Hey Jakey,

My daily fortune on my Excite start page today says "Take a moment to remember fourth grade." So I did.

My fourth-grade teacher was Mrs. Lane. The only two kids I remember weren't even kids I hung out with, I just remember their names: Chris Barnes and Leslie Hart. Chris Barnes had a big, curly head of brown hair, and Leslie Hart was well on her way to becoming a 43-year-old, thrice-divorced barfly with a penchant for whiskey, straight. Ha. I just remember her being kinda slutty and smoky-voiced for a fourth grader.

Fourth grade is where I threw my pencil up in the air that one time, and caught it, point down, in the palm of my right hand. Thirty years later, I still a have faint little pencil mark, just below the skin there, to remind me *not* to throw pencils up in the air.

Fourth grade is the first time I remember not wanting the school nurse to announce my weight out loud when she lined us all up and weighed us during our school checkup.

Mrs. Lane had us bring a book on Fridays, and would let us read for an hour. She said she loved watching the expressions on our faces when we sat and read. We would register surprise, anger, happiness, according to what we were reading.

She also told us a joke that hinges on a fourth-grader's knowledge of Spanish (we lived in Panama, so we had to take Spanish lessons every day). I don't know why I remember it to this day:

A Spanish-speaking man walks into a store in America. He wants to buy some socks. He points at them behind the counter, and the English-speaking clerk takes down some underwear. "Is this what you want?" she asks. The man shakes his head no and points again. The clerk shows him a tie. "Is THIS what you want?" Again, the man shakes his head no and points. This time the clerk shows him the socks. The man takes them, smiles and says, "Eso si que es! (Yes, that is it!)" The clerk replies, "Well, if you knew how to SPELL it, why didn't you just say so!"

Ha ha ha, very funny to bi-lingual fourth graders.

I'm in the middle of making pillows for F and C's wedding present. The wedding's on Saturday. I don't think I'm going to finish on time. Why-oh-why can't I just BUY a present like everyone else? I always have to be so artsy-fartsy, and then I waste a week making something, spending even MORE money than if I had just bought something off the damn registry at Target. And they're not even close to what I was envisioning in the first place.

I had wanted to dye and batik the fabric using muted autumn tones and leaf stamps, then the pillow back would be a soft, cushy pile in a rich, chocolate brown. I thought I had the dyes already, but then I found out that I didn't, and I know of only one place, all the way in Draino (Reno), that sells my dye, so I decided to just go with the dye I already have: garish pink and navy blue, which doesn't go well with chocolate brown, so now these pillows are starting to look reminiscient of a day at the circus, rather than a walk down a leaf-blown autumn path. Argh.

Anyway, I know F will pretend to appreciate them, just because they're handmade, but I know she would've really LIKED them, if they had turned out the way I had intended. Oh well, it's probably not too late to run to Target and buy them a mixer.

Gotta run. Love you!