the refrigeration saga continues. the other night I turned it down as low as it could go and left it...for about 24 hours everything stayed frozen. then, last night when I got home from work I opened it to find that everything was lukewarm and there was no detectable refrigeration at all. opened the freezer to find the same situation. my grapes were mushy. my zuchinni was mushy. I threw them away and turned the dial back up...this morning when I woke up, thing were frozen again. presumably, I must resign myself for the next six months to having a freezer, and a slightly less powerful freezer, and no refrigerator. oh well. what are ya gonna do.

teaching yesterday was especially fun. I was in a goofy mood for some reason, and had a lot of fun with the kids. I have to keep that in check though...I know that the standards for teaching here are strict, and too much fun is not looked up favorably ;-). at one point I had a group of girls playing the spelling game (self explanatory- I say a word, they raise there hands if they know how to spell it, I call on them, and they spell it. I tell them if it's right or wrong), and they were so insanely excited that they would scream when they got a word right. literally scream. which I don't mind. I mean shit, if they can get that excited about spelling then that's awesome. but eric, the dude who runs the desk and does a lot of the discipline, kept peeking in the door to see what was wrong...and I know it's not exactly appropriate for them to be screaming. I *was* telling them to stop. but I just don't think it's so wrong for kids to be loud. they are naturally loud. let them be loud! let them have fun! especially if they're having fun doing something educational, ya know? this is why I know that long term I need to not work in a school setting (at least a traditional one)...I have too much fun with children to keep them as structured as school requires.

earlier in the day, with some of the tiny kids (first or second graders), I was teaching them to write a book review. we were using a book that linda (adorable, smart-as-a-whip little girl) had read. they had to list the characters, which included a monkey, a fish, a dog, an elephant, a gorilla, a duck, a snake, a cat, a bird, and children. when we got to the events, linda said "the monkey eat ice cream." this set them off.

child 1: the monkey eat the gorilla!
me: the monkey ATE the gorilla??!! the monkey would explode! the monkey is small, the gorilla is biiig. his stomach would burst!

they giggle madly, and begin firing off a chorus of smaller things eating bigger things, to which I respond with an incredulous "on no!" or "oh my goodness!"

child 1: monkey eat elephant!
child 2: fish eat cat!
child 3: duck eat gorillla!
child 4: cat eat elephant!

this went on for at least five minutes, and culminated with us drawing pictures of the snake having eaten an elephant and the fish having eaten a gorilla. it was great fun! then, at the end, sweetly and quietly,

linda: maybe, a bird eat teacher!

I laughed my ass off :-).

then a couple classes later with some slightly older kids, we were doing a fill-in-the-blank exercise where I have them read the sentence and decide which word goes there.

scott: a dog is big. a hamster is...teacher!
me: a hamster is teacher!!? teacher is small and furry with a tail?
all of them, laughing: yes, yes!!

then on the next question, terry: there are...teacher trees in the woods.
me: teacher trees!? like this?
and I proceeded to draw a tree with bangs and glasses, which they found uproariously funny.

yeah, I am having entirely too much fun with these kids sometimes, and I love it :-).

I was going to blog about a bunch of insights I'm having about myself and patterns of behavior and emotion and adjustment and a bunch of introspective crap like that, but I think I am all blogged-out for today. perhaps tomorrow can be reflective blog post day.