jennifer patel

When I reflected on 2015, searching for inspiration to write an end of year post, I think the thing that surprised me the most about this particular year was...back fat. Used to have a little now I have a lot, No matter where I go, I know where I came from - Jenny from the block Even Pinterest knew. I didn't get on Pinterest from August until now and this is what showed up when I returned on my 'suggested for me' pins. Another memory that stands out is at the local park in my neighborhood back in October. There were two boys sitting on top of a tunnel and talking. They couldn't have been older than 4th or 5th grade. I started eavesdropping their conversation. One boy said to the other, "Have you ever noticed that the older you get, the worse life is?..." Conversations were getting deep at the park that day. The idea that these two boys were talking philosophy at the park was cute enough to burst my heart...and a bursting heart was the theme of t...

Most people, especially parents, know of the famous children's book, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. What you might not know is that she wrote hundreds of children's stories in her short life. When Alex and I went to the library a few weeks ago to get Christmas books, the library had all the Christmas books displayed on top of the shelves. We picked up Brown's The Little Fir Tree and added it to our stack. Since we also got Star Wars books, the less appealing  The Little Fir Tree did not get read until the day before the books were due. Even the Hanukkah book got read twice before The Little Fir Tree . Alex is not an inquisitive child during book reading. He doesn't stop us to ask questions and he only talks if we ask him a question, which we occasionally do to gauge brain activity. I saw the word coming up on the page and decided that I hated the word (a truly disgusting word when used to describe a body part) but would read it anyway...You know, to st...

Dear Hertz, My family only owns sedans. To accommodate our combined numbers, we rented a larger vehicle from your establishment (DFW Airport location) for a day trip to visit my grandparents. We have rented several cars from your company across the U.S. and have always been pleased with the service. We have also been fairly responsible about our belongings until this Christmas Eve. When we returned on Christmas Eve night everyone grabbed stuff and headed into the house, weary from travel. My husband still had to run presents to nearby family and it was nearing 10 P.M. He was rushing to return the car and we did sort of the equivalent of the McCallister family counting the neighbor kid instead of their son, Kevin. Only instead of leaving a child at home, we left some of our belongings in the rental. So not really like that at all; I just wanted to reference Home Alone . Once I realized our mistake, I drove back to DFW Airport hoping that since we just dropped it off half an hour ...

Daylight walks though... Nothing brings a week of great weather to an end like the Dallas Marathon weekend. E and I got to take a rare walk in the daylight today. It was muggy and disgusting, but beautiful. I love when I realize that after driving to and from work day in and day out, the trees have gone from green to autumn. Actually, compared to our 5 AM walks, I love being able to enjoy not worrying about being abducted or killed. (as much) On our walk, I saw three children raking leaves in their yard. It took me back to the time when my Mom would make us rake leaves...which would have been fine. But my Mom made us rake leaves before they had all fallen off the tree. I remember arguing, vehemently, my logic that it would be better to wait until the tree was bare before raking. Why waste multiple days raking when you could just do it all in one day?! Obviously, I ended up raking leaves before the tree was bare. It was infuriating and one time I threw the rake up in the tree...

This table was clean for 2 days only...the day before and the day of Thanksgiving. That plate has been cleaned and refilled and cleaned and refilled and cleaned and refilled...WWF (Writing while fat...or full) This week has been a bit of a faux break.  I am so thankful that I got a week off from actual work where I had to wake up and follow a schedule. We also got to spend a little time with our awesome families. I knew though, that I could not sit around all week and do nothing...or things I wanted to do (like watch 48 recorded episodes of Ellen... Oh, I will watch them)... Because there are 2 more major papers due before the middle of December and my house hadn't been deep cleaned in approximately 2 months.  This week, though, was a tiny taste of true freedom coming in about 3 weeks.  So now as I sit in my 65 degree house (supposed to be grading) and watch the rain outside in my awesomely more clean house, I rehash Thanksgiving: These people snapped 4 pou...

This is one of the points in the year when I.Cannot.Even. There are only three days left (now 2) until our first big break and I feel like my brain stays at home while my body goes to work. The students are in the same boat and we are slowly sinking together. One year at my old school during state testing, we had to eat in the room with our students. I just happened to bring leftover Pei Wei that day AND had snagged a pair of chopsticks to eat it with. That was so dumb. I had NEVER done either of those things before, and the students then thought I ate out of Chinese containers with chopsticks for every meal. Because of course I did. Today, history repeated itself and a teacher offered me one of her take out egg rolls at lunch. Even though I was like, "Oh, I can't eat that, blah blah blah, healthy eating, blah blah blah..." I then took it without much contest at all. Instead of eating it in the lounge, I sauntered off to the hallway to walk back to my classroo...

