Little Car

Today, as I was driving to dance class, my car started making a noise. I didn't like it. It sounded like a cross between crickets and nails being scratched across a blackboard, but quietly. It wasn't terribly loud, so I figured maybe it'd go away. I'd wait and see.

This is my general strategy for dealing with unexpected and odd automotive behavior. Pretend I don't notice it, and maybe it'll stop. It's similar to a popular strategy for dealing with pouting 3-year-olds.

It didn't stop. I began to reason with my car. "Now, little car, you are going to make mommy upset, and that's not nice." It didn't appear to care. "Little car," I pleaded, "I just took you to the mechanic a few months ago and spent hundreds of dollars on you. Besides, if I had to take you in, mommy would get lonely without you [not to mentioned bored, stuck in one place]." The chirping continued.

Then, Kathwump! we hit a bump in the road. The chirping stopped for good. The jolt had somehow "fixed" it. "Little car, you are teaching mommy bad things." The "just kick it and it will work again" theory has been largely acknowledged to be detrimental when applied to such entities as laptops and small children.

The little amusements

This is one of the times I wish I could do drawings for a blog like I can in my journal. Yesterday, as I was walking with the kids up from the playground to the main building, I noticed some paper scraps along the path and remembered with a guilty feeling that I had forgotten to clean up after the project from the week before. (We had cut out heart shapes from paper plates and covered them with peanut butter and birdseed, then hung them on bushes for the wildlife to enjoy.) However, the paper hearts had been left behind by the birds (as I had expected), and were lying crumpled and ripped on the ground - a rather messy sight. As I was noticing this, a squirrel caught my eye. He was doing the pause thing they do, with his paws tucked up against his chest, and in his mouth was a huge paper heart. It was almost as tall as he was, and twice as wide. He stared at me, then went leaping frantically toward a tree and scrambled up it, flicking his tail back and forth angrily at me.

It was quite a sight, though not as hilariously funny as watching Ms. Mack get chased by a squirrel (literally) earlier this winter. Now that was something to behold, especially when the headmaster's dog, Scout, came running out of the main building and chased the squirrel up a tree, rescuing Ms. Mack from her diminutive aggressor. What made it even more amusing was that the headmaster came out of the building right after his dog and saw the whole thing. He told me later that one time as he was standing near the building, a baby squirrel rushed at him and attempted to climb his pant leg (maybe thinking that he was a tree). Actually, who knows what squirrels think, especially the ones around here.

A few conversations I just must document with a certain young fellow (4 years old):

I was sitting at lunch duty with the preschoolers waiting for the other teacher to arrive. I wasn't eating, because there isn't enough time for me to eat right then, and I have my own lunch later.

Him: "Ms. Crystal, why aren't you eating?"
Me: "There isn't enough time."
Him: "You can have some of my time. My mommy owns my time. I don't eat all my time."

The next day, during an art project

Him: "Ms. Crystal, my brain is still asleep."
Me: "If your brain were asleep, you wouldn't be talking or thinking the way you are right now - you would be dreaming."
Him: "I am dreaming about you right now, Ms. Crystal. I like you."

This is the same little fellow who, as I was reading a story to the class, started rubbing his head against my leg and drooling on me. Who does that? Gotta love little kids.