This is basically my dream come true.

Guys.  For the first time in my life, I have a car registered to my name.  In my state.  And a husband who is giving me free reign at the DMV.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS MEANS.

I can have vanity plates.  I am literally dying over here.  I am also paralyzed with indecision as I spend hours on the MD vanity plate availability website.  What. should. I. get.  :O

Here are some top contenders, all currently available:

ILVPL8S
RACES
SUZE (also THESUZE)
FREEHGS

Votes and/or other ideas are IMMENSELY WELCOME

Two ornaments

Total ornaments: 42
Trips out to get tree lights: 2
Minutes spent analyzing tree lights in stores: 47
Number of products of tree lights bought: 3
Attempts to light tree: 5
Outlets tried: 4
Figuring out it was your extension cord that was faulty the whole time: priceless

Bellow.

These three basically represent a day in the life.

Thanksgiving Lessons

Learned the Easy Way

1. Read your recipes a million times over.  
2. Work backwards and plan out the time everything is going to happen.
3. Start earlier anyway.

  Learned the Hard Way

1.  Have backup plans for potentially significant amounts of leftover herbs and/or celery. 
1. a. Buy the right amount of thyme in the first place.
2. Line the bottom of EVERYTHING that goes into a heat source in foil.
3. Make sure ALL your tupperware is clean on Wednesday.
4. One gravy packet with four servings does not, in fact, make enough gravy for four people.
5. Line the bottom of EVERYTHING that goes into a heat source in foil.

Numbered list, for heaven's sakes.

Gosh.  Guys.  I fell in this ridiculous loop of half-baked thoughts that went nowhere and then I worked myself into a frenzy of having nothing to say.  Well.  Here's what I've been thinking about.

1. For a few weeks now I've watched this ^ a whole bunch.  They both seem like the coolest.  And then I sit and marvel at the fact that we as humans can distinguish "sounds like."  "Looks like."  The craziest of all, "seems like."  Isn't it crazy that we can take something we've never heard before, or seen before, and pinpoint its similarities to something we know?  Her inflections are perfect.  They obviously never sang this, but you KNOW it's that exact artist.  You've never heard this song before, and maybe no one started singing it yet, but you KNOW it's the new one by Muse.  You've never seen this painting, but look at the colors and style and subject, it has to be Toulouse-Lautrec.  Or those Jerry's impersonation commercials.  They're exactly what that person would say, and how he would say it, even though he has never talked about Jerry's Subs and Pizza!  My goodness!  Isn't that so crazy!
2. We watched the videos we made when we first moved in.  Holy smokes.  Every door and window was always open just to air out the stench!  I never thought it would go away!  But I think it has!  I can't believe how much we scrubbed, how all our stuff filled the living room for weeks on end, how we didn't have Bellow.  Sigh!  Also, I seem to take videotaping and narration way more seriously than Justin.
3. Every student who receives special education services does so through a 30-page legal document called an IEP, Individualized Education Plan.  Being in this business sometimes reminds you that everyone needs an IEP somehow, a relationship IEP, for example.  When you start framing out-of-context situations around an IEP, you kind of start to think about the other person's (or your!) present levels, where he or she is right now.  And as much as I hate that rhetoric, you do have to start where that person is and move from there.  Accommodations and modifications.  You adapt to what works best for that person.  You provide things you may not think need providing, but you do because the other one benefits greatly.  You go on to the service page, to explain the overall details of being together: it can be more!, but at least an hour three times a week, across content areas of home, outside, playing with dog, etc.  Goals, to remind everyone that you're part of this too, you're working on yourself as well, with your partner's help.  And then, you know, whether you're going to summer school or not.  But really.  The potential for understanding and compassion when you picture a relationship IEP is, well, above grade level.

In which the Gym Class Heroes do it again.

Holy smokes.  In addition to the still-overwhelming schoolwork, the last twenty days have featured dancing! and ocean! and food! oh my!  Richmond.  Love.  I took the advanced track for classes for the first time ever and I am like, so happy.  Thennn I drove by myself to Ocean City for the MSEA Convention, which did not provide me with nearly as many post-its as I thought it would.  It did, however, provide me with ocean views and docks, lonely hours, strategies which are at turns invigorating or saddeningly unrealistic, several apples, and an absolutely infuriating documentary where I walked out after the first 40 minutes.  My time was better spent pacing the dock just outside the exhibit halls.  Maybe if I feel like getting super angry some time, I'll write a real post just about this alone.  THENNN I've been making food!  We do this thing where our fridge is almost completely bare, and then we'll make lots of food AND have a dinner out and bring home leftovers AND have more ingredients for food in the works.  Man.  I made quinoa!  With cranberries and cinnamon and apples and toasted walnuts!  Who even am I!  In fact, it was my SECOND TIME making quinoa!  I repeat, WHO EVEN AM I.  Another butternut squash and radish leaf soup is coming up, but this time I felt bad about the radishes, so I braised them (?!)!  They were pretty good! 

 

But.  When I haven't been attempting to teach the children or dance or cook, I've been singing this song.  I can't stop listening to this song.  Not since Up have I heard such professions of love and friendship that ring so true in my heart.  I want to live such that this song defines my life.

There's so much I want to point out about it, but I'll leave it at the two lines, "Appreciate every mix tape your friends make/you never know, we come and go like on the interstate."  So sad! beautiful! true!  People, guys.  Connections.  Good friends.  I'm not even going to try to form sentences about how special and important these ideas are.  Every six or eight months or so I get crazy into the idea that I have zero friends and no one but Justin would ever hang out with me.  But then.  But then!  Some way or other I settle back into reality and find and cherish all my people again.  This line epitomizes that simultaneous joy and sadness.

PS.  Gosh.  Embarrassingly enough, when I listen to a song, basically any top 40, a secret part of me listens, like, undercover to see if it has great examples of literary devices and imagines myself playing them to my awesome high school English classes and they think I'm the coolest and they TOTALLY get personification and simile AND metaphor and the difference between the two.  Then I remember where and who I teach and more often than not, something else in the song nixes it for itself anyway.  ANYWAY, this would totally be one of those songs.

PPS.  Simile and metaphor is totally coming up in sixth grade.  Oh snap.

New blog!

Hey kids.  If you like me, and you like attempts at photography, and you like people I like, then you MIGHT like our new blog, this kind of thing commutes.  Get Jimmy to explain the title to you, but it's just us and hopefully other people (YOU if you want to be that other people!) trying to not be so bad at taking pictures, with the eventual dream of owning A Real Camera.  Hooray!