Originally Written 11/13/15 Obviously this picture is terrible...I don't want to get fired! I attended my first middle school dance tonight...since I was in middle school. I didn't have a bad attitude about it as I was definitely interested in how it was going to turn out, but I also had many other things to do tonight. Friday night is laundry/grad school discussion response/paper outlining/reading night. I am so glad I volunteered though, because this dance had everything: * Songs I no longer know * Awkward groups of friends who didn't want to dance, just standing around throwing out the vibe * Boys chasing girls chasing boys chasing girls * No slow dances! * Kids doing the Thriller dance perfectly! * Whip and Nae Nae * A boy who didn't want to be there, sitting against the exit door, hugging his knees the whole time (The same boy the girls scratched on the 'No No List' in the bathroom). * My sixth graders dressed so sweetly! I don't get t...

I just finished up an online writing center appointment for a paper due next week. It was so bizarre. I almost wished to be face-to-face with a bored, grad student, whose face screams, "Your paper sucks!" while they try to give you constructive criticism (in a foreign accent). Instead, I could have been chatting with "Evelyn" from India for all I know. There could have been a group of people laughing so hard they cried at how terrible my paper was...or asleep because it's actually the most boring paper ever. It was convenient, but so bizarre. I've had a lot of ideas...some of them turn out okay, some of them not so much. Deciding that I would be able to handle grad school and work school was a bit ambitious of me, but luckily the end of the semester is near. I really miss all the things. GrayWatch 2015 (where I keep an eye out for gray hair) might end this year. So far in November... I know what you're thinking. And you're right. This...

As we were driving out of the alley Sunday night on the way to dinner, I saw this hawk standing on our neighbor's lawn surrounded by plumage...lots of plumage. He/she didn't fly away right away. As we watched, they stomped the ground with their feet. I usually think of my Dad when I see a hawk because he's the one who always pointed them out to us. But this hawk, straight up, murdered a mockingbird. Not only that, he then was stomping on their remains. I took it as a Sunday night omen. The hawk was Monday and I was the mockingbird. Turns out, today was not the equivalent of being murdered. Monday, check.

A and Jules Casey V went out of town for a school week leaving me alone with Alex for 6 days. Since the work week is crazy hectic and I didn't want Alex to have to stay at school every night until 6 PM, my Mom offered to come stay a couple of nights to help out. When the weekend finally . arrived, we took her out to a thank you dinner at my favorite, family owned restaurant near her house, DeVivo Bros Eatery. They describe their menu as "rustic comfort food". I'm not sure why I like it so much...but it is delicious. They were doing live music that night and a super cute girl was singing acoustic covers of all of our favorite pop songs post the early 2000s...One Direction, Taylor Swift, Maroon Five, etc. She had Alex at Shake it Off . It took him a minute to realize it was Taylor Swift, but then he was like, "I know this song!" Her voice was good...more country western with her raspy tone and she performed her original songs as well. JULESCASEY.CO...

"Meredith rode the bus"... Being at the big school has brought many changes to my way of teaching. At alternative school, I was the department for middle school for my subject. Party of one. Rolling one deep. Uno. Me, myself, and I. This year, I have a teaching partner. We've split 6th grade and we plan together all the fun things we'll torture our students with. Maybe I'm just saying this because Meredith (Mere as I call her just to myself...weird?...Sorry Mere) is the bomb.com, but having a teaching buddy is fun! Aside from not feeling lonely, she is also responsible for reigning in my crazy. Sometimes when planning, I fly by the seat of my pants and hope things fall into place. Having a partner holds me accountable to actually planning appropriately and ensuring that I do not go overboard (or underboard?) on anything. She is also an Aggie and she is way younger and cooler than me. I look to her for fashion trends, current pop culture subjects and the ...

Truth be told, the only reason I bought these was because I needed to spend three more dollars to get school supply deals back in August. When my students wore out my dry erase markers in approximately 2 days, I fished these out of my closet. They work so well! They are bright and they smell 0%. You have to work a little harder to erase (they provide you with this cloth thing), but I use the Expo board cleaner all the time anyway, and it works just as well on these crayons. Also, if you draw at the wrong angle, they make a noise similar to nails on a chalkboard. Different, but just as jarring. It comes with a sharpener in the back, just like a box of regular crayons. For now, they are hidden in my closet. I write the learning targets for the next day when there are no students in the room. They haven't questioned why there are no markers matching the colors they are looking at every day...oh sixth grade observational skills. I want to keep them my little secret a li...

