My Cardboard Balcony

If I could compare this week to anything, it would be a roller coaster. Not the sharp incline leading to the downward slope, however - it's not that simple, not just an up-and-down process. No, in this case, starting on Monday, the coaster was already racing down the tracks. And the last two days of work - Thursday and today (Friday)? Well, that was the loop-de-loop resulting in vertigo from too much blood rushing to the head. I don't know exactly how many reasons I can throw into the pot here for why things got kind of odd and definitely intense at the school where I work during these past couple of days. Maybe it's spring fever or allergies. Maybe it's the fact that summer is imminent, and school will be out in fewer than two months. Hell, maybe the upcoming STAR tests are stressing out my students (second grade and above). Whatever the excuses, my students have been emotionally exhausted or emotionally peaking. And it's been more than just a handful to deal wit

The Painting by Belinda Roddie The gentleman is a man of music – teaching it, not playing it, Talking of movements but never moving with them, Turning each note to dry theory rather than their mellifluous resolve – His wife is a painter, but only of what she sees outside her window, Though it proves that she sees more than he’ll ever know, And as he watches he says, “Perhaps you can paint music itself, You have the talent,” and his wife dips her brush in black, then white – Then in red and blue, purple, dark, light hues all mixed To make fire, storm, passion brewed in alchemy, fantasy, Gardens full of yellow roses – “But that is not music at all!” Says the gentleman, his head all crammed with staffs and clefs, But his wife says, “No, I have painted an entire symphony.” The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since November 24th, 2008.

So that was that. They would electrocute him. That poor old electric chair hadn't been used for years. Last time it was utilized, it was Larry the Beast, the fat bastard who killed sixteen people with a hatchet and a hammer. Six of them had been young boys. Probably because they hadn't wanted to pork his greasy, fatty loins. But now, it would be a runt known as Gerald.