Popper Nose

Here's my eleven year old hiding what must be disaster to a recent middle school student newly aware that hair actually does look better brushed and that there just might possibly be more to clothing than comfort. She looks happy in the picture, but that's actually deceiving. Yes, she was pleased that I didn't get a picture of her popper nose, but actually embarrassed and, I believe, insulted that her old friend the popper would do this to her.

If you are unfamiliar to poppers, let me introduce this cheap form of entertainment. I first saw one when my son brought one home from art class as a good behavior prize. "Really?" I asked, "That's a prize?" Looked like a broken or lost piece of something or another to me.

But as it turned out, those hours of fun that toy commercials talk about are contained not in expensive toys with buttons galore, but these little half ball shaped pieces of plastic. They push it down like a suction cup on a hard surface, and it pops back up. (picture above). They are especially fun to stick on your nose, apparently. But not as fun when you go to your new brand new middle school the next morning with a big, purple bruise across the bridge of your nose.

First Day of School

Here they are just out the door, full of from-scratch-pancakes they helped make that morning, still totally unsuspecting of the chaos ahead...

Some days are just like that

My brother told me once that nobody has bad days like I do. Maybe it's just Alexander and me (but I doubt it):

8:00 Get lost delivering my son to his class. Realize that his teacher has absolutely NO contact information for me what so ever. Copy phone numbers for him to keep in his pocket & leave four minutes later than planned.

8:15 The time I was *supposed* to headed West toward work, my car is inching East toward my daughter's new middle school. Or at least it's inching along until about...

8:20 My car is at a total standstill. All the streets around the her new school are packed full of cars going nowhere. I decide to take the first available parking spot and walk her the rest of the way to school. Mobs of children are everywhere, with minimal supervision. The woman who assured me that all children were closely supervised is nowhere in sight. I did see two, maybe even three school employees planted amongst the mad confusion. My daughter assures me that she will be fine & disappears into the masses (who have not yet been let into the building).

8:30 I am supposed to be arriving at work; instead I am almost back at my car.

8:45 I walk in 15 minutes late to the first meeting of the day & plop down in the first available seat - right next to my principal.

9:15 Several people have been getting up for coffee during the presentation & I decide to do the same. My cell phone (which is still innocently sitting right next to my principal & which I decided against turning off considering the total bedlam where I had just left my daughter) went off loudly just as I was spilling half a cup of coffee all over the table.

12:00 I finally finish eighteen cute little prayer booklets made for my cute little class. They're so stinkin' cute, in fact, that I hardly notice I have put the title upside down on every last cute little book.

12:30 One of my parents (also a staff member) takes the time to let me know that she will be complaining to the principal about our classroom policies (before I even make any).

3:00 Finally time to pick up my lil' darlin's. How was my son's day? "Fine. Except you bought me the wrong school supplies." He was the only third grader with a ($40) second grade school supply package, conveniently labeled in permanent marker the night before, so as to render it un-returnable.

3:45 Another fight through traffic and we are looking around for my daughter, who is nowhere to be found. Luckily I told her to call me if she didn't find me by...

4:00 My cell phone rings. I can't hear anything, but she manages to hear me yelling for her to go to the door of the main office. Here's how her day had gone:

• She got lost three times
• She was tardy two times
• She was put into a beginning sports class even though she has been doing the sport for over three years
• They had no schedule for her. She ended up waiting for half an hour in the library for them to find her one.
• She was transferred her away from her original homeroom where she knew one person to a new homeroom where she didn't know anyone.
  
• Her PE teacher was so mean she was scared to ask about the size SIXTEEN shorts they gave her (she wears an 8).
• She was NOT put in gifted and talented even though I turned in all her paperwork and she qualified.

9:30 I get a call from my co-teacher explaining that one day before school starts, the principal has decided our classroom needs to be totally rearranged, right down to where we store our manipulatives and which carpet can be used for circle time.

Some days are just like that...even in Australia.

Apparantly the novelty has worn off

Worn off of finding out what friends and relatives live or have lived in our current apartment complex, that is. Still, this was an interesting conversation with my 11 year old, especially considering that our city is one of the five largest in the US:

Me: "Guess what sweetie? One of the administrators in my new school..."
Her: Bored look followed by, "lives in our apartment complex?"

Me: "No, guess again."
Her: "Used to live in our apartment complex?"
Me: "No."

Her: "You saw her in the laundry room?"
Me: "Keep guessing!"

Her: "We sat next to her on an airplane?"
Me: "Guess again!"

Her: "She has bright red hair?"
Me: "Closer! It is something about her head."

Her: "She goes to my same orthodontist?"
Me: "No."
Her: "She works with my same orthodontist?"
Me: "No."
Her: "She *IS* my orthodontist?!?"

Me: "No. Give up?"
Her: "Yes."

Me: "Your great grandfather put in all the fillings in her teeth!"
Her: "That's weird!"

Uh huh!!