The Haircut

I got a haircut earlier this week. I told my husband about it a dozen times in at least a dozen different ways, but maybe I was too subtle:

"Ugh, my hair looks awful. I'm so glad it's getting chopped this week."

"Only two more days, and I get rid of all these split ends!"

And perhaps the most cryptic message of all:

"Matt, I'm going to get a haircut right now."

I got home and waited for Matt to say something. Nothing. I waved my head in his face, and he said, "Oh yeah. How was your haircut?" I told him that I finally got my split ends cut off and my color spruced up. "I'm sorry, but I've decided that hair removal must be greater than or equal to three inches before I'll notice," he said.

The next day at school, not two minutes into first period, a female student asked, "Did you get your hair done? It looks a little darker. And is it shorter? Did you get layers? I don't think it used to flip out like that." Apparently, to a teenage girl, a haircut can be less than or equal to a quarter of a millimeter, and it will get noticed.

A Teaching Bonus

I took a pretty big pay cut when I started teaching. I know I get compensated in other ways--touching the lives of young people, blah, blah, blah. Some days, though, I miss the cold hard cash.

One of my students must have sensed my need today. As the three pennies whizzed by my head and clanged against a filing cabinet, the entire class fell silent. Perhaps they thought he'd be in trouble. I thanked him for the bonus.

This everyday problem can be solved any time

My Facebook status earlier this week read, "Grammar peeve of the day: anytime is not the same as any time, nor is everyday the same as every day." For those who may not know, anytime and everyday are adjectives. Anytime describes an object that is frequently used; everyday describes something commonplace and ordinary. Any time and every day, however, describe how often something happens. For example, "I use my anytime phone any time I want to call someone" or "I do my everyday workout every day."

In the last week or so, I've counted at least six separate instances of "anytime" being used in advertising when "any time" should have been used. I'm at the end of my grammar rope.

I've heard advertisers say they use grammatically incorrect language because of the asthetics or because they're trying to be clever or make a point, but I wonder if they realize what a disservice they do to our young people in the process. When an incorrect way of speaking becomes ingrained in students' lexicon, they honestly can't see language any other way. "But that doesn't sound right" or "But that just looks wrong," they say. At that point, I've lost many of them before we even begin. It's not cute when students have been programmed with incorrect information.

Thanks to Apple, students think "funnest" is a word. The SAT still knows the difference. Thanks to Sprint, NBC and many others, they think anytime and any time are interchangeable. The PSAT still knows the difference. Thanks to grocery stores around the country and those darned Gardasil commercials, they don't see a difference between less and fewer. Sadly, the ACT still knows the difference.

I recognize that it's my job to teach my students these rules (plus a few hundred others), and we do work religiously with grammar in my classroom. But how do I convince them these rules matter if they see the rules broken everywhere they look? Think of how much more they could learn if I spent less time deprogramming and more time teaching.

Please, advertisers. Help me help them.

We fought the bees, and the bees (nearly) won

I've written much recently (perhaps too much) about what a Renaissance Man my husband is. From woodworking to mechanics, it seemed he could do it all. Then, we met the bees, and we had to call in a professional.

It's not that Matt didn't do everything he could do get rid of our friendly infestation. He dressed in his best homemade beer keeper outfit...

and built a contraption to try to combat the bees from the outside:



In retrospect, it may not have been surprising that sealing up the house and sucking the bees into a ShopVac only put a Band-Aid on the problem. It was a lot of fun, but it was a Band-Aid nonetheless.

Finally, Matt found the source of our buzzing buddies. He cut a hole in our basement ceiling and found a papery hive the size of a basketball:

When a strategically placed bug bomb only killed the bees that were already outside of the hive, we decided it was time to call in a professional. Never having called an exterminator before, we called a big-name company, Terminix. The technician who arrived was pleasant enough, but he nearly fell off the ladder when he saw the hive. He then screamed like a child and ran upstairs, waving his arms wildly above his head (no exaggeration). Matt followed him up the stairs and said, as only Matt can say, "I have to tell you, dude. That reaction doesn't inspire confidence."

The Terminix guy made a few frantic calls to superiors, all of whom told him that it was "illegal" to remove bees and that our only solution was a year-long contract involving the spraying of various chemicals. When he hung up the phone, I told him there was no such law and he said, "Yeah...I really don't know." Never being happy with the idea of either spraying needless chemicals or giving money to big business, Matt and I decided to keep our options open.

The next day, we found a listing for a local bee-removal specialist. John Roswell's company (if one could even call it that) was nothing fancy--just a one-man operation. He drove up to our house in an old Chevrolet Astro van, and he stepped out with a big glove and a stick. While the Terminix man (aka "Chemical Ali") ran away from our problem, John climbed up the ladder, sprayed something on the hive to kill all the bees, then used the big stick to poke at the hive. He then went out to his van for an old cardboard box and scraped the hive remains into it. We told him that the Terminix guy said he'd never seen anything like our hive. John laughed and said, "Then he hasn't seen that much."

After the entire hive was removed, John showed us the larve in the hive and explained how queens are bred and the hives are built, all the while speaking with a sense of respect for his 30-year adversary. By the end of the conversation, all three of us were captivated by what had once been an infestation. This is just a tiny piece of what was extracted from our ceiling:
John was a mixture of insane bravery and old-school charm. He charged half what Terminix would have, but I would have paid him twice as much.

