Hippie on the Down Low

My new meal challenge

2009-08-12T19:23:00.002-04:00

Before the kids came for the summer I planned out all of our meals for the five weeks they were going to be here and then I made looonnng shopping lists and made the rounds. I bought all the meat, bread, cans, and all non-perishable things we needed at our warehouse club with a few loose ends at another, low price grocery store. There was so much food that I had to put it in the freezer in backwards order so that I could work my way to it as we ate it because the fridge/freezer was packed to the gills. The total cost for all this food was about $500, which I didn't think was bad considering that it was supposed to last for five weeks for four to five people.

Now that our time with the kids for the summer is over we still have lots of food. Even though I planned everything carefully the best laid plans didn't work quite the way I thought. For one thing, some of the stuff I bought at the warehouse club came in super-huge packs so there was more food than I needed for my planned meals. For another, sometimes we had leftovers and didn't have entire planned meals so that food just stayed in the freezer. So now here we - just me and Robin - are with a house full of food.

So here's what we're going to do! Being the OCD-type person that I am I've decided to set a new challenge for myself - I'm going to see how long we can go just eating the food in the house without grocery shopping. I'm thinking that we can go at least a month and a half so that's my goal but it might be longer or shorter.

Even though it is my overall goal to not buy anything extra I know that we will not be able to just eat what's here without any supplementing. For one thing, that will be unhealthy since everything that is in the house is frozen or canned. So here are the allowable exceptions I've thought of for this challenge.

1. I can buy fresh things that are prone to spoilage such as veggies, fruits, eggs, and milk on an as needed basis.

2. I can buy things that might be needed for a specific mealtime - I'm thinking breakfast (0r possibly lunch) specifically. Right now we have breakfast food in the house but that is likely to run out before the other stuff does and we will need to have breakfast. Now I'm not fussy about what I eat for breakfast because it's just a meal like any other so this might not be an issue. But if/when we run out of suitable breakfast foods then I will be allowed to buy those. The same is true of things like sandwich supplies if we need them although I think that we will try to have leftovers for lunch so that I won't have to buy anything new for that.

3. This is sort of the same as number 2 but we generally have fiber bars in the house that we eat for breakfast or snacks and if those run out I will buy more of those.

4. If I have everything I need for a meal except for one, minor, ingredient then I can buy that one ingredient. But it has to be minor. For example, I know that there is lots of chicken in the freezer and I have a great recipe for crock pot chicken and dumplings but it calls for a can of cream of something soup. Right now I have one or two cans of soup in the cupboard so that's not a problem. But if we're getting down to the end of the month and I have everything else I need for that recipe then I'm going to buy a can of soup. However, I also have lots of potatoes and a warehouse club sized box of stuffing. So I could think that we will have roast chicken and stuffing and potatoes. But I will not be allowed to go buy a roast chicken from the grocery store because that is not a minor ingredient of that meal. But as much as possible I'm not going to buy anything at all and will instead strive to see what I can make out of what we already have. It's more like a puzzle that way which is part of the fun of this experiment.

5. Each meal HAS to incorporate something that we already own even if I have other ingredients. We like to have salad on a somewhat regular basis and obviously that will require fresh ingredients. But it's not allowed to make an entire meal with all new stuff. Something has to be used up too.

5. Since most of what we have in the freezer is meat I think it's possible that Robin will be able to eat for a longer period of time than me so depending on how that goes then I might have to buy some veggie options for me. We'll see how it goes.

6. If this challenge goes as long as I think it will then the kids will be back to visit before it's over. Depending on what's left at that time then I might have to buy groceries to feed them. But there is definitely at least one kid-friendly meal in the freezer that I plan to save until then plus there are still about ten boxes of mac and cheese in the pantry so we might be fine when they get here.

7. We are allowed to eat out but not as a way to extend the length of this challenge. We're trying to cut back on our eating outedness anyway to save money but it's not okay to eat out for a month and then say that we didn't buy groceries for three months. So even if we don't cut back, we can't increase the amount we eat out.

That's all I can think of. If you have other suggestions for rules I might have forgotten, then please let me know. I plan to chronicle our eating in order to see how it goes. Not a meal by meal description necessarily, but a general view of what I'm putting together.

My mind turns to high school....

2009-05-14T17:22:00.003-04:00

And not because it's graduation season and everyone I know has someone graduating from some school somewhere. No, my thoughts are along a more personal vein.

