Be sure before you hit the send button.

First, I received this in my email.

Then I started this:

Please note the name of the file I sent her and my attempt at recovery after saying "hey, nice cat and electric toothbrush." 


I can't stop laughing. 

spires

I've been staring at this photo I took. I love the composition for the way the spires yield to the sky, leading thoughts to the divine.

Tributes from my sisters

Wocket Launch

Use your skills of inference to piece together this story. (It reads bottom to top.) Ha.

When I was little, I used to bring home salamanders, fireflies, snails, caterpillars, tadpoles, crickets, homegrown ant farms--and my mother let me keep all of it. In the house. She may have drawn the line at Crystal's bucket of earthworms. Oh how it's hard growing up and leaving the creatures outside. :)

targeted ads are we-ird

What the...??

ready for the attention?

2012 is going to be an interesting year in the media.

(Not because of this album, but because of politics. But you knew that.)

Monday night is the new Saturday

Remember all those things you were going to do on Saturday?

Saturday turned into Funallday and now those things are urgent.

Haiku Moroni 10:3

Distressed prayer answered
"Remember how merciful,"
the Lord seems to say

Inverse

If 

no success can compensate for failure in the home,

then is it also true that

no failure can negate success in the home? 

I hope so. 

[better word than negate please?]

41° feels like

Propaganda

Corazon inspired by Romero Britto, local Miami artist

The Pop Music Critic: Like a Tattoo

I am an NPR fiend. (I've tried to think of a similarly powerful word with fewer alternate connotations, but I haven't come up with one yet.) I can tell time by what's happening on the radio no matter the time of day--during the workday, I can only tell you the hour, but before 9:00, I can tell you the time almost to the minute. This is actually really useful because the info screen in my Saab signed out of my life a couple of years ago.

Anyway, my ticket to knowing very little about a very lot is NPR. My CD player is broken, my tape player for an adapter is broken, FM transmitters won't work in my car, and I need intelligent adult time daily, so I've come to rely on NPR. The only downside with the local NPR station is that at 9:06 pm, Radio l'Ecole, programming in Haitian Creole, begins. After that it's random jazz and Sounds of the Caribbean very late. I do not speak Haitian Creole and I don't often feel like listening to jazz. Miami radio stations are either annoying club music about girls who brush their teeth with whiskey, bachata, or Delilah, so I've had to find myself another radio station. It's hard to find but I have programmed it in.

I promise I'm getting somewhere with this.

While listening to the other radio station, I've come across songs with lyrics that absolutely must be openly criticized. :) Example:

You're on my heart, just like a tattoo. I'll always have you. 


This is NOT a compliment, nor is it reassuring. Tattoos get uglier the longer you have them. I intend to become more and more beautiful with age. I do. So if you plan on always having me, please don't refer to me as a tattoo.

Geometric Love Song

Audience. The "Geometric Love Song" concept has been in my mind since last summer, and I'm finally making something of it. It is such a deliciously hilarious delight to write that I giggle as I type it. Haaaaa. Here is a sneak preview:

Our two lives converge on every single point but one.
If you'd just stop and learn some math, life would be much more fun.
You and me are right together, so we're complementary.
This is a simple matter of plane geometry.

You may think we're tangents, two ships passing in the night
But we're concentric circles! Pull me in and hold me tight.
When we are together, the wide world becomes 3D,
just one small dimension short of sweet eternity.

I'm not really interested in trigonometry.
The only form of cosine, dear, that I want to see
is your name above, my name below on that dotted line
so we can be adjacent through forever and all time.

I'm going to go ahead and claim exclusive rights to this one. It's gonna be big.

Text your own mom

I am not even going to go into how wrooonnnng it is to mess with some of my students' hair, but let me tell you Mr. N was in a LOT of trouble today for pulling off Miss J's wig. BIIIIIIG trouble. I texted his mama to let her know he got taken down to the office for the offense and she immediately called back, very concerned. 

You don't touch a black girl's hair. (And to set the record straight, it's not un-PC to say "black." Not now, anyway.)

