earth day recap

no those are not balls of alien moss. those are my earth krispie treats! they're amazingly similar to rice krispie treats, except they're dyed blue and green and balled into earth shapes. they might look questionable but they tasted good. oh, i am so clever.

so yesterday we had our earth day party, and i was all by my lonesome handling a room full of 40 something kids with only the help of a few teen volunteers. yikes. but it was cool, and we only had one minor injury.

first we played a game called Litter Pick Up, in which the kids must sit in a circle and inside the circle is all sorts of litter: plastic bags, paper towel rolls, etc. then when they hear the word 'go' they must pick up as much litter as possible without leaving their spot. they got surprisingly excited by this and soon utter chaos erupted. i didn't see what happened, but one little girl must have gotten slightly trampled or something and she started crying. then one of my more industrious volunteers gave her a sticker and sent her on her way. game over.

then we played a game called Recycling Sort in which the kids had to stand behind a line and then throw recyclable materials into the proper bins. this was pretty cool and since only one kid was throwing stuff at a time and the rest were lined up behind the line, there were no injuries.

and finally we made a craft, which i don't have pictures of. but it was really cool. basically, we cut out the center of paper plates and decorated it like the earth. then we decorated the outer part of the paper plate and hung them together to make a sort of mobile.

and that was our earth day party.

today we have our last installment of indoor playground. we'll be playing hopscotch. i've had to cancel indoor playground because the kids actually like it TOO much and get totally out of control. maybe i'll bring it back in a few months if they promise to behave.

portraits of miss dewey decimal

as you know, i don't typically post pictures of myself ... need to keep a low profile from all you adoring fans and such. but i couldn't help posting this lovely portrait a little girl did of me. isn't it good? i mean, that looks a lot like me. and i love the detailing on the sweater.

stealing candy and doing kids homework

it has come to my attention that a certain manager of a certain library keeps candy in her office. and not just run-of-the-mill sucking candies ... we're talking quality chocolate. now, i think it is safe to say that it is NOT a good idea to steal candy from your boss. but sometimes it's so busy here and there are so many kids asking me question after question after question. a girl just needs a miniature dark chocolate krackel bar. is that so wrong?

now, for weeks i saw the candy day after day after day. but i did not touch it! then, one day one of the pages offered me a hershey's kiss and i knew it came from said office stash. are we allowed to eat the candy? is it there for us to grab as needed? how do you even broach such a subject.

so ... the other day i was walking past the office and no one was inside and i stole a piece of chocolate! oh the humanity. today, a co-worker was "covering" my desk while i was in a program, and i noticed she had a few pieces of the chocolate next to her. so i ask you, is this communal candy or what?

then, later i had a 3rd grader ask me for help with his homework. he kind of reminded me of my favorite kid from library in the hood. he had these fire prevention dittos that were WAY beyond his understanding. first they would give a scenario, most of them were rather complex, and then they would ask what should be done to prevent a fire. if that wasn't hard enough, then they asked if your solution involved removing 1. heat 2. fuel or 3. oxygen. this was really tough. and if you pour water on a fire are you removing heat or oxygen? aren't you kinda removing both? anyway, it got to the point where it was so difficult that i just started telling him what he should write, and which multiple choice answer he should circle.

but then. oh readers then i got a very bad feeling ... what if this kid catches on fire (as children often do) and he doesn't know what to do? so i repeated several times, "you know if you're in a fire you need to stop drop and roll, right?" and he said oh yes he learned about stopping dropping and rolling. so hopefully he and his family won't be killed by fire because of poor little ol' me. but really, this homework was ridiculous. there were THREE dittos of this.

i fear that my moral compass may be askew without my beloved bolshevik.

stalin, the bolshevik and my glass baby

sometimes when i look kids' records up on the computer i am unclear as to what is their first name and what is their middle name. obviously it should go Last Name, First Name Middle Name. but sometimes it's in the wrong order. so when a young man came up to read down his fines and i looked up his record only to find it read smith, stalin frederick ... i could only assume that this was a mistake. i prayed that this child was really named frederick stalin smith (names have been changed to protect the innocent).

i know i am dating a commie and all, but really ... naming your child stalin? maybe that means something different in latino cultures that i am not aware of? but i digress. young stalin is off in a corner, reading a captain underpants book ...

as many of you may already know, my beloved bolshevik has set off for several weeks of world travel SANS everyone's favorite bibliophile, miss dewey d. so unfair. but before he left, i promised that i would email him my novel (in progress) so that he could read it on the plane on his way to the land down under. this may not seem like a big deal, but it kinda is ...

you see, many moons ago when i first started dating the bolshevik, he had asked me if he could read my novel. and i said, "oh no, you can't see it. it's my baby ... it's fragile." then the bolshevik, being the logician that he is, said that babies are not actually fragile. they're quite resilient. you can drop them even. (note to parents: do not hire the bolshevik as your babysitter) then i changed my stance, saying that my novel was fragile, like glass ... like a glass baby. and since that time i have been rather strict about not letting the bolshevik read my novel.

so last week when i was getting it all together for him i was quite curious to see just how much novel i actually had. well, lo and behold i have 40,000 words! typically, novels start at about 70,000 words. so this means that i am officially half-way done! you see, i've been telling people i'm about half-way done, but i thought i was lying. kind of like when you get so used to adding a half-inch to your height, that you forget you're not actually that height. not that i do that. i'm totally 5'7''. moving on! so it was exciting to see that i actually am half-way through, and not just lying to everyone.

in other news i've been riding my bike to and from work (about 11 miles round-trip) in hopes of returning to the long lost svelteness. there has been little progress on that front. grrrr.

ok, mr. smith came back and his first name is in fact stalin. crazy.

and that is my life.