my lips not only mumble

today at work (supervising at the elementary school during noon hour), i overheard one of the grade 4 girls talking to her friends, who apparently have this "secret club" called "the webkinz" (kaylin told me about what "webkinz" actually are this afternoon, and if you go here, you can learn about them too: http://www.webkinz.com/). anyway, the kids (3 girls, one boy) were gathered at the tires, and the one girl said, "okay, guys, if i say, 'last one there is a rotten egg,' it doesn't ACTUALLY mean that you're a rotten egg. it just means that the webkinz are having a secret meeting, so you have to get there fast. but, like, if someone is always the one that is the last one there, we can call them 'turtle.' we can say things like, 'hey, turtle. just joking!' does anyone mind being called a turtle? because i don't, as long as you're just joking." hi-larious. i watched another little girl spend the ENTIRE noon hour on the swing by herself, and i think she was the happiest kid on the playground. at times, she was smiling really hard to herself. some other little girls came up to me to complain that she wasn't sharing the swing, but i was too enchanted by her to make her get off. i am realizing more and more that my approach to disciplining kids is maybe a little more laissez-faire than it should be. good thing i don't have kids.

i went to kaylin's after school for some tea and hang-out time. i cuddled with her cats and we talked a bit about art and world war III. she showed me some pictures of bats she drew in her journal. she is so neat. this is a poem by billy collins that has always made me think about kaylin:

Vade Mecum
I want the scissors to be sharp
and the table to be perfectly level
when you cut me out of my life
and paste me in that book you always carry.

i wish i could cut kaylin out of her life and paste her into a book that i could carry around. i wish kaylin would have a life filled abundantly with deep pocketfulls of sharp scissors, glue sticks, and books that are 1/3 lined, 1/3 graphed, and 1/3 blank.

i have a lot of homework and studying to do and i am not very good at getting it done. here is a fun new cree word for you to learn: cîscayisîpwâkanis. it is pronounced kind of like this: tsee-stsai-iss-eep-waag-an-is. it means "fork." another neat one is "amiskwacîwâskahikan," which literally translates as "beaver mountain house," but is the word for "edmonton." what an interesting fact!