henry moore to the rescue

i'm so sorry the macrame african bra lady has been at the top of my blog for so long! she gets a bit disturbing with time.

just to have something new, here's a few henry moore sculptures. he's my absolute favorite 3-d artist. today being friday and subsequently art history day at blue eye high, we're doing a little henry moore action.
i'm excited.
not many of my students will be.
they abhor art history day.
but of everything i teach them all year long, they remember the art history stuff the longest. i disregard their teenage whinings and force them to learn it.

plus, it's just the thing to do on a friday when i feel like a limp sack of cornmeal -- my kids are always much calmer on art history days and much less prone to headless chicken chaos.
there's something about fridays. they're always hard to get through, even with the tantalizing weekend right before us.

good luck getting through yours!

i just have to plug this site -- it's truly amusing.
to give you a taste of the funniness, there are sarcastic comments surrounding this picture...
go, see more macrame glory, laugh, share the fun.

a fun little story

my favorite thing about being back at school is hearing all the stories my kids have to tell from their week away -- near death experiences with tanning beds, malicious dog bites, tongue piercings, it's almost as good as a new episode of prison break!
one of my girls told me she'd seen two dead bodies while hanging out with her grandma in the hospital and that reminded me of a story i had buried deep in the recesses of my mind. i thought you all just might want to hear it.
as you may have guessed, it has to do with dead bodies, so if you have a weak consitution, you might want to pass this one up.

i used to work 3rd shift at a hospital in south carolina as a nurse aide. it was a relatively uneventful job as far as jobs go, until the random excitement. this story is about just such an excitement.

i worked on the post-op unit, which saw its fair share of elderly folk (since you seem to need more and more surgeries the older you get) and one poor lady just didn't recover after her surgery. there were a variety of contributing factors, but they all combined to make her stomach swell at an alarming rate after she had passed away. we had to clean her up and do the usual medical type things that you have to do before sending a body down to the morgue. as we were getting her ready, her stomach kept growing and growing. before long, it was bigger than any 9 month pregnant lady i've ever seen. this in and of itself was rather alarming, but then i was informed that i needed to accompany the transport fellow in taking her down to the basement where the morgue was located. seeing as how it was around 3 in the morning, i wasn't too thrilled at the prospect of a visit to the morgue, but you do what you gotta do, right?
when we got there, of course there was no one working. the morgue was locked up tight and no one to be found. no phones, no intercoms, just a long dim hallway that was spooky enough without our poor unfortunate bloated lady on her gurney, but we had to wait for someone to show up. the transport guy and i waited in that hallway for a long while. i didn't know him, he didn't know me, we didn't have much to say to each other, and the situation didn't call for much small talk. after an hour or so, this guy decided he'd had enough, and he said, 'i'm out of here.' i was like, 'what?! you can't leave me down here with a dead body that might explode!!' but i was talking to his rapidly retreating back. the farther he got down the hall, the more aware i became of the gurney and its occupant, and the weaker my moral resolve became. just before he turned the corner, i'd made up my mind -- i was out of there too. i yelled, 'wait!' and ran after him.

i never knew what happened to that poor lady.

Right Brain |||||||||| 40%
Left Brain |||||||||||||||| 62%

ever wonder why your head is vaguely heavier on one side?
why one of your eyes tends to drift lazily while the other one does double time?
why ...
okay i'll stop making up false symptoms.

but go find out which side of the brain you function out of more!
it's fun.

turns out i use 102% of my brain! i just knew i was a genius.
genius notwithstanding, i am an anomaly -- a left brain dominant artist.
that's what you call an art teacher, i guess.

break happenings

it's so fun to be back!!

i think timing is always just perfect when it comes to breaks -- by the time sunday comes along in a break week i'm excited and ready to get back to school. any sooner in the week and i'm not. maybe it's all a mind game... since i know i have to be back, i set myself up to be excited to be back. who knows with this crazy ole mind of mine.

here's some fun things from break...


allison and i had the year's first picnic by the lake and took a bazillion pictures -- as you can see, it's tricky to get the cutest of looks combined with the lake in the background combined with being in focus...
we honed our skills.

then one of my old roomates, mandy, started going into labor the night before i was going out of town so i went and hung out with her a bit thursday night. she had little jaden michael the next day but i haven't seen him yet. i assume he's the cutest little feller in the world. it only stands to reason.
i can't wait to see him!!

nick and i then drove to kansas for the weekend. it was good to meet his friends and see some of the places he lived. we went to his church on sunday morning then drove back afterwards. it was a good end to a good break.

but i'm so glad to be back!
did i mention that?

