The end is near!

2 1/2 school days until summer break! Technically I have 3 full work days but the students have a half day on Friday...

Also, my time as a math teacher is wrapping up too! I have finally received my new teaching assignment. There was a big problem this year on our campus and I stepped in to cover a second class last month. I'll be staying in that class next year. Tons more to come about that later.

The AtHomeTrio are hitting the road in a couple of weeks. We are heading to St. Louis and points undetermined on a week long road trip. The Boss Lady has to work a few more weeks before her two week break begins so I'll be making the trip solo.

That part doesn't sound bad but the maniacal sounds of laughter that the wife makes when I talk about the trip are a lot worrisome.

There is tons to catch up on. Luckily for both of you readers, I will soon have a lot of free time to fill you in.

Job changes and unchanges

I didn't get the new job.

I got a different new job.

Surprised? Yeah, not as much as me.

I am staying at the campus I love and because of some chaos caused by NOT me, I am shifting into a new role already. There are only 20 days left at school, but my new gig is crucial so I have started already in my new class.

Of course I have my old classes to cover too. But that is because I am a nice guy.

That and I am always scared when the Principal's office door closes. Seems that all I can say in that closed office is "yes ma'am".

I may pray to burn in Hell, just so things cool down around here

OK, that may be waaaaaaaaaaay to far with the title, but this blog is still mostly about making myself laugh like a mental patient on a 3 day bender.

Evidently I am in the running for a new job.  Didn't ask for it.  Didn't know it was being considered.  Wasn't looking but the email exploded into my inbox this morning.  Of all of the cool stuff I have done over the years, two of them were EXACTLY right.  I made for a pretty good AtHomeDaddy for all of those years and I am a really awesome Special Education Teacher.  The Boss Lady has to remind me about that once in awhile because I tend to be a pretty harsh critic. 

Even though the work is sometimes tough and the parents are sometimes a pain to deal with, I do not regret moving into teaching at all.  Some would say I just haven't been around long enough to get really bitter and tired.  Those are the teachers I tend not to spend much time around.

Anyways, our school district is opening a new middle school this coming year.  Some of my current students will be moving to the new school.  Teachers are getting shuffled to the new school too.  I haven't been against moving, but I have not really sought out a spot for myself over there either.  That does not seem to matter.  I was called today to interview for a position at the new school.  The technicalities of the position would bore you to tears, but suffice it to say that if I were to create my dream classroom, it would look A LOT like this opportunity.

So, AtHomeDaddy what is the problem? 

Let's just say that The Boss Lady would love (love might be too weak of a word) a job at the new school. But if I take the teaching gig at the new school then she would not be in the running for a new job over there.

See?  You knew I would get back to the title, right? 

I am officially stuck.  I can chase after this opportunity and cost The Boss Lady a shot at a new job. Or I can tell the hiring people to kiss off (nicely, of course) and never have another chance like this land in my lap.  For now I am going to spend a day or two trying to decide.  Wish me luck.

After all, if The Boss Lady kills me in my sleep and hides my body in my classroom filing cabinet, at least we will end up with an easier decision.

The Last of the Lucky Sevens

Tomorrow The Princess turns eight years old.  She is an awesome, kickball playing, doll toting, chicken chasing, dancing, singing, awesome bundle of girly-girl.   

She still twists her hair into knots when she is tired.  She wakes up grumpy every school day.  The Princess is my gardening pal and she is always good for a laugh at my really bad jokes.    She still can't seem to keep her room straightened for more than 15 minutes at a time.  She pretty much refuses to ride her bike anywhere but I think she knows that it is easier to parade down the street on foot.  Makes it easier to visit with any neighbor who might have something interesting going on... 


I could not care less about my birthdays anymore.  Just another year on the clock from what I can tell.  Don't get me wrong, I am all for the presents but I would accept them ANY day.  The kid's birthdays are another thing entirely.  Lots of times I think I might be more excited about the day than they are.

Happy Birthday Princess.  I sure hope it is a great day.  'Cause I know you will be an awesome eight year old!

Might as well make my beauty work for me!

I have signed up to help raise money for St. Baldrick's, a charity that raises funds to help fight childhood cancer.  I hope to raise $500 pretty quickly.  And the team I am on has a goal to raise over $2000.  The catch?  On April 14 I will get my head shaved at the finale of the fund raising.

You guys may have already seen my beautiful, bald melon.  There are several good pictures and stories about the different times I have decided to shave my head.  But this time I get to collect more than a story and a snapshot.  I am going to collect some cash to help out lots of great kids.

Want to donate?  Here is a link to my St. Baldrick's fundraising page.  Donate a lot.  And often.

Or this guy might haunt your dreams.

 A preview from a few years ago, when I "fixed" my hair real good.

A whole new level of backyard chicken keeping

Fair warning.

This post and the accompanying links may not be for the squeamish...  It is all about our family taking a new step into keeping a backyard flock of chickens.

Chickens lay eggs and they are food too.  That is your last hint...



In the last few weeks I have become more convinced that one of our newest chicks was not a potential egg laying hen (which are really called pullets), but a potential noise maker and hen hassling roo (which are actually called cockerels).  In a backyard flock of 10 (now 9) birds, roosters aren't really desirable especially by the neighbors.

A few days ago The Boss Lady bought a magazine about different chicken breeds.  The suspected rooster was an Australorp and he had huge, long tail feathers.  The magazine all but confirmed my suspicions.  But conventional wisdom says that you don't know for sure until the bird gives you either a crow or an egg.