Yesterday I had a meeting with most of the middle school librarians. This is a group of colleagues but also women who I admire and enjoy spending time with. This group is the GOOD bunch of MS librarians as opposed to the slackers in the county. When we are together we talk about lesson plans, reading programs, books we've read for said programs, librarian gossip, and other less school-y stuff too. All of them do great things at their schools.

Although I generally fear that I'm not doing enough at work I'm also aware on another, totally contradictory level, that I work very hard at my job and that I excel at it. In fact, I would not be comfortable with myself if I didn't excel at my job. I could tell you about my dysfunctional childhood that inevitably resulted in my super-driven work ethic but regardless of what got me here, that's who I am and have always been.

One of our county reading programs requires that we come up with a list of 20 young adult books that have been published within the last year. In order to come up with the 20 titles, more than that amount are nominated - last summer it was about 50. Not everyone reads all the titles but I decided last year that I would read all that were nominated in order to make a better decision for the final list. My reason for doing this is that I'm pretty much the first person to bitch about other lists of literature for children made by adults and how stupid those adults were to choose such terrible books that the kids will hate. And since I feel free to criticize everyone else, I thought to myself "HERE is a list about which I have some say so if I don't participate fully then I'm a big stinking hypocrite".

Furthermore, although I read pretty fast I don't retain the details of the books for very long. I can remember that I liked this one and not that one and maybe a couple of important plot points but nothing detailed. And since we're supposed to be able to discuss these books with the kids when the program starts, AND since I don't want to have to re-read everything at that time, I write detailed summaries of the nominations. It's a pain but it saves me time in the long run.

Okay, so that's me and that's why I do these things. Although of course part of the reason I do these things is three paragraphs above this one. Keep up.

So at the meeting last night as well as at other recent meetings there was some teasing of me. For yesterday's meeting I had typed up some guidelines for something we're developing and someone sort of snorted and asked how I could possibly find the time. I dismissed this by saying that I'd just typed up a few things we'd talked about at our last meeting, nothing official. There are always many comments about how many YA books I've read overall as well as how many of the nominations for this year I've read. When this comes up I usually say something about how I'm a skimmer and don't read all the boring parts so I can go faster. Also I throw in that while I do read fairly fast I don't retain things. Someone else said that she's only read a few of the nominations and I told her that she wasn't missing anything so she didn't need to worry about not reading as many as me. At this point another friend mentioned how she will jot a few notes about a book but that they should see my notebook of summaries - fully detailed! To this I protested that I only do that for the nominations not for every book I read and only because my memory is so bad about the plots and characters.

Then the topic turned to Facebook where someone pointed out that in addition to reading lots I also seem to spend a good deal of time on-line and that I garden and quilt. I responded that I haven't had a chance to sew anything for a couple of weeks...

On the way home it occurred to me that I felt slightly disturbed and was worrying about whether the others liked me. I thought about what I should do to seem as though I'm not really all that concerned with work, that I just happen to do some things but not because I actually care. And then I realized that this is exactly the same feeling I used to have in high school where I tried to appear less smart and more carefree than I actually was. And actually, it's the same feeling I've had for much of my life that has caused me to fumble for words as I try to translate the big words that spring immediately to mind into shorter, dumbed down language. I realized that although I'm in my 40's, I'm still trying to not be a nerd to the people around me. And that all afternoon I'd been slightly anxious about not fitting in and that all of my comments deflecting theirs were an attempt to downplay my differences from the rest of the group and make them like me because I'm just like them.

I had thought that my accomplishments made me cool and popular but now I wonder if actually I'm the dork of the group. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm even friends with the library supervisor and who is that in this scenario if not the teacher of the group? So now I'm not sure what to feel or do because all of this has made me sad. I'm always sad when I see a group of adults exhibiting the same behavior that we try to teach out of our students. But I'm more sad because I am still able to be made to feel insecure about who I am. Furthermore, I was actively trying to be cooler by dismissing all the things I have done as insignificant or accidental.

I thought that was the end of my thoughts on this but then I remembered something else. During the past couple of months I have had the opportunity to chat with two high school friends I haven't talked to for close to 20 years on Facebook at different times. As we were chatting one of them said that I was just like I had been back then - completely forthright and smart. The other one said he saw that my biting irony was the same as it had always been. (Let me put in an aside that while these traits could be taken in a variety of ways both friends assured me that it was complimentary to be labeled as such.) But both of them surprised me because I remember trying to fit in more and specifically trying to downplay some of these very things because high school girls were not encouraged by their peers to be different from the pack. And yet obviously my attempts at blending were a failure. There must be a lesson there somewhere.

