wonky windows #25.

this installment of wonky windows is brought to you by paper. as an art teacher, paper is essential. unfortunately, i took over a classroom with a shockingly limited supply of paper, but i was so delighted to be teaching art that i was not about to be fazed by a little thing like no paper. and then a colleague suggested i cross my fingers and submit an order to the principal. lo and behold, my principal approved it and the order was promptly placed. so a couple of weeks ago a stack of boxes appeared in my classroom. super exciting.

what is behind curtain number one?

 

paaaaaaaaaaaaper!! this sight makes my heart go pitter patter.

wonky windows #24.

these are my travel windows...a few tidbits that made me giggle during our christmas trip to los angeles.

pringle on the plane. checking out the view from 35,000 feet.

have you ever looked closely at the lock on a public bathroom stall? me neither. or maybe i have and there was never anything to see. either way, when i saw the logo on this lock, it made me giggle. hiny hiders!! and check out the logo's picture...soo awesome.

upon returning to fort lauderdale, we saw this dude sitting in a room. whatevs. but then i started feeling a little creepy. we looked a little closer...

he is made of wax. art installation. right then. welcome back to florida.

wonky windows #23.

never a dull moment in miami. here are some windows into my day-to-day encounters with my city.

i was in line behind this lady and i was kind of mesmerized. and that's all i am going to say about that.

i see this bumper sticker semi-regularly. no comprende. i mean if you want to share with the world that you love and/or hate jesus, that is fine by me. but to be honest, with this bumper sticker, i am not sure whose side you are on.

a little old lady, who needs a walker, jaywalking across a six lane road. during rush hour. the epitome of a florida grandma.

wonky windows #22.

a window into my working world.

cut paper faces. this was the second project i did as an art teacher. i gave every student the same materials and then sat back and watched their personalities emerge.

as the sign says, these are collages. magazines, novels, textbooks, wallpaper, construction paper, glue, and scissors... a lot of the students did not grasp the concept, but these students took to it like ducks in water.

some more awesome collages.

one of my sample collages. i was showing the students that collages can be designed around color instead of objects. fun times at work!

this student finished her work early, so i asked her to draw a self-portrait and this is what she came up with. i adore the hair style and hat.

wonky windows #21.

i am always snapping pictures of things i want to share...of course i never seem to find the time to do my sharing. but here are just a few things i have seen recently that made me chuckle.

i took this picture at a cvs pharmacy. in my opinion they need to do a little work on their signage... when i want a soda pop, i have never before thought to myself "let me go and buy a warm beverage."

on wednesdays i work at a different school, which takes me on a different path than usual. i drive by this plaza that hosts the sexy shop and cuban cafe. i will never understand how these two businesses ended up sharing a parking lot. i am equally baffled by the shopping center two blocks further down the road, which houses a bagel store and a gun shop. strange bedfellows.

saw this sweatshirt at a tjmaxx. i immediately recognized that something was strange, but it took me a second glance to see what was amiss. apparently we live in miaim.

wonky windows #20.

looking at the world through my eyes.

yesterday, i went a-hunting for some toys for pringle. i did find some goodies at target, but i have to admit, some of the prices seem ridiculous, especially for toys the kid will discard after a few months. so thinking i might be able to find something in good condition and easy to disinfect (hello BLEACH!), i wandered over to the local goodwill store, where i found a couple great toys. yay. and then i saw these shoes. and if this one isn't bad enough, just know that there is an entire display. it is a ten-foot-square, waist high stack of boxes filled with this ridiculous footwear. i am eagerly anticipating the day when i see someone trying to walk down the street in these. as i am typing this, i am terribly bummed to realize i did not look at the price. clearly i was too mesmerized. unfortunately that means i cannot finish the sentence..."these can be yours for the bargain price of __________ dollars."

sometimes i try to act like an adult. here and there i think i manage to fool a few people, but not in the grocery store. i am like a five year old. who needs lunch when you can have a box of animal cookies?

wonky windows #19.

 this week in our wonky world.

on monday we found this sign hanging in our building. now, the mister and i are no strangers to living life without running water, but no water at all? for five hours? with a baby? oh dear. i decided to fill the bathtub, so there would be water for washing hands and bucket baths. yes, a bath in a bucket. the mister filled up a giant soup pot. when i was filling up a pitcher and some water bottles, the mister suggested that i was going a bit overboard, because we would not need that much water.

and then i woke up in the morning and found this...every thing that would stand still long enough to hold water was full. when i asked the mister what it was for, he said it was just in case we needed some more water. apparently, he had changed his tune. 

