B-A-B-Y-S-I-T-T-I-N-G

In my last post (which you probably haven't read yet, so get moving!) I mentioned that I had my first real non-Fairwood babysitting job. Who was the lucky kid? Um, the third cousin of a town friend who helped get Uncle Sterling elected as a selectman. Or at least, the lady told me that the girl (yes, I babysat a six-year-old girl) was her third cousin, but she also told me that the girl's mother was her second cousin. Automatically I was tempted to protest ("Hey, that's not how it works!"), I who have to keep such things straight like so many of my readers, who are privileged to keep track of their fourth cousins or second cousins once removed, and so forth. But wisely, I refrained. I didn't need to point out the dear lady's ignorance.

 

Anyway, with very minor tremors of trepidation I set forth, and drove myself to the site of my first real babysitting job. Actually, most of you have probably been by the house many times, so I'll tell you that it's right next to Carr's store, and if you know where that is, great, if not, oh well. I'm not about to hand out other people's addresses. Well, if I was nervous, I shouldn't have been. To tell the truth, the whole thing was disgustingly easy. Basically I spent the whole time watching The Santa Claus with the girl, and then her mother came by after an hour and a half or so and picked her up. Then it was over. And people get paid for doing this?

 

But the girl herself was a character. Right away I could tell she was going to be interesting. A dark eyed, slightly Hispanic-looking girl waved at me from the window, and as soon as she had opened the door and had gotten my name straight, she began  jumping up and down asking me to guess how to spell her name. It was Jessica, and my mind flipped through the spelling, trying to figure out what was so tricky about it. Obviously there was some deviation from the normal, but I decided to play along, and spelled it just the way she was hoping I would.

 

"Nope, it's J-E-S-I-C-A. There's only one S. You see my mother's name is Melisa, and hers is spelled with only one S too. Her mother was a Spanish teacher. That's how it all got started!"

       

The girl's third cousin's husband, or whatever relation he was to her, proceeded to give me directions and began to recall an interesting history of the house, which used to be a school house,  and the work they'd done to it. In the meantime she kept jumping up and down, trying to catch my attention.

 

"Oh, oh, I know how to spell your age!" was the next thing she told me. "It's S-I-X-T-E-E-N!"

 

"Very impressive," I told her (or words to that effect). "And you're six, right?"

 

"Y-E-S."

 

Later, when we were alone, she started bouncing up and down on the couch saying my name over and over again, as if she were a chearleader trying to get on my nerves. Once out of breath, she told me, "You're nice. Nice like mice."

 

I wasn't sure this was a compliment, but since she seemed to think so, I decided to take it as one.

 

She asked me if I had ever had snow icecream. I hadn't, so she asked me if I wanted to see some. Taking me to the freezer, she pointed it out to me and then told me she was allowed to eat a little, so could I give her some? I wasn't sure whether or not to believe her, but I decided to take her word for it, and a little while later she was licking her fingers as we watched The Santa Claus.

 

"Mmm, I'm eating the blood on my fingers," she informed me.

 

"You're gross," I told her.

 

"Have you ever had it? It's good! It tastes like a dark chocolate and white chocolate mix!" Then she told me that she was painting the couch with her blood. Perhaps I should have been more alarmed, but she was just the sort of girl who would have told me that just to get a reaction out of me, and since she didn't want a bandaid and so far I hadn't seen a drop of blood about her, I decided not to be too concerned, beyond telling her to stop.

 

Her mother came soon, and then I locked up the house drove home. And thus ends my little babysitting story.

To sum it all up

So the Christmas season is over. Ugh, those words reek of despondency!
However, life is still great, and I refuse to let blothpickness conquer
me! I'm not quite sure what my favorite part of the season was. Could it
have been stuffing my face with desserts at the Dessert Banquet! I think
not (poof!). No, but it could have been a combination of any of the
following things:

~Watching the bibleschool students' powerpoint presentations.

~Making a gingerbread houses with the bibleschool (Craig and I painted
ours purple and gave it an outhouse)

~Sneaking up to people's houses to carol to the inhabitants.