What constitutes health in a commercial?

2009-03-27T14:14:00.000-04:00

I have had many things about which I wished to blog during the past few weeks but, alas, limited time in which to do so. But now I have to discuss a commercial which has recently caught my attention. In it some children (they appear to be around age 8-10) are watching TV. As they watch, the siren song of the television grabs them and they begin floating off the sofa towards the TV. Obviously they will soon have their ever loving souls sucked out and devoured by the evil television. Out here there is a fairly regular commercial for Luray Caverns that has similar music and a similar theme so I honestly thought that this was new "Enjoy the Great Outdoors and Bond with Your Family Unit" commercial. But at nearly the last minute their dad busts into the room and breaks the trance with the healthy alternative to mindless TV - Dunkin Donuts!

Really? Donuts are now being marketed as the preferable choice to something that is bad for you? I have to imagine the ad concept meeting on this one where they all sat around and brainstormed about what is good about donuts that they'd like to really highlight in their ads. I envision a very quiet table until finally someone said "well instead of thinking of something good about donuts, let's think about things are actually WORSE for you than donuts". And the solution was that donuts are better than something that is widely believed to destroy your brain. High praise indeed. Heck - by that reasoning I'd rather have a donut than lots of things! When I am awake tonight at 2:00 as usual I will think about all the things I'd hate worse than eating a donut.

And the even sadder corollary to this is that these same ad people must have believed that there were people in the United States who would watch this commercial and think "At last! I can break television's grip on my children with a cruller. I would be a bad, neglectful parent if I didn't stop by Dunkin Donuts this afternoon." And the final, even sadder part of this is that those ad people are correct. You know that somewhere someone was moved by this ad.

Of course I was also touched by this ad - touched on my cynical funny bone - so perhaps the joke is on me because here I am blogging about it. I'm tempted to turn on Adsense on my blog and see how long it is before an ad from Dunkin Donuts shows up on the side.

I am not in advertising but I do know some things about communication and media literacy so I think that I know something about the devices at work here. Plus, of course, I think that I know something about almost everything. But it seems to me that maybe the donut makers of the world should just come clean with buyers and say "we know they're really, really bad for you but darn it, they taste good and you're probably craving one anyway so just come on in and get a dozen" instead of trying to fool us into thinking that there's some higher purpose to eating a donut. And the rest of us should stop trying to justify our bad habits by pretending that there's some reason for what we're doing other than that sometimes we like to eat things that taste good. Except for me. I don't actually like donuts. But the principle is the same as if I were to apply it to a Brach's chocolate star.

Us, taking a nap

2009-02-28T11:29:00.003-05:00

Cast of Characters:

Me
Robin - my husband
Fletcher - the 80 pound dog
Senor Tail - a cat
Penelope - a cat
Leelu - a hungry cat

While trying to take a nap during the past week I was struck by the comedy that our lives have become thanks to our animals. Whom we love. A lot. But sometimes, not as much as at others.

It began when Robin decided to rest on the bed and Fletcher climbed up beside him. Fletcher is not generally allowed on the bed except for when we're not in it or in the morning after the alarm has gone off for a daybreak cuddle. But naps are a grey area so he was making a place for himself on the edge of the bed next to his daddy. After a few minutes I thought that maybe a nap seemed like a good idea for me too so I headed over to my side of the bed. This opened up an exciting possibility for Fletcher. Because while being on the bed at all is pretty good, the absolute BEST bed position is to be snuggled in between the two of us with his head on the pillow. This allows him the chance to kiss either of us with a simple turn of the head and there's also the chance that one or both of us might decide to tickle or wrestle with him and that's one of the most fun things ever.

So as soon as I started over to the other side of the bed he jumped up to get into position. Thinking that I might beat him before he got there I jammed myself up against Robin so there wasn't space for a big ole dog. But Fletcher solved this problem by just laying down on top of me. Eventually, to his disappointment, we got him off of me and into a suitable position next to me but not between us. NOW we were ready to nap.