despite our preparation, i still managed to end up in the shower with no water. see, i went to the gym and when i returned, i planned to use pringle's bathtub to take a bucket bath. but then the mister pointed out that the water had not yet been shut off, so i could take a shower. my gut told me it was a bad idea, but i did it anyways. that's right. i drained the bathtub and got in the shower. of course you know where this is going...i got halfway through my shower and whoops, the water stopped. so there i was, dripping wet, with conditioner in my hair, and no water. thank goodness for the mister's arbitrary desire to fill every container in the kitchen. i raided the mister's stash of water, dumped it in a bucket and finished my bath. thankfully, the rest of the water shutoff was a total non-event.

wonky windows #18.

while the mister and i were running errands, i found myself snapping pictures. it seems that i am constantly entertained by the vehicles around us.

the back of this truck lists the number 1-800-CLUCKER. it made me giggle. when i saw the side of the truck, which features a large chicken, it all made much more sense. further research has informed me that apparently this company is one of the leading poultry distributors in florida. who knew.

there is something about seeing ginormous target trucks rolling down the street that warms the cockles of my heart.

we pulled up next to this car and the mister said "do you think they are scouts?" i was dumbfounded. since the mister is from lesotho, there are gaping holes in his knowledge of non-essential american culture. which makes it all the more entertaining when he pulls a gem out of thin air. when i asked him how he knew about scouts, he said that there are boy scouts and girl scouts in lesotho. fun fact i never knew about his country. although, i still don't know how or why he linked this car with scouts, because i do not imagine the scouts in his country have a ride like this.

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wonky windows #17.

wow. it has been a while. thanks to keri for reminding me that we should not neglect the windows!!!

this week is a window into a simple delight.

this melts my perfectionist heart.

seven weeks ago i gave birth to a little munchkin who likes to eat every two to three hours. since i opted to breastfeed him, we are sort of attached at the hip (well, actually it is the boob). pair that with the fact that his lack of vaccinations means we limit his excursions to public places and i am a stay-at-home mom. when i say stay-at-home, i mean, i literally do not leave the house. okay fine, i do. but it is rare. tuesday and wednesday pringle and i attend exercise class and on sundays i go grocery shopping.

holy organization. the joy, the joy.

the grocery shopping is sans pringle, which means it takes a bit of finagling. i needed a time that fit with the mister's studying, class, and work schedules, AND fit the munchkin's eating and sleeping schedule, so i picked sunday morning. early sunday morning. so early that i had to look at what time the store opens. 7am. that's right, this night owl heads to the grocery store at 7:00am sunday mornigs. eek. but there are some distinct beneifts. 1) it is easy to get an awesome parking spot. 2) the store is practically empty. 3)  the checkout lanes rarely have a line. 4) the bread in the bakery is still warm from the oven. and 5) the store is untouched, which makes it look delectable...hello produce!! which leads us to this week's pictures. these displays are always present, but by the time i used to show up in the afternoon, they were a mess. this organization; this perfection; this gloriousness, makes me want to sing from the rooftops.

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wonky windows #16.

a window into our wonky world...
the mister and i love fruit. not fruits and vegetables. just fruit. we occasionally eat vegetables, but it is fruit that finds us in the grocery store four or five days a week. mostly we eat bananas, strawberries, pineapple, nectarines, and apples. but a few months ago we added watermelon. don't get me wrong....we always enjoyed watermelon, we just did not consume it that often. now i happen to be a lucky lass, because i am married to a championship watermelon picker. okay fine, he has not ever won a championship, but if there were such a contest, i would bet a lot of money that he would come out on top. he honed his skills in the fields of lesotho, so the grocery store with plenty of pickings is no match for him. we always got the lovely little watermelons, which according to this ny times article, are called "personal melons." right-o. they are about the size of a honeydew melon, seedless, taste delicious, and fit nicely into the refrigerator. oh and the mister and i can consume one in less than 24 hours.

the twenty-eight pound monster.

as of last week, those personal melons are old news. we have now regressed into the world of seeded (gasp!) and gigantic watermelons. last week the mister brought home a giant that was probably close to 20 pounds. ummm...we ate the whole thing...in 6 days. today, the mister was not feeling so bashful. he bought a 28 pound behemoth that is so gigantic it will not fit inside of the bag he was planning to use to keep it fresh. are we having a party? uhhh..nope. sharing with seven other families? uhhh..nope. this massive gem is just for the two of us (well three...pringle is a hungry little one). this leaves me wondering...is it possible to consume too much watermelon???

wonky windows #15.

a collection of random photos from the past week.

