potpourri

[constance]

More bullet-points for your reading pleasure.

• I love my friends from my erstwhile office very dearly, but man, that doesn't mean I'm blind to their faults, one of the biggest of which is that they keep sending me those goddamned chain emails. You know, the ones that insist that if I don't send this to my entire contact list the angels in heaven will weep and my children will get sick and my dogs will eat me alive in the night while I sleep and I will never find another pair of jeans to fit me as long as I live.
  
  Something mysterious about me is that for some reason I can't just delete these as soon as I realize what they are, and get on with my life, which is what I do with most delete-able things I find annoying. No, I must sit and read every word, getting increasingly balky and furious, until by the end I am fuming "ALL RIGHT THEN, BASTARDS, DO YOUR WORST" as I pound the delete key.
  
  Today there were three in my inbox. And so if tomorrow you hear that I was killed when a plane came crashing through my roof, you will understand that mysterious chain-letter forces were at work, and you can remind me of my folly when next we meet.



• I had lunch with my aforementioned work posse this afternoon, and came home with a burning desire to go back to college and get another degree, something far away from the unstable tech industry, something that doesn't involve sticking needles into other people's skin which I AM SORRY I CANNOT DO IT MAKES ME SICK TO MY STOMACH OKAY, something that involves small children -- in short, a degree in elementary education -- and I am counting on you to either offer words of encouragement or else remind me how many different kinds of hell it would be to teach for the next thirty years or so. Would you want me to teach your children? Be honest.



• I've been dreaming in fanfiction lately. I've had dreams about Frank and Alice Longbottom. Dreams about Anne of Green Gables. Dreams about Dream. (Actually, the dream about Dream was actually a crossover featuring the Longbottoms.) Dreams about Peanuts. I do wonder if I've somehow lost my capacity for original dreaming, but in the meantime, I'm mostly waking up smiling bemusedly, which I have to say is not at all a bad way to wake up.



• I am a sucker for that trendy pale aqua/chocolate brown color combination. Anything that can possibly be produced in those colors is something that I am instantly drawn to. And yet I understand from certain people that it is not universally popular. Do you have any feelings for these colors? I ask merely for information.



• Leory the new dog is improving daily, looks-wise. His fur is shiny and growing longer and there are no bald patches at all any more; he has this trick where he sneaks his 60-lb. carcass onto my lap in tiny, gradual stages that I find completely irresistible; and if there is anything at all in the world better than looking over at your dog and as soon as you make eye contact he jumps to his feet and trots over (because he is absolutely incapable of walking anywhere) as if he's been waiting patiently for you to notice him, I want you to tell me what it is because I need most of the inspiration I can get these days.

Anyway, hi, everybody. I hope you're all okay.

Comments

[tilney.livejournal.com]

I think if yo taught my children they would grow up to be imaginative, sensitive, thoughful, gently obsessive (I mean it in the best way individuals. In a word, yes, I think that with the good judgement you seem to have you might have a go at actually trying to get a bunch of screaming semi-demons (sorry, my personal bias is showing) to pay attention to you. :)

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

I adore the blue and brown. I also adored the pink and brown of last year.

I think you would make a good elem teacher because you would be interested in each child as an individual. You take joy in the small things. I would love for you to teach my children. From what I can see the job needs a strong sense of humor though - do you have that? I know you have a marvelous sense of whimsy but how about outright laughter in the face of chaos and mayhem?

[somniesperus.livejournal.com]

I think you would make an amazing elem school teacher in a perfect world, where teachers are actually paid enough and class sizes aren't full to bursting and people aren't crammed in trailers and the kids' parents aren't crack addicts. (My mother and my sister are both teachers.) As it is, the best advice I can give is to find a very wealthy district with a good tax base, where the schools might be properly funded and there might actually be enough teachers to go round.

You WOULD be a fantastic teacher. Forget my kids, I'd love you to teach *me.* But I'd be afraid you'd get burned out and discouraged, and I would hate to see that happen to you because you are so lovely. :\

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

The ever-eloquent somniesperus beat me to all the good points about elementary school teaching. On the other hand, my cousin's been at it for 10 years now in one baaaaadass neighborhood, and he still hasn't cracked, so who knows? (It's a draw, by the way, on who I'd rather have teaching my children- you or him. In the best-case scenario, you both would, exclusively, till they both graduated college.)

You know, my whole year of semi-immersion in the public school system saw me vaccilating wildly between, "Dang, I want to do this full-time!" and "What kind of crack was I on to even agree to 5 classes a week?" Then again, I don't quite have your rapport with children. What age group are you most drawn to, by the way?

I love the pale aqua and brown combo, too; both with and without the addition of pink. It's my second most compelling color combination after pale aqua and lime green.

Yay for Leory getting shinier! And no, there isn't anything better than the eye contact-initiating-the-trotting-over thing, unless it's the Lab-centric, "OMG I'm so glad to see you that I need to quickly go find something to carry around in my mouth while I circle you wildly or I may combust from sheer excitement!"

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

Others have expressed my concerns about the problems of teaching as a career, but I do think you'd be good at it. Do you have any professional experience with kids? If you really think you might want to do it, I'd suggest that you find a volunteer opportunity with kids and check it out. I've been a nanny and a Sunday school teacher and really loved it, but I know I can't be satisfied with the salaries available to teachers in the kinds of places I like to live.

That aqua and brown combo is beginning to grow on me a little. I like it better than the chocolate brown with powder blue that preceded it. Greener is definitely better to me. What I do like a lot is deep coffee brown with pistachio green and little touches of bright red. In general I've always favored the warm jewel tones, especially magenta. I really like the jewel tones with a neutral, say hot pink, orange, and royal blue with a golden brown. I always think of those combinations as "Missoni" colors.

*feels unreasonable urge to send you a Tibetan love charm chain letter*

[tinderblast.livejournal.com]

I heart Leory. Why can't he sneak onto my lap?

You have connections

[(Anonymous)]

Cammy / Rebs,
This is chris. You are in luck! I work at Educational Research Service and could probably get some good advice on where to go to school or what the jobs are looking like or salaries paid to teachers (i do that!) or ....OR you could come work for us. No, we don't work with kids directly, but we do help a lot! And we have a bunch of job offerings opening up. yay!

[leestone.livejournal.com]

Funny, I'm the reverse of Amelia--I prefer the powder blue/brown combo to the aqua/brown. However: pink, powder, aqua, whatever...I like them all with brown. Brown is so phenomenally underrated. We've discussed this.

I have lots of opinions about you as a teacher, all of which are positive. But I think I'll go call you to discuss them in person instead of typing it all out. ^_^