Hello is right. I thought, maybe we'll go to the fair on Sunday night, and most people from game weekend will be gone and we can stay late because we don't have school Monday. That was a really great thought that I shared with a billion other people. It was the most people I've seen there to date. The Beach Boys performed the Sunday night concert (at 5:30 PM after they ate dinner) and they were awesome. Unlike some of their rock star counter parts who sound like they're gurgling glass at this point in life, the boys sounded really good. We walked up a little late because I thought they would play closer to 7. Hearing their music took me to my youth. For the first time in a very long time, I was completely caught off guard by a memory of my Dad that affected me on such a visceral level. I was immediately transported back in time, riding on a long road trip and picking Summer Dreams out of my Dad's cassette tape briefcase. I immediately got teary eyed th...

Alex calls it Tee Tee Oil because 1) He can't say "Tea Tree" and 2) Potty humor rules our home right now I know that I used to get hung up on germs occasionally, but nothings has made me a full out germophobe more than working in a huge, public school environment. At my last school, the population was small enough where I could use a few disinfectant wipes every now and again to get a false sense of security about the germ sitch. Now whenever I come home from work, I feel like I'm covered in a layer of MRSA. It doesn't help that sixth graders have no sense of personal space. I am surrounded by at least 4 of them at any time. They are always hugging me, and touching me, and talking to me so close, that sometimes I have to put my hand out and hold them back so they don't keep stepping forward while I'm stepping back. They are filthy, disgusting creatures who still pick their nose, cough/sneeze in their hands, and put EVERYTHING in their mouths...pap...

I can't remember September, except to say I have not watched TV or read my celebrity gossip the entire month. There is a stack of 5 on my night stand. With tears in my eyes, I deleted all recorded episodes of Project Runway knowing I would never watch them and to free up more recording space...to record more things I will never watch. I've chosen sleep, working out, and hanging out with Alex (and the occasional blog post) as the "free time" activities I can fill the rest of the day around work. *Whine, whine, whine about my self-inflicted busy, scheduled life. Most importantly, study the picture above carefully. Picture day was coming up and I panicked. I had the choice of having him look like a girl with his bangs way below his eyes (like last year), taking him to a random fast place (the day before pictures) to get a terrible haircut, or try to trim his bangs myself. As he whipped his hair back and forth (he whipped his hair back and forth) I tried to not...

"I never been to a hot air balloon festival..." Photo Credit: Sonal Kaki We read a book from the library called something I don't remember...but it was about a dog who accidentally takes flight in a hot air balloon because someone put fried chicken in the basket of the balloon. She doesn't eat the chicken, though she is tempted, and the book is about everyone trying to get her to land the balloon safely. The dog is rewarded for not eating the chicken without permission by being fed the chicken. I thought it was mediocre at best but it seemed to really stick with Alex. He likes to talk about hot air balloons a lot.  We tried our first ever cousin's sleepover this past weekend. I was really worried for my sister and brother in law that they would get zero sleep. I tried to make sure Alex knew that Mom and Dad would NOT be spending the night with him. The in-laws usually take their kids to the hot air balloon festival every year and V suggested they ad...

SMU fashion statement of 2015: Side boob...and lots of it! I gave it a day to try and be less judgmental, but it's probably not going to seem like it... Our friends invited us to the North Texas/SMU game this past weekend. They are Mean Green alumni and season ticket holders. This picture was taken as I was enjoying a nice meal in the Mean Green alumni tent. One theory of the scene I was watching was that it was fueled not only by alcohol, but also a large amount of illegal drugs...probably Ecstasy and Cocaine.  That is the only way to explain a rave under a tent in 90 degrees at 4:30 in the afternoon. DJ...check Spewing Beer over each other...check Dancing up on ya...check Scantily clad (the scantiliest) undergrad girls...check (is she wearing pants? No...) This area had it all. I think the real story here is that I am old. Watching these young people made me tired. So tired. And really thirsty. The day also proved that you can talk into a microphone in a cro...

Today at school I got one of my classes started on group work. While I was walking around "managing", a boy asked to speak to me in the hallway privately. He's on the smaller side for a 6th grade boy...easy to remember that he was just in elementary school 4 short months ago. I was expecting him to tell me he was getting bullied by people in class. Instead, he looked me straight in the eye and said, "You seem really nice and like you would be good at giving advice. I really like this girl and I need you to tell me what to do about it." Then he went into a story about how he wanted to ask her to the movies, but he didn't have any money and he had Netflix, but his parents would probably have to meet her parents before she would be allowed to come over. He said his last plan would be to invite her to next month's school dance, but he hoped to hang out before that. Then he went on to say how hard it was to get a moment to ask her anything because he was su...

