"...In the end, people either have excuses or experiences; reasons or results; buts or
brilliance. They either have what they wanted or they have a detailed list of all the rational reasons why not."

~ Anonymous
(taken from Matt Erbele's, It Takes Time to Get Good)

Saturday, May 29, 2010

For the love of Mary

This week has been typical end of the school year fare: award ceremonies (no, I did not win anything. Thanks for bringing it up, though), retirement dinners, end of the year parties, and the mad scramble to finish all the the shit we should have been doing in March and April when we thought the end of the school year would never arrive.

I have 2 more weeks of cherubs.

I am tired of the cherubs.

The cherubs are tired of me.

*sigh*

AP biology had their end of the year party last night and I HAD to show you all the coolest freakin' baked goods of all time ('coolest' being a relative term, of course.) It is a tray of brownies that have a human karyotype in frosting. It was frosted to show the karyotype of a Down's Syndrome (trisomy 21) female.

I was literally beaming with pride over the nerdiness of this! (Technically, if you count the pairs they made it 'trisomy 22', slight error, but mom frosted them and she is not in my class, so we will let her slide.)

Saturday ride: 30 miles, 1815' of climb

I titled this post "For the love of Mary" because one of the roads that LA Run buddy and I were biking on today is called Mary Avenue. Every time we ride on Mary I think of the summer the world lost a great human, named Mary.

Mary Avenue is the site of a uber cool, new (ok, new-ish. I took a few months off remember?) freeway overcrossing for bikes and pedestrians and we just HAD to ride over it.


LA Run Buddy in all her adorableness, on the Mary Avenue Bridge


Hysterical statue on the other side of the bridge. See the adorable family of California Quail? Then look up in the left had corner to see the statue includes a predator looking down, deciding which one of the fat, empty-headed little chicks to pick off first.


LA Run Buddy consoles the mother Quail. She is such a trooper. I ask her to pose for all of these pictures and she hardly ever rolls her eyes at me.


RBR (aka the luckiest girl alive) and her BFF.


The end of this July will mark the second anniversary of my friend Mary's death. It is hard to believe it has been two years. I still miss you Mary.

I will be toeing the line at Barb's Race in her memory like I have every year since she died (Barb's 2008, Barb's 2009). This year we have a another cancer battle going on, so I will be racing in honor of my husband as well.

10 comments:

Generation X (Slomohusky) said...

Wow - nice brownies. Meaning behind the autism choice? Just curious? Or was it there and I missed?

Have a great last few weeks and Summer. Teens amaze me. Whenever I have taught a class of them, and thought no way was I getting inside them (heads on table with pretend naps always the intial clue) - boom they say or do something which came directly from me. I have learned to never give up, even though it all seems hopeless on the surface.

Thanks for being a great Teach!

Aka Alice said...

I just know that mom's daughter/son was just mortified by her error and suspect that aforementioned error caused a huge fight between mom and son/daughter.

Not that I would know about ANY of that...just a guess.

That bridge is too cool.

Thanks so much for all the positivity about RnR.

Coachhrd said...

As you move toward summer, there's always more fun!

SteveQ said...

I know you're expecting some uber-geeky comment about the DNA brownies, but you went and wrote a sincere post and I'm feeling all cahritable. Damn you and your perky-ass outlook...

I like to think mama quail's thinking, "Look behind you, hawk, those powerlines are keeping you from having this many offspring!"

SteveQ said...

That's "charitable."

Perky-ass is still right.

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

It was frosted to show the karyotype of a Down's Syndrome (trisomy 21) female.

Don't fuckin' patronize me, B*tch! I know the karyotype of a Down's Syndrome (trisomy 21) female in brownie frosting when I see it! Pffttt! What am I? Stupid?

On the other hand ...