this is a picture of my inner elbow. i had to go through a three hour glucose tolerance test, which included four, yes FOUR blood draws. not cool. now i know that my veins are challenging, but typically after some whining and griping, the nurses do hit their target and there is no problem. ummm..not this time around. this is the chronology of my arm. on the left is the day after the test. in the middle is about five days after the test. and on the right is seven days after the test. it is now nine days after the test and it is still the same. i am starting to wonder if this is permanent.

this picture was taken through my windshield. i was stuck behind this behemoth the other day and i could not help but chuckle. i always find it amusing to see gigantic gas guzzlers making claims towards environmental friendliness. now i realize that this company deals with liquid waste cleanup (i.e. sewage spills), so that is probably a good thing for the environment, but it still made me laugh.

i am overly fond of buying large bags of oranges, clementines, tangerines, etc. unfortunately they often sit on the counter until they rot and then we throw them away. terribly wasteful, i know. but last week i bought a bag and promptly devoured them. deliciouso!!! holy cow they were so perfect easy to peel and super duper juicy. so i bought another bag. and another. the mister and i have consumed approximately nine pounds of these mandarin oranges in a mere ten days. and the stickers? could they be any cuter?? i mean, seriously, could they?

this is the cutie that got away. it rolled behind the tv stand and bikes. the mister declared it out of reach for mrs. prego. i grumbled that he was being ridiculous. and then i saw the location and realized that he was right. grrrrrrr.

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wonky windows #14.

thursday afternoon rain clouds. i know people come to florida to enjoy the sunshine, which i like, but i love the rain. it is amazing. one minute we have sunshine, the next a torrential downpour, and five minutes later it is sunny again. sometimes it pours on one street and not on the next. this picture captures it perfectly....sunshine on the playground with black clouds rolling in. since there was no thunder or lightning, we stayed outside until we felt the rain, when one of my space cadet kids said to me "ummm...teacher, i do not like the look of those clouds over there." my response? "my name is not teacher and if you had listened, you would know that we are going inside right now." hmmm...not exactly gonna win any awards for being sugary sweet, but the entire class made it inside 7 seconds before the clouds burst.

this week's art project. i never intended my blog to be a stream of all of my students' artwork, but i cannot help it. i LOVE kindergarten art. it is so whimsical, so perfect, and well....so wonky! and it is a huge point of pride for me that unlike many of the other teachers at my school, when it comes to art i do not stop at drawing with crayons. not me. no sir. when it is art time, we take out all kinds of goodies and the kids are 100% responsible for the creation of their project. in my classroom the wonkiness is not a mistake, it is cherished. to that end, i limit my assistance to demonstrations, explanations, and unclogging glue bottles. and the results make me smile every time.

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wonky windows #13.

wondering what i do with my time? you are probably thinking i spend all of my time looking for things to photograph and feature as wonky windows. you might be right. but i have to admit, i find it seriously amusing to share my world via a few select pictures each week.

this is actually a picture i took about a year ago. it was a demonstration of my ridiculous fondness for green. i always knew green was my favorite color, but i did not fully appreciate how much it had infiltrated my life until i gathered just a few things to include in this "green" picture. if only you knew how many things were left out. clearly i love the color green. in the course of the year a lot has changed...my phone is now in a pink case, my purse is a lovely brown, my favorite sweater is too small for my belly, and my toes are natural because i read somewhere that nail polish leeches through your nails, so i am scared to wear it while i am pregnant. regardless of these facts, my favorite color is still green, right? ummm...well, i think so. although lately i have noticed that my color preference seems to have shifted over the course of my pregnancy.  i now find myself ridiculously drawn to orange. 

when it came to select an exercise ball, i picked orange. just the other day i bought a yoga mat. color? why, orange of course. now i am starting to get concerned, because pringle will be residing in our bedroom and we seemed headed for a huge clash between the pre-pregnancy and pregnancy decor. but green and orange go great together, right?

my wonderful mister. he has always been wonderful, but since we found out about the existence of pringle, his awesomeness has known no bounds. during the first trimester, when i wanted nothing to do with food, he took over making my lunch. and he has not ceased this production. he follows a list and makes me the same exact lunch every day. you might think this is boring, but let's face it...the lunch is working and when you are feeding a pregnant lady, you do NOT get creative. but there are often little quirks that make me chuckle. yesterday amongst my lovely strawberries, i found a miniature, unripe strawberry, with its little leaves painstakingly sliced off, just like all the big, ripe strawberries. kind of like a mini-me strawberry. the adorableness was not enough to overcome the knowledge that it would be a bitter bite, but i did struggle to throw the cute little berry in the garbage.

