notmuch to say, really

but, i do have a video to share with you. um. so, yeah.

a new era

woot woot!

lucy is not impressed.

only in texas - rated pg for mild language

part one:

i was at weight watchers this morning with melissa. the topic was how to get past all of the excuses we give about not exercising. (honestly, kind of a topic i needed to hear lately, as the 'my foot hurts' is getting to be a pretty thin reason for not running. even though it REALLY DOES hurt.)

anyway. we were coming up with a list of common excuses and people were calling out things like "tired" and "no time" and "i don't like to do it" and "my foot hurts." then, the lady next to me - not melissa - calls out, "i don't want my hair to fall." yes. you read that right.

texas = big hair.

(and yes, i know my title says "only in texas," when really that statement probably could have been uttered anywhere in the south and probably in some parts of new jersey. still. it is funny.)

____________________________________________

part two:

one thing i've learned working in middle schools is that for some reason 7th and 8th grade boys CANNOT keep their hands to themselves. (being that i was never a 7th or 8th grade boy and that i was probably too shy to talk to any 7th or 8th grade boys, i honestly never knew this about the species.) with the end of the school year coming so quickly, i think the hyper-tactile gene/neuron/somerandombiotermhere has kicked into overdrive. everywhere i turn they are picking at each other, which is just what was happening as i came to my classroom after lunch yesterday. instead of just saying, 'no no stop that' or something similar, i unfortunately had to, like, be a real teacher/adult when one of the offending kiddos said, 'what the hell?' to the other.

sigh.

so i put on my mean face and had a 'discussion' about how inappropriate his response was. his teacher, my next door neighbor, kaci, joined in on the 'discussion' that was turning rather lengthy because this kiddo was trying to explain to me that 'what the hell' was not swearing. kaci, being much cooler and more on-the-ball than i was at the moment, asked him to explain when it would be appropriate to use the word HELL. without missing a beat, this young ruffian (sorry - kiddo was getting old) said, "well. you could use it to describe a weather event."

yall. he meant this -



what makes this even more hilarious to me is that kaci - who not only is awesome, but who has also spent her entire life before teaching in dfw living in WEST TEXAS - knew exactly what he meant, didn't even flinch, and kept on going with the 'discussion' like what he said was perfectly normal, whilst (sorry, in the middle of teaching shakespeare) i stood there trying not to laugh in this poor child's face.


*full disclosure: yes. i am completely aware that i often affect the same accent. there is no need to remind me of this. my fourth period does on a daily basis.*

yumminess illustrated

this is random.

tonight i was over arlington. i never go 'south' very much anymore, which is so weird to me because my first go around in dfw i never came 'north.' anyway. i was near whole foods at supper time, so i thought i'd stop and get a salad to take home.

the first thing i saw when i walked in was the display of oranges. not just ANY oranges, but oranges peeled and sliced for you already. i LOVE fresh oranges, but i HATE peeling them. oddly, the whole peeling part grosses me out so much that i can't eat the orange once it is ready. because i am bored/boring, i decided to take a picture of the amazingness that accompanied my dinner and will find a place in my lunch box tomorrow . . .

it's the little things like this that make me forget that i still have 6 whole weeks until summer.

also, i discovered a new brand of frozen pizzas. i'm pretty good at eating healthy during the weeks i make an effort to, but frozen pizzas are my downfall. i like the 'high dollar' california pizza kitchen goodness that line the freezers at target, but i also have no problem shelling out my 97 cents for a good ol' totinio's cheese pizza. i try to stick to the lean cuisine 'healthy' versions, but they really don't cut it. BUT. PEOPLE. i've found the solution: Life Choices and Living Right Foods. (yeah, i know. kind of a youth group devotional sounding name.)
i got their mini-cheese pizzas, which come 4 in a box. i don't think i will go back to eating the lean cuisine or weight watchers pizzas when i need my fix. these are SO yummy. AND healthy. i counted up the ww points and the entire mini-pizza is only 5! fantastic. also . . . absolutely no preservatives, which is REALLY hard to find in the frozen food aisle. next week, i'm going to check out their chicken strips . . .

wow. i'm pretty embarrassed i just wrote an entire blog about oranges and pizza.

i am not mike huckabee

i am not an anti-income tax person, but seriously. who likes this whole april 15th tradition? anyway. i was addressing my kansas tax stuff today (shut up. at least i didn't wait until tomorrow!) and i did have to giggle at the zip code my $68 bucks are zooming to: 66699.

i maybe laughed a little harder than others at this coincidence. but i swear, that has NOTHING to do with the fact that the stinkin' kansas forms were the source of all taxing frustrations this weekend.

okay. leave me alone now. the bachelor is back on. (yes. VERY guilty addiction. really i just watch so i can read this every tuesday.) anyway. the host keeps teasing THE MOST DRAMATIC FIGHT IN BACHELOR HISTORY. dude. i love me the DRAMA. ooh. there's hand clapping!

snow day? (be prepared for a really long post - sorry!)

snow day? in texas? in APRIL? um. yes. you read that right.

so last night around 3:15 i woke up because the blinds in my bedroom were blowing like crazy. i got up to close the window and to look outside where i could see almost nothing because the rain and wind were both so intense. being a good little okie, i knew it was time to go turn on my tv and check out the forecast, just like ol' jim giles/gary england taught me to do. at this point, i wasn't panicked. all i needed to do was look at a map to see where the red was. so, i stumbled out to the living room and tried to turn on the tv. the important word there, is TRIED. no electricity? affirmative.

