spring fever...

this morning, as i was driving to go clean a girl's house, i got behind a laidlaw school bus. for those of you who do not know, laidlaw drives the city school children. i was trapped behind this bus for about 7 minutes on a one lane street at a stop light with no turn lane in rush hour traffic. why did i choose to fight this traffic, who knows. i actually like to go early to clean this girl's house so i can return home in time for zoe's little nap. back to the story about being behind the bus. there were a couple of children who had already been picked up, and as cool children do, decided to ride at the back of the bus. one child was standing between the back seat and the window/back of the bus by the emergency door. as unsafe as that spot may have been, this did not bother me nearly as much as the child that should have been in the seat across from him. at 8 am, this child was bouncing with energy as he jumped back and forth in the middle of the aisle, getting in the other child's face, holding on and swinging from the emergency door, etc. he was not in his seat. it took all i had (the teacher in me) to NOT put my car in park (holding up rush hour traffic even more) make my way to the door of the bus, ask permission to get on and put those children in their place by telling them the dangers of standing in the aisle, jumping and carrying and on while the bus was in motion, etc. what a distraction to the bus driver (obviously this was a driver who only cared about payday and not the safety of children)! i would have loved to taken away that child's recess, given him the bus rules to write 100 times, or something to that effect. however, i refrained, stayed in my car, and thought to myself, my child will a. never go to a city school (even though i did for 5 years as a child) and b. will never ride the bus (probably since she will ride with me to the school where i teach). that is besides the point though. it is no wonder why we hear about bus accidents all the time. with undisciplined drivers, accidents are bound to happen because of distractions from little johnny's jumping in the back of the bus. "back in the day" my aunt (who is a school bus driver in chattanooga) would have slammed on the brakes and tossed little johnny to the front of the bus. legally, she can no longer do that, but if she could, i bet he would think twice about acting out in the back again. ahhh! spring is definitely here, teachers, hold on to the reigns until may 25th!

middle of stage rd.

i just wanted to share with the blog world what my mom and i did sunday. we took my precious little 17 month old daughter and dressed her in her fabulous (handmade by me) easter dress and placed her in the middle of stage road to take a few cute pictures of her with the gorgeous tulips. i will admit at first she was a teensy bit scared of the 6 lanes of cars speeding past us, but after a few minutes of reassurance, she gladly stood with the tulips in awe. it was fun for her to watch the cars and smell the flowers. i recommend y'all take advantage of the beautiful scenery before they die. tulips don't last long.

this last picture was actually in the trees by a walgreens. don't you love the blooming plants in spring!!

giant tampons

is it just me or has anyone else visited the wolfchase mall lately and thought there were giant tampons at the entrance? i would have a picture posted for all to agree with me, but there were several male workers standing around them and i didn't want them to think i was photographing them. please, someone tell me you know what i am talking about!

the neighbors...

i love our neighborhood. i love our neighbors. daily, we play outside together, monthly we have dinner parties together, we watch after each others children, etc. our neighborhood is culturally diverse. our diversity made a great "around the world" dinner thing we did last summer. each month we honored a different family and their ethnicity by eating their cultural food. we started with the "american"/"all white" family. they had "ears and beers" (the ears were corn on the cob). at that party, we planned what weekend worked best with everyone for the rest of the parties... one neighbor is a policeman and his schedule is constantly changing. over the course of five months, we had "middle eastern" night with our single guy neighbor. we had "filipino night" at our house (because of my husbands heritage). we had "mexican night" at the house where the hubby is from new mexico. we had "soul food night" at the the black people (african american) house across the street. we ALL get along GREAT! i say all of this to preface my story today. last may, one of our families that we were great friends with (who hosted many game night parties) moved to southaven, ms. they sold their house to a couple that was about to get married. color shouldn't matter, but for the sake of stating it, they were black. i have no problem obviously with color because our neighborhood is so diverse. we also have a chinese family that plays outside with us a lot (and ping pong in our garage a lot). they were not included in our around the world cooking though because it is rumor that they eat the pets in their garage (birds, rabbits, etc)... needless to say we were afraid of them to cook! back to the story. folks moved out in may, new folks moved in and got married in sept. it was obvious when they moved in that they didn't associate much with "white people." how could we tell? they rarely spoke when we said hello, they didn't attend the "welcome to our neighborhood" party that we had FOR THEM, etc. the female is a cop and last summer, whenever we smelled WEED and announced it out loud, they would close their garage because they knew they had been caught. we never actually confronted them, we just knew it. anyways, since the weather has gotten nicer, and we have been playing outside a lot more, we have noticed lots of different cars in and out of that house. we have noticed a young guy walking a pit bull, we have noticed that we don't recognize the people coming and going or parking in the garage. last week, they left the garage door open all day (by mistake). when the guy got home, a neighbor and i walked over to inform him. he acted as if it was his home, so i asked where the other two people (the owners) were. he said they moved out TWO MONTHS ago. ok. wait a minute. i live next door to these people. one of the other girl neighbors and myself are the nosey neighbors that know everything going on in our little section of the street. how in tarnations do you miss people moving out next door?!? so, i prod. "oh really! we never saw a for sale sign in the yard or anything." new guy (who looks 17) says in his best african language that i had to concentrate hard to understand, " we kinda just took over where they left off." how do you do that is what was going through my mind. he let us know that he and his girlfriend (the girls pregnant sister) and their other little girl were living there. i replied, "oh, so are they still married?" he was quiet and didn't say much. we later found out that original guy that lived there had d.v. (domestic violence) charges against him. wheels are still turning about what happened to original owners. we knew they had a hard time getting financed to begin with, they didn't live there long, and they surely couldn't get approved for another house or even an apt. could they? so where are they now? and who the heck are these new people with the pit bull (that is half of the time not on a leash and he pooped smack dab in the middle of my front yard two days ago)??? when my husband spoke to him (you know the "hey, how you doing?" kind of talk), he got in the car and looked at me and said. "ok, the old people were ghetto, but these people are ghetto ghetto!" don't believe me, here is a picture of new guys ride...

