Still snow on my car every morning

It is cold and wintry still here in Wisconsin. I know Spidey had been keeping everyone up to date on that.

The play is under rehearsed and I am starting to panic. Very few costumes are in and we only have three more weeks of rehearsal. The kids are kind of lackadaisical about learning their lines and we have a few prima donnas in the group that I occasionally would like to slap down.

We have two autistic kids in the show... Both are eighth graders. they are always interesting to work with. One boy is a complete ham. He wanted to be a pirate so I wrote him a few lines and made him a pirate. Monday night at rehearsal when we took the break he came out on stage and announced that he was now going to do his pirate dance. He proceeded to do about 7 minutes of a tribute dance to the lead pirate. It was the funniest dance. He moved all over the stage and up and down on the sand dunes posing and gesturing. He is not a small boy at all and once he gets moving he pretty well stays moving.

Today I gave the pirates each an earring...Alex was a little scared of it hurting so I bent it back pretty loosely and put it carefully on his ear. Thank goodness it was ok. He has matured so much since last year it really is incredible and he does a helluva arrrrrghhhhh.

I am feeling a little lonesome tonight..Puck got a call to sub at one of the taverns in town and I have only seen him for a couple minutes today. We have tomorrow off because of teacher conventions so no rehearsal and I get to sleep in.

My finger that got the worst of the slamming in the car door still hurts. It is not swollen, but I have no feeling on the top of the finger :( Everything works pretty well, but it is just a little dead.

Maddie is painting the whole entire floor of the theater stage in fieldstone. It is a big job... she is taking a little bit of ribbing from her classmates about the high quality of her design work.

Also her second roommate has moved out on her. The girl's best friend lost her roommate and asked Emily to move in. they came and talked to Maddie and she said it was fine. I think Maddie is starting to feel a little paranoid



This picture was one of the first assignments she had in design class. they were to draw their hand using only a single line.

This is her first costume rendering. It is a watercolor

One of her fellow students was commenting on her scene painting skills today

"jimmy was saying earlier that they taught me well..and i kinda laughed and rolled my eyes...and proceeded to tell him that the people here didn't teach me how to do any of this
my parents did...they learned it here though so I guess inadvertently i did learn it from here
but not from you people"

that was pretty funny

weather woes again

Just responded to Spidey about water issues and realized it probably was worth a blog entry.... Started off with freezing drizzle this morning and when I got up at 7:30 my car was covered in a thin sparkling sheet of ice... by that time it was raining ... I checked the forecast and waited until I heard from Rob my co worker who lives in Madison... they were getting really bad weather... ours was mostly rain, but they had heavy icing then rain then snow.... Church closings were scrolling across the tv like school closings

I knew he wouldn't make rehearsal, but I was still sort of hopeful... I waited till 10:00 and then called the cast and told them we were going to cancel... I think I am going to have to make all the times later for our rehearsals if we expect to even be ready..

Rob and I are pretty sure that either this year or next year will be our last. He will probably have to move to the high school because his job is being cut at the end of next year, but he still has some seniority. I do not want to do it by myself and we absolutely need more crowd supervision than even he and I can provide at rehearsal

So today I have been caning a chair that a very nice lady dropped off on Saturday. I might even finish it tonight, but I dare not get it back to her too soon or she wont find me worth the money she is paying LOL I sure didn't expect to have the whole of Sunday to work on it that is certain. It is a cute little chair, but when I took the old cane out last night a couple small chunks of chair fell off too... I really hate then that happens.... She just brought it back from the refinisher too and why he didn't take the old cane out I have no idea... He recommended me off a notice I put on Craig's list... I am glad to have gotten some work from it.

I had to glue those little bits back on the chair or I would have started it last night. I really love reweaving old chair seats. They are so interesting to work on and I love the feel of the old beloved furniture people bring me.

Maddie sent me an excited e-mail at work telling me she had finally gotten into a play. She is playing Helena in Look Back in Anger... there are only two women in the play so she was about as excited as I have ever seen her I am glad they will get a chance to see her act in a full length play.

Well back to caning

Tired today

the days go by quickly with Read 180 and Rehearsal. I get a little tired of being the bad guy though. I really am not such a mean old lady like most of the kids think. I am just a person who expects students to follow rules, and respect each other and me. I am not very tolerant of rude behavior which makes for a lot of fun in Middle School LOL

Lately I have been trying to get the kids to catch up on their writing in class. Many are sort of skimming by with work that is not quite up to par. Most are not following the directions very closely. I am hoping that by paying a little closer attention to their work that not only can I save the teachers a little time grading all those papers, but get the students into better habits knowing that someone is expecting it from them. Most are caught up now so it is not quite as harried as it was last week.

There is a great deal of paperwork for the kids to do along with the reading since it is a language arts class as well as a reading focussed class. Most is in the form of work sheets that ask them to write about what they are reading. I keep telling the kids that they are not designed as tests, but more to help them to learn how to read for meaning, but most of them wait until the end to do the sheets unless I harp on them.

I came up with a plan using post-its with the chapters labeled where they were supposed to stop and write, but I have yet to see if that is working. They leave the sticky notes in the books as markers so they are always with them... I should try to find some fun post-its so they can be different maybe for each grade... It is an ever evolving program.

This week we found out what the recommendations for staffing cuts were. They plan on dropping the entire reading program in all grades, but keep Read 180. they also are getting rid of Computer lab supervision. Both of these things are devastating to our school. I really am disappointed that we are headed down an anti-technology path.

Middle school is the perfect place for tech classes and where kids should be learning how to use software and the internet responsibly and effectively and depending on classroom teachers for that is just not realistic.

