I'm up because (I love my husband but) if you are already sleeping and someone else comes to bed and the bed is not a triple emperor size and that someone has congestion issues and that someone starts clearing their throat every 30 seconds with a persistent and thundering HEM-HEM! and it is all happening Right Next to Your Ear then you will wake up and CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE:
a. Claw at his exposed throat until a new opening is created and phlegm can pass inaudibly
b. Suffer stoically until he is asleep then return to sleep yourself
c. Gently pat him and ask if you can get him a lozenge, a squirt of Chloraseptic, a comforting hug
d. Stomp into the next room, pop open a soda, and cuddle with the Internet
Today, as I explained alliteration and assonance to those groups that bothered to read the board and work accordingly, I tried to use the kids' names to make my examples more meaningful. This wrought examples such as SHEILA EATS FLEAS (assonance) and MINDY MAKES a MESS (alliteration). Sorry. More than once I've told the freshmen that I chose to work with their grade level specifically so they could help me mature.
Not that I have a student named Mindy; wouldn't that be neat, though? Makes me think of roller skates and sincere short-sleeve banana-yellow shirts with rainbows. Is "Mindy" the diminutive of anything? Let's name all the great Mindys of yore:
- Mork and Mindy
- Mindy Cohn (Natalie on The Facts of Life)
- Somebody in a Judy Blume book, although I may be thinking of Moose from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
(It hurts me to not put a comma before "God," but this is apparently the preferred style, and I am NEVER going to tell Judy Blume she's wrong about ANYthing, except maybe her adult novels. And, by adult, I mean the ones about adults, not the ones about teens in adult situations that are hopefully still being furtively passed among 15-year-olds.)
(Also, as of last year, did you know AYTGIMM no longer references "belted sanitary napkins"? I understand why, of course, but doesn't that just lose something for us oldies? Take away the fuss of belts and bulk, and half of Margaret's problems/anxieties disappear. I've been known to spend many minutes enthusiastically talking about having lived at the time of the revolution, how I grew up with my 5th grade sex ed classes showing us how to clip the belts and pads together, but by 8th grade reality, everyone had gone sticky-backed. Many minutes. This is why I have a blog now and don't have a phone.)
Other: Yesterday, on a whim, I had one period read "Annab*l L**" backwards. Not word-by-word but line-by-line. It kind of works! Try it! Start at the bottom with "In her tomb by the sounding sea" and read it out loud, working your way up. Interesting, no? Well, I thought so.
I am hopelessly behind in NaNoWriMo - OBVIOUSLY - but I haven't given up yet. I used what could have been my writing time to finish reading The Other Boleyn Girl (yes, because the movie is coming, and yes, because I still get a little excited about all that Tudor drama, yet found The Tudors slow and unwatchable, hm), so I think the next NaNoWriMo installment will have to feature some romantic drama. I will try not to use the word "**nny," though. (I can't even type it.)
Was the book good? It was quite readable, and I enjoyed getting a sense of how mistresses were (supposedly) handled, such as with rival courts across the wing and men being rewarded and openly recognized for being cuckolded. Right now I can't imagine sweet little Natalie Portman playing Anne Boleyn, especially in the cold portrayal given by the book (which I don't look to for facts, in case anyone is worried), but we'll see.
What we really need is a juicy book about Anne of Cleves. (Or is there one already?) I know everyone says the whole problem with Anne of Cleves is that there was nothing juicy about her, but so? "Fictitious" was one of our new words in class last week. I like saying it. FICK-TISH-US. It's just fun. I think Anne of Cleves must be written into my NaNoWriMo. Perhaps some sort of secret society. (Originality is overrated.) Look for that this weekend, when it's a three-dayer plus a staff day, or sooner if freshmen hijinks drive me to it.
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