i guess it is time for us to start thinking about moving before people think we live in

hickory hill.

getting measured...

well, my birthday is coming up. my mom asked what i would like. i thought about it for a while and then i said i would like go get measured and know exactly what size these knockers are since the life was sucked out of them after a year of breast feeding. so, yesterday, after she left work, she came by, picked me up and we went to victorias secret. as soon as we walked in, the little girl at the door asked if she could help us and i informed her i was here to see what size bra would contain these babies. she asked if i prefered to be measured right here (in the front of the freaking store where every tom, dick, and harry can see how large these puppies are) or in the back where the dressing rooms were. DUH! i headed to the back of the store. a girl in the back told me to hold my arms out and she put her little measuring tape around these bad boys. she nicely looked at me and said. i am going to get you to try on a few of these bras... they are THIRTY-TWO A'S! do they come any smaller than that folks? she asked if i would prefer trying on the ones with some padding and lift. well, of course i would. i need all the help i can get obviously! she had some really cute ones that fit that description. well, i put it on, opened the door and whalah- the cups were too big. there was AIR between my tits and the bra. she then let me know that i would not be able to wear "those types" of bras. i guess when your boobs are this small, you aren't allowed the privilege of purchasing the allusion of more cleavage... heck any cleavage. so i was able to try on the ipex with no underwire, which luckily fit, and was comfortable. she asked which of the 27 colors they had would i prefer. i chose white (since i am boring and it will go with anything). they had ONE white bra and wouldn't you know that the right tit had been creased by the drawer. so i opted for the whisper pink, along with my free whisper pink panties. the bra was $42. that should be outlawed. a bra that really isn't even needed for tits this size should not cost THAT MUCH! at least i was able to use my $10 bday coupon and take $10 more off with my "free panty" coupon. i know it was supposed to be for the secret embrace bra, but folks the secret embrace bra is the one with the padding and i guess she felt sorry for me since my boobs are too small for those and so she let me use it on a bra that actually fit. i was happy with getting $20 off my bra. my mom swiped her card and we were out the door... with my tiny bra.

5th grade

ok. how many of you have started watching that new show, "are you smarter than a 5th grader?" i think it is hilarious. where do they find some of these contestants? like the first guy. a ucla law school graduate, that couldn't get ONE question right. the concept of the game is great. the wording of a few questions may make you second guess yourself, but for the most part, they are easy as pie to answer. i guess once you get into the business world you forget certain things. like what REM stands for or which boat the pilgrims came to america on. i think it would be great to put a teacher on there. surely they could get all of the questions right and score an easy one million dollars which, lets face it, is 25 times the yearly salary of a teacher. i know uncle sam would have to take his part, but that would pretty much be enough for a teacher to retire on! i guess if you were a teacher though, they would either, a. not allow you on the show, or b. you would have to go on under an alias like lawyer, brain surgeon, or some other high paid profession. if you have not watched the show yet, i recommend you put your brain to work one night to see how smart you are or at least how much you remember from grade school because let's think about it... everyone should know that polar bears do not eat penguins!