Commander In Chic

If I were to have another job... I don't... But if I wanted to... I would want to be.. Wait for it.... A nail polish namer. 

My nails are important to me. There is not very often where my nails are naked, and if they're naked I am trying to fix them immediately! And don't even get me started on chipped polish. If you have chipped polish, I am probably judging you.

I also have a horrible habit at picking at my polish... Especially when I get bored! So I change my nail polish quite often. It's become a game to my kids! It's one game I'm ok if they play it during class. Its also the reason why I'm somewhat of a hoarder of colors. Do you know how many shades of pink there are? That's why it's only fitting that it be my next career.

Some polish names are classic, some are logical, some are witty, and some are just plain awesome. What are some of the names of my personal polish collection? Here is a small list.

Wink, Gilty Pleasure, Mellow Yellow, Champagne Toast, Russian Navy, Naughty Neutral, Lilacism, You Don't Know Jacques, Racy Rouge, Rags to Riches, Mrs. Plum, Set the Nude, Over the Edge, Honeymoon, Frenzy, Mint Sorbet, Temptation, Silver Sweep, Instant Iris, Commander In Chic

And I love each and every one of them equally. I want to be a commander in nail polish!! So, OPI, if you're reading this... Pay me more than a teacher's salary (ha) and I'm yours!!

Ohh, you need a resume? Well just from this blog, here are my suggestions:
Naked Nails - a clean, neutral color
Chipped Polish - a crackle polish, probably silver
Hoarder of Colors - an iridescent glitter that changes colors when the light hits it
Teacher's Salary - a poop green

OPI, call me maybe?

To My Students

We do mistakes.

"Ms. Lindstrom.... Huh? This is a math classroom. There's a right and wrong answer and you can only write in pencil and you must grade in red pen. That's how a math classroom works."

I spend the first week of class trying to lay a foundation in my classroom that we do mistakes. We fail. We are not correct all the time. We don't erase our work, because its our thought process; our guide to the answer, even if we got it wrong the first couple of times.  

You can write in pen, but don't you scribble your mistakes out! I want to see them! 

The book Mindset is going to help me foster more of this rationale in my classroom. It's going to change my language and its going to help me show my students that it is ok to make mistakes. I will instill in them it's what they do with those mistakes that is important to their learning. They will learn by correcting mistakes that they have made. They will challenge themselves by pushing their limits. They will not be satisfied with an easy problem. By instilling these traits in my students, the book will not only be changing my mindset, but changing the mind sets of my 100 students as well. 

To my students I say (to quote Ron Washington), "That's how [math] go." 

A Bug's/Bird's Life

Why am I awake at 1 am blogging about birds and bugs? Well, it's been an interesting day in the life of apartment living Mollie.Also, thanks to sucky lungs and starting on steroids, I'm wide awake.

So here's my day. I've been reading all day for an institute I'm attending later this week (more to come on that!). I've also been trying to stay inside since my lungs produce an equivalent to a mouse's squeak. However, the Bachelorette finale was tonight and I was determined to make a new dip for the people coming over to watch this brilliant  addictive reality tv show.

I back my car out of my covered parking spot and start freaking out. My mom is on the phone with me and says, "you're scaring me." Mom!! It's a baby bird!!!!!! It's on my windshield wipers!! (And there was a car waiting for me to move so they could drive around me!) I had to drive! The baby bird was fluttering around and I was looking like an idiot trying to figure out what to do with it! I drove about 20 feet and stopped by some grass (completely blocking cars coming into the complex). As I was trying to think about how I could not touch the baby bird so it's mom wouldn't disown it, it flew, hopped  fl-opped off my hood and into the grass about 20 feet from where my parking spot is. Wow, that was exciting.