But next came Senor Tail. Senor Tail is a beautiful boy with a large, fluffy tail and a neat white tuxedo. He's also quite high-strung and exacting in just how, when and where you are allowed to pet and admire him. Because he has such precise requirements, and because the dog is not too precise in how he loves the cats (think big black nose sniffing the butt), Senor Tail is still mostly a mystery to Fletcher. One place Senor Tail does allow us to pet him is in bed. Because then he can stand on top of us and be in control of the situation. So up he jumped onto Robin. And because Fletcher is ever-hopeful, up he jumped to try to get a forbidden sniff. There was some scrambling of white cat feet and off he went. After several minutes of calming him down, Fletcher was ready to try napping again.

Now it was Penelope's turn. Penelope is our feral cat. She's not really feral anymore but she's also not really friendly in a regular cat way. Although as I write that, I don't think we have any "regular" cats with which to compare her. Like Senor Tail, she also has some requirements about being pet but her absolute most favorite time is when we're in bed. Almost as soon as you get on the bed - either to sleep or put on your socks or just stretch out or sometimes even to do something else... - Penelope is there ready for petting. And she's quite demanding about it too. Since she actually was feral for several years before she ended up in the house with us she only has one meow. We actually read this once that feral cats don't learn to vocalize like pets for some reason. So Penelope has a raspy, smoker's cough meow and if you don't pet her immediately, or if you start and then stop, she rasps at you several times to let you know she's still waiting.

Sometimes, for various reasons, she moves on to roosting on top of you and purring. The purring is punctuated by rasps every few minutes. This was the case on the Day of the Nap. Although it's sweet in its way I was finding it hard to sleep with her there. Partly because she was facing my feet and her tail was brushing slowly back and forth across my nose. Partly because I was thinking about a recent visit from the vet which revealed that Penelope now weighs 16 pounds and I was wondering if I ought to be going to sleep with a 16 pound weigh across my heart. Luckily, she's not fussy about her butt being sniffed so Fletcher doesn't even bother to lift his head when Penelope joins us on the bed.

Now comes Leelu. Leelu is a stunningly beautiful orange and black calico with a winning personality to boot. She has a full range of vocalizations including many meows and chirps that she mixes with purrs and appealing head twists. She must have taken a class entitled "How to get the humans to give you whatever you want by being adorable" - honest to God. And what Leelu wants most often is food. She has taken it as her personal mission to ensure that everyone else in the house gets fed. When she thinks it is time for a feed - and that is generally about every hour or so - she employs one of her tactics. If we're up and about she runs over to the food spot and chirps and throws herself on her side and looks at us with big eyes while kneading the air. But if we're in bed she gets our attention by running very fast across our pillows while chirping. And then she does it again. And again. And so on. Once in a while she stops and throws herself on her side on my head and just purrs and that is lovely but the Day of the Nap was a time to just run across the pillows many times.

Finally everyone was settled and it seemed like a nap was at hand. But that's when some neighbors down the street started up what must have been a chipper/shredder type thing. I swear that these people are chipping and shredding every single weekend! And while I could adjust to the hum of the machine, Fletcher couldn't and thus began the series of quiet woofs and growls. I just got up.

And now you know why I post so few pictures of myself on Facebook - because every single one shows that I have huge circles under my eyes that scare even myself.

My reading shelf

2009-02-21T21:56:00.004-05:00

As a budding Buddhist I work on my zen and try to accept life as it comes without throwing all sorts of judgments at myself for whatever I feel. But I don't have it mastered yet. When I get it all done then stress will be a thing of my past because I won't have to worry about what I haven't done or when I will get something else done, I'll just take things as they come. But in the meantime...

In the meantime I have this reading shelf that is a source of stress for me. Here are the categories of things on my reading shelf:

The books that are nominated for Cafe Book or other reading programs in which I participate. (And I have to read all those because I complain an awful lot about the lists of books for kids made by other adults and how out of touch they are so I can't pass up an opportunity to have a say in a list of books for kids.) Last year the list of Cafe Book nominees was 52 books long.
The books that are possibilities for being nominated for the reading programs in which I participate. I like the thrill of finding something that no one else has discovered yet. One of the books I nominated last year is proving to be one of the most favorite titles on the list this year so how could I resist that fame?
The books that are new young adult classics that I haven't read yet such as Inkheart and
The last few volumes of various young adult series that are good enough that I want to read the entire series. With the long list of stuff on my reading shelf I generally only read one book in a series just to get the feel of it so I can talk about it with my kids. So it's rare that I plan to read an entire series. Right now this section of the list includes the rest of the Percy Jackson and Alex Rider series of books as well as the other books in The Last Apprentice series. Will I ever get to these? I'm not hopeful about that.
And although I know it's foolish to hope that I would ever have the opportunity to get to these, but I also have a few adult titles on my shelf that I'd like to read. These are broken down into fun, crappy books and serious nonfiction titles.
Oh, and there are also the books on my Kindle.

