Poison Ivy Poem

In honor of National Poetry Month, and the fact that I stuck my arms in a jacket I haven't worn for two years (because the zipper sticks), and I consequently got a return of the poison ivy I had on my arms from two years ago (Yes, I washed the jacket 3 times before wearing it again!) ... Here is my Poison Ivy Poem. It was written yet another time I contracted the lovely rash, when I knelt in a Michigan bog one fall to get a close-up photo. (No, I wasn't taking this photo; all the leaves had died back into the swamp by that time.)

Can be sung to the tune of "Clementine."

Oh my darling, Poison Ivy, I don't like you, don't you know?
Oosing rashes, itchy patches, from my knees down to my toes.

I just wanted a little photo, simple picture of nature sweet.
So I knelt down on the wet ground, through my jeans your oil did seep.

Just a little poke in my little hip, my doc said would do the trick.
Then the nurse came: "Drop your drawers, kid. Don't you give me any lip!"

I'm on steroids, lovely steroids, feeling pretty, fast and strong.
I'm so smart, too, till the pills are through, so I wrote this perfect song.

Oh my darling, Poison Ivy, I don't like you, don't you know?
Oosing rashes, itchy patches, from my knees down to my toes.

Testing Grapes

Okay. I'll admit it. I'm a thief. But it took me years to come to this point. It all has to do with grapes. There are moments in my life I crave grapes more than chocolate or sunshine. So I stuff a bag full of the lovely looking treats and pay for them, only to discover when I get home they are practically inedible, and I end up tossing out the lot.

Grape tastes vary. And in today's modern world, we can have grapes year round, flown in during the winter months from Africa and South America. We Americans provide income for the field workers, and we get grape treats year round.

I still only buy grapes one or two times a year, so that's one or two grapes I've stolen per year. If they taste heavenly, I buy lots. If they taste mediocre, I buy some. If I want to spit out my sample grape, I move my cart down the aisle.

After hearing my confession of grape-stealing, my daughter-in-law noted, "It's not like you're taste-testing, say, a melon... which is always a gamble."

She's right... about the melon tastes varying. So why can't I get the picture out of my mind of me in a grocery store, biting through a cantaloupe rind?

Psychic Cats!

It's spooky, but it's true. Cats know things.

When we visited our son and daughter-in-law, as one of their cats passed by my son, he put his cell phone on the cat's back. The sweet thing walked a few steps, nicely balancing the phone, and then stopped. She didn't try to shake it off, nor sit or lie down. She just stood there.

Then my dear hubby gets this brilliant idea, to call our son's cell phone. My husband stood in a different room, but through an opened doorway. As soon as the phone vibrated on the cat's back, she jerked her head, looking directly at my husband with her ears back and flattened in mad-mode.

Yeah. Psychic cats.

New Battery Factory (very punny)

As we drove past a large area under construction, my husband turned to me and said, "That will be a new batter factory... Shocking, isn't it?... I thought you'd get a charge out of knowing that."

Careful What You Mulch

It was early spring, and in an unprecedented way, debris fell hourly from our trees around our yard. I raked it up, but not wanting to simply toss the natural stuff, I moved some of the river rocks in our landscaping, and swept it under the ground cover mat in a low spot of our front yard.

A couple weeks later, I noticed the rocks rolled away and the mat domed up. It was extremely spooky. I was thinking rabbit hole, skunk, snake pit, dead neighbor.

I grabbed a shovel and carefully lifted a corner. I discovered hundreds -- no, more like thousands -- of baby sprouted trees pushing upward from their warm, dark "nursery" under the mat. I "rearranged" the baby trees, killing them all. However, those sprouts made for even more mulch. So why do I feel like a murderer when I know that none of them would have survived, anyway?

Life-Sized Models in School

I've been gone and busy for a while. I'm baaaaaack.

I've taught 5th grade in two states. In the last one, I tried to very closely follow the teacher manuals instead of being my normal creative self. (State Educational Standards, and all)

From the health book, there was a group assignment, where one child in the group lies on a large sheet of bulletin board paper while someone else in the group outlines him or her. Then the kids were to bring in 3-D objects from home to represent the various organs and body systems. I provided some of the materials they could use, from the suggestions in the book.

They did EXCELLENT jobs, both on the projects and doing teamwork. I was very proud of them. Only, I removed their projects from the school hallway in less than a week. It appeared that the balloons, suggested in the teacher's manual to represent air-filled lungs, definitely looked like a different body part when the papers were taped flat against the wall.

Ah, fifth graders.
"All right, class, let's move on to the next unit."