all their background knowledge which will help them in their stories.  Judge for yourself this second grader's background knowledge.

"Then I flew over Mount Everest.  It was cold.  After that I flew over the jungle.  I saw monkeys, lions and a rhino."

Not bad for a second grader, but of course we elaborated what the monkey looked like or what the lion was doing, as well as the rhino.  I reminded second graders that when they watch Discovery Channel, Crocodile Hunter, and Animal Planet, they are filling their imaginary suitcases for later use.

Now here is a third grader's background knowledge about porcupines.

"Then the porcupine chased me and threw his porks at me."

Oops!  Now it becomes our job as a class or a teacher to teach this child what a porcupine throws.  Spikes?  Spines?  Quills?  Porks?  Do you know?

stalking my stuff

I'm beginning to rethink the "Roger needs a friend" theory.  Punky and Roger are getting into mischief.  BIG MISCHIEF!  I couldn't sleep last night so I got up and wandered down the hallway.  Then I saw a dark shape laying ahead of my feet.  "What in the world?"  The lights were dim in the house so I couldn't see clearly. 

Then I stepped on something hard.  By then my curiousity was peaking so I flipped on the hall light.  That's when I saw the mess Roger and Punky had made.These two brat cats had jumped on my scrapbooking table and carried some of my things to the hallway during the middle of the night.

                     

                       I know what this is.  The top to my stickie squares. 

                           

                                        Further down the hall I saw this.

                           

                                                    And this.

                      

                        Finally, I saw this.  This looks pretty dangerous to me.  I didn't check their little mouths, but I bet somebody furry has a sore jaw.  Serves you right you brat cats.

danglies

While standing on car rider duty in the freezing weather this morning, I decided to occupy my mind with things other than my burning big toe and numb white fingertips.  Brrr!  Forty minutes is a long time to stand out in the frigid air and open icy car doors. (Well, not really icy like people in the north, but enough to set my fingers afire.)  That's when I spied danglies.  You know.  Those things that hang from the rear view mirrors over the dashboards of cars.  So I summoned a pen and paper and set to work.  Here are some of the danglies I saw:

Albert the alligator and beads of all kinds.

Wooden, Mardi Gras and ones of orange and blue.

A brown fuzzy monkey and a white one too.

A feathered pink boa and some white baby shoes.

A graduation tassel.

Two stethoscopes.

A prism that sparkled. 

A felt Puerto Rican tag and a plastic name badge.

Let's not forget a handicap car tag, sunglasses,

and a Hawaiian lei.

"What else?" you ask, and this is what I say:

A golden cross, a pine scented card in a Christmas tree shape, necklaces of gold,

and one of candy.  Yum!

A fuzzy m&m, and an arrowhead,

feathers, a dream catcher and a golden chain.

"Is that all?"  you ask.  "Please be nice."

Last but not least, a pair of fuzzy  black and white dice.

Moral: You never know what will surprise you.  You only have to look to see!

Does this sound like I've gone totally insane?  How about you doing my duty. 

wheels on the bus

I suppose we all know the preschool song that goes like this: The wheels on the bus go round and round

Round and round ,Round and round.  The wheels on the bus go round and round.  All day long.

I thought of this song this morning when I was promised a "duty-free" morning from our technology teacher who is being sympathetic to those of us who have outside morning car rider duty.  The tech teacher did take my duty this morning, bless her heart. 

Yea!  Forty-five minutes for me to plan my morning lessons.   So I dressed appropriately.  No warm jacket because no duty.  No gloves because no duty.  No socks or knee-highs because no duty.  Yea!  No outside duty this morning.  Heck.  I even got to school five minutes later than I normally do.  So I happily trot to the office only to find a hand-written sticky note that said:  Mrs. _____ is running late.  Please cover her car-rider duty. Crapola!

So I did my duty for someone else.  Moral:  Never assume there won't be nails in the road as the bus moves to its destination.

On a happier note, this is my little weed angel.  He protects all the weeds in what used to be a pretty little garden.  He really doesn't mind.  This little area is his.  If you look closely by clicking on the photo, you may see a tiny frown in his forehead.  He wants warmer weather also.

any given sunday

Any given Sunday may be a little more special than the last or the one to come.  Today was one of those.  Today began as a dreary, gloomy yet mildly warm Sunday and misting rain.  The mildly warm was the saving grace.  After visiting mom I came home and played around with the 60 mm camera lens.  Here are a few of the photographs I took.

                        

                         Up close with the micro lens.

                        

                          Still closer.

                        

                         A closer look of an acorn.

