Coming Home

"Home" means a lot of things.  I tell people that I'm flying "home" tomorrow, and I mean Las Vegas.  While at my cabin, I say that we're going to go "home" when we're finished snowmobiling, and I really just mean going back to my cabin.  If I really had to define "home" for myself, though, I would define it as southwest Michigan.  That is the place where I really belong.  I grew up here, my family lives here, and I feel like a part of me will never truly fit in anywhere else.

Rex and I have been home since December 22, visiting family and friends for Christmas.  It has been a blast, but we have to go back to Nevada tomorrow.  As I sit here typing this in the final 23 minutes of the year 2012, I figure I will give you a few of the highlights of our trip:

1.  When we first got on the plane to come home, the kid sitting in front of us was crazy.  He was about three years old with mousy brown hair and skinny arms.  We called him "Rocketship Kid" because as soon as he sat down he exclaimed, "Oh my gosh, this is going to be SO FUN!  It's going to be just like going on a ROCKET SHIP!"  He was talking non-stop.  I started taking notes so I could transcribe his words for you. Here is a gem: "Hey dad I love you dad hey mom where is our luggage is it in the belly of the plane wow I am so excited this is going to be so great!!"  I put no punctuation between those sentences because he said them as if they were all one sentence.  He kept talking and talking so quickly that Rex turned to me and said, "Uhhh...is this kid on speed?!"  He was so fun to listen to.  He saw another plane on the tarmac and declared that our plane should marry that plane.  His mom tried to explain that planes don't get married, but the kid wasn't buying it.  Finally his mom said, "Aren't you tired, honey?  Look, your dad is getting tired - he's closing his eyes!"  The kid jumped on his dad and yelled, "WAKE UP, DAD!  WE'RE ON A PLANE!!!"  The kid was hilarious for a few hours, but I think I would be banging my head on the wall if he was mine.

2. My family went to our cabin up north for a few days.  We had a great time snowmobiling, playing banagrams, and sitting by the fire.  In order to kick off our road trip, I offered to buy everyone some Starbucks with the plethora of gift cards that I received from my students.  My family is not a "Starbucks" kind of family.  They don't generally spend more than 99 cents for a cup of joe.  My dad ordered a large coffee, and when the lady handed it to him she said, "Here is your venti coffee."  For those of you non-Starbucks-educated folks out there, venti means large.  My dad misunderstood, though, and said, "Ew, a veggie coffee? Why would I want a veggie coffee?"  I tried to correct him: "No, Dad, she said 'venti.'"  My mom jumped in with, "Yeah, 'venti' is short for 'vintage.'  It's like, an older type of roast."  No parents, it's not.  My dad finally accepted the coffees and then called to the lady, "Have a latte day!"  I looked at him like he was crazy, and he said, "What?  I'm just trying to use hip Starbucks lingo."  I'm surprised my family didn't get permanently banned from the store...  Luckily I don't think they will go back again anytime soon.

3. My dad LOVED the Perry the Platypus shorts that he got for Christmas.  That's all there really is to say about that.

4.  We went to go visit my Grandpa Hubert, who is pretty much the most ornery man you will ever meet.  We talked to him about the "good ol'days" for a couple of hours.  He used to be in the Navy, so my mom asked what he did for exercise when he lived on the ship.  His answer?  "We'd just shoot japs."  Greeeeat... Then we talked about the sports that his son (my dad) played in high school.  My grandpa said, "Sports are fine, but do you wanna know what I played?  Spin the bottle.  Now THERE'S a good game."  We went to my dad's favorite pizza spot, Pizza Sam's, after we got wisdom from his dad.  He pointed out the parking lot across from Pizza Sam's where he used to "do stuff that I can't tell you about."  Oh my.  I am a little bit ashamed to be related to these people.  Just a little.

5. For New Year's Eve (aka RIGHT NOW), my mother-in-law is playing Scrabble with Rex, my father-in-law is watching a hunting show about killing elk, and my brother-in-law is making plans to go fishing in the morning.  I mentioned, "Hey, it's five minutes till midnight...maybe we should turn on the Times Square coverage."  They all glared at me and said, "No!  Who cares about that?"
Who cares about that?  WHO CARES ABOUT THAT?!  It's New Year's Eve, people!!!  We should all care about that!  Who cares about a random elk that died in Nowheresville, Nowhere is what I'd like to know.  Man, I married into a weird family.  I really, really like them, too, which might make me even weirder.

Well, there it is - midnight.  It's officially New Year's Day.  No confetti, no midnight kiss, no party hats or noisemakers.  Just a triple letter score and a dead elk.  Happy New Year, people.

It's been an up and down kind of winter break.  I've had some interesting revelations, a lot of fun times with family, and made some re-connections with old friends.  2012 was one of those "growing" years.  I learned a lot.  I'm that much more ready for the next year.  Bring it on, 2013.

My Unprofessional Moment

Today I kicked a hole in my desk.