That noise I heard this morning when I was walking to the car?  Yeah, that was NOT an egg!

I posted an ad on our local chicken message board, but I knew that this guy needed a new home quickly if we were not going to make the neighbors mad. Yeah, their four barking chihuahuas?  That is another story...   No nibbles on the ad, AND Wednesday is trash day which would make it a lot easier to get the "leftovers" taken care of quickly.  It was looking like the rooster's fate was sealed.

This evening The Boss Lady and I decided to butcher the bird ourselves. So, like all good urban farmers, I hit up Google and found this link:

How to butcher a chicken in 20 minutes or less... 

After a few hours of reading up on how to best process and butcher chickens, I decided that this was the best method for us to try for our first time. We would skin the bird, instead of scalding and plucking all of the feathers and there was not even a small chance I would eat the livers and gizzards...

Cut to the chase.  We did the deed and it took less than an hour, including the times that we stopped to read the instructions I printed out.  Now the bird is in the freezer and we will cook up some chicken and dumplings later this week. 

When we started with backyard chickens, I promised the kids we would not be eating their pets.  But this seems like we are kind of coming full cycle with having chickens and growing our own food in the garden. The Boss and I decided that we will tell the kids about the roo and give them a choice when it come time to eat the chicken and dumplings.

Front yard re-do, Part 2

A follow up to my last post, Front yard re-do, part 1

I'll come back and write up a little more about the specifics of our yard makeover, but I think that the results are worth more than the $500 we dropped on this project.

 After two and a half days of work, we are almost done.

 The focal point pieces of our new flower beds.  Two horse water troughs.

Loving the new look!  No Asian Jasmine and a lot more water conscious!

We will get the planters filled next weekend (or during Spring Break). 

What we started with.  That is a big difference!

One of my goals for this project was to re-use as many plants as possible.  Everything that we had growing is water conscious and either native or adapted to Austin's climate.  Plus, the neighborhood deer leave all of this stuff alone!

Lots of the big shrubs were growing out near the street,  so they moved to a better spot in the new  beds, swapping places with much smaller plants.  Of course, that meant that I am now re-doing the flower beds  out by the street, but that project will not be photographed for a while.  

In the end, we only spent money on the planters, some mulch and a roll of weed block fabric.   I am thrilled with the results.  My yard  chairs are no longer facing the street.  We repositioned them, too, so that we  can admire all of our hard work.

Front yard re-do, Part 1

Our house is in need of some serious TLC.  When I was home full-time I kept a pretty close eye on repairs and maintenance needs around here.  In the last year and a half our 30 year old house has started showing her age.

Next month we are having some foundation work done and I have been really wanting to get the yard back in shape.  Today we started cleaning up and renovating a big flowerbed in our front yard.

The front flower bed.  A mix of 1982 fabulous and a 2005 re-work that is looking a little tired and boring.

After Day 1.  

Lots of clean up and digging out of 30 year old ground cover.

There may not be a lot of obvious progress in these pics, but I have the blisters on my hands to prove that The Boss Lady and I did A LOT of work out there today.   I dug out about a mile of Asian Jasmine ground cover that was here when we bought the house.  This stuff is notoriously hard to kill and even though it is brown and dead-looking in the top picture, I am sure we have not seen the last of it.  In fact, I didn't trash the jasmine, I moved it to the backyard to fill holes left by the dog, kids and chickens.  We have a retaining wall that is a pain to mow or weed-eat, so ground cover will be perfect up there.  

To keep the cost of the renovation down, I am going to move several plants to new locations in the landscape.  When we are done with the cleanup and new pea gravel ground cover, we are adding some large planters.  You'll have to wait for those details though.

I highly recommend

Taking a cruise back though your own blog.

I was heading to bed two hours ago.  Then I decided to find something really quick that I knew was posted here, back in 2006.  Or was it 2005?

Anyways, I have just gotten lost in stories about my children as babies, long dead pets and many of our great times at home.  It made for a good night and I am sure it will all be worth it when I am waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too tired in the morning.

I need a minute

Or maybe a few days.

This working for a living thing is highly overrated.  Especially the parts that involve rolling out of bed before 7am and back into bed after midnight.  I think I'll be burning a day off this week.  I'm not really sick, but I guarantee I could hack up a lung on command just to make sure that my request is taken seriously. 

I was thinking about taking off Monday, but I have evening meetings that I can't miss.  Might as well go in for the whole day.  Exact same thing for Tuesday.  Wednesday would work except that the students get out early on Wednesday, so that is the first day I can actually head for home at a decent hour.  Don't want to miss that!  Of course we have a meeting with The Princess' kickball team that night, so I won't ACTUALLY be at home very early...

Thursday isn't as good as Friday, but this coming Friday is Friday Fun Day.  On these days I let the students work on hardcore math like strategy games (checkers and chess are big hits) and online math games.  That is a day without a lesson plan.  And that is a good day.  Can't miss that one.

So Thursday it is. That is the soon to be (and much needed) scheduled day for my mental health break.



Please don't call.  I'll be very contagious and weak.  I won't be able to answer the phone.  Or email.  Or faxes.  Or text messages.  Or smoke signals.

If it isn't raining I will probably be found out in the garden.  If it is raining, I may still be found out in the garden.  Stop by and plant something for me.  'Cause I am sick, remember?