I'll huff, I'll puff, I'll blow you away

I took a logic class in college. It's been some time, but let me try my hand at a scenario:

If Marie wears white pajamas, she'll have a blowout at night.
If we have just done laundry, she'll either soak through her diaper or have a blowout.
Yesterday we did laundry and Marie wore white pajamas.
Therefore . . .

(I'll let you draw the conclusion.)

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I made a pie chart to represent the contents of our bathroom trash can, but I couldn't figure out how to put it in this blog post. I'll give you the raw figures, though:

Hair: 80%
Toilet paper tubes: 5%
Dental floss: 3%
Used tissues: 4%
Miscellaneous trash: 11%

This postpartum shed thing is no joke. On a weekly basis (at least!) Jacob makes a comment that he can't believe I'm not bald yet. It's pretty foul.

* * * 

School has been in session for three weeks, and for the most part I'm enjoying being back in the classroom. I did a couple team building activities with my class at the start of the year that I'd like to share, because, well, I can.

The first activity was called "Saving Fred." I told the class a story of how Fred the worm was always very safety-conscious and took his life preserver with him when he went out boating, as he doesn't know how to swim. Unfortunately, today his boat capsized before he was able to put his life jacket on. He managed to cling to the underside of the boat, but it was up to my students to retrieve the life jacket from under the boat, put it on Fred, upright the boat, and place Fred in the boat without letting him drown.

(At this point, I demonstrated the initial setup: a peachy-O ring was placed underneath a plastic cup, and a gummy worm was placed on top.)

Of course, the students weren't allowed to use hands -- they could only use paper clips to complete their quest. And before too long I had to tell the students they weren't allowed to stab Fred either, as the point was to keep him alive and unmaimed.

The second activity that they had a lot of fun with was called Constitution Island. It was supposed to be a long drawn out lesson about the importance of rules and such, but I ran out of time, so it boiled down to this:

I told the class we were on a cruise ship sailing to the Bahamas, and I was the captain of the ship. We were looking forward to snorkeling, playing on the beach, and drinking smoothies. Unfortunately, we were caught in a terrible storm, and the passengers were all blown to five separate islands. Of course, the captain always goes down with his (her) ship, so I died. (At this point, the students asked if they could hold a funeral for me and if I was a ghost.)

I then gave instructions that the students had to design their own island and decide upon seven rules to help govern their island. Everything had to be agreed upon by majority rule vote, and they weren't allowed to leave their islands because they would drown since they didn't have boats. And if they got into a disagreement with their fellow island-dwellers, I couldn't resolve it for them, since I was dead.

The kids had a blast with it, and it was especially interesting to see some of their island designs. One group built a Costco on their island "because it has everything there," while another group created a gravesite AND a log cabin for me. It was touching. Sniff, sniff. Yet another group used those scented markers and my room has just finally stopped reeking a week later.

* * *

I hate it when I read a book that rivets me and then I find out the next book in the series doesn't come out until next year. This has been happening surprisingly frequently as of late.