oh, drea's moved out of the homestead! she's moved into the cutest apartment ever with her friend jackie. it was a really fast thing that happened, but i'm very excited for her. she'll have a little more independence over there and it's all brand-new carpet, paint, appliances -- it's really nice.
our little girl's growing up!
sniff.

maybe i'll move into her room in the basement. maybe then i'll be more motivated to finish up the little projects that need to happen down there. it's not too incredibly ghetto but it definitely could use some attention.
i'll be nannying again this summer 20 hours or so, which will be perfect to fund my home-improvement habits.

well that's all the news.
not too exciting, but that's what's goin' on, yo.

amulets, haircuts & a roadtrip

so my mother is right, i was remiss in mentioning the return of my suitor, nicholas. i was indeed very thrilled to have him back, safe and sound here in the americas. along with all the fun bahamiam (similar to, but not the same as 'bohemian') shells and pink sand he brought back, he also finished my valentine's present that he'd been working on for a while!

to give you an idea of this fellow i'm dating, here's a little snippet for you.
not only does nick like to be out in the wilderness, hiking and whatnot, but he's also pretty creative in his wilderness-liking. when he comes across caves here and there, as missouri has from time to time, he's noticed that there's natural clay in them. so he's made a habit of collecting handfuls of this clay and filling his pockets for the hike back. then when he gets back to civilization he likes to mix the clay up with water and make it into beads or random things you might make out of clay. not only does he make the beads, but he also likes to make his own little kiln out of rocks on the side of a hill somewhere and fire the beads.
if this doesn't impress you, i don't know what will.

for my present he made a special bead (the big circular one in the middle) and he attached four other bead strings to it. they're symbolic of the four main character qualities he sees in me. he wrote about what each of them means. it was the sweetest thing in the world.

he's a good guy, that nick fried.

i hung it on my rearview mirror in my car, which was a big step for me.
you see, until now, the same little stuffed mexican parrot has been hanging on my rearview mirror that my dad gave me when i graduated high school and came to the states. when we first went to mexico as a family we had a green parrot hanging on the van mirror and it hung there for as long as i can remember. when i moved on from the family van, i wanted a parrot for my car, of course.
eleven years later and the same parrot was hanging there. his colors had faded to some sort of beige-ish green and his poor little beak was hanging from a strand. his tail feathers were all gone. he hadn't attracted a she-parrot in many a year.
it was time for him to move on to the memorabilia box where he'll live out his retirement days.

and now nick's creation is in paco the parrot's place. what nick made reminds me of an amulet. i told him through this action of replacing the rearview mirror adornment, he's symbolically taken my dad's place.
he's now my sugar daddy.
i expect him to act like it.
he was nervous, but i think he'll live up to the challenge.

in other news, but also related to nick, i went to get my hair trimmed yesterday. after 6 months of growing it out, i had quite a collection of split ends and frizziness, so i thought a little trim would do the trick. little did i know but that fateful decision would lead to an emotional rollercoaster the likes of which i didn't think possible (in the hair world anyway...)
it wasn't really all that horrible, but it wasn't great either. combined with some good ole fashioned hormones, i was on the verge of tears all day yesterday. when nick called to chat for a bit, he didn't know what he was getting himself into. luckily, he's the sweetest guy in the world (have i mentioned that before?) and he came over to console me in my distress and affirm my feminine beauty.
he did a very good job of it.
then this morning i went to a different lady and had her fix it up a bit, which resulted in the front being shorter than i wanted, but at least it was even and layered like it needed to be.

i don't feel as long-laired as i once did, but at least my emotional state has regained equilibrium.

and these tiny purple flowers helped a lot.


on friday, nick and i are driving to manhattan, kansas, to spend the weekend with some of his friends whom i have yet to meet. i'm sort of nervous, but i know it'll be fun. it's always good to see the side of people that comes out when they're around their favorite friends. no matter how well i know him, i don't think i'll ever see the part of who he is when he's around his little niece emilee :-)
she's not really his niece, but she calls him uncle nick and she's the daughter of some of his best friends.
i'll take lots of pictures and keep you posted next week.

i hope you all have a great springy day!
(even in wisconsin! sorry you don't have little purple flowers! i'll save you some for your visit this weekend even though i won't be here to share the joy with you...)

spring break

it's been a while -- spring break is the reason... i made it a couple of days longer even by taking 2 days off to hang out with francesca & andrew. after driving around in the van a bit francesca got fantastically carsick all over the place. luckily we were just a few minutes from my house so into the tub she went. here's the great combination we came up with to keep her clothed while her outfit was being laundered... as you can see, she was feeling much better.