~Swapping fun stories in the girls' van during the above said caroling
venture (like how Kendra got locked out on a baby sitting job by the
Maguire boys, and how she got Craig to call them and scare them into
letting her in; or how Clyde and Bria were arguing about whether Cara or
I should get a tricycle, and how Clyde tried to spank Cara)

~Coming in from caroling to sip hot chocolate and eat cookies,
culminating in a spontaneous, a cappella song of the Carol of the Bells
in the kitchen (and I loved singing tenor with Aaron and Bobby:)

~The Bibleschool Christmas Tree time--and taking pictures of it with
Clyde's camera

~Wasting ages of time trying to figure out which student was the most
tactful to ask Dan if the students could play outside in the
snow--ironically, it was Bobby, the least tactful, who finally procured
the permission.

~Playing Monster with almost the whole bibleschool out in the dark and
snowy wonderland around the Maine House

~Christmas shopping (e.g. yay, Kendra ended up loving the pink winter Red
Sox hat I gave her!)

~Going outside with my dad and cutting down our very own Christmas tree
from the woods like all cool people do in books (something I'd never
experienced before!)

~Decorating and trimming our angular, but beautiful Christmas tree (it's
got loads of character, let me tell you!)

~Seeing God answer prayer.

~Having Kimberly and Andrea around.

~Getting an e-mail from Amanda, my Aussie friend.

~Having my first real non-Fairwood babysitting job!

~Thinking about what the world would be like if Jesus hadn't come.

~Having lots of snow, and getting church cancelled one time because of
it.

~Singing the Twelve Days of Christmas for the home church service that we
couldn't get out of (this was after watching Dave's powerpoint
presentation on how each of the gifts were a symbolic representation of
something that God gave to us)

~Going to my first Conval basketball game of the season.

~Having my family home.

~Having a frosting party with my family when I needed help decorating the
eleven dozen cookies that I had spent all afternoon making.

~Singing and reading through a fun old Christmas program at my Aunt
Lori's with her, three keyboards, Aaron, Kimberly, Craig, Kendra, and
Clyde.

~Seeing the shy little Post boys singing up front for our church
Christmas program.

~Stealing toe socks from Chad at our church's Yankee Gift Swap.

~Reading the Best Christmas Pageant Ever out loud on our radio station.

~Going to Pizza Hut for Clyde's birthday

~Having the presents I ordered arrive on time, when I wasn't sure they
were going to.

~Missing my Grammie on Christmas Eve, since it's the first one in ages
that we haven't spent with her. (that probably wasn't my favorite moment
this season, but it was bittersweet)

~Caroling around Fairwood with my family all decked out in Santa hats
(even those who didn't want to).

~Playing games and watching movies with my family.

~Surprises on Christmas Day--like my new papasan chair! Or better yet,
hearing about Claire's baby!!!

~Watching Kristin Chenoweth sing "Taylor the Latte Boy" on Utube.

~Having dessert and a Yankee book swap with my dad's side of the family.

And so much more that made this season special! Hope yours was as
wonderful!!!

Mr. H's latest

You've heard about the whole issue with Beethoven, haven't you? Well I
guess lately there was some sort of dispute about whether or not some
music was really written by him. To settle the problem, investigators
decided to get a DNA sample from him to find out. But when they went to
dig up his grave (or his tomb, or vault, or whatever it was that he was
in), they found Beethoven sitting there scribbling away on on sheets of
music!

"Beethoven, what are you doing?" they cried.

Undisturbed, he replied, "I'm decomposing."

