"I must be me, I'm in my head, black birds are circling my bed. I must be me, I must be me, black feathers are falling on my feet." ~the national

My tattoo is inspired by Counting Crows, particularly by the phrase "I am feathered," which is from the song "A Murder of One" and which they insert into lots of other songs and is absolutely gorgeous. I love listening to live versions of different songs in which they insert that lyric. They did it during "A Long December" at the Bowery Ballroom concert I went to last month; it was the perfect ending to an awesome performance of that song. The opening quote of this post is from The National's song "Karen," and it also fits my tattoo perfectly. I love that song as well.

I've been feeling uninspired lately. It's hard for me to sit down and write creative lesson plans that will engage the kids. I get distracted easily. And it shouldn't be so hard for me right now, because I'm doing a unit on Katherine Paterson and I love Katherine Paterson. Maybe it's the winter. It makes everything seem so "blah."

My kids are doing okay for the most part (of course, now that I've said that they'll come in tomorrow and act completely insane). There's this one boy, D, who's a real handful. He actually has gotten really into our current read-aloud book, though, which is a Katherine Paterson book called Park's Quest. I was sitting with the kids during science today and I had the book with me. We had just read about a mysterious new character, and D kept trying to convince me to tell him who she is. When I wouldn't tell him, he grabbed the book from me and skimmed through it for an entire period (while he was supposed to be doing science), trying to figure out who the girl is. He refused to give the book back to me, and he was so invested in his search. I was particularly frustrated when he flipped to the last page and started to read it, because I didn't want him to spoil it for himself. I was frustrated with him for not giving me the book back, for not doing his science work, and for yelling out things that happen in the parts we haven't read yet. At the same time, though, I was glad that he was actually interested in a book. That's unusual for him. It's those little things that keep me going.