now for the rest of the week! i have several lists of things to accomplish. none of them are too exciting. the great excitement will be getting through all the lists!

nicholas is gone for a week. i'm very sad.
(i've never tried frowning before -- it's harder than i thought!)

i've gotten rather attached to that feller.
he's in the bahamas for a mission's trip with some of the other folk from doulos (where he works). despite the vacationy locale they will in fact be doing missiony things, not just lounging on the beach with umbrellas in their coconut drinks.

art...? or kindergarten? you be the judge...

it's friday, presumably the best day of the week, but it always seems to be the day for a good ole fashioned funk. if i'm going to have a bad day, it usually lands on a friday. my theory about this trend is that i'm just so tired out from the week of longness that by the time the last day of the week rolls around it just needs to be done already. aren't we supposed to listen to our bodies? my body's telling me it's time for the weekend.
so in an effort to redeem the day and not be a slave to the grumpiness -- along with taking a cue from spontaneous guitar day -- i decided to break out the play-doh!
someone gave me (and erica, but i stole them all) 20 things of the aromatic stuff and they've just been languishing in my closet ever since, waiting for this very day.
i gave each class the challenge of working in teams and creating a scene of some sort.
here's a few of the results -- it was so funny to see how into it they got, young and old alike.

this is zach, shannon, lacey & bryan. their dinosaur scene was super cool. here's a close up of the reason dinosaurs are now extinct:

here's morgan and christi's first date scene...

jayme & race's spaghetti dinner...

this one made me laugh -- snakes on a plane, complete with a little feller riding one of the snakes and harpoons impaling them from all angles...


you might see a jungle of rolled play-doh, but i see genius.

here we have a giant/midget wedding scene compliments of whitley & alyssa...

ryan, crystal, jordan & amy created a special edition of spongebob gone seriously awry...

spongebob was drinking and driving which led to a sad pedestrian encounter that impaled patrick with some random pole in the process. notice the liberal use of play-doh-y blood...

i still had a headache all day long, but at least they had some good kindergarten-esque fun.

how cute is this girl?! she's another one of my students. we're doing a section on self-portraits so for the final painting i took their pictures and they're going to paint themselves. this is christina. she's a good one.

today was such a fun day at school! last night nick and i traded vehicles so he could change my oil on his day off... (how sweet is that?!) on the way to work this morning i spied a random guitar in the back of his truck and i immediately thought to myself, 'self, wouldn't it be fun to have live guitar music while my kids are working on their art projects?!' and my self agreed. so i took it in and found a couple different students that like to jam out and at various points in the day when they had nothing better to do they played us some tunes.
then during 6th hour i graced my students' ears with the ever-memorable spanish fishy song then encored with a little 'don't be afraid of the dark' and 'thank you' -- songs laura made up at some point in high school. they've always stayed with me, close to my heart. my guitar playing didn't match my singing, but it was fun and vigorous. i got called phoebe a few times too many, but it made the day much more lively and invigorating.

i need to think of spontaneous things like that more often to mix it up. it's easy to get stuck in one way of doing things. not that that one way is bad, it can just be boring.
so if you have any fun ideas for me, just let me know.
(billy blanks painting... underwater photography... strip poker... oh wait, we're talking about art...)

i got so much grading done!!!

hurray!

that's all i got for now.

i love this.
it's by three collaborative artists called the royal art lodge.
just random enough to be random, just vague enough to let you give it your own meaning.

cool hair, part 2

continuing the saga of becoming-a-cool-art-teacher-through-finding-cool-hairstyles, here's what i like to call the princess leah wannabe.
in contrast to the swedish buns, this one is less controversial, more attractive, yet still unusual when compared to the standard ponytail or french braid.
all the other teachers were so amazed.

it's funny how a happy hairdo can make you feel happy and respond to situations happily. i had several kids acting like high schoolers again (i really wish they'd just grow up already) but because of the happy hair i was able to respond with calm pleasant strictness, nip the disrespect in the bud and move on without letting them define my mood.
hair has so much power. i hope it doesn't decide to misuse that power and try to take over the world.

here's two of my favoritest students EVER -- amy's here from s. korea for a year and sierra's decided she wants to be an art teacher! isn't that just the best thing an art teacher can hear?!
i think so.

in case you're wondering why my face is so humongous, i don't think it's because my students are shrinking... i think i was just closer to the camera (??)
they're pretty normal sized, as far as girls go.

these two are so funny -- sierra's got the entire nacho libre movie memorized and likes to pull out lines from time to time as the situation calls for it, and amy's starting to sound like a typical american sarcastic girl, with a korean accent of course.