idontbelieveingrammar

No less than a dozen times a day I have to utter these words in my classroom, "Stop taking selfies and do your work." or occasionally I'll just photobomb them.  #bestteacherever or I've even considered bringing in one of those duck billed whistles for the next girl that insists on taking a dozen pictures with her best ducky face. I love my Instagram, but I can make it through several days with out adding any pictures. And the selfies are rare.  Part of me just doesn't get how these kids can't make it through a 45 minute class period without documenting their face. I thought maybe it was teenage vanity. Or that sense of just wanting someone to like them. Like literally. They brag about their number of likes and followers and I am oh so glad that all I had to worry about in my day was a silly spiral slam book that might get passed around in secret.  These kids are documenting their every second and getting immediate feedback for it. I am even more thank...

Recently I've been taking a lot of pills. Prescribed ones, in the right amounts, before you decide to stage an intervention for me. They are for some unusual symptoms. About 2 months ago I started getting shocks on my face.As in really painful electrical feeling shocks, when I bit down on something hard, dried my face off with a towel, rubbed in my makeup and even when I kissed my daughter on the top of her head. Some days they just happened once or twice. Others a dozen times. At first they were so painful and caught me so off guard that I would panic every time they happened. One poor waitress almost ended up wearing the contents of my entire wine glass. Eventually I got used to these taser-esque shocks to the face that I could tolerate them without throwing things or swearing. Which was really good for my day job. They persisted so I called my doctor and the nurse suggested that I had a sinus infection and maybe that my swollen sinuses were pushing on my cranial n...

The story of Hosea has always intrigued me. When I don't know what to read but feel like I should try dusting off my bible for a change, I often end up here. Probably because it isn't exactly the kind of story that would ever come up in a children's Sunday school and even enough to make most adult ones uncomfortable. If you aren't familiar let me summarize. God tells Hosea to go out and marry a known prostitute.You might think, especially if you watched Pretty Woman, that if a man knows all your dirty secrets and choses to marry you anyways.....that maybe you'd change your line of work. Not Gomer. They have 3 kids. God tells Hosea to name them horrible things them divorce her and charge her for being a whore. And if this sounds more like Jerry Springer episode than the Bible to you,  I assure you it is in there. Just read the first two chapters of Hosea. What comes next gets even crazier. He tells Hosea To go find his promiscuous wife and to buy her back. ...

College Station is the land of tradition. I’m not Aggie….but I like to make up my own. In the middle of town there is a big giant big open Christmas tree made out of lights. Most people just drive through the park. But I always like to get out and go stand under it. Right in the middle. And spin. I probably started this self imposed tradition with a good buzz as a teenager and didn’t need to spin to make the lights all run together. And I have to admit it kind of feels like flying. Spinning, swirling, lights blurring, like one of those speedy action shots in a big city. I didn’t know this was unusual until I asked some friends to spin right in the middle of the Garylord Texan and they stared at me like I was crazy. One reluctantly put her arms out, the other I am pretty sure prayed that no one would see us. I didn’t care who was watching, I wanted to feel like that. Like flying. Like I was somehow right in the middle of all that light. Maybe even a little bit like I was...

Santa brought Owen a go-kart. Santa was reluctant, despite Mrs. Claus’s pleadings that it is what he asked for and that this might be the last year he believes in him. And doesn't he have any Christmas spirit. Even a little bit. Santa was caught up in details, like who was going to put it together, how safe it was, how were we going to get it under the tree and the hefty pricetag. Mrs. Claus only thought of her son excited on Christmas morning or driving little circles around our cul-de-sac and sent him text after text that they were on sale. And to hurry up before they were all gone. We did Christmas morning a day early at our house. Due to Santa’s demaning travel schedule and things like how impossible it would be a to sneak an entire person sized gokart into my car before heading over the river and through the woods. He was not as excited as Mrs. Claus had hoped. His sleepy eyes took it for a few spins around the living room and then we all piled into our real car ...

I started writing REAL Christmas letters about 5 years as ago. As a joke, in response to all the fake and cheesy ones people send out about how perfect their lives appeared on paper. A friend and I laughed about how refreshing it would be if people wrote real Christmas letters. Confessed to filing for bankruptcy or their kids straight C report card. A place where they shared the highs, but didn't ignore the lows. It would be way more honest and a whole lot more entertaining. Most people don't write Christmas letters any more, and the Christmas cards themselves have even started to dwindle. These days we do not save our perfect lives for yearly updates. We post them in our Facebook status and on Instagram 365 days a year. And I am just as guilty. I post pictures of my kids scoring a soccer goal, not the giant tantrum they threw in the Target checkout line because I refused to buy those little toys they put on the bottom shelf. (Well played Target). I post pics of my pe...

Something rare and unusual happened this year where I live.   Fall. Here, we usually we go straight from summer to a few ice storms that we like to call winter. Spring is also known as Tornado Season and then we go right back to summer’s so hot you can literally fry an egg on your driveway and make cookies on your dashboard. (I have done both).   But Autumn around here usually lasts about a week. That small sliver of time that Target takes down the Halloween decorations and puts up the Christmas ones. This year, however, the crisp weather has lasted a little bit longer. Even if it is erratic. One week I am bundled up in blankets, coats and hats in the freezing rain for my girl’s soccer game, and the next I am worried that I should have put sunscreen on her. Two Sundays ago my kids rolled up their pants, slipped off their shoes and played in the new fountains downtown for well over an hour. They were soaked. My son laid out his shirt to dry in the sun while we ...