Costume Drill

It is such a gorgeous day! Even though it's evening, it's about 72 degrees outside and sunny. I love the in-between seasons in the desert...the weather is just perfect (when it's not windy).

I just got back from taking Moses on a walk and he did so good. He's getting better and better each time we go out, which I guess is what is supposed to happen. I'm not used to actually investing time to train a dog. It's one of those idealistic things that I always say I'm going to do, but never wind up doing. But for some reason, with Moses, I've actually been sticking with it. I think there might be two reasons why I feel more committed to the "Get this Damn Dog Trained" Project: First, his size...I have this near-panicky urge to get him under control before he outweighs me. In my mind it's becoming this race against time. Secondly, Christmas is at my house this year, and I want to present my big beautiful behaved dog to my family, because where it stands right now, he's pretty much going to pummel the kids and bull-doze poor Grandma to the ground. But at the moment I feel really excited about Moses' progress, especially on the leash. Today a pit-bull got away from his owner while we were on our walk, and Moses handled it very well. He showed a little interest, but didn't try to drag me. He kept right on walking, so he gets an "A" for citizenship for today. The pit bull started to come toward us, but changed his mind at the last second and ran down the street.

Today was entertaining. It was Halloween Dress-Up Day at my work, so I went ahead and dressed up as a cheetah...or it may have been a leopard. Some sort of spotted cat. I don't care to dress up, but the kids love it when I do, so I try to be a good sport. I'm not exactly crazy about Halloween, but I have to say that the costumes this year were pretty adorable and harmless. The girls were dressed up mostly as fairy tale characters, fairies, and lady bugs. The most popular boy costume this year was a banana...there were a lot of bananas running around (did Wal-Mart have these on sale this year or something?). It was refreshing to see students veering away from the morbid, gory costumes. I especially expected to see a ton of vampire costumes due to the popularity of "Twilight," but there were hardly any.

The most humorous part of the day occurred in the middle of 6th period when suddenly the fire alarm went off. I was immediately surprised; a reaction any teacher experiences when there is an "unscheduled" drill. So we all had to file outside and march to the outer fields, costumes and all. It was like a costume parade, but the participants were much more confused (and let's face it, happy to get out of 6th period). The poor 8th graders were supposed to be at lunch, but they were required to go out into the field as well, so they wound up having to eat their lunch during 7th period and it seriously messed up the rest of the day. We found out later that the fire alarm was pulled because of a dry ice experiment that went awry in one of the labs.  I'm sure I'll get the whole story on Monday.

After school let out, I stayed after to chaperon for the Halloween Dance. It was fun and the D.J played great music, but it wasn't as fun as the last one because I didn't have Trin and Elijah with me. When they're with me, I have an excuse to dance and get crazy. Without them, I'm actually limited to strictly chaperoning, or otherwise I'm just the weird teacher shaking it by myself...and not even well since, really, I am a terrible dancer.