The Perfect Memorial Day

 The secret to a successful holiday...

1. Sleeping in

2. Warm banana muffins

3. Pool party with 40 of your favorite people

  4. A BBQ

 5. Lounging around...

 6. and playing Mario Kart with your best friend.

It was definitely a success.

The End.

This is it, my friends.

There are three days left of school.

Hallelujah.

May has been quite the crazy month- and I am so happy it's almost over.

I wanna share with you ONE more set of "Top Tens" before I take a three month hiatus.

Enjoy.

10.

I've taken to locking my door during my conference period.

Does that make me a bad person?

My conference period is 8th period and there are Seniors that roam the halls with nothing to do because they have "filler" classes.

Filler classes are SUPPOSED to be a time when they can leave early and go do some good in the workforce.... but a lot of them just hang out.

A lot of them like to come to my room to play their ghetto booty music.

Nope.

Sorry.

Not happening.

So now I lock my door, so I can get something done.

I just want peace and quiet- is that too much to ask?

9.

Speaking of locking my door, students will come up and yank and pull on my door.... then  walk down the hall and try my other door... and yank and pull and yank and pull and yank and pull. Then they come back to the first door... and repeat.

Maybe they think if they pull long enough that it will magically open?

Or, wait- I know...

They think they're strong enough to rip the lock out of the door frame?

8.

No matter how many times I say pirouette (which is pronounced peer-oh-wet) this ONE student STILL calls it a peer-oh-way.

Cracks me up!

Maybe she's pretending to be French?

I dunno.

7.

All throughout the year my students have given me the criticism that I'm too nice.

They tell me I need to be meaner.

But I tell you- being nice has it's advantages....

When I got back from jury duty and found out that my kids went crazy and didn't do ANYTHING while I was gone-

I laid the smack down and yelled raised my voice at them...

AND all my students piddled their pants.

It was AWE.SOME.

As they were walking out of class one student asked...

"Mrs. Brame... *sniff* *sniff* don't *sniff* ever do that again! *sniff* Are we still *sniff* friends?"

6.

I overheard this the other day while my students were walking out of class...

"OMG! When I laugh, like, my butt cheeks squeeze in!"

TMI girl... TMI.

5.

I'm pretty sure they should change my title from "Dance Teacher" to "Dance/Sex Ed Teacher".

I talk up abstinence to these girls everyday because they're always worried about being prego.

They didn't even know that there's a certain window of days where they're more likely to become pregnant.

Really?

What are they teaching these kids? I feel like this is something they need to know if they're going to choose this type of lifestyle!

4.

"So You Think You Can Dance" is the best thing that ever happened to the dance class.

I put clips of the show on- and my students are mesmerized and inspired.

I love it.

I can't wait for this season

:)

3.

I'm thinking it should be illegal to have school after Memorial Day.

It's like giving a kid of piece of candy and then taking it away before they've eaten it all!

Here you go- a small taste of summer... PSYCH you hafta go back to school tomorrow!

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

2.

National Teacher Appreciation Week was a couple weeks ago.

And I found these in my box.
(click to enlarge)

These letters were the sweetest things ever.

Made my whole year of teaching worth it

1.

I think I have "officially" been accepted into this high school's ghetto culture...

I was given a new nickname...

"Brame-aneesha"

Has a nice ring to it..

Dontcha think?

27 in San Antone

We spent the weekend in San Antonio-

normally we have a clogging performance in San Antonio every Mother's Day weekend 

(see past posts here and here) 

and we were SUPPOSED to have another performance this year... 

but it was canceled.

But alas, we booked a hotel through Priceline- and HAD to still go.

Darn

:)

AND it coincided nicely with someone turning 27 this past weekend.

3 hour drive to San Antonio

 Blunt bumper sticker on the way.

 

We hung out around the Riverwalk Friday night, saw "Avengers", and ate yummy Mexican food.

PS- the weather was amazing!

Neither hot nor humid.

That never happens.

 

cool cloud...

 Riverwalk by night

We stayed at "The Menger" hotel... 

oldest hotel in San Antonio!

Apparently Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders liked to stay there, too back in the day.

Oh yeah- and rumor has it... it's haunted.

Saturday was someone's birthday and it started off with a lovely birthday breakfast at "Schilo's"- famous for their German cuisine...

