I should be asleep right now.
But I'm not, so I'll fill you in on what's been keeping me so exhausted of late.
The most obvious change is that school started.
Padre continued a tradition for the 22nd (I think? My math is fuzzy right now.) year by sending me flowers on the first day of school. He's the best dad there is. It's my favorite part of a new school year beginning, and I love to brag about how thoughtful he is every year as people ooh and aah over flowers and ask who sent them. These ones were champs, and they lasted two weeks!
This is the first year in as long as anyone can remember that my district has started school on a Monday. Needless to say, we were practically comatose by Friday afternoon. That would be the same Friday afternoon that I crashed into bed before dinnertime, undeterred by the sun shining through the bottom of my window. Saturday morning I was energized and ready to tackle a bunch of projects, including the last patch of unpainted hallway above the stairs. I had gotten most of it done before school began, including the part directly above the stairs. That part involved some acrobatics and a very sturdy ladder, along with lots of prayer and a "does this look safe to you?" text to madre.
There was one last spot I couldn't get to with the ladder, so I pulled a MacGyver and taped a paintbrush to the end of the roller extender rod. It worked like a charm. I did all the trim up to the ceiling without one miss!
I also began a project that I finally finished last night.
When I moved into my house, I discovered this cute spice rack hanging on the inside of the pantry door.
As you can see in the picture, though, not all spice jars fit upright on the shelves. I wanted a better solution. I talked to my friend Gina, mother of the world's cutest baby-who-turned-one-yesterday (That's safe to say right? I think he's the only baby I know who had a birthday yesterday.) to see if she had some baby food jars I could take off her hands.
Some chalkboard paint, a handmade stencil, and a few hours later...
Big improvement!! Look how cute they are!! Here's a closeup:
I ended up picking a few of the spices I use the most frequently and put in a large order to spicebarn.com. I am pretty much set for the next few years.
This weekend marked something even more exciting and noteworthy than the beginning of school - the opening weekend of Aggie football season! My Ags made their SEC debut at home against Florida. ESPN came out to host College GameDay, and seemingly everyone in the world was at the game. I went full SEC mode and wore boots and pearls to a friend's watch party.
To really get in the spirit of beatin' the hell outta those gators, I called around until I found a retailer who sold alligator meat.
I watched the game at a friend's house with a few coworkers. Our host's wife graciously left me detailed instructions and ingredients for frying up the gator tail, which took me all of halftime and the better part of the third quarter.
At some point during this preparation, one of the guys asked me if there was bone in the meat. I responded by asking "Aren't alligators invertebrates? I don't think they have bones."
This was met with a very loud and dismayed "YOU'RE A SCIENCE TEACHER!!!!" followed by a lot of laughter in my direction. I haven't bothered to look this up. I'm still trying to figure out whether alligator is considered seafood or land-food.
Thankfully, I managed to cook up the two pounds of gator without burning down the house (as predicted by the host) and somehow without noticing that cute tea kettle directly behind the pan I used for frying.
The verdict? The boys said the gator was good. I was underwhelmed. It wasn't bad, but I definitely wouldn't spend $12.99 a pound on it again when I could spend that money on a nice steak instead.
I was left with a slight lingering insecurity about my science-teaching ability, though.
Fast forward to Sunday afternoon.
I was at school setting up safety stations to teach the students about all the lab safety equipment this week. One of the stations was the Eyewash Station.
Here's the thing. All the eyewash stations I have seen in our safety material and resources look like this:
I do not have one of those in my room. I didn't have one last year, either. That being said, both rooms are super old. Many changes have been made to how labs are set up since they were first built. I did have this little guy, shown below, in my room. Trying to be a thorough teacher (and to rid myself of any doubt that this also qualifies as an eyewash station), I wanted to check it out.
You can't see it in the picture, but there's a little lever on the back that you would pull. My thought process included the assumption that the eyewash station wouldn't work unless the sink was running.
That assumption, like most, was incorrect.
As soon as I pulled the lever, water began gushing everywhere.
As I laughed at myself, I was reminded that I need to show a little (read: a lot) more patience with my 11 and 12 year old students. That being said, I do need to avoid catastrophes whenever possible. As a result, this:
was quickly updated for my students as this:
Love,
Murphy & Me
