June 24: Those that grew up with them have become calloused to them in a way that we laugh at high budget disaster films that depict The Rock cresting a tsunami wave set in motion by a literally groundbreaking 9.6 earthquake in a rigid-hulled inflatable boat. I’ve lost count of how many movies and TV shows have destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge by earthquakes, a space drill, and a giant mutant octopus. Each one depicts a scene more ridiculous than the last. There are website articles and YouTube video collages that are dedicated to listing every movie that has caused some form of destruction to the bridge and even arrange a top five list. The comments sections are full of people suggesting other films to add to the list and saying how hilarious this all is.
We forget how devastating earthquakes can really be.
June 25: We stopped by a man selling boba milk tea with a sign that read “Let’s suck balls”. His table was located in a corner that caught and twisted the breeze, forming a tornado of rainbow confetti and condom wrappers. The giddy girls behind us in line very loudly bought edibles from the guy who was behind them in line.
June 26: The teacher’s lounge is still being cleaned, so we are forced to take our lunch at the two tables just barely crammed into the hallway behind Mr. Carlson’s class. Every time a class is lead down the hall to the cafeteria, they pass by us, usually staring and trying to figure out what we are eating. It is especially awkward because we spend most of our lunch complaining about the exact kids walking by.
June 27: The dosen who took us on a short walk through the Fragrance Garden pointed out that even if we had trouble telling which plants were mint by the smell, we could also identify them by their square stem. We all rolled stems between our fingers and I could feel the corners. Joanna looked confused. “That’s not a square. That’s a diamond.”
June 28: Xavier and Scarlett went around the yard and collected all of the flowers that had fallen to the ground from the Tecoma tree branches that curved over the fence between us and the home next door. They flipped the bell-shaped flowers around and slipped them like rings onto their fingers. They ended up with long, accusatorially pointing fingers that looked pink and yellow from third degree burns. Their hands looked like sentenced witches from Salem coming back to seek their revenge.
June 29: As we were lead through the Walt Disney Family Museum, our guide would point out people who were important in Walt Disney’s life. She introduced us to Alice, the little girl from the animation adventures. We learned about some of the animators. A few kids even learned for the first time that Walt Disney was actually a person. Each a new person was mentioned, the first question the kids had was whether or not that person was still alive.
June 30: The kids got creative when I taught them about the Land’s End labyrinth and we went out to the West Yard to draw our own in chalk. Francisco and Scarlett worked together to make a maze inside a maze. Joanna made a maze of herself after getting Cindy to trace her while she lay dormant on the ground. Stephen had way too much fun adding fire pits you had to jump over in order to reach the end.
much love,
hedgie
Friday, June 30, 2017
Friday, June 23, 2017
paranoid and itchy
June 17: Elaine continues to skip around in her story about her uncle who faked his death without any background information. She glossed over such details about how a body was never found, just blood on a dock. That it might have been tailored to frame his then best friend. And that the DNA test had linked them to a girl who had been adopted as a baby and they now suspect was her uncle’s love child.
June 18: There’s another lice outbreak at the school. Every time we talk about it in the teacher lounge, we all suddenly get paranoid and itchy.
June 19: Nick always encouraged Addie to howl with the sirens that pass by our apartment. Now that we live in the city, they drive by more frequently. Addie always perks up when she hears the first inkling blocks away. Then she waits for one of us to howl first before she joins in.
June 20: Ana scored crates of free popcorn at the food bank. Unfortunately, they turned out to be child snack-sized. Every snack, it takes two microwaves and at least three hours to make enough to feed every student.
June 21: Jackson wanted to know how much longer it would take for our bus to arrive. I told him we wouldn’t have to wait much longer, it was only three minutes away. Jackson’s jaw dropped and he held his hands out about two feet apart as if he were showing off the size of a fish he caught over the weekend. “But a minute is like this long!” he shouted.
June 22: The lights constantly changed colors, making it even harder to pick our way through the mirror maze. The place makes everyone wear flimsy plastic gloves so that they don’t leave prints on the mirrors as they navigate their way to the exit. My girls managed to escape in about three minutes. Mr. Derek’s group abandoned him inside.
June 23: Today, Angelina informed me that her scooter can talk to her. They mostly have conversations about her scooter’s crush on George Washington.
much love,
hedgie
June 18: There’s another lice outbreak at the school. Every time we talk about it in the teacher lounge, we all suddenly get paranoid and itchy.
