A spelling lesson

Over the long Labor Day weekend, Toby and I paid a visit to the Home Depot and got some curtain rods. After much effort, plaster dust, paint flaking and dulled drill bits, we got them hung. Apparently you need a masonry bit or, I don't know, a diamond-edged spike, to put holes in my walls. Regardless, the place has gotten a lot homier over this past week, so for the benefit of curious family members, here are a bunch of new photos of 518 Willoughby:

Still needed are two barrel lampshades for my 60s golden pine cone lamps (on the end table). Also, some throw pillows. Also, a GFI outlet in the kitchen that can power the microwave without tripping the whole circuit.
Toby brought his turntable! He also brought a stool from the old Korner Diner in Newark (may it rest in peace). The stool make a nice, shiny side table, and its peely gray vinyl is still a comfy seat. Next up is re-covering the chair cushions. Midnight blue? Gold? Ideas?


A dimly lit photo of the dining room...but...I have a table! And four bentwood chairs. AND I have back the cuckoo clock I got in Germany in 10th grade! Although the damn cuckoo itself is so irritating I finally took the weight off the cuckoo chain.
These curtain rods were a nightmare to hang. This one is hung with a nail on one end, and a half-in screw on the other. There's a 5-inch circle of paint that popped off the wall when I tried to drill a hole, so that's held onto the wall with a giant piece of packing tape. Plaster walls are nice and solid and good for keeping the place well-insulated, but good lord they're a pain in the ass to hang ANYTHING on.

Still some things to pick up, hang up, and tidy up, but the place is looking a lot nicer than a month ago.

Teaching goes well. I think, to be honest, I had braced myself to be miserable and stressed and hate my life at this point. TFA even gave us a whole presentation about the phases of your first year of teaching, and how by October many people reach the "disillusionment" phase, or something to that effect. Apparently last year the Charlotte corps had more corps members quit after their first year than any other region. Yikes, right? I'm happy to report, however, that I actually very much like my job so far, and the people I work with, and our students. I'm also very thankful that it's my second year teaching, and that I'm not doing this straight out of college. Plus, co-teaching with someone who's been at the school for a year already has made a big difference in terms of the amount of work I have to do alone. Being able to divide up grading, or planning, or what have you makes things a lot less overwhelming. It's also nice to be living in a region where I have friends and family within easy driving distance.

As an addendum, one of my favorite kids (although one of the most obnoxious in class) stayed after school recently to get his homework done. He had to write sentences using vocab words from an article we'd read in class. He wrote one sentence with the word "wuz," and so I told him to spell "was" correctly. He erased "w-u-z" but then paused. He couldn't tell me how to spell "was." With some prodding, he figured it out, but it took a minute or two. "Man, I be texting too much!" he said, and then grabbed a dry erase marker and showed us how he and his friends spell things. "Dnt" and "Cmeing" and "Wut"... "Wen ru cmeing ovr?" I pointed out that "Cmeing" has just as many letters as "Coming," but somehow that didn't seem to be the point. Anyhow, it had never occurred to me that kids might actually FORGET how to spell words like WAS!!! because they write everything in text language. Even on facebook I see kids spell stuff like that. Sometimes I think there must be some contest to come up with whose spelling requires the longest amount of time to decipher.

Anyway, I was at the fabric store today, and I saw this:

Really??