Thursday, November 28, 2013

Thanking a blog: Thank you blog!

I am thankful for many things but I am going to blog about being thankful for this blog.  I follow many other blogs and many are about real life.  I know that this must be cleansing to do but my decision was to make this blog not about my life but just the little things that occur within it.  I get enough real life all day long so I decided to use the blog to pinpoint things that make me feel good.  On some days, it is hard to think of a topic but I work with children and one thing I always ask them is "tell me something nice about your day."  So this blog is often my answering that same question.  Even if it wasn't a good day or it was just a "typical day" (my students always tell me that), I strive to find something that I can write about that will help me focus on the positive.  I couldn't think of anything the other day but wound up reminiscing about paper fans and water fountains (and later discussing this with my husband and sister) because the bright point of that day was my conversation with my friend Marla about air conditioning and us laughing at my ridiculously dramatic story of my "tough times" growing up without it.  I blog about my bunnies because they bring joy to myself and my husband and on any day, they do something that can make me laugh.  Plus, they are always staring at me so if I can't think of anything, it just gets awkward. (She's staring at me right now.) The blog about my grandmother's art, well, that one made a few people cry but in the way of bringing fond memories about someone who deserves to be remembered in that way.  The other day my husband asked me to blog about how good his meatloaf was but I refused, not wanting to write a blog on meatloaf (gee, why?) but he gets honorable mention for making delicious meatloaf, particularly when I have a lot of work to do!  I use the blog to talk about inspiration in music and lyrics because frankly, sometimes I need it and sometimes I ask people to read it because I think they do too. This blog is an opportunity to let me wonder but not worry about the big stuff, just ponder about the everyday and I love that.  Life is really interesting when you pay attention to the details. Hey, this blog started three years ago around my birthday.  I must thank this blog because every year I get tons of birthday coupons. All that free ice cream, is thanks to janisiswondering!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone, including you Janisiswondering!

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Is your wife hot?

On the topic of air conditioning (we weren't but I was with a friend earlier)...I must point out that I live in Florida and although it is cold almost all over the US, it's not cold here.  So broken air conditioning is a problem here even in November.  Strange but true.  Since I lived in NY most of my life, we didn't always have air conditioning.  Our house didn't have central air and our schools had no air conditioning at all.  Well, later they did in the computer labs (after schools got computers).  While writing about this topic I get the distinct feeling that I am about 100 years old.  Anyway, they did have AC at the schools here in Florida so people my age had it made down here while up north we suffered.  First of all, we had to walk to school in the snow, uphill, in both directions...wait, wasn't this about air conditioning?  OK, so in the summer, it was hot and water bottles weren't trendy (or possibly allowed...or invented) back then.  Did children even drink water in the 80's?  I know I had (and still have) a distinct fear of water fountains because you never knew when the kid behind you would bop you on the head and the water would go up your nose.  (Also, EW sharing water fountains!!!!  UGH). Whenever the class would come in from PE or recess, kids would take a piece of looseleaf paper, fold it back and forth and make a fan.  We would all sit there fanning ourselves until inevitably the teacher would say "stop fanning yourselves.  You just make yourself hotter by using the energy to move the fan."  Now, I wasn't an education major but I was a teacher for 7 years and have worked in schools for over 15 years.  This topic was not ever addressed in my education classes in college or grad school.  Now we all have air conditioning so problem solved....but I want to know the truth:  was it really making us hotter because we were expending the energy or was the teacher just finding it annoying to have all that movement and distraction?  As an aside, I am not really wondering the answer to this because as a former teacher and as someone who knows a lot of teachers.......hahahaah, I know the answer!!!!!!!  I didn't believe it then and I still don't.  Not going to use a water fountain either!!!