I return from the grocery store and am talking to Duck Dude telling him about this sweet little bird who looked like the bird from Are You My Mother and I turn the opposite way to my parking spot to see if the baby bird is still in the grass where I left it. It's not. So I pull into my parking spot and once again I'm freaking out!!! I found it!!!!! It's in the same spot on my neighbors car!!! Here's where I concluded the bird and I were meant to be friends. It's also where I concluded the bird had a love for windshield wipers. She fl-opped off again when I got to close but here she is. Meet Amelia. As in Earhart.

There she is! So pretty! And so floppy. And I don't know how long she will be in my life, but I thought she'd be the most exciting part of my day ( besides Desiree of course!). 

Cue the entire Bachelorette party and an excellent recipe which I will post later. And everyone leaves me. 

Now. One of the benefits of living on the 3rd floor is exercise the amount of bugs that you do not see in your apartment! In the 2 years I have lived up here, I have seen one gecko... And I thought it was 

cute and I wondered how hard he worked to get all the way up here. So when I walked into my 

kitchen to clean up, I was terrified to see a cockroach just staring at me. Uhhhhhhhh. No. I don't do those things. And when he ran into my burner, I was satisfied. Ha easy. What did I do? Duh, turned 

the burner on!!! What did he do? Ran further into the electrical part. 

I called Duck Dude to let him know about my recent encounter and stood in the kitchen the whollllle time. When we hung up, I turned the burner off and went to finish the show I was watching. It took about 6 minutes before I heard a loud flying noise and turned and saw the little joker on my carpet!! Not even on the kitchen tile! Are you kidding me? He flew like 6 feet?? I didn't have a shoe handy so I grabbed my remote and went to whacking..... And missed every time. Cocky, the cockroach, had escaped me. Really? I had a remote and random curtain rod and Cocky is hanging out underneath my couch... That is so not right!! 

So, maybe Cocky can fly like Amelia Earhart wished she could... But I'm left typing a blog in the wee hours of the morning and feeling like a failure. 

Signing off with a towel underneath my door.

Ranch Dressing

Oh, ranch dressing. We have a love/hate relationship. I really love ranch dressing, but I really hate the calories and the amount I use.

Cue Greek yogurt. I've read and pinned and heard about how Greek yogurt can be substituted for all sorts of less healthy options. So when I saw this at the grocery store, I knew I had to try it!

A bottled ranch dressing that is made with yogurt! A nice, easy way to transition myself into using yogurt instead of sour cream and mayonnaise. And one serving (two tablespoons) is only 45 calories!!! As if anyone only uses two tablespoons of ranch dressing, it makes me feel so much better about using a tad more.

How does it compare to regular ranch? Good question. Hidden valley ranch has 160 calories every two tablespoons. Oh, you use light ranch? That's great, it has 80 calories for every two tablespoons. So, essentially, even if you're using light ranch you are still cutting your calories in half!

But does it taste the same? I'll be honest. No. But it is very similar!! And I couldn't tell a difference at all when I made a recipe with it. The only time I could tell it was a little different, was when I dipped pizza directly into it. And I still didn't stop. It tasted different, not bad, but different.

 
 


Maybe this will make me use yogurt a little more. It's just hard for me to wrap my head around putting yogurt on a potato instead of sour cream.

If you've had success, let me know!!

A Father's Love

A while back, I blogged about my Baylor Family. Those were my main peeps, my go tos, my bestest buddies. However, there were plenty of other friends that made differences in my life.

Holly and Taylor were definitely two of those people. They were like pseudo-roommates! Melanie and I lived in a 3 room house; they lived in a 3 room house... And we all switched third roommates every year. This story isn't about them. It's about their first, 3rd roommate.

Gracie was super cool, there was just one thing a little different. She only had one leg. This didnt stop her in anything and we had so much fun with her. She ultimately ended up transferring schools, but since she's from my home town, you still see her around every now and then.

This story is not about Gracie either. It's about her dad. And her father's love.

Click here to read about Gracie and her dad and see a collection of beautiful pictures.

(Sidenote: as someone who's dad has beaten cancer twice, I cried throughout the entire thing. Also, if you have feelings, you might cry. That's a fair warning.)