about that same time the rain started pelting my windows so hard it sounded like rocks were pounding on the glass. lucy, being the smarty pants she is, went and grabbed her leash and brought it to me, all excited that i was up and that maybe just maybe i was going to take her on a random walk in the middle of the night. i would have laughed at her, but that's when i started hearing the sirens going off. they were so faint, that at first i was more disgusted with the city of "b" because there was no way people were going to hear those if they were sleeping. (i've since learned that they were the sirens from next town over.) anyway. THAT is when the panic set in and i put on jeans and shoes, grabbed lucy, the flashlight, my cell, all of the pillows from the guest room and my room, and all of the blankets on my bed and the guest bed and headed to my closet to wait things out. i live on the second floor, which FREAKS ME OUT during storms, especially since last spring when another tornado went RIGHT OVER MY ROOF. i've always been nervous about big storms, but over the last few years that nervousness has turned into plain fear. so . . . lucy and i stayed huddled in my closet until about 4 when i couldn't hear the rain anymore.

after that i tried to sleep, but i kept waking up. my alarm went off at 545 and i checked to see if the power was back on. it wasn't, so i figured, why get up now? i'm not going to be able to do my hair or anything, so i reset my alarm for 630 and finally went to sleep. right before the next alarm was suppose to go off, my cell phone rang. yep. "snow day." :) according to the call, my school had damage from the storm and wasn't going to be opening. she didn't know whether or not it was the whole district. sooooooo, i got up to try the tv again. still no power. (this being cut off from the rest of the world REALLY sucks. i need to get a radio with batteries for the future.) i called my parents and my mom proceeded to read me internet news for dfw for the next 30 minutes.

my power finally came on about 945ish. WHEE! i decided to go drive around to see if there really was damage up at school and if they needed help cleaning. luckily, it looks like my school is okay, but getting there was pretty crazy. below are the pictures . . .


this is the building behind mine at my apartment complex. lucy and i discovered this this morning when i took her out. i couldn't figure out what it was that had been ripped off of the building . . .

. . . until i saw this when i was on the other side a little bit later on. that is a CHIMNEY!!!

look how blue the sky is now! it's a perfect texas april afternoon.

i was driving my normal route to work, but it was closed off because of the power lines that had fallen. while i was out running around, i ran into melissa's hubby, kelley. he works for at&t. he told me that all he was doing today was driving around and going to their locations (i'm guessing he meant boxes and stuff) that were without power and running them off of his generator. in my area alone he said there 1000 locations without power.

this is the street i turn on to get into the neighborhood where my school is. you can't really tell from the picture, but this tree is covering the entire yard and has landed on the roof of the house. all of the street signs were down over in this area, too. (this is where the sirens were going off.)

this is the house that my classroom window looks out on. the house next door to it had even worse damage, but they were outside cleaning, so i thought it would be tacky to take a picture.

all of this was just from winds!!! craziness!!! the neighborhoods and apartments around my school are in pretty bad shape, which makes me wonder about my kiddos. i didn't see any of them wandering around outside to check on, though. i have a feeling most of that area is still without power, though, because all of the stores and restaurants along the main road were closed up and police were out all around making sure there were no problems. it's a pretty weird day, to be quite honest. i know that it could have been much, much worse and am so thankful it wasn't. but i have to admit that the constant police, ambulance, and fire engine sirens that are going off makes all of this pretty unnerving.

from what it looks like, a lot of you - dear amigos and familia - are going to be dealing with weather today and tomorrow. i'll be thinking of you as i sit here and twiddle my thumbs . . .

rock chalk part 1

NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!!!

i was 9 the last time this happened and have watched every single ncaa championship since. trust me, there is more to come on this, but i just wanted to post this first . . .

Lupinus subcarnosus

i. am. a. nerd.

cody and i decided to go on a bluebonnet hunt yesterday. while we thought the weather was perfect, we were quickly corrected by the lady working at the ennis visitors' center. after she told us "i know it's april, cuz i'm workin' on a saturday," she gave us a quick botany lesson. apparently, the bluebonnets need a little more heat than what we've had here lately. the warmer weather makes them "pop!" (i guess that's why my parents saw bluebonnets before i did while they were down at big bend 2 weeks ago.) anyway, EVC lady did direct us out west of town a little, off of highway 34 to a park just off the lake where there was a small patch.

(sidenote - how much fun would it be to have the job of driving around texas figuring out where the wildflowers had bloomed?)

for those of you not from around here, lemme fill ya in. people in texas go CRAZY for the bluebonnets . . . especially if they are the parents of young children or are engaged. photo ops galore. since cody and i are neither of those things mentioned above, we have never had the chance to go crawl around in a field and take pictures. until yesterday. and gracious cody even let me bring the pup on our road trip. lucy was WAY more interested in the lake and the dead fish carcus that she found, but for a few minutes she did let us take a some pictures of her.

Here is a view of the little patch we found.

Apparently, a lake is way more interesting that a bunch of blue flowers.

Yep. She found a dead creature and decided to roll in the grass near it.
My dog is gross.

There was no real posing or listening to be had today.
What did I expect?
We were OUTSIDE!!! WITHOUT A LEASH!!!

Finally. She listens.