What this really means is that the person who has been employed the longest will now be out of a job after next year. It makes every support staff position in the district vulnerable to her bumping into it. It could get very ugly.

Just got my Valentines card for Puck tonight along with some puffed corn and mashed potatoes (his dentures are still a little sore) for a special treat LOL

We are so romantic

happy Valentines day to the rest of you lovebirds

Wow a new post

Like Spidey said it continues to snow here in Wisconsin. It was snowing when I got up and is still snowing now although we probably didn't get more than an inch and a half. It was so light and fluffy you could almost blow it off the car.

It is pretty and makes me homesick, but I guess I am tired of it too. My bloodshot eye is almost healed.

Screwed up the calendar for drama and everyone showed up for rehearsal yesterday only to discover that it was not our day... I had gotten a request long ago to give up the day to some band concert and totally spaced it out. thank heavens the kids all found rides home without too much trouble. some of them even were able to catch the bus.

I got the coolest aviator helmet on EBAY and now need to find goggles. I really don't want to spend too much on them as we are running out of money and I have none.

Puck is working hard on the set and continuing to search for work other than subbing.
We are eating a lot of pasta which is good for his teeth but not so interesting to me. I did make a huge batch of split pea soup which we both enjoy, but leave us a little gassy :) that is what 30 years of marriage does to you.

Finished putting in all the pictures in my drama blog so far... now it will be fairly simple to update... I was getting pretty incremental with times to get some of those plays in there. As I find any earlier plays I am going to add them , but I think I will have to scan pictures and that will take some time.

it has been fun to be able to quickly refer back to the plays and see how we have progressed... especially how much better we are at making stones and rocks LOL


I have come a long way as a costumer and makeup artist too

Drama Drama Drama

Spent most of the day fussing with my Drama Blog. I was trying to figure out how to get the plays to be entered in order and finally figured out that if I changed the posting date or time under post options that they would come up in different places.

I went back and entered pictures from some of the first plays we did when Maddie was in Kindergarten and we were dragged kicking and screaming back into drama. Her teacher wrote a grant for and anti drug and peer pressure play, but didn't know much about production. I volunteered Puck and I and the rest is history. Maddie was the leader of the Glamor Glitter Gang (the bad guys) and did a great job. If you click on 2007 and go to the beginning you will see the progression of our plays.

I still have a few more to put in, but it is almost up to date

It snowed again but not so much that I feel like shoveling. I burst a blood vessel in my eye a couple days ago and it still looks pretty creepy. I think it was the shoveling that did it.

This evening I have started applying for art fairs. I really hate filling out forms and writing checks only to wonder whether or not I will be accepted. I am glad we have one of those all in one printer\copier\scanner thingies

It is such a freaking crap shoot. I am going to try the fair that was so horrible last year again but if it goes poorly again that is it.

Snow Day again

Another snow day today. It stopped snowing sometime around 8 PM and Puck went out and shoveled the rest of the driveway so at least one car can get out. I had done some shoveling earlier. This is the biggest snowfall I have seen since we lived up in River Falls. That would be at least 20 years ago.

That is our front porch with the peacock chair that I loaned to the King and I. it is now gold. The brown house is the neighbor rental house. There are at least 2 families living there and at times have had 4 or 5 families living there. The downstairs guy is a sweetheart who always says hi and puts up a fabulous Halloween display. The upstairs guy just got busted for selling crack along with his mother so we had quite a scene a few weeks ago. People kept asking me why all the cop cars were next door, but I had to wait for the paper to come out to find out any information.

The shot with the stop sign (the one head on and not a side street) is up the street going toward the schools and the other is the one going downtown toward Main street and past the library and Methodist church. The pizza place is at the end of the street too.

My pictures don't really show how huge the piles of snow are. Apparently there was a 10 hour backup of traffic on I 90. I am very glad not to have been stuck in that.
That is my van which is just barely visible underneath the 16 inches of snow. We are going to try and get that shoveled out today before it never starts again.

Just glad to be snug

In June when we have to make these days up it will not be too fun though

Snow Day

We got another snow day today... Puck is out shoveling as I type He says there is at least a foot of snow on the ground and it is still snowing and blowing... Our very kind neighbor snow blowed (or is it blew) the sidewalk which is a big job, but that still leaves the walk to the house and the driveway. It looks like I will probably have to walk to school tomorrow unless I get out there and do some shoveling myself. We are running out of places to put the snow and it is difficult to lift it that high.

I slept in after the phone call this morning then worked a little on the play. I fancied up the Ben Gunn character's staff with a little raffia. So far I have made the Witch doctors headdress, which she loves and sailor scarves for the Devine sisters which they hate (sigh)

I feel badly that the girls are not fond of their costume, but I only have what I have. they are all different sizes and the costume is an embellishment of costumes we used a couple of plays ago consisting of gold shorts and tops. I made red sailor collars with blue embellishments and now they think they look like boy scouts.

I was going to try to make an aviator helmet, but found one on eBay that is much better than anything I could have created. Now I just need to find goggles.

Puck has been working hard on the set and created some lovely dunes. It will be great to have them to work with to help with the blocking.

I wore my daughter's tiara to school yesterday along with all the beads I could manage. One of the classes was selling Mardi Gras beads as a fund raiser for the K-9 unit of the police. I bought some from them and added several of my own. I was a little more blinged than most people and they were heavy so I dumped them around noon. I kept the tiara on for the day though :) I sort of forgot I had it on.

I guess that does it for an update... My days are spent in read-180 and my afternoons are spent at rehearsal then home to work on costumes or other minutia.