The Big Red Dog: A Eulogy

Raymond was a big red dog, arriving in our lives on the 11th of June, 2009. He was a slight 76 pounds, multi-colored, long eared, amber-eyed dog who had been on the road most of his life. He was wild, not house-broken and pretty much out of control...and I fell in LOVE!

I spoiled him rotten, spent untold amounts of money getting his teeth fixed, modifying his diet, buying toys for him to chew through and basically putting life on hold to make the world a better place for Raymond. You see, on the way home in the truck, this big dog leaned his head over the seat, placed it on my shoulder, and proceeded to sigh and snore the rest of the way home. Who could NOT fall in love (I just might have a weak spot for snoring men who sigh....since I live with one of those of the human persuasion.).

When we arrived home, he had his run of the yard and house, pee'ing on anything and everything, including the other dog at home. He was incorrigible, jumping on me, on the door, knocking us down...he was WILD...and we were...you guessed it....In LOVE! You might wonder how you can fall in love with a critter like this, and I can tell you there is no cerebral explanation. It was just that he enriched out lives, he made for some really interesting conversations..."Did you watch him eat that poop?" "Yeah....do you think he's always going to do that, or will he stop when he knows he's always going to have food?" (answer: Always going to do that).

We had been without our old (and wonderfully incorrigible) black lab Penny, when Raymond came into our lives. We wanted a big dog, a male, and one to keep our little Trudy company (she's a lab too). We wanted a younger dog, that would be around awhile, and one that needed us as much as we needed him. We got everything we asked for, except time.

He gave us "walkies" each night before dinner, walking around the yard in the twilight, laughing about the antics of the critters. We got "crazy man dog," when Raymie would run around as if there were stray wires in his brain, no purpose or path, just crazy running. We got snoring at night by the bed, and howling in his sleep. We got skunked once, and we worried about getting skunked again. I got a dog with velvet ears, who would lay his head on the bed at night and let me rub them until he could no longer sit up, then groan off to his snoring sleep. We got multiple trips to the vet, who always said, "He's some dog!" and we got Life in our life....He embraced us so easily, it was only natural we'd return the hugs.

Our little granddaughter, Peanut, got a HUGE dog that loved her very much, but would put his mouth on all her stuff so that she eventually had to tell him..."Raymie....I am NOT a toy!!!" But she also got someone to lay her head on and share a book with...who would listen and idolize her and not correct her reading.

Raymond died yesterday....heart failure...and he went really fast. We had no idea he was sick, but when I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and went to see him, it was pretty obvious something way wrong. We called the vet, rushed him in, but he died soon after we got him there. My heart was broken, and spent forever second guessing if I should have noticed something sooner....and have now realized that there was really nothing I could have done.

I couldn't have loved him more, spoiled him more, treated him better, or found him more wonderful. I couldn't have laughed at him more, bragged about him more, and been more proud of how much better he had gotten over the last year. I couldn't have wished for a better or worse dog, and I know he'll never be replaced.

Wherever he is now...they better be ready, because he IS the center of the universe and YOU will not forget it!

R.I.P Raymond, you were on helluva Big Red Dog!!!

Time off in the middle of the week

Today I had the day "off" because Jazzman had cataract surgery. I had a sub, for whom I spent untold hours writing up detailed plans for the day, so she doesn't get completely overwhelmed, like I was the first four weeks of school. I'll find out tomorrow how that went, I don't expect great things.

I feel like I have to over plan for the sub, in case they find a way to get through the massive amounts of material that I can't even do in a day, and have extra time. There is nothing worse than extra (unfilled) time when you're a sub. You don't usually have the resources to quickly pull that proverbial rabbit out of a hat, and create a new activity out of the blue.....so having lots of material to fall back on is the kindest thing to do. In addition, it holds down the possibility of the chaos factor creeping in to the picture and adding more damage control to my tomorrow.

I thought that I'd be uber productive today, pick the garden, bake, mow, get lots of work done, since it's sort of an unintended vacation. Jazzman doesn't really need anything other than transportation and meals, so my day is pretty free. Of course I didn't get much done, mostly because I went back to bed at 10 and slept until 1...so those three hours were pretty much spent in dreamland.

I WAS busy in dreamland, though, I coached a winning football game, gave the dogs a bath, and went camping with my granddaughter. I fought off one monster on the campgrounds and killed a very large snake with my bare hands. If one can count the amount of productivity that one does while dreaming, I'd be the most productive person on the planet!

Of course my garden still needs to be picked, the yard still needs to be mowed, and the house could use a good scrub down....instead, I've decided to dedicate this day to personal pursuits of happiness. Blogging, reading recipes (yeah, my blog is nerdy mimi for a reason) and basically taking it easy.

