I am David

Have you seen the movie, I am David? It was wonderful, a happy story for one in six million. A child named Ben Tibber plays David and is wonderful. It is about him escaping from a concentration camp, and is just incredible. It made me cry at the end. I don’t want to say anymore, because I would give it away. It is based on a novel by Anne Holm and was filmed in Bulgaria. Under the title it says, “Believe in the Power to Change Your Destiny.” It just gives me hope that perhaps some people actually didn't have such a horrific ending, although millions didn't. So, all it all it was unrealistic but the young boy was a good actor, very intense.

Happy Memorial Day Everyone!

CAT-astrophe

An interesting thing happened to us last night. Around 11:30 p.m. I went down opened the front door and the cat walked right in. It was dark but this is our nightly routine. Around 12:00, there was the most horrible racket screeching and smashing and utter chaos. I had just drifted off, I scrambled up as quickly as I could trying to get my bearings so I could get to the bedroom door. I opened the door and my cat ran in, and I quickly shut it almost catching ANOTHER cat in the door. The cat ran around my room and up onto my dresser.

Finding the light switch, I flick it on and look... it isn’t my cat! It is a grey and black tiger cat, but not mine. My daughter starts calling from her room, “Mom, what was that?” I ask her to come into the hall and get our cat, Diamond, and put her in the bathroom. She does and then I open my door and tell her to look on my dresser, "Sonny," she says, apparently it is a cat from across the street. Thank goodness he just let me pick him up and carry it down and out without fighting and scratching. In the meantime, our cat is like throwing herself at the bathroom door trying to get out.

When we let her out she searches everywhere while we collapse into my daughter’s bed with our hearts pounding a mile a minute. It was insane. We talked for an hour because our adrenaline was so pumped there was no way we could get back to sleep. Then I burst out laughing and my daughter said she didn’t think there was anything funny about it. This morning the first thing she said was, “Okay mom, I think it’s funny now.” and we laughed. I know one thing, I’m going to turn on the light before I let the cat in, just to be sure.

Endangered Species

One of my students who is Filipino made me think today about how life may sometimes be difficult for her. I think that although we all look differently, sometimes we really just want to look the same. The school I work in has so little cultural diversity; it has to be an anomaly. There are only two Filipino students in our entire grade, and perhaps only one or two more in the rest of the school. She wrote on her hand, “Asian - Endangered Species.” It made me pause and think, I just tapped her hand, slightly nodding and smiled at her. I am proud of her ability to express herself. In the world at large she is not a minority, but in our little community she is. I do however have to hope that she was just having a homesick day (she's been in this area almost a year) and she doesn’t normally feel that way.

Darfur

This is a copy of a letter suggested by Amnesty Internationalthat we all send to our respective representatives in D.C. to ask them to support a bill that will allow for additional funding to help the citizens in Darfur. Please send one, this genocide has gone on for far too long and people are still being murdered every day.

Dear Senator/Representative:
Thank you very much for your ongoing support for the people of Darfur.
As you know, United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) deployment is well underway. As you will also know, that deployment has been disturbingly slow and under-resourced in relation to the enormity of the humanitarian crisis.
More than 2.6 million Darfuri civilians have been displaced, including some one million children since the conflict began, more than five years ago. Millions more are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance throughout the conflict region—in Darfur, eastern Chad and the Central African Republic.
I am writing today to request your immediate action to ensure that additional funding for humanitarian aid and peacekeeping operations in Darfur is included in the FY08 supplemental appropriations bill.
Our government is currently $334 million short of this year’s expected contribution to UNAMID through Contributions to International Peacekeeping (CIPA). In addition, $50 million is urgently needed to help train African Union peacekeepers transitioning to UNAMID and to provide them with the transport equipment they require to effectively protect vulnerable civilians in Darfur.
Finally, to address the urgent needs of displaced Darfuri and other civilians, an additional $335 million should be provided to International Famine and Disaster Assistance (IFDA).
This additional U.S. funding would make a very real difference to conditions for the people of Darfur and the entire conflict region.
Thank you for your prompt action on this pressing matter.

Spring Cleaning Vacuums

No seriously - spring-cleaning sucks! I am doing my best, but I hate it and have to take frequent breaks. I have decided today, however that when I finally get my dream house. Perhaps not the first house I will get, which will be a dream of course, but my dream dream house. I will have two huge walk in closets. One will be for summer and one will be for winter. When summer or winter is over, just close the door. Spring and all, keep them both open, you know depending on weather... Anyway, just an idea for anyone who is building their dream house! I intend to be winning the HGTV green dream house in Hilton Head, South Carolina soon and when I move down there, two closets is me, who needs a guest room anyway!

Mother's Day Yay!