We had potato pancakes with homemade applesauce-

dee lish.

The next part of the day wasn't as happy as eating....

our car was broken into.

Lame.

 Here we are...

making the police report.

Lamest part?

(Well besides people being jerks and thinking they can do whatever they want to other people's stuff)

THEY stole our bag of dance shoes...

that was in our trunk.

It wasn't even sitting out in the main part of the car.

In fact nothing was in the main part of the car.

I digress.

A bag of dance shoes...

Really?

I'm positive all those shoes are sitting in a dumpster somewhere in San Antonio because used dance shoes are worthless to someone like jerk-face robber.

BUT they're valuable to people like US!

Each pair of shoes is probably $80-$100, and we had EIGHT pairs of shoes in said bag.

Yep...

you do the math.

It was a blow.

BUT we took care of things and moved on to happier places.

Like SeaWorld!

We had a birthday to celebrate after all!

 We rate it the third happiest place on Earth...

(Harry Potter world #1, and DisneyWorld #2)

We saw dolphins...

 White beluga whales...

(cutest guy ever. I want one.)

Sea lions...

 Mr. Walrus...

 Rode lots of scary rollercoasters!

 And we sat in the Splash Zone to see...

 Shamu!

And wet we DID get!

 Shamu was amazing.

 I want a pet whale, too.

 SeaWorld was the perfect thing to take our minds off our broken car.

That night we went back to the Riverwalk for birthday dinner...

And remembered the Alamo on the way home...

(with our clogging friends)

 Sunday morning we cleaned up the glass in our poor car...

(and probably ruined that car wash's vacuum in the process... whoops)

 Created a ghetto-fabulous makeshift window...

And headed home :)

Hopefully a "car break-in" the morning of my 27th isn't indicative of how this year will turn out!

Happy Birthday to me.

The Week from H-E-double toothpicks

Excuse my language- but it was the week from hell.

No other way to describe it. 

I've never been so frustrated in all my life.

Want to hear about it?

Here we go...

Jon and I BOTH received a jury summons in the mail.

(Random pickings my foot- I knew I never should have registered to vote in Harris county!)

Jon was exempt because he's a full-time student.

I, on the other hand, was not.

It was to be April 30th, the Monday before our school's Spring Show, but I didn't think anything of it BECAUSE everyone and their dog had told me that they'd NEVER been picked for jury duty, and that they'd let you leave around noon, and have the rest of the day off, and it was wonderful, blah-dee, blah-dee, blah.

A-huh.

 It all started with this line.

In come 600 hundred of Harris counties finest all awaiting their fate.

To jury duty? or not to jury duty?

Lucky for me- I was one of the 48 picked out of my room of 200.

We went through hours and hours of them selecting the jury...
 very inefficiently, I may add.

Out of the 48...

12 are selected as jurors.

And I was one.

Thus begins the drama.

My students at school are a mess because I'm not there.

Spring show is in two days and I'm supposed to be holding rehearsals everyday after school.

Because I'm not there- my students are going crazy in classes.

Nothing is getting done.

My subs were lazy and incompetent.

And I'm hearing all of this through frazzled students who now no longer want to be in Spring Show.

I'm running from jury duty (which gets done at 4:30) over to my school (which is a half hour drive away) to have rehearsals with WHATEVER students could stay.

Dress rehearsal I had three girls there.  
Three.

I was a mess.

My students were a mess.

It was not pretty.

Not to mention that my mentor teacher and administration is thinking I'm completely incompetent of  putting together two (measly) dances.

So instead of being at school- I got to spend my mornings fighting traffic....

to be downtown at the courthouse.

I don't know how, but come Thursday and by some merciful act of God- we pulled it off.

Students showed up to perform for the show that night.

They got their costumes and thought they were the prettiest things on Earth.

They danced beautifully- and by closing night we had no almost no mistakes.

 Our theme for the show...
"Dance Hero- Warriors of Dance"
all the music was "Rock and Roll".

One of our girls was M.I.A. Thursday night... so I danced in her spot.
I look like a student, right?

Ok maybe not.

Now I'm on my 8th day of jury duty.
Oh yeah- it's still not over.
We should be done tomorrow....? Maybe?
But I do know one thing.
I never want to see a lawyer EVER again.