Tomorrow, on my way to work at 6:00 a.m., I'm sure I'll be thinking, "Now, why didn't I do more yesterday, while I had the time?" But for now, I'm just going to continue my personal pursuit of nothingness. After all, I've been told that tomorrow's another day.

Air quotes and other signs of the time

The other day, someone in my little first grade class said something that was really kind of mean. I've been really working with them on not being so mean to each other, since it seems they can be just vicious! Example: One little girl has chickens and she talks about them all the time, one little boy likes to hunt, and is not above saying, "and when I'm out hunting, I just might shoot your chickens." Ouch...for real! Of course this puts them into what I'd call a "pissing match," where she tells him that she'll call the cops, and he says that he has a license to hunt, and she decides to "faint" dramatically, and cry hysterically until he apologizes. Seriously, Scarlett O'Hara has nothing on this little girl.

Anyway, someone said something mean. You know, like..."Yeah well you have bad breath." So I thought I'd try to step in and break things up before we got to fainting and crying. I said, oh...little girl, that was so "nice" (with air quotes, using my fingers) to say to her. This stopped everyone, because apparently they had no idea what the air quotes were for. Little boy said, "Why do you say that telling someone they have bad breath is nice?" Me: "Well, I said it like this....showing him "nice" with air quotes. Little boy said, "What is this (making air quotes).

At this point everyone was interested, so we had a little lesson in air quotes. I explained that if someone brings their dog over to your house, you have a lot of fun playing with the little dog, but then it goes home. Over dinner that night with your family, you talk about the dog, and your mom says, "You sure had fun playing with that "cute" (air quotes here) dog." But what she really mean is the dog is not cute at all, but you friend called it cute, so she's using the friend's words but expressing her opinion that the dog was not cute.

I thought this was a pretty good explanation and the kids seemed to understand. But the thing they just couldn't figure out was why air quotes are even necessary, because if mom thought the dog was ugly, why couldn't she just say ugly, without all the hand gestures. I told them that mom was using someone else's words that she didn't agree with, and when we use someone else's words we use quotes...or in this case air quotes.

Little girl in the front row said, "Yeah, well (air quotes here) that's really "smart." Yeah, I think they got it!

And one more thing...oh, and one more....

This week I was sent to my "encore" meeting, where I receive "training" about various things. So far, at these meeting they have gone over the various software things that are required for the inordinate amount of testing that must be done for first grade. These tests are intended (I think) to make sure that no teacher can slack off, and all the kids get moved along. They are also, probably unintentionally robbing me of the desire to teach. You see, there are 7 tests, for each of the 22 kids, which are one minute long. In that one minute, the kid demonstrates whether or not s/he is competent at a particular required skill. If during that one minute they are deemed not competent, then they are required to be "Progress Monitored." Which, as best as I can figure out right now, means that they are going to be continually tested to see if they're making progress.

This of course requires intervention, for which time is scheduled each day, where no active teaching goes on, only intervention with those students who need it. The rest of the students are to be doing activities that can be done independently and quietly. Now the intervention, to me, is pretty much what first grade is about. Taking them from where they are, and devising strategies to get them further along the path. I have some ideas about what that looks like, and some intervention strategies that just might work, but I never have time to implement them because there is this computer program that has interventions built in, plus additional interventions to use, so I'm compelled to use that as my intervention, rather than the intervention I would prefer. So, you see, the intervention is intervening on my intervention....Oh, the horror!

And then on Friday, during encore, we were introduced to "one other thing" that we must do, via a "test." and some type of computer generated intervention plan. This would be the "Behavior Module." I'm not sure what this really means, but I think I document behavior, put it in the computer, and the behavior plan is written for me, complete with teacher instructions about how to carry this out. So, you see, all that education that I got, the MS, the additional 30 hours....needless, the computer will tell me how to teach and as long as I follow what it says, don't vary from the 1's and 0's, I'm pretty sure I'll turn out excellent students.

I was told, seriously, "This program sees what is needed and you can print out a worksheet to address that issue, it requires no thought, just click and print." Wow...seriously? That's the kind of education I set out to provide?

As you can guess, I'm philosophically bent out of shape. I don't know how I'll bet bent back into shape, but I did ask for some training on the software, so if I can at least figure out how to use it, I can make an effort to fit it into my style of teaching. I'm not opposed to these kinds of helps, but I am opposed to thinking that there is a prescription that a computer could generate that will solve all of a child's learning and behavior needs. Geez, if it were that easy, we could just turn on the television, set them in front of it and....wait, didn't we already try that?