Even cute enough to pull this off... I was driving down Story the afternoon the agency called to tell us we matched with a child. We matched much sooner than I had expected and I had to pull over to talk to the case worker. She asked if I wanted her to send me a picture. I reluctantly said yes and she said she would send it as soon as we hung up. I remember sitting in that parking lot and thinking, "What if I don't like the way he looks? What if I don't think I want to adopt as badly as I think I do...? You're a terrible person for even thinking any of this!" My heart was thumping and I was nervous. Forever later (like, 5 minutes) I opened the picture on my phone. You've seen enough pictures of Alex to imagine...he was scrumptiously adorable with his huge cheeks, propped up on his mini throne. It was love at first sight. As we waited over a year to go and get him, I constantly thought about what it was going to be like when we were finally a family...

I am the picture next to the definition of a 'creature of routine'. Almost boring. Maybe boring! The sheer amount of work that a regular school teacher has to do has been eye opening for me. I did a lot of work at alternative school, but I realize now I had it made. Other than the soul sucking environment that left me emotionally empty, the actual work was e-a-s-y. It's always greener on the other side. from husband, son, dog, and Dan Cortez The good news is, I am adaptable and once these first weeks (maybe months) pass, I know I'll get more and more efficient at what I do (after all, I was at alternative school for 9 years) and it has actually been fun. Of course sixth graders are immature and have to be taught the ways of everything, but most of them are so so sweet and I am not used to students wanting to help and stay after and talk, and give me drawings (not of gang violence) and tell me everything about everything. That is refreshing. And while I miss...

Throwback to both the day this was taken and the 90s.

Sometimes I think, hmmm he needs a pair of shoes to match every possible thing he might wear.  Don't worry, some of these were hand me downs (like, one pair) and we usually buy shoes on sale, but seriously? What's happening?

When I turned 16, like most new drivers, I was involved in a car accident. I was on my way to afternoon swim practice, and decided to go with the car next to me at a very busy intersection (that is now a light) on their turn instead of coming to a complete stop and then going on the next round. A truck turning left blocked the view of my car to the next side's turn and I got hit in my driver's side door. The person who hit me was also a brand new 16-year-old driver and while I was at fault, I don't know how you run into something head-on coming off a stop that far away, but whatever... We pulled into the gas station parking lot on the corner and it was sort of the blind leading the blind. We asked each other if we were okay, agreed we were, and I think I apologized (thereby admitting fault). We were exchanging information when a lady pulled in behind us and got out of her car, fuming. She looked at the other girl and was like, "I saw the whole thing, here's my num...

Remember this ? Well, it got kind of hot and uninviting to manage. It's okay, you can laugh. Okra loves heat.

Dear Occasional Second Driver, First of all, there is no need to act vexed when readjusting the driver's seat settings to accommodate your larger stature. Bigger people than you drive us just fine. Sorry it takes longer to adjust as there are more manual adjustments compared to your younger, sexy German sports car. She might be sexy as hell, but she's kind of a bitch. Just saying. What is your problem with me, anyway? Have I ever stranded my main driver anywhere? No. Okay, that one time when my battery died and you had to come jump me. I could not have picked a better place to die. The Target parking lot? It's not the worst place I can think of. I take good care of your precious cargo. She and I are a great team. Given her birth race, she has become quite the defensive driver. I wear my corner scuffs proudly to remember how far we've come. Although highway speeding has become a problem, we are alert. I just gently remind her that we don't go that fast b...

My Mom won a trip to San Antonio in a silent auction this past Spring. We did a one day beach trip turnaround and drove down where we then tried to pack as much stuff as we could into two days. No, I've never seen Blackfish and didn't care to watch it before going to SeaWorld. Zoos already make me sad if I think about them too long and yes, so does SeaWorld. That doesn't stop me from wanting to swim around with their dolphins and whales. They are really cute. Also, if you're interested, SeaWorld cares. They say so on their website. You can learn about all the inaccuracies of Blackfish here . (mainly directed at V) Which side is more truthful? Did anyone who declared a major in Marine Biology actually get that degree? I didn't think so. The real tragedy of our trip took place in Historic Market Square. We ate Tex Mex at Mi Tierra Cafe. In the back room, there is a huge 3D mural of influential people to Hispanic culture, past and present. It was very detailed ...

cousin john's boogie board...both boys did well and both boys wiped out! Can someone, who is a licensed child Psychologist (or someone who thinks they are), please tell me why my son will run with reckless abandon into the ocean but take 10 minutes to decide he wants to swim in a pool? Why he will get pushed around by waves almost to his neck, and wipe out getting trapped under his boogie board for a few seconds and recover but wants to go home after choking on pool water? It's very confusing to me, but I am not complaining. He is my beach baby and I'm glad I have one because I also love the beach. As V puts it, our yearly TRIP to the gulf is "forced relaxation". We beach it up twice a day and eat and sleep a lot. Rinse and repeat. "cause baby I could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me..." (gotta work in Taylor Swift when you can) #newromantics surf ninjas is a real game third year in a row to wear this swim sui...