It's Bee Season

Interestingly, no one seems to mind that I look like Carol Brady and David Bowie had an illegitimate love child; in fact, I've received more compliments in the past two days on my hair than I have all year long. Perhaps people really like me with the emo hipster wannabe hair (emobe? emoster?)? Or maybe people just like to see others change it up because they're glad they didn't have to do any of the changing themselves and they don't have to spend 45 minutes blowdrying and styling their new hair. Whatevs. All I know is, it's one thing for me to rock out to My Chemical Romance in the privacy of my own car, it's another thing entirely for me to look the part at 28 years old.

Moving on, things here in the library have been steadily improving. Testing is over for the most part. The children have resumed normal levels of screaming and shoving. Teachers have stopped rolling their eyes and audibly sighing every time the word "test" is mentioned. Schedules are back in full swing. We're through with you, MCAS! Until we meet again... in May.

Also, I've been so busy whining the past few weeks that I've neglected to give full props to this Friday night's main event: the annual town Spelling Bee! Picture, if you will, a scene of the utmost nerdliness. Businesspeople and town officials alike gather for a test of rote memorization skills. Who will come out on top? It'll be a regular American Gladiator up in this piece. Minus the physical part. Hopefully this year I can lead my team to victory- I chose my teammates well. And by that, I mean I conned two new teachers into it and recruited one other due to the fact that she had a spelling bee trophy in her office. It wasn't until much later that I found out she didn't actually attend the spelling bee for which she has a trophy, but her team won, so she got one too. Kind of like getting a Super Bowl ring even if you were injured and didn't play, I guess. Whatever- she has Bee experience.

I was mildly disappointed this year, Scripps has stopped producing the little 30 page books they printed to list all the words they use in their Bees. Instead, their website directed me to an intimidating 350 page PDF document and I am so not printing that out. But for once my packrat tendencies have paid off- I kept my booklet from last year and I decided to just re-study.

Now all that's left is to actually take a look at the list of words and I'll be good to go. How hard can it be?