I have this dream, or vision, that someday I will finish reading all the books on my shelf and then I will be wide open to any future possibility that will come along. This has been my vision for a couple of years and yet the shelf doesn't seem to be any less burdened by books. And despite the fact that my shelf is full, I brought home six new books from the latest order I got at school this week. And five others from the Cafe Book meeting this week. And then we went to Borders today... I mean, what is wrong with me?! Do I crave the stress? Am I not as dedicated to being peaceful as I think? Do I secretly want to spend all my time reading rather than anything else? Regardless of the underlying motive I need to find a way to make peace with this glaringly obvious thorn in my side and either stop adding books to the shelf or not worry about it. I'm open to suggestions.

I am conflicted

2009-02-13T20:35:00.003-05:00

I am a homebody. Everyone who knows me knows this so it's not news. I don't like traveling for several reasons - I personify the animals probably too much and worry about what they are thinking while we're gone, I have lots of things I like to do at my house and always feel a bit behind on those fun things, I just don't have a big desire to see lots of other places, and my usually very good intuition flies out the window when it comes to traveling.

Usually I trust my feelings completely because they're very good. But when it is time to travel my intuition always says "DANGER! DON'T GO!" Obviously I have taken trips in my life and have emerged unscathed from those trips so I have learned that I have to disregard my intuition when it's vacation time. But it is still a very stressful thing for me to force myself to go places in the face of this overwhelming message of fear and danger. What this leads up to is that in addition to the stress I feel about traveling, I also have a good deal of guilt about not wanting to go places.

Think about this: when you play that game where you say "if you won the lottery tomorrow what would you do?" the thing everyone (except me) says is "travel!" And if you do the "you have six months to live" thing then the answer again is to see the world. Traveling is the ultimate fantasy for most of the population. It's the thing that people wish they could do more than anything but they just don't have the time or money.

Now I'm not rolling in cash but we do alright and I definitely have the time, so what's wrong with me that I don't want to go places? And especially now after watching the evil man on "Wife Swap" who criticized Americans in general and mid-westerners in particular for being stupid and uncontinental, I know that I must be the ugly American (thank you 10th grade history teacher who made me read that book and made me culturally literate) to whom he was referring.

It is an area of my life I try to reconcile on a fairly regular basis. I don't feel the desire to go anywhere and yet I know that I should want to go places if I am the enlightened, pretentious, better-than-you person that I feel I am. So in the meantime I vacillate between telling myself that I'm just a homebody and I'm at peace with that and feeling like I need to just get over it already and fly to Greece. My real wish is to be a homebody and ACTUALLY be at peace with that and never give it another thought. Or feel the need to defend that. Or post blogs about it....

Why I hate my job

2009-02-08T20:00:00.003-05:00

Okay, I don't really hate my job. This is more of a complaint about things I hate about teaching. Specifically, I'm talking about other teachers.

First of all, let me spell out the background to this rant. As a librarian I am surrounded constantly by people telling me how great my job is - to just sit around and read and check out books. I know that some of my closest friends feel that I'm wasting my off the charts intelligence in such a menial job. And even my own dad told me that "any literate person can be a librarian". I'm well aware of and can accept the fact that this is the typical vision of a school librarian but IT IS WRONG.

I am a teacher and I have the teaching certificate to prove it. I see classes and make lesson plans and grade papers and I kick some ass at all of those things. I'm not just a teacher, honey, I am THE teacher at any school where I work. Now I could school you in what all I do and show you how very, very important I am, but that's not the point of this particular rant.

Here's the next part of the background that leads up to the point: Teachers have a hard image already what with the "those who can't do..." thing. People already think that we're not that smart of a group on the whole. (And then the librarians fall below that as I've illustrated above). And at the many schools where I've worked I've heard many teachers complaining about their status in the community and how people don't treat doctors and lawyers this way, etc. Teachers demanding to be treated like the professionals we are.