I'm proud of myself.  It's not bad for a novice who didn't know to take the lens cap off the camera a month ago, or that I needed to replace the card reader each time I chose to take a photo.  Not bad for a gloomy, gray, misty Sunday morning while I wandered around the cleared woods in front of our house.  Exploring Photoshop is my next venture.  I did learn one thing.  All the photographs I take that are fuzzy is because I am squatting, and these seasoned knees don't squat so well anymore.  I can see now I'll have to practice squatting to get clearer photographs.

                         

You know the saying, "A rolling stone gathers no moss", well this is a photo of a forgotten baseball chucked into the woods when Clay was probably eleven years old.  It's lost its skin and is showing its inner beauty, blue and pink twine.  This old baseball has gathered some moss and probably has many stories to tell.  It was a special surprise in the woods.

This Sunday afternoon Truett and I saw "The Bucket List."  It was a wonderful movie.  Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman can't make a bad movie.  GO SEE IT!  It is one of those movies that make you question if you are living life to the fullest.

Finally, we ended our Sunday with a delicious dinner at Macaroni Grill in Gainesville.  Chicken Parmesan and Lasagna will be our Monday dinner as well.  So any given Sunday can be like magic, like today was.

gazebo

One of my favorite structures on our property is the gazebo.  Truett designed and built the gazebo around 2001.  Clay and I carried the wood, stacked the wood and helped paint the wood.  Mostly Clay and I watched Truett build it, ready to fetch the things he needed or try to catch him if he fell off the ladder. Yeah, right! When it was completed, it was the cutest building I had ever seen.   

When the gazebo was built Truett and I would sit in it in the late afternoons and talk and watch squirrels and birds.  This lasted until the Spring rains came which consequentially brought mosquitoes.  Swarms of mosquitoes.  Even the Citronella candles did not keep the mosquitoes away.  That's when we realized we should have screened the gazebo in.

Several times a year we sweep the gazebo down and swipe the granddaddy long legs, banana spiders and crab spiders away. We never squish the spiders, just fling them out with a broom and give them a new area to spin their webs.  Then one of the guys power wash it until it practically sparkles. 

Maddie used to dance in the gazebo when she was smaller, before we remodeled the house and added all the screened porches.  I was inspecting the gazebo today, thinking it needed cleaning again.  After all, now that Oliver is walking and climbing, it will make a fun place for the two of them to play in.

I remember one summer when Sherry and I chose to wind down in the gazebo after a full day with the family, a place to escape the kids.  It was very peaceful.  Then the sprinkles began, followed by a downpour of rain.  Still, we sat there until a Florida thunderstorm blew in.  The rain blew in sideways, getting us wet.  Still we sat there.  "It'll be over in a few minutes," I said. That's the way our summer storms are." However it took only one flash of lightning and a deafening clap of thunder to spend us high-tailing it to the house.  I have good memories of the gazebo and plan to have many more.

                                        

finally friday

For a short work week of only four days with the students, this one seemed longer than usual.  It took the children until Wednesday to recuperate from the holidays and back into their  learning mode.  I taught hard this week.  Important stuff.  Stuff they will need for FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test).  I forbid the word 'stuff' to be written by students but it sure does feel good to write it in this blog on a weekend.  Shhh!  Don't tell the children.)  Even the second and third graders were pushed to plan and produce a perfect story. 

By today (Friday afternoon) the children were hyped up and ready for the weekend which they obviously began at lunch today.  "Boy, they're wild,"  I told the first grade teachers.  "It must be the weather," they said, and I believe it.  My right knee has bothered me for two days with a deep arthritic pain in it.  It is supposed to rain and maybe thunderstorm, but I don't care.  Let it rain.  It is the weekend and I can sit on my porches and watch it and listen to the rain fall on the tin roof.

I love being at home on the weekend.  I like looking at our place, all the outbuildings and structures.  Looking at our compound relaxes me. 

The playhouse.  Relax in my terms does not mean cleaning up around this area.

The pool.  We've had so much fun at the pool.

Part of the studio and old dog house.  Reminds me of Fuzzy Wuzzy.  Kind of fuzzy.

Clay's house is relaxing to look at, but I never ever go in it.  That's way too stressful.

Have a great weekend.

a purrfect pat

I am rejoicing.  Yesterday when I fed Punky his Friskie's dry cat food, I accidentally spilled a few morsels on the kitchen floor.  Punky ran to them and began gobbling them up.  Here was my big chance.  Ever so slowly I inched my hand toward his back and gave him not only one, but two rubs right down his little orange back, from his neck to his stubby little tail.  Obviously, Punky was so focused on the food that by the time he realized it, I was satisfied.  Of course he looked up and skedaddled to the dining room.

Later I was able to photograph him curled in a bread basket.  I was so thrilled I touched him, that I don't care where he curls up.  Isn't he the cutest thing?