My morning companion

Matt is taking a little break from work to go to school full-time (i.e., he's the luckiest person alive), so he sleeps later than my usual 5:00 wake-up call. Rather than let me face such an early hour alone, Barley keeps me company. From my shower and getting dressed to my ritualistic cup of coffee with the Washington Post, Barley is right there.

Still, the early morning hour means that Barley doesn't always bring his A-game. Last week, he tripped on a few stairs in the dark. Before that, he tried to walk through a closed door...three times. Just a couple days ago, he tried to join me in the bathroom, but found an adversary in the shower curtain. He tried to free himself, but gave up half-way:

Don't worry, Barley. Winter break and sleeping in are right around the corner.

Pearls of Teenage Wisdom

Student, deep in contemplation: "Why is the word 'abbreviation' so long?"

I laughed clear to the next class.

A million years ago...

October 15, 2005 seems both like yesterday and a million years ago, both for all the right reasons.

Happy anniversary, love.

"Do Not Feed the Animal"

Part of the one-person-coming-home-later-than-the-other routine in our house is to give Barley his last scoop of food. Every once in a while, however, Barley will beg well enough to get his last scoop early. That begins a stream of telephone calls, text messages and oddly-placed Post-It notes to let the other party know that the dog has already been fed. Barley, on the other hand, pulls out his most pathetic looks to convince the late-arriver that the person sleeping upstairs has allowed him to starve.

When I got home late a few nights ago, Matt had gone to bed, and I was left wondering once again if Barley had been fed. Barley (aka, "Buddy Dog") tried to tell me that he was starving, but Matt was one step ahead of him. He left this note right above the spot where Barley waits to be fed:

But that didn't stop the poor, starving Buddy Dog from trying:

Pearls of Teenage Wisdom

Me: "Remember, 'a lot' is two words. Every time I see it written as one word, I sprout another gray hair."
Student: "You don't have any gray hairs. Oh, wait. I see them now."

With another class later that very same day...

Me: "And what was the name of the mountain where the shepherd found Oedipus?" (The correct answer is "Mount Citheron.")
Student shouting from the back with complete sincerity: "Mount Syphilis!"
Another student, also with complete sincerity: "Really? I thought that was something else."

Portrait of a Yankees Fan

Last night, I watched the home field umpiring Twins game at a local bar. Lady Luck sat me next to a quintessential Yankees fan, unapologetically oblivious to the fact that his designer shirt and uncomfortable shoes looked ridiculous at a blue-collar bar. He may have been out of place, but at least he was obnoxious about it:

Yankees fan circa inning seven: "Oh, great. A-Rod is up. God, I hate that mother f***er."
Yankees fan in the bottom of the ninth: "Yeah! That's my A-Rod! God, I love that guy."

Yankees fan in the top of the ninth: "I can't believe they're going to lose to those f***ing farmers. God, the Yankees suck."
Yankees fan in the bottom of the ninth: "Yeah! The Yankees always win!"

Perhaps not surprisingly, said Yankees fan did not take kindly to a certain die-hard Twins fan publicly calling him out for such hypocrisy. Nor was said hypocrite pleased when said Twins fan suggested that fewer people would hate the Yankees if their fans supported their team win or lose and worked for their championships instead of buying them. Thank goodness said Twins fan was among like-minded friends or this post may have had an entirely different focus, most likely involving a more interesting story about a bar brawl and eventual jail time.

Christmas in October...almost

Last weekend, Matt and I visited the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, one of the rather obscure museums in town that I'd always been meaning to visit but never quite seemed worth the $14 admission. We were lured to the museum in part by the draw of free admission, but mostly by the visiting Christmas Carol Train Tour, billed as a "once-in-a-lifetime attraction." The tour even advertised items from the Charles Dickens Museum! And for free? We wouldn't miss it.

Apparently, no family with a toddler in the greater Baltimore area was willing to miss it either. I doubt the main draw for any of them were the Dickens artifacts, however. Nevertheless, by the time we got to the back of the line, the wait was nearly two hours. We decided to skip the "Christmas in October" experience, but we did get to see the museum for free.

The museum is a converted train station and rail yard, so it's absolutely massive inside:

It's filled with old trains, many of which kids (of all ages) can climb on:

And what would a trip out and about be without a little grammatical error? Overused quotation marks have always been some of my "favorites":
I wonder if they meant to say, "If it does belong on the floor, leave it there," and were trying to be clever.

Barley vs the DVD Player

We're in the process of getting some new furniture in our basement, so our DVD player (as well as a few very tempting boxes) are taunting poor Barley on the floor.




He's insane, but we love him.

New in Town

Student: "You know who you remind me of?"
Me: (This question never ends well. I should just end this now, but...) "Who?"

Student: "That lady from the movie New in Town."
Me: (This might not be so bad.) "Really? Which character?" (Please say Renee Zellweger, please say Renee Zellweger.)

Student: "The lady who does all the scrapbooking in her kitchen and makes tapioca pudding."
Me: (Shut up, you little snot.) "Hm. I don't know if I see the resemblance."