the neighbors have been barbecuing all afternoon. the smell is seeping into my laundry hanging outside, but i'm just so happy the girl next door hasn't practiced her clarinet since friday that i really don't care.

i desperately need a nap but i think if i can just hang on till dinner and go to bed right after my shower, i'll sleep much better and have an easier time tomorrow. tomorrow i switch jobs -- but i won't know till i get there exactly what i'll be doing. i'm switching from a 19.5-hr/week position to a 17-hr/week position, but will be paid almost twice as much hourly. my title (PTT, part-time teacher) is kind of an anything position. they throw me where they need me. a couple of years ago it was second grade, where i taught PE, reading and math. last year i was in pre-K SPED, which i liked well enough to be currently considering dual certification. (sure, once you're SPED certified you never see a regular-ed classroom again, but job security in this state, i'm figuring, is so worth a few gray hairs.) these first few weeks at work i've been a PPT (para-professional tutor) for a kindergartener placed in FSC (a fully self-contained classroom), the position which Eugene's Brother will be taking over tomorrow.

so tomorrow i'll be in regular kindergarten, probably working with the entire grade (i wouldn't mind if they gave me PE again). i really like kindergarten -- well, i like all the lower grades up till about third. when i worked with fourth, fifth and sixth at kiddiepark, it took some getting used to but by the end of the year i didn't want to go back to K & 1. of course that's where i was sent, and at K-school i was sent back further to Pre-K, and in the end (of kiddiepark, anyway) i can say it's great to not to be intimidated by any age group. my three years at kiddiepark served me well in that respect.

i was awakened at 6 today by pouring rain. i went outside to rescue my Djali rabbit, who as usual didn't want rescuing from the weather. since i was awake, i decided not to go back to sleep (which probably explains my tiredness now) and to do laundry instead, then get cracking on my Cat Playhouse, which i am going to build All By Myself, With No Help. (it was designed by a Home Depot employee, and i will probably have HD make all the plywood cuts for me, but that's the extent of the Help i'll ask for. p.s. "hold this together while the glue dries" does not count.)

incidentally, it's not a going to be a cat playhouse, but a Djali playhouse. it's all part of the master plan to move her into the backyard, but as E's B pointed out, the soil back there will eventually cause the wood to rot, and as i discovered, it'll take a huge effort to level an area of the yard well enough for a four-foot-tall structure to stand safely. you ask why it needs to be four feet tall since it's for a rabbit and rabbits are not huge vertical jumpers ... well, the plans are for a four-foot structure and i want to deviate as little as possible, considering 1) my math skills suck and i'd likely convert one panel of board and forget, say, to convert the wire fencing and 2) a taller structure will allow for more open air and light, making it more like a playhouse and less like a hutch.

Djali's existing house, which she doesn't live in because she's a wild rabbit who prefers to romp uncaged, was originally built to house chickens. the summer before my junior year in high school i took a biology class at roosevelt, where we incubated a bunch of chicken eggs and a few of us took home the end result. after that, for a few years, my family kept chickens on and off, raising them from cute babies to un-cute adults, the stage at which my uncle, who lived in the Waipio gentry area of mililani, invited them to live with him. so the hutch/coop was a temporary home for the little chickadees, and much later, for a very short time, shelter for Djali. (by "wild" i don't mean skittish or untouchable, like many pet rabbits, but adventurous, always curious, and not afraid of anything. she's so un-rabbitlike that way.) anyway the hutch/coop is breaking, another reason i don't keep her in there, and i thought it would be nice to move her into the backyard, because she and the dog like each other well enough and also it'll be much nicer for her to run on grass than on concrete all day.

other things about my weekend: you go, (chinese) girl!: congrats to connie and her four zealous chinese brothers (and legion of fans) who on saturday evening took it all the way to san francisco (and HPU! ... if only anyone actually had use for an HPU scholarship.)

sunday E's B came over for dinner and brought the second-to-last episode of "S&TC" on tape. the last few episodes have been much better than the start -- funnier, anyway, and timely. carrie's book gets great reviews but she focuses on the feeling someone gave her that she "threw away" an ex of hers that she actually loved very much. in the end she of course realizes that it's how you judge yourself that actually matters. to paraphrase, she says somewhere, at any given time, someone in the world is making a funny face about you. but it's the review you give yourself that counts the most. judgment was a theme of the previous episode, too, i think. i didn't really get that one, though, because samantha gets all pissed at carrie after carrie walks in on her blowing the UPS guy. samantha snaps at carrie for her "judgmentalism" when carrie didn't say a word. well, she cracked a few jokes, but that was it. the point, supposedly, was that samantha valued her right to "wear whatever she wanted and blow whomever she wanted as long as she could breathe and kneel." in the end carrie says she respects the way samantha "puts her sexuality out there," which in turn i can respect, to a point. is it so hard, though, to lock the door if you're going to do the delivery guy on your lunch break?

better get the chow on. work is just one meal, one shower and one sleep away. i'm knocking on wood that the move won't involve any more kids who like to crawl under the table or who need to be hauled, dead asleep, off the schoolbus. ever notice how heavy even the littlest kids are when they're asleep? may we never have a fire drill during naptime. who needs a gym membership (or basic training or corporal punishment) when you've got kindergarten?

but first, my funny dream: we were in france, staying at some sort of hostel along l'avenue du Champs-Elysees (does such a thing exist?). barry, one of Eugene's Brother's brothers, was there, picking up french chicks and drinking pepsi blue, and Eugene's Brother and i were playing some kind of board game in the common room. E's B left to buy an arizona iced tea from a kiosk across the river, and i went for a walk in the other direction. i walked and walked past bridges and riverboats and billboards advertising cheap lodging and textbooks. i realized at some point that i hadn't changed my clothes, or for that matter, showered, since yesterday. i was horrified, so i ran back to the hostel and got in the shower. while i was showering a guy came into the locker room and asked if this was a place he could shower. i said yes, but that he'd have to wait. i was talking to him with my head poking out of the shower curtain when suddenly the rod broke and the curtain tumbled down. he turned to leave, presumably to find a shower that had a functional curtain rod, offering no other comment but "you have a lovely round tummy." i took it as a compliment and finished my shower. as i was getting dressed i decided he was a nice boy and that i should find him and ask him to dinner. naturally it was like finding a needle in a haystack, and i never did locate him in that crazy city ...

okay, time for dinner.