Don't Spit, Joel

My son, Joel said that if I didn't update my blog he would spit.

That makes me think of Ash, my favorite character from "The Fantastic Mr.Fox."

So, my brother in law is staying with us for a while. He's going to be moving into a house as soon as they close on it and he needed an "in-between" place. The basement bedroom is that place.

The basement bedroom had become the collective limbo for all the family's stuff. Joel's stuff that couldn't go with him to Mississippi, Katie's stuff that didn't make the transition to the room upstairs, furniture and books that didn't get a place upstairs after the flood. It was quite a combo of items. So, we went through it all and sorted it out.

Now, there's a nice clean room.

Then our sorting out energy spilled out into the main room of the basement and we are in the process of turning that into a studio for sewing, painting, crafting, whatever you want to do. I'll get pictures up of the process soon.

My brother-in-law loves to go places and so we've spent the last couple of weekends going places. We went to Trader Joe's. It's a pretty cool grocery store. It has organic and Trader Joe's brand items. I got some killer chocolate chip cookies. We also went to Harbor Freight Tools. It is a really amazing hardware store. They have EVERYTHING! I almost bought a sextant, they really had one there.

I don't know how to use a sextant, probably would never learn, but it reminded me of the Great Explorers! Adventure lept in my heart and I felt the wind in my hair and tasted the salt on my lips right there on aisle 7!

We also went to The Container Store. One of my most favorite stores. It appeals to the organizational freak inside of me. I was looking for containers for the shelves in my bathroom. But instead I bought a door stop for my classroom, a flip flop organizer for my friend and a display box for a crazy thing that my aide found at school.

Let me explain "the crazy thing": a parent donated a large bag of toys and random items for our classroom treasure box. We were to go through the items and pull out what we thought our class would like and then pass the bag on to 4th grade. It was a large bag and quite overwhelming to me, so I assigned that task to my aide with the suggestion that she delegate that task to the girls. I knew they would love to go through the bag and make the executive decisions about what to keep and what to reject. 6th grade girls love power.

My aide, being the kind, hardworking person she is, went through the whole bag. Later in the day, she came by my desk and held out her hand. In the palm of her hand was a plastic thing. It was in the shape of a purple and gold  crown and glued to the crown was a naked, flesh colored baby. The baby reminded me of a baby hamster or mouse, a pinkie that you would feed to a snake. Kinda creeped me out.

Then we laughed hysterically!

I immediately thought it had some religious implications. King...baby...Jesus....I felt surely we had come across some religious relic. Right then and there I had the desire to issue sanction that my classroom be henceforth known as a "cathedral" or "sanctuary" due to the discovery of the Naked Baby Relic. I still haven't come up with a good name yet.

It was such an amazing find that I wanted it to be under glass. So, I bought a $1.99 plastic box to put it in.

We've done some research on the Naked Baby Relic and found this:

You can buy a bag of naked babies.

You can buy a bag of plastic crowns.

But you can't find a naked baby glued to a crown.

To celebrate Mardi Gras, people bake the naked babies into cakes to a make a "King Cake."

They bake them into muffins to make "King Muffins" I suppose.

They put the naked babies and red jelly into cakes to make "Scary King Cakes."

Then they serve these cakes to their friends. The person who gets (eats, bites or swallows) the naked baby is dubbed "King of the Party" and they are required to bring the "King Cake" the next year.

I don't think I'd want to find a naked baby in my food.

Even though that's really strange, I'm still going to keep my relic under glass. And I still want to name my classroom.

Maybe: " The Cathedral of the Naked Baby Glued to the Crown Found in the Incredibly Large Bag of Treasure Box Donations"