Mr. N sent a text to my cell phone tonight, and I am just cracking up over it. In its texting-language purity: 

Dis [Mr. N] y do you have txt my mom txt yo mom 

Haaaa. "Text your own mom!" He must have gotten in some serious trouble. 

In a future post: hate graffiti in my classroom and why I think it is so funny.

Some girls watch the Bachelor...others make Chinese New Year crafts. :)

I had a horrible day. I have been sick for a week. My students hate me and my class. They would rather use thermometers as drumsticks than science lab tools. My ears are congested so bad that I feel like I'm underwater and I can't hear.


One of my colleagues had a hard day too. She said she was going home to watch the Bachelor. I made a Chinese lai see red envelope to console myself. Parents give these to their children filled with money for Chinese New Year. Each of these paper bills features a rabbit (for the Year of the Rabbit), the phrase "1,000 yuan," and a traditional Chinese New Year wish: from the top, He -- harmonious, De -- virtue, moral, Xi -- happiness (I kind of messed up this one), Cai -- wealth, money, and Lu -- prosperity. The front of the red envelop is Fu -- good fortune. The glitter was gold but soaked up the red Mr. Sketch marker. I am especially enthusiastic about the embellishment of the Chinese flag gold foil star and gel pen constellation on the back of the envelope.


This was all very spontaneous and I'm really excited about it. I am sending it to my friend Richard in China. If he doesn't like it, pretty sure his mom will. :)

I applied for graduation!

I applied for graduation from the University of Miami for my Master of Science in Education and Social Change today and cried tears of happiness, relief, and anticipation of accomplishment while I did so.

(Just a couple of them)

Hello, Sir.

I don't know if I've told you, but I have mad bizarre dreams, often involving me trying to save people from large-scale disaster or trying to hide from someone who wants to take my life (I usually have powers of invisibility when being pursued. Sometimes I can fly.). Perhaps this is a bizarre thing to post on the internet, but I need to write about this one so it can stop chasing me when I am awake.

Last night I was in the throes of the Holocaust. Most of the dream's characters were children. I'm pretty sure I was a child too. In order to escape the genocide, I climbed a mountain road near a frozen river. And guess who drives by? That's right. Hitler. I, pretending I did not know who he was, approached his car and issued him an extremely polite "Hello, Sir," hoping that my sweet innocence would not incur his displeasure. (He was prone to shoot people at will.) Eventually, I was living in a sort of safe house on the edge of an ocean. Every family living there was planning their escape--mostly by plane, although I knew that most people who attempted to flee that way would be intercepted and executed. I was planning an escape by kayak across the deep, dark sea and over the mountains on the other side. I had no idea what to do when I got to the mountain, but I was responsible for three people and was our only hope. It turned even more disturbing when four of the characters were my students--all African-American boys. I begged them (brothers K&D B, DS, and JC the only seventh-grader) to stay in the house out of sight and stay safe. At one point, I looked in the mirror and knew that my blue eyes were keeping me alive (I have green eyes in real life). A white family moved into the upstairs of the house, however, small girls with light blond hair, and they were in danger as well.

I am of the persuasion that dreams are meaningful somehow. I just hope the meaning of this one is more complex than white guilt.

There. I did it. Feel free to discuss.

Christmas Cards

I designed our family's Christmas cards...a few days after Christmas. And when I say designed, I mean I chose the photos and layout and used an online template. Well my dad chose the main photo--the one that reveals how, um, fun we are. :) Thanks to my friend Anna, we're getting them for freeee!

I'm looking at PhD programs

Education+International+Politics+Development? 


"The International Education Policy Management concentration is designed for those who intend to build an academic career dedicated to the study of education and its effect on social and economic development. "


Why must it be at Vanderbilt?

Second Chance

A girl just moved into my YSA branch.
From Australia.
I told her I wanted to guess by her accent which part of Australia she's from.
I said "you're not from Melbourne?"
She is.
She's from the last area of my mission.
I know her mum, and remember with vivid detail her house:
the painting on the wall, what we ate, what we talked about.
I don't know if you feel this way,
but sometimes I feel that I didn't get everything done when I was there.
And let me tell you (without getting into details),
this may be a
second chance.