Thanks for the Advice, Alice

Today's prompt asks me for words I want to share with people.  See above.

Now, eating and drinking everything you see probably won't solve your problems.  In fact, it'll likely cause more problems.  However, odds are you will probably eat and drink some awesome things.  So kind of win?

I find this inspiring.  #Dreams

#Reality

Two Things Tuesday - Midnight Edition

I'm sure it'll hardly be Tuesday by the time I finish this post.  Nevertheless, it's still going to be a Two Things Tuesday post.  I had meant to write something earlier today.  However, I spent the day trying to think of two things to post about.  TWO.   Just two.  Seriously, how hard could that be?  Anyway.


1.  Have you ever looked positively mentally crazy?  While I try not to do this too often, I find myself in these situations more than I ought to be in them.  Today's crazy is compliments of my cousins Danielle and Emily.  For my bridal shower, they bought me this fantastic smelling perfume set from Victoria's Secret.  It's from the Sexy Little Things line and called "Tease".


Being home alone, with nothing better to do with myself, I decided to play with the contents of the gift set.  I tried the body wash, followed it up with the lotion, then a spritz from the fancy-shmancy perfume bottle.

Now, when I use foo-foo juice stuff, I expect to be able to smell it for maybe an hour on myself, then have it be noticeable to everyone but me after that.  This did not happen.  Hours later, I could still smell the pear, apple, vanilla, jasmine, and gardenia (oh, my!).  

It started to get to me.  Don't get me wrong, it smells great.  However... I was intrigued I still smelled so strongly.  So... I did what any self-respecting crazy person would do.  I licked my arm.

Anything that smells that strongly, I reasoned, was probably edible.  I wanted to know if I tasted like pears.  The first lick produced a taste that I thought might be pears.  Though, I wasn't sure.  It could just be the taste of lotion with lots of chemicals.  Pears/chemicals, same thing.  So, I continued to lick my arm for a little while in order to make a decision. 

Even the cats were watching me like I was nuts.

2.  I went to the post office today to ship a book to Wichita Falls, Texas and a box to Costa Mesa, California.  The helpful man behind the counter, who likes to give me a hard time every time I come in, mentioned it must be nice to be part of the 1%.  

Quizzically, I raised an eyebrow at him.  He responded that I was shipping my items more expensively than I should have.  I shrugged.  He fixed it and laughed, saying he was just picking on me.  :(

The Sword of Awesomeness

While the best word to describe my teaching methods may be "episodic", sometimes I still don't understand some of the things I do in the classroom.  I'm nothing if not visually interesting for one reason or another.  Sometimes, it involves wearing a chipmunk costume.

Others, it involves flailing my arms for no apparent reason.  Which brings me to the story of the Sword of Awesomeness.

As I was creating a spur of the moment, full-blown story for my students, one of the important items in the story became the Sword of Awesomeness.

Each time the item came up in the story, I would raise my arms in a rounded victory V sort of way.  I didn't even realize I was doing it until the students started doing the same each time I mentioned the Sword of Awesomeness.

As entertaining as it was, I didn't think much about the whole thing again until today, weeks later, when one of my students was sharing his 11 page (yes, he's a 6th grader!) imaginative story with the class.  At one point, he describes his characters battling through a hoard of zombies in order to retrieve the Sword of Awesomeness.

As he said it, he turned his attention from his paper, set it in his lap, grinned and raised his arms in the special salute.  I couldn't have been more proud.  Not only had he remembered the random thing I did and included it in his story, he also remembered the lesson and applied everything when he wrote his amazing story.  I was truly impressed.