June 19: Nick always encouraged Addie to howl with the sirens that pass by our apartment. Now that we live in the city, they drive by more frequently. Addie always perks up when she hears the first inkling blocks away. Then she waits for one of us to howl first before she joins in.
June 20: Ana scored crates of free popcorn at the food bank. Unfortunately, they turned out to be child snack-sized. Every snack, it takes two microwaves and at least three hours to make enough to feed every student.
June 21: Jackson wanted to know how much longer it would take for our bus to arrive. I told him we wouldn’t have to wait much longer, it was only three minutes away. Jackson’s jaw dropped and he held his hands out about two feet apart as if he were showing off the size of a fish he caught over the weekend. “But a minute is like this long!” he shouted.
June 22: The lights constantly changed colors, making it even harder to pick our way through the mirror maze. The place makes everyone wear flimsy plastic gloves so that they don’t leave prints on the mirrors as they navigate their way to the exit. My girls managed to escape in about three minutes. Mr. Derek’s group abandoned him inside.
June 23: Today, Angelina informed me that her scooter can talk to her. They mostly have conversations about her scooter’s crush on George Washington.
much love,
hedgie
Friday, June 16, 2017
what the hula hooping hippos
June 10: I think I have been listening to Hamilton too much. Today, Nick and I drove past Alexander Avenue and my brain immediately began singing “Alexander Avenue. My name is Alexander Avenue, and there’s a million things I have to do. Just you wait, just you wait”.
June 11: The hills lumped around the freeway are back to being dried out and golden. It finally looks like California again.
June 12: Melissa came up with the idea of a reading contest where students can earn a fake piece of pie every time they read for 20-minutes straight during reading time. For every 10 slices they earn, they win a pie that they get to throw into a teacher’s face at the end of summer. My students are suddenly very literary.
June 13: My new Pin Up Girl clothes arrived and I love the way they make me feel. There are pants that make me feel like Rita Hayworth and a shirt that reminded me of Audrey Hepburn. Today, I wore the pants that made me think of Katharine Hepburn and my kids spent all day asking me why I was wearing pajama pants.
June 14: Juan’s reaction to anything that delights, confuses, or frustrates him is to yell “what the hell?” at the top of his lungs. I can hear him when he is out in the yard at recess and I am in my classroom setting up for the next lesson. Two students and I have been trying to come up with cleaner substitutes for him to yell. So far, the winner is ‘what the hula hooping hippos’.
June 15: “I have Boading Balls!”
“Whose balls?”
June 16: Of all the experiments and exhibits at the Exploratorium, Francisco’s favorite part was the water fountain shaped like a toilet. I almost could not tear him away from his “one last sip” so that we could make it to the bus on time.
much love,
hedgie
June 11: The hills lumped around the freeway are back to being dried out and golden. It finally looks like California again.
June 12: Melissa came up with the idea of a reading contest where students can earn a fake piece of pie every time they read for 20-minutes straight during reading time. For every 10 slices they earn, they win a pie that they get to throw into a teacher’s face at the end of summer. My students are suddenly very literary.
June 13: My new Pin Up Girl clothes arrived and I love the way they make me feel. There are pants that make me feel like Rita Hayworth and a shirt that reminded me of Audrey Hepburn. Today, I wore the pants that made me think of Katharine Hepburn and my kids spent all day asking me why I was wearing pajama pants.
June 14: Juan’s reaction to anything that delights, confuses, or frustrates him is to yell “what the hell?” at the top of his lungs. I can hear him when he is out in the yard at recess and I am in my classroom setting up for the next lesson. Two students and I have been trying to come up with cleaner substitutes for him to yell. So far, the winner is ‘what the hula hooping hippos’.
June 15: “I have Boading Balls!”
“Whose balls?”
June 16: Of all the experiments and exhibits at the Exploratorium, Francisco’s favorite part was the water fountain shaped like a toilet. I almost could not tear him away from his “one last sip” so that we could make it to the bus on time.
much love,
hedgie
Friday, June 9, 2017
bringing jello shots to bingo
June 1: It is such a relief to have my own classroom again. I can finally put things up on the walls and rearrange furniture. I don’t have to carry heavy crates of my supplies up and down the stairs everyday. I don’t have to worry about a teacher getting upset with me and emailing me multiple times because first graders have trouble figuring out what goes into recycling and what doesn’t.
