but said she this butter's bitter

Emmett got what may or may not have been strep throat on Saturday. He's such a gigantic drama queen anytime he gets sick ("It feels like my neck is being chopped with an axe!"), who can say what was wrong with him? He was just on an antibiotic for strep a month ago, and I was not going to take him in again. But he refuses to take the home remedies we usually use for this, because he doesn't like the taste of garlic and honey and cayenne pepper mixed together. Baby. The outlook wasn't good, but with creative cooking, juicing, and judicious application of Satan's plan we were able to get a bunch of the necessary things into him, and he woke up fine this morning. Even so he's still going to want to go to Lee's Mongolian for dinner tonight, because he has blind, trusting faith in the curative properties of the Mongolian stir-fry.

Last Friday the PTA provided a luncheon and took the classes for a half hour so the teachers could have a leisurely meal all together. I took Emmett's class, and there was this crazy kid who was saying to his friend, "Your argument is clearly based on conjecture." He was not quoting, that's just the way he talks. I only had them for five minutes after they came back from art and before they went to lunch, but it was exhausting. Fourth-graders are old enough to smell blood in the water when there's a substitute, and they were just this side of mutiny until I made them say tongue twisters, which didn't start out as a vanity project, but became one when I blew the doors off the joint with my flawless rendition of "Betty Botta."