The one weird thing , ( well, not the only weird thing) , about working in a high school is that I am always having crazy déjà vu to my own high school days. I see how a lot of my students interact and remember what it was like to be that age.

I know it wasn't that long ago, but oh, how quickly we forget.

On one of the first days of school I noticed that a lot of the kids - especially the girls - classified themselves when making introductions.

" What's up, I'm -----. I'm goth. I like drawing on myself and skateboarding and writing poetry. "

" I'm ---- and I'm real chill, y'know? I only wear Baby Phat and my kicks are jordans. "

" I'm ---- and I'm emo. I think preppies are stupid. My favorite bands are 'my chemical romance' and 'death cab for cutie' "

I thought " how stupid, what is this world coming to?" Then I had a flash back to being thirteen, seeing Emily Harris jumping on the bed in her big brother's pearl jam shirt. I remembered my pages and pages of notebook paper covered in Beatles and Third Eye Blind Lyrics. I remembered wanting to dress like Cher on clueless but my mom not letting me buy whore-y clothes. At that age, you are a sponge to pop culture.

It sometimes makes me miss my high school friends. I never had an overwhelming amount of friends...but the ones I had, I have kept for the most part. Suzi lives 300 miles away, but we still find about 4 times a year to hang out. Whenever one of us is invited to a wedding, we take the other as a date. ( Boyfriends don't like weddings; makes them nervous.) I went to Aidan's first birthday party over the weekend...Jessie has changed so incredibly much. I hope she knows how blessed she is. The afore mentioned Emily is on a boat in the middle of the ocean babysitting some nuclear...whatevers. Just last night I saw an old friend, G. We didn't really become friends until after high school...he used to grade my papers in Mrs. Bissett's class. For some reason I would always bomb the Hamlet quizzes, and he would overlook wrong answers and give me A's. When we were in college we would go to Indie films and eat exotic food. He was always strange but rarely boring. We had French food at Lavendou last night, to celebrate his first paycheck since getting his masters in CS. I feel very lucky to have kept up with these people for so long.

So it's February....and I've said before how I hate February. This year though, I have so much hope! I'm doing something every weekend including: salsa dancing, teacher workshops, a super secret surprise for Matt's bday, and VALENTINES! The weather is warm and I've been following my diet, minus the braised pork tenderloin in lavender honey with currants I had for dinner yesterday ;)

Well, this post has gone on long enough.