THE PLAGUE OF PEANUT BUTTER
I’ve been running experiments to see what causes my weird, fluctuating weight gain. Despite the obvious hypothesis of “Hello! How about that daily intake of ice cream?” I refuse to believe it –though I DID switch back and forth between no-sugar added and low-fat / no-fat ice cream, and oddly, the no-sugar added was the worst.
Hear that sugar theorists?? Sugar is NOT worse for me than fat! (although I’ll get back to you in ten years when I’ve been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.)
However, ice cream is the constant, so we can negate its effect.
I was talking to my dear friend Sarah the other day, and she mentioned her dad blamed peanut butter for his weight gain, and I wondered…could THAT be the problem?
I’d been eating peanut butter every day for lunch and/or a power snack*, so I decided to cut it out for a week.
Result? I lost three pounds.
Therefore, I wept and stared longingly at my jar of peanut butter and took a spoonful the next day. What will I do without you, blessed super food? What will I do without you?
*note: I typically do not put peanut butter on bread or crackers. I just spoon it from the jar.
NALGENE REPLACEMENT
It has come. My mother baptized it in soapy suds and now it lives.
BAD TEACHER
I have found a new obsession.
It began with me trying to teach The Hobbit. I read somewhere that Tolkien based his trolls (William, Bert, and Tom) on Cockneys, and when I tried to find that resource again to create a writing assignment about “modern day trolls,” it was nowhere to be found. HOWEVER, I came across something even better.
Cockney rhyming slang (!!)
Granted this has nothing to do with The Hobbit, but my students spent an entire day learning about it because I spent the last four nights watching YouTube videos about Cockney accents and Cockney rhyming slang. It’s FASCINATING.
I want to walk around saying things like, “Can you Adam and Eve it?” and “I can’t Chevy Chase your Brad today. Please just shut your North and South.” It’s a little like living in A Clockwork Orange, only not as dark or hard to follow.
So, as part of their assignment, my students had to come up with their own rhyming slang dictionary. They made glossaries using terms that are specific to the school. Highlighted examples include:
Post = Hasselhoff roast –> Hasselhoff –> The Hoff
Stoop = Chicken coop –> chicken
Pop to = Mountain Dew –> mountain
Slab = yellow cab
Taps = black man raps
Cover = mother lover (yes. I have sensed danger.)
Stuck = rubber duck (which reminded me naively of bath time as a kid. I did not see its abbreviation coming.)
It started innocently enough: “I live in the yellow cab;”
“Five minutes till black man raps;”
“I had to mountain dew on the chicken coop.”
BUT then
They shortened it (like a true Cockney would): “I had to mountain on the chicken.”
That just sounds…gross.
“Did you grab your mother?”
Uh oh.
“I got a rubber for going off The Hoff!”
and it was all downhill and “rubber this” and “rubber that” for the rest of the class.
Well.
At least they walked away with something.
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They Call Me Fushilou 
When a young teacher comes up with something entirely her own and gets excited about it, this old teacher gets nostalgic! “Cheers to you, you righteous red brick, you bring the floss some!”
Where are my round me’s? An original Cockney–Round me houses trousers I used to know more but old age has set in.