Randomness

In no particular order...

1. Why is the marionnette music from Escape to Witch Mountain (one of my favorite movies as a kid) playing on The Simpsons?

1a. Looking that up on imdb.com for y'all solved one of my lifelong mysteries. (Sad as this is, I'm not kidding.)

I noticed under the tidbits that young Tia was played in the flashbacks by Kim Richards' younger sister Kyle.

Why is this momentous?

Because I always -- always -- thought I recognized the girl shown in the flashbacks, but the quality of the picture is too (deliberately) poor to see her clearly. It's hazy, and as Tia's memory "clears," so to speak, the scene shifts away from them in the water and Uncle Bene giving Tia her star case, to the kids in the Malones' arms, from too far away to see the girl's face clearly.

So, I checked out Kyle Richards. She was Alicia on Little House on the Prairie -- Mr. Edwards' daughter. I loved Little House as a child -- so no wonder I thought young Tia looked familiar.

The Internet is cool. :-)

2. Bulldozer made it all day without a big meltdown -- just maybe 3 minutes of crying when he had to do speech. :-) And it's only Tuesday!

3. I have had random bits of songs stuck in my head all day. And I do mean random.

4. M had a pretty fun meltdown at the end of class time today, because she has to go number 2 again (she yelled "Ow, hurt me, bleeding!" when I asked if she had to go to the bathroom). That's a fun thing to explain to the OTs....

5. "The Bells" is a really long poem. But, it has the word "tintinnabulation," which I -- for reasons inexplicable even to myself -- have always found cool.

6. Aide J was bitten by my former student C at the group home where she now works. She seemed quite traumatized...not that being bitten doesn't suck, but it's not like I didn't warn her.

7. However, Aide J dealt with an E meltdown in exactly the right way -- she turned away, no words, etc!

8. On the down side, E was very excited to see Aide T today, which I think perturbed Aide J. She seemed kinda territorial, even after telling me Monday that she thought it would be good to rotate.

9. Boy J got over his drama when he realized he really would have to copy the stuff he missed while singing nonsense and yelling "poopy head" and "butthead" during science the other day. I think he was shocked we remembered.

10. It took some time to know for sure, but Angel does not belong in this class as it's currently made up. She, like A before her, has low academics, but I'll eat my shoe if she really is developmentally delayed.

10a. Back when I thought it would be fun to get a master's, I always thought it would be interesting to study how the minds of kids with and without developmental disabilities differ. I would have taken two groups of kids -- all of whom who were at the same reading and/or math levels -- and seen how they actually thought and problem solved.

Well...knowing Angel and A, and comparing them to, say, Now-In-Middle-School-R and Boy J...it's interesting. There really is a perceptible -- but difficult to define -- difference in the way they interact with, perceive, and problem solve the world.

As my hero would say, "Fascinating."

Dinner -- and then more work (I am trying to get ready for next week so I can copy tomorrow and modify on Thursday so I can either have an IEP or go home early Friday) -- awaits.