That's my chemistry teacher's (Mr. H's) latest from this very morning.
Hope it amused you as much is it did me! ;)

Weak attempts at sparkle

Okay, I've decided that my previous depressing post has been sitting alone for way too long. I'm well over it now (thank you so much for the encouraging comments!), and now how about some sparkle? Sorry, I'm too impatient to describe the Messiah Sing for you eager readers out there. It would take far more time than I'm interested in spending, and besides, the only thing that made this year very different from most years is that a girl in the front row threw up right before the concert. But perhaps I shouldn't be dwelling on that. Still, she did run out, but she left a trail behind her (poor thing), and it was enough to make you feel sick if you are the least bit squeamish. Fortunately the lady in front of us had some Calvin Klein perfume, and it was passed around freely so that many of the sopranos reeked of a scent which, ironically, was called "Escape." Some people in the orchestra even passed out cinnamon toothpicks to stick up their noses. Such ideas may sound unpleasant, but they were alternatives much more favorable than the more unpleasant smells that uh, wafted, or um, assailed those not far away. No sparkle in that story I assure you, though it's interesting in the telling.

Should I talk about the gingerbread house making this year? Craig was going to make one with the bibleschool students, but when he arrived late and realized how dull making a gingerbread house by yourself can be, he invited me to join him. And how freely the creative juices flowed! ("freely, freely, freely, and he that is thirsty let him come . . . ") While Bria and Jane beautifully furnished the inside of their house (including a deer head over the fire place), Vanlora and Katie K. produced a quaint church with stained glass windows. Some made dump trucks in their front yard (what makes me think that was Stephen's idea?:), or just trees, or even a backyard barbecue that very much resembled a bunch of cows sacrificing another cow. But Dave said it was a barbecue, so a barbecue it was.

Although at first Craig and I were at a loss for ideas, our gingerbread house was inspired by the purple house with green trim that you see in Marlborough, and it was complete with a fire pit, a duck pond, and a roofless outhouse (roofless so you could see inside, where the dear little candy toilet and toilet paper were). Actually, we did put plastic wrap over our purple outhouse just so people would stop asking why there wasn't a roof, so now we have an outhouse with a sunroof, which is very convenient if one like star-gazing. However, despite the ideals of such a construction, some students claimed that they would never want to use our facilities. After all, what would they do if an airplane came by? But what I want to know is, what kind of airplane comes low enough to be dangerous anyway?

On town trip on Thursday I told some of the students about NASA's new plan. Have you heard about it? They're going to take a bunch of cows, put them in a space shuttle, and send them to a space station so they can be orbiting the earth. They'll call them the herd shot 'round the world.

"Are you serious?" Bobby asked (or he uttered incredulous words to that effect).

Katherine laughed. "You're not serious, Kayla, right?"

Of course I wasn't. I had heard it that very morning from my wonderful chemistry teacher and thought it was so delightful I wanted to share it. But only one person seemed to think it was funny, and that was Katherine. But then Uncle Tim asked me to repeat it (I was near the back and he hadn't quite caught it) and he laughed quite heartily and asked me if I had made it up. I told him I hadn't, and he informed me that actually that joke was around in his day, only they said the Russians were going to do it. I was rather pleased that someone else besides myself could laugh about my joke, but at the same time I was a little put out that nobody else seemed to think it was funny. I just assumed that my sense of humor must be different. However, later I told it to Craig and when he chuckled sincerely I began to wonder if there was another reason. He suggested that people might not have laughed because of their ignorance of the phrase "the shot heard 'round the world," and I would rather believe that than deny the humorous wit of my joke. So there you have it, most of the bibleschool is ignorant and therefore can't laugh at my jokes because they're so beyond them.

Actually, pretty much everything I say is so beyond people that they just don't get it, unless they also have a higher mind that appreciates puns and other such simple pleasures. Or maybe my first theory is more accurate in that some people just don't appreciate me and my sense of humor. *sigh* But at least I appreciate my sense of humor, which my bursts of laughter at odd moments when I'm by myself can testify. Maybe that's why I get along so well with people like Klara, whose clever jokes more than match my own (which aren't even clever, just random), and who sometimes seems unappreciated just as I am unappreciated. At least we appreciate our own wit (at least I do), and we appreciate the other's, so what more can we ask for?

All right, maybe my vague jesting concerning my sense of humor (which obviously isn't as clever as I'm pretending) isn't exactly sparkle, but at least it's something new, and it's the best I can do for now.