Oh yeah, and I did it in front of all of my students.  It wasn't my finest hour, but I figured it would make a good blog post.

It all started when I was having writing conferences with my students.  They would come up to my desk, and I would help them edit the stories they are currently working on.  I tried to open the top drawer of my desk to grab a colored pen, but my desk drawer was jammed.  Blast!  This had happened once before, but that was earlier this year when Rex was helping me set up my room before school started.  At that time he jiggled the drawer a few times and forced it open, so I figured maybe that would work for me too.

Bad idea, Mrs. Webb.

I jiggled the drawer a few times and jerked it really hard (which obviously meant I now had the attention of everyone in the room).  The drawer opened...but only because I broke it.  The bottom fell out and all of my stuff started tumbling to the floor.  I hurried to pick it up, and I ended up emptying the entire drawer of its contents.  Then I pulled the drawer off of its tracks so that I could assess the damage.  The picture below is a picture of a drawer like my drawer, but it isn't mine exactly (I didn't have the foresight to know I would be blogging about this, so I didn't take a picture).

As you can see, the bottom of the drawer has to fit into the grooved sides.  Mine had popped out at the back right corner, so I had to pop it back into the grooves if I wanted the drawer to hold anything.  I tried to pop it back in, but the bottom of the drawer was half in and half out of the grooves so it wouldn't budge.  I tried pounding on it, but no luck.  Of course, by this time everyone in the room was watching me, and about seven of my students were crowded around my desk.  Usually I would have sternly chastised them and told them to sit down and get to work, but I was on a mission to repair my drawer.  My arm strength wasn't working, but guess what?  Legs are stronger than arms!  So when one of my kids said, "Mrs. Webb, what if you stomp it back into place?"  I decided to try it.  Yes, I realize I was taking carpentry advice from a ten-year-old.  It was a volatile situation, okay?  Stop judging me.

So I flipped the drawer upside-down and tried to (carefully) smash the bottom of the drawer back into place.  What neither I nor my ten-year-old student had accounted for was the fact that I was wearing high-heeled boots today.  High-heeled boots with a nice skinny heel.  Guess what happened?  YEP!  My heel went straight through the cheaply constructed board and stabbed a hole in the bottom of my drawer.

A collective gasp sounded across the room.  The students looked at me, waiting for my reaction to see what they should do.  I did what any professional teacher would have done in this situation - I started cracking up.  Once they had "permission" to laugh, the kids started laughing too.

"See, kids?  What did we learn today?  Don't try to fix something if you don't know how to do it, and also high heels are evil."

Personally, I think that's a pretty valuable lesson.  Also, I patched up the hole (kinda), finally got the drawer to pop back in, and put it back in my desk.  The hole is in the back corner of the drawer, so probably no one will notice it.  Probably...  And if anyone does notice it, they are going to be very confused as to how it got there.  I don't think many teachers put holes in their desks.  I'll just blame the rats.

Oh, Rats

The rats got out of their cage.

How did they get out of their cage?  No idea.  I just know that I came into work and saw that their cage was open.  Furthermore, they had proceeded to chew on everything possible.  My internet cord was chewed through, one of my kids' art projects was destroyed, two of my promotional posters for The Elsie Files were shredded in their cage, and a box of Kleenex was emptied so that they could make a nest in it.  They did this all in one night.  Do you want to know the best part?  When I gasped in dismay, both of the rats poked their heads out of their hut as if to say, "Good morning, how are you?"  They had apparently spent the night traveling around my room destroying everything, but once they got tired of that they just curled up in their cage again.  I suppose we can see the bright side in this - at least I didn't spend my morning chasing them down and trying to find them.

And I guess that kid had a great excuse for art class: "The teacher's rats ate my homework."  Oh geez.  At least it wasn't anything too time consuming or critical.  She wasn't upset.  *phew!*

The funniest part to me was that the rats ate an entire red colored pencil.  Specifically, they shredded the wood into shavings that they put in their nest, and then they ate the red part in the center.  It's been two days now, and their poop is still BRIGHT red, like tiny little holly berries littered around their cage.  If I weren't so annoyed with them I would actually consider it kind of festive.  I don't know how they haven't died.  They ate a magnet, a colored pencil, an internet cord, and an assortment of other weird stuff from around the room.  I swear I feed them...so why are they eating all of my stuff??  Also, HOW DO THEY KEEP GETTING OUT OF THEIR CAGE?!  This is the second time it's happened this year.  I feel like I should take them out of the classroom to prevent further destruction, but if I bring them home then they will escape once and become cat food (literally).  That seems like it would be kind of traumatizing for me.

I guess with all of the other drama going on at my school, destruction of school property by the class pet is pretty low on the list of things to deal with.  In case you need to catch up on the drama you've been missing...  Quest has been on the news three times now.  Check out the videos if you want:  http://search.journalbroadcastgroup.com/ktnv.aspx?k=quest%20academy

My rats are never even mentioned; those sneaky little buggers.