All Rileyed Up

My nephew drew this. My brother sent it to me with the remark, “Too many Tim Burton films?”

You be the judge.

*This picture also submitted to Magic Marker Monday at 5 Minutes for Special Needs.

Last post, I quoted Offspring. This post, Fugazi. What next, Primus?

Of late, I’ve been channeling my girlhood musical tastes and I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I’ve been surrounded by 10 to 13-year-olds for the past two weeks. School started on August 24th and I was there bright and early for the first bell. I get up every morning between 5:30 am and 6. I leave the house and don’t return until 5:30pm. Through the course of the day, I read, write, teach, talk, and drive 90 miles. And when I get home, I make dinner and pass out. And to think, I used to to think I didn’t have time BEFORE I started working.

As much as I’d love to tell you about all of my amazing students and the clever things they say and do and how their behavior makes me miss and not miss my youth simultaneously all day long, it turns out that I posess more discretion than I ever gave myself credit and take their confidentiality seriously. Instead, I shall regale you with tales of The Boy and Little No Limit, which begins and ends with the bloodthirsty ways of… BITING!

Let it be known up front: I have never had any trouble with biting betwixt the kids. The kids are enrolled in a comprehensive classroom of Kinder, First, and Second graders. The Boy, having already spent a year in school with a diligent teacher who taught them the finer points of following a regimented schedule, had no trouble easing into the rigors of classroom life. Little No Limit, on the other hand, just wrapped up preschool, where Free Play Time was the order of the day, and Chilled Out Teacher ruled the classroom. I wouldn’t have had that any other way, and I have no doubt she’ll adjust to Kindergarten, but the first week of school, The Boy came home every day and reported how Little No Limit didn’t listen when the teacher said this and didn’t do when the teacher requested that.

It being the first week of school, we didn’t push the matter on either of the kids — him for tattling or her for not listening. Little No Limit being Little No Limit, she took matters into her own hands to give him a heads up. On Monday of the second week of school, I learned that she had repeatedly bitten her brother, the final bite resulting in actually breaking his skin (and it was no small break either — full upper and lower teeth marks). This is a big deal to me, a huge deal in fact because in case you don’t know/remember, The Boy has serious eczema. While the prospect of dealing with a human bite is never fun because of the possibilty of infection, in the case of The Boy, the likelihood of an infection is higher than the average bear. Fortunately, it’s been a week and all seems to be healing well, and we had a looooong talk with Little No Limit about expressing herself (”no matter how mad you are at your brother, it is never acceptable to bite him”) and with The Boy about tattling (”you can let Little No Limit’s teacher tell us if she isn’t listening in school”).

In other news, I also spent some time on a deserted island, wherein I formed a survival group with with an elected leader with the people I was deserted with but then the group broke apart and most of them succombed to savage ways and they killed my sweet friend Simon and my fat friend Piggy and just when I thought was done for, I was saved. At which point, I wept for innocence, the darkness of man’s heart… uhhhhhh… sorry about that. I’m thinking about Lord of the Flies. Probably because I found this in my yard today:

WHAT IS A BOAR SKULL DOING IN MY YARD???????

Oh, right. I live in nature now. Ho hum. Just another day in the Life of Riley.

P.S. Here’s a hint to one of my future posts: guess who got a Kindle!!!!! I can already tell you — the Kindle is one bad mothershutyomouth.

P.P.S. Watch the video in my sidebar and enter to win a free GE appliance. Do it. DO it. (it’s just not as funny in writing as it is when Ben Stiller says it, huh?)

P.P.P.S. To anyone wondering why I quoted that Fugazi line, it’s because I was talking about emo with a student and that song got stuck in my head and then I was thinking of a title for this post and it seemed appropriate given how long I’ve gone without blogging. Ho hum. Just another day in the Life of Riley.