Mother’s Day when your child is six is the best yet! For Mother’s Day my baby cooked all of the meals! Okay well “cooked” is pushing it, but prepared. For breakfast, she brought me cereal and milk in bed. For lunch, she served green beans and iced coffee. For dinner the little chef cut up fresh veges and turkey kielbasa. So it was really nice. She made me a card and a little Styrofoam ball tucked in a cup wrapped with fabric. The ball had pipe cleaners in it to make a flower. It is beautiful modern art! Also with that was a lovely card. Later that morning I was teaching and went into my purse for a pen and there was another wonderful Mother’s Day card inside. It said to have an aswome Mother’s Day. We walked for an hour that day, and played outside the rest of the day. Besides doing laundry at the laundrymat, because life goes on, it was the best Mother’s Day I’ve ever had.

Teacher Workshop Day

Teacher Workshop Day was fun. I wish I was able to get more of my own personal work done but... I was sitting with my esteemed teaching team writing rubrics and it was so much fun trying to find the perfect words for these rubrics that the kids barely look at. They barely look at them but we agonize over each word, so they know exactly on what they are being graded. The ridiculous things we came up with were so funny. We make these alone all of the time, but they are fun to make with friends!

We did a teacher’s scavenger hunt and I had my favorite economics teacher on my team. This teacher is so positive and energetic; you just feed off his positivity. And funny, he is funny. I have learned a great deal from him especially about relating to the students. So all in all it was a great workshop day.

I stopped in to the ladies room on the way to lunch to check the mirror. My department ate lunch together and I wrote this poem while we were eating:

I look in the mirror
and what do I see,
it’s surely not my
face staring back at me.

The shape is distorted,
too long and too wide.
The nose kinda crooked,
it just can’t be mine.

My blond hair is gone.
Whose black part
is that? Surely not mine,
or I would’ve worn a hat.

It’s a trick mirror
from what I can tell,
and when I stand sideways,
Holy crap!
What the hell?

“Exerwhew”

I have been out of shape since my surgery. Well that and add winter too. I have been walking a half an hour a night for the last two weeks. The weather has been cooperative and warm enough to even walk in the rain with a hood. My daughter rides a bike alongside me and I walk as fast as I can. Boy have I been feeling good, and pretty proud of myself. Tonight my neighbor was riding around on an electric scooter giving the kids rides. My daughter was racing her bike and trying to go as fast as he was. So his completely adorable little two-year-old said he would walk with me. This kid is the cutest little boy; he has a buzz cut like his dad and dresses just like him. We started out walking and holding hand and then he thought we should run. OMG! So much for being back in shape - I could barely keep up with this little man. Whew, I must walk on! I can’t believe I can’t run around the block as fast as a two year old, he may be a very small professional runner, or a superhero...

Kids for president!

My 6 year old always talks about what she will do when she becomes president. I thought I would compile a list:

“When I become president I will:

...tell all kids when their bedtime will be.”
...go to all of the schools and give every child a book of their own.”
(Addendum)...give every child a book and give all of the nurses in schools lots of medicine for free that the kids need.”
...teach everyone to sing Nigerian songs.”
...decide what gas station should charge for gas. (I wonder where she got that one.)”
...talk to the presidents of other countries and see how I can help them.”
...obviously help everyone who needs help.”
...give out art supplies to anyone who needs them."
...have everyone ride hovercraft brooms like on Harry Potter but cooler with polka dots and silver streamers."

She cracks me up! I think it's a pretty good platform.

Oooh I forgot the best one: "Ask not what you can do for me, ask what I can do for you."

Virtual tree for you and me

I went to www.carbongrove.com (link in Links I Love) and planted a virtual tree. They will email once a week to remind me to reduce my carbon emissions with tips I’m sure, which is nice. You can choose one of three forests and one of three trees. First, you take a quiz and I am pretty “green” except that I drive to work everyday and don’t see that changing in the future. I was pretty good on the rest of them, except I do dry all of my dryer dryable clothes in the dryer. But I am already at the laundromat, so why schlep home heavy wet clothes. When we buy our little dream house and I have my own laundry, I will be sure to put up a clothes rack in the back. Take the quiz see how you are doing. You get to name your tree and then can search for it in the forest. You can also see what tips other people need to work on by their trees. My daughter and I had fun looking for our tree; we never found it so they allow you to search for it. More cool internet fun stuff.

Now, if you want to plant a real tree to help our environment go to American Forests website (link over there~). It says in their website that not only are they the oldest nonprofit citizens organization but also that "every dollar you give to a tree planting project plants one tree in the right place for the right reason." They have a lot of projects you can choose from including Trees for the Environment, although Trees for Tigers sounds good, expand Siberian Tiger habitat. And I don't know what the IKEA project is, but is it trees for their furniture? I dunno. Okay no, that would have been funny though. I checked it is a forest to reduce carbon emissions and every family needs to plant 30 trees to offest their daily carbon use. So, a global cooling forest. Hmmm. I may have to get my daughter another can...