June 2: Five minutes into play centers, I look over and Francisco had rolled up to giant red balls of play dough and was going around the room, holding them up to his chest and pretending he had boobs.
June 3: Addie was sprawled out across the bed and was using Nick’s butt as a pillow. She started wagging her tail as I entered the room. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and opened the camera to take a photo. As soon as she saw what I was doing, Addie immediately stopped wagging her tail and lay very still. When I lowered my phone, she began wagging her tail again. That dog definitely knows how to pose for photos.
June 4: Ryan and Dylan vote to wear dresses to my wedding. Ryan has been planning on that for months, ready to spend the entire day drinking and loudly wailing that he is always the bridesmaid and never the bride.
June 5: Sometimes it’s hard to tell what age Jen is. It’s like she flips from 17 and 80, nothing in between . When I asked her how her weekend was, she gave me a long and convoluted story about bringing Jell-o shots to Bingo.
June 6: Stephen was so taken by George, that every drawing he made that day was inspired by him. He gave me my favorite one, which depicted George as a person who was pretending to be George Washington. He named him George Washington George Person.
June 7: To my left, Mauricio and Wilfred were pretending to be babies, talking to each other in a series of “goo’s” and “gah’s” that only they seemed to understand. Angie tapped my arm from across the aisle and asked me if I believed that God would send people who had never heard of Jesus to hell. I told her that it really depended on what she really thought god was like. My school bus philosopher thought about it for a moment before deciding that what mattered most was being a good person.
June 8: Michael is pretty sure that his house is haunted. He told me that last year, he found what looked like blood all over the floors, but then he tasted it and realized it was red paint.
“Why would you eat it if you thought it was blood?”
“It wasn’t blood.”
“But you thought it was. Why would you eat blood?”
“I already told you it was paint!”
June 9: I’m always amazed by how folklore and urban legends adapt to modern times. Today, I was frantically informed by at least five kids that if you spun three fidget spinners at exactly three in the morning, Bloody Mary would call you on your cell phone and tell you that she would come for you in three days.
much love,
hedgie
June 2: Five minutes into play centers, I look over and Francisco had rolled up to giant red balls of play dough and was going around the room, holding them up to his chest and pretending he had boobs.
June 3: Addie was sprawled out across the bed and was using Nick’s butt as a pillow. She started wagging her tail as I entered the room. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and opened the camera to take a photo. As soon as she saw what I was doing, Addie immediately stopped wagging her tail and lay very still. When I lowered my phone, she began wagging her tail again. That dog definitely knows how to pose for photos.
June 4: Ryan and Dylan vote to wear dresses to my wedding. Ryan has been planning on that for months, ready to spend the entire day drinking and loudly wailing that he is always the bridesmaid and never the bride.
June 5: Sometimes it’s hard to tell what age Jen is. It’s like she flips from 17 and 80, nothing in between . When I asked her how her weekend was, she gave me a long and convoluted story about bringing Jell-o shots to Bingo.
June 6: Stephen was so taken by George, that every drawing he made that day was inspired by him. He gave me my favorite one, which depicted George as a person who was pretending to be George Washington. He named him George Washington George Person.
June 7: To my left, Mauricio and Wilfred were pretending to be babies, talking to each other in a series of “goo’s” and “gah’s” that only they seemed to understand. Angie tapped my arm from across the aisle and asked me if I believed that God would send people who had never heard of Jesus to hell. I told her that it really depended on what she really thought god was like. My school bus philosopher thought about it for a moment before deciding that what mattered most was being a good person.
June 8: Michael is pretty sure that his house is haunted. He told me that last year, he found what looked like blood all over the floors, but then he tasted it and realized it was red paint.
“Why would you eat it if you thought it was blood?”
“It wasn’t blood.”
“But you thought it was. Why would you eat blood?”
“I already told you it was paint!”
June 9: I’m always amazed by how folklore and urban legends adapt to modern times. Today, I was frantically informed by at least five kids that if you spun three fidget spinners at exactly three in the morning, Bloody Mary would call you on your cell phone and tell you that she would come for you in three days.
much love,
hedgie
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