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wonky windows #12.

time for another installment of wonky windows into my world (i seem to have a limited number of actual windows, so we are liberally using the figurative definition of windows).

i kill plants. fast. but not on purpose. i know i am not the only person who is incapable of keeping foliage in a living format, but i might be the only person raised by a gardening genius to completely lack any ability to keep alive any type of plant. even those so-easy-a-baby-could-raise-it plants seem to have me stumped. the worst part is that i refuse to accept that plants are dead. take the one in the photograph. it has looked precisely that spritely for approximately two years...most people would have long since realized that they lost the battle. not me. 

people love to give me gifts of turtles. although i do think they are rather amusing looking little beings, i have never professed an undying love for turtles. yet for some reason when people see turtles, they must think of me. not that i mind - turtles are kind of adorable. the one on the left came from my grandmother's collection. the set in the middle is a lovely hanging decoration with lots of turtles that was bestowed upon me for a birthday a few years ago. the one on the right was given to me for christmas during my freshman year of college...his name is humphrey jellicus rex the third, and he has slept on or near my bed every night since he entered my life.

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wonky windows #11.

you might think i have some sort of fancy explanation for why i disappeared for two weeks. not exactly. all i can say is that lately my night owl tendencies have been completely overshadowed by this baby growing in my belly. i have been asleep by 9:30pm (at the latest!!) and the five hours between the gym and the bed are fully consumed with thinking about food, finding food, eating food, showering, and starting back on the food process. not to mention i probably spend an hour a day enthralled by my kicking and wriggling pringle.

but it is time to share a few pictures with you...

a glimpse into life as a teacher. last week this kid decided to throw a five day tantrum. this lovely pose, which was accompanied by a loud wailing, is from the playground where he was in timeout. there was not much i could do about his perpetual fit, so i just ignored him. i am hoping that if my own children decide to try this tactic, i will be half as calm as i am when it is one of my students. i can see you scratching your head wondering why i did not speak with his parents. i did. they informed me that he was upset because i did not give him a birthday present in november. ummmm...right then.

taken through the window of steak & shake, pringle's favorite restaurant. we eat burgers and fries and top it off with a mint chocolate chip milkshake. YUM!! but i digress. these absolutely delightful and yes, HOT PINK plants seem to be all over miami. every time i see them, i think to myself, "if i were a plant, this is the plant i would be." you know, simple with a flare.

i love bread. this particular display is one of four, that's right, FOUR, bread displays in my favorite little market. i would like this assortment to come to my kitchen every day. actually i would like this whole market to come to my house everyday. is there anyone that is not secretly obsessed with bread? i could eat fresh baked bread all day long. in fact the mister and i typically finish a baguette in two days or less, which means we buy about 4 baguettes a week. yikes.

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wonky windows #10.

it has become increasingly evident that my internal clock does not have a special alert for wednesday. as a result, i frequently forget to post my "wednesday windows" on wednesday. in an effort to avoid avoid false advertising, while still participating in this rather entertaining ritual, i am changing the name to wonky windows. i long ago fell in love with wonky quilts...probably because i just adore the word "wonky", so it seems apropos to get to use this term anytime i feel the need to share glimpses into my wonky (heehee) little world. so, with no further ado, the first installment of wonky windows...

THEME: reasons i might be 5.

(note: none of these pictures were taken through/via a window, but they ARE windows into my world).

i LOVE sugar. this picture was taken at school. it was the friday before my birthday, so ms. pumpky baked me cupcakes to celebrate. thanks to my unnatural obsession with sugar i have been known to out-sugar my five-year-old students. when handed a box of cupcakes, i was overjoyed to stuff my face with the sugary goodness. yummy!!!

i take a school picture EVERY year. sometimes two. one of the perks of being a teacher is the opportunity to get a complimentary school picture (probably a dubious perk, but a benefit nonetheless). although i almost always loathe these ridiculous pictures, i like things that are free, so i never fail to go in for my photo sitting. these are hands-down my least photogenic moments, but i keep going back for more. somehow on this particular day i actually managed to resemble myself. sort of. i am giving all credit to pringle for adding a little glow to my world (too bad he/she did not unquirk my eyebrows).

i dress like a kindergartner. i like to think that i look adorable and hopefully appropriate. but then five-year-olds, some of whom i do not even know, walk up to me to tell me that they love my shoes, my dress, my jacket... either this means that i am uber-stylish OR (and this is more likely) that i adorn myself in articles of clothing that appeal to small children. i mean seriously, what's wrong with a baby-doll dress, leggings, purple socks, and flowery corduroy shoes?

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