What if? ~ The Meek Moose Waxes Philosophical About Windows.

Watch this move:

*click copy and paste *

"One, I need to blog. I have almost completely stopped keeping up with it, and this makes me sad. Two, I need to actually MAKE the math games I'm realizing I need in my classroom. Three, and maybe this should actually go first- I need motivation to do the two other things. But I don't. I just keep reading Backyard Chicken magazines and staring at the advert that says I can make 36,000 a year growing herbs on a quarter acre. And I'm on three acres. So really, I could be making half a million. If I liked the outdoors. Or could keep a plant alive..."

There.  See that?  I started a ramble to some FB friends and now I'm stealing my own ramble to have a blog ramble out of guilt.  Level of Lazy: BOSS

And now- staring at this picture- I hadn't even noticed someone was selling clothes for chickens.  Dang.  I could make clothes for chickens...

I also a need to flush out my brain.  I have no one to talk to at the moment except a three year old.  And frankly, if I have to discuss "linecraft" (at a certain point the speech impediment will no longer be cute) or how it is not okay to kill villagers because "they were looking at me" (cue creepy music and slowly back away.  DO NOT LOOK AWAY, just slowly back out of the room), I may die.  Possibly quite literally. Because if he isn't playing a game I cannot understand, he's setting traps on the stairs just like in "Scooby Doo".  And I don't know about any of you, but when I used to watch Scooby Doo, I just remember Don Knotts, and Sonny&Cher, and The Harlem Globe Trotters, and Jinkies!!! I do not remember being taught how to set traps.

Did I tell you that he karate punched my ex-husband in the tenders the other morning?  Yes.  Yes he did. But for no reason whatsoever.  He was saying "Hi!".  Hi-yah!

Do I have anything at all to say about school?  Or education?  Probably too much, kittens.  This is the Winter of My Discontent.

Which really means, it might be an alright time to dream a little.

Last night I had this really vivid dream that I went back to my old elementary school in Alaska to take a tour and interview for a job.  The fact that I am FREEZING in my basement at this moment clarifies the issue of moving back to Alaska.  No.  No way.  HOWEVER!  I am haunted by the architectural design of my old elementary school. One wall in the classroom was huge windows as I remember.  With like, a counter shelf thing you could sit on.

Not just the one little window people today think is all you need for a classroom.  The whole back wall was windows.  I think.  And does it matter?  It's how I remember it.

The point, if there even is one- is this:  How guilty are you of ever saying "Well- if I had my own school!"?   Because I am feeling overly curious at this moment.  Teachers are pawns to bureaucrats who have never been in a classroom.  So naturally we think we know what's best.  Maybe we do. So what if we did? I'm going to go ahead and say I do.  I know what's best.  There.  Gauntlet thrown.

First thing, damn it- is I would have a school where LIGHT, you know, FROM THE SUN, was a key feature.  It's like folks go to build a school and spend the night before they make up the design reading about Troglodytes. How old is this research about how natural light is better than fluorescence? OLD.  OLD NEWS.  But then we hear the lame excuse that 

This is not my picture.  Click to link.

"Schools have limited funds, so fluorescent bulbs are cheaper."

This is my horse face.  And it links to nothing but awesomeness.

Really?  Replacing bulbs that make everyone sick and depressed is cheaper than making a bigger window?

Click to link.  I like this man's head...

"But what if it's dark?"  

Yes.  I love my nose.  I do.

I don't know about you, but I go to school during the DAY.

Cutest toad ever.

"Sometimes it gets cloudy."

I am seriously having an amazing lip gloss day.

Stop it. Cloudy. Be ashamed of yourself.  It gets cloudy?  If I am outside, during the DAY, and it's cloudy, I can still SEE.  And if it were so cloudy outside during the day that I could not see, obviously a volcano is erupting and the sky is full of ash and I am about to die.  It's okay to close school if that happens.  I can stop reading a book in the middle of a Vesuvius-like event and run for my life.  And if you can't figure that out, you deserve to be covered in lava. And I'm not apologizing for wishing lava on you.  Cloudy.  Come on!

This artist is sculpting him out of wood.  Amazing work.

"But we're in a building during a cloudy day so it's not as bright."

I can even make my face look uglier than this.  It's a gift.

MAKE BIG WINDOWS.  Did we not start with that?  The windows are going to be BIG, and there will be more of them.  You will think you are freaking outside even though you're on the inside.

Adorable.

"I think that would make the building cold."

Told ya.

...

Let's imagine for a minute that instead of buying cheap windows, with cracks in them like we're living in the 1800s, that we bought windows that were of superior quality and actually helped regulate temperature?  Or that we took the money we saved on fluorescent bulbs and paid for a quality heat source.  Orrrr that people put on a sweater when they got chilly?

"Yeah, ok.  But don''t you think it would be really loud if it rained?"

I'm going to put this on the on-line dating site as a profile pic.

Forget it.  I'm going to go listen to Justin Timberlake and crochet a sweater for my chickens.

Side note.  I took twenty pictures of myself just to get one I was willing to send as a text message to a guy who has lips like this:

He agreed that I was having a good lip gloss day. However, you all are the only people benefiting from any of this.  The Meek Moose has been put out to pasture.