Here's the real point (and it's a secret that I think I'm not supposed to tell you so shhh!): Many teachers I've worked with really aren't that smart. Or at least, they're not stressing too much over putting their smarts into everyday practice. It just drives me CRAZY when I see a teacher sending out a paper filled with spelling errors or grammatical errors. Or posting something stupid and wrong on his or her webpage or even on Facebook. And it really drives me up the wall when the teachers I work with can't even teach their student basic things. I mean, if we're gonna go around complaining about how people devalue us when we teach the future and other such platitudes, then by God start showing the community that we deserve the respect. And learn how to spell "you're"! So if you're gonna tell people that you're a role model, then try to be one. I know we're not going to replace sports stars as the ultimate role models, but we could at the very least try to be examples of academic achievement.

Why I love my job

2009-02-07T21:58:00.003-05:00

Today I went to the grocery store and there was a table of Girl Scouts out front asking people to buy things for the local food bank while inside. So when I came out I was trying to find the spaghetti sauce I purchased when I heard "Mrs. Ashby!!" The Girl Scout table crew had changed while I was in the store and now one of my students was there instead. I got to meet her mom and tell her what a great girl her daughter is. I got to tell them that the requirements for a homework assignment she hadn't completed yet (a story for another day) had been drastically reduced so I was the bearer of happy news. And I got to hear about how much this student enjoyed the field trip we took the other day.

Of course there are days when I get a little worn out at work. But honestly, what other job would give me the opportunity to have as much of an impact on the world as this one? What else would I be doing that would allow me to actually see the impact I'm making? I mean really! How lucky am I to be greeted by a student who loves me on an average Saturday? And after a bad week at work when I have been frustrated feeling like I'm trying all the time and not making a dent with the kids, how amazing is it to be shown that I'm making a difference with this one? And then, to top it off, it was 70 degrees today so we took a walk in t-shirts. The universe has really taken care of me today.

When Doves Cry

2009-02-05T20:27:00.003-05:00

When I was in college in the mid-80s I loved Prince. He was the absolutely best musician ever. I mean c'mon - the purple, the androgeny, the awesome songs, the sexual references - what's not to love?

I saw Prince in concert during the Purple Rain era and this was not just any concert. How was this concert special? Let me enumerate the ways:

I drove with friends from Columbus to Cincinnati for the concert
during a winter storm (half the audience didn't show up so we ended up in much better seats than we bought)
we got two speeding tickets on the way there
it was during exam week

So when I tell you that Prince was the most outtasite, influential and listened to musician of my early college days, you gotta take me seriously.

Why am I thinking about Prince and those hazy, violet-colored days? Because tonight with friends we were discussing young adults and the decisions they make with absolute certainty based on their years of experience. Decisions they will never, ever regret. Like the woman I saw at the grocery store last summer wearing a spaghetti-strap shirt. And displayed on her upper chest was the Purple Rain tattoo done up in purple ink and drippy font just like the original. I'm sure that this woman still feels a sense of pride and no regret whatsoever for her decision when she sees her tattoo 25 years later. In the title song Prince himself says "I only wanted 2 one time see u laughing" so I guess he got his wish last summer.

Welcome to my blog

2009-02-04T20:37:00.000-05:00

Inspired by the desire I'm sure all of you feel to read more of my clever writing I've decided to blog again. Since I've become more active in Facebook I have felt that sometimes I have more to say than a simple status update. Like, for instance, my new favorite thing. I often come across a new TV show or item that I really love. Currently one of my new favorite things is my sugar scrub that I got for just $5 at TJ Maxx. Not only does it exfoliate like mad, it only cost me five bucks!

My other new favorite thing is the TV show "True Beauty". If you haven't watched it, the premise is that a bunch of beautiful (by their own definition) people are competing to be the most beautiful. But in reality, they're being judged on how nice they are. When the judges get rid of them they get to watch a bunch of clips of them being jerks.

I anticipate, however, that next week there might be a NEW favorite show. My friend Chris informed me that there is a RuPaul reality show with drag queen contestants. How on Earth have I missed this show?!! If it is any good at all then I will be a fan.

Tomorrow I have a field trip with my Cafe Book students as well as teacher book club. I need to re-read the book I selected for this month so that I remember enough to discuss it so this is the end of the blog for tonight.