Check it out! The Lucky Monkeys? That's my fantasy football team. I am #1 this week. Ah, I'll enjoy this while it lasts. Fantasy football standings change every week.

I discovered the most delightful medicine last night for my "tune out" blues. A HIGH SCHOOL HOMECOMING FOOTBALL GAME! We still had 4 buckets of carnations left over and decided to sell them at the homecoming game last night. One of my dear colleagues volunteered to stay and help. We had an amazing enchilada dinner at my favorite Mexican restaurant in town. (Mexican food is sort of like barbeque...the best food is always at the smallest, low-key joints.) Then we peddled our wares at the gates. I saw several of my students from last year, each of whom called out my name and ran over with their arms wide open. We laughed and cooed over babies and gave away the broken flowers to little Mexican pre-schoolers. Two girls who aren't even members of our club offered to sell flowers for us. We gave them the last 30 flowers and told them they could do whatever they wanted with them. (They sold most of them!) We stayed through the half-time show to see the crowning of the homecoming ...

I'm the faculty sponsor of my school's International Club, and we have been working on our big fundraiser for the last month. Homecoming carnations. This pretty much just means that I haven't had lunch in two weeks. Instead I oversee teenagers in my classroom making notecards, attaching ribbon to notecards, sorting notecards, and collecting money. We spend 2 1/2 hours this afternoon attaching notecards to the flowers and sorting them for tomorrow afternoon's delivery. Folks, it's almost done. And I cannot wait. I drove home tonight in the dark, and drove right past my street. I didn't realize what I did until I was at the light a few miles down the road. That's when it dawned on me that everything about the afternoon was a complete blur. I have an incredible ability to tune out the world. All on my own. I've been like this since I was a kid, and it comes in handy sometimes. Like this afternoon. Sometimes it's a hindrance. Like the past few weeks. Oft...

I thought I'd share my thoughts on this year's Biggest Loser blue team. ! Hmm, that's the only part of my commentary that I am comfortable sharing here. Seriously, I have loved this show. In fact, it is the only reality show I can even attempt to endure. And that devotion hangs by a thin thread. I spent most of last season screaming at the t.v. and felt completely vindicated when Ali won the finale. This season is even worse. The alliances. The bickering. The lies. The crazy, psychotic blue team women! This show is about WEIGHT LOSS people. It's about CHANGING YOUR LIFE! The blue team needs to learn that sometimes that change requires more than an adjustment on the scale. I was so angry tonight at the injustice I saw that my blood pressure was through the roof. It dawned on me just how invasive hatred and vindictiveness can be. From my couch I could feel the cold black hand of ugliness shadow my body. I didn't like the feeling. If Brady had not been voted off tonigh...

Sometimes I'm amazed at the information my students share with me. (Just this week one asked me if it was true that "a lot of pimples on your face means you're horny all the time".) One of my students this year is an amazing poet. He truly has a gift for words, and I am daily stunned by his ability to take a language that he has been studying for only two years and craft poems that move you. This week he shared with me his two latest. The first one starts: "Bury me a poet." He goes on to explain that no matter anyone thinks of his passion for poetry and no matter how fruitless his dream of writing may seem, he is compelled to write. I so get that feeling. The second poem was about the feeling of desperation that goes hand in hand with poverty. That one made me cry. I understand that feeling, too. Let me tell you, this kid has talent. He and his siblings often keep me going throughout the day. I know what they're facing at home, and I'm always amazed ...

My nephew is 14 years old today. I cannot believe how time has completely flown. In typical teenage fashion he informed me tonight, "Yeah, everyone keeps talking about how it seems like yesterday I was just a little baby." I laughed and told him that people are saying that because IT'S TRUE! He was the sweetest baby I've ever known, and he has grown to be a fine young man. Bright. Compassionate. Friendly. Creative. And he thinks rap and hip-hop lyrics make no sense. Our world can use more people like him.

As much as I hated to do it, we had to mortgage our property. Alan desperately needs a building out here for storage and a workshop, and we just didn't have the reserves to pay for the permits and concrete and steel beams with cash. We signed the closing documents Friday evening. This whole process has me thinking. Over the summer we sold our other house and had to wipe out our savings to cover the difference between our loan and the sale price. We did the responsible thing because we the bank gave us the loan in good faith, and it was just the right thing to do. Then we found out that we had to pay additional interest and paid the bank more than the loan value (even though we had already paid down the principal). We're supposed to get this back when we deduct the mortgage insurance on our taxes. That just makes me angry because we could have just as easily walked away from the loan. We still would have had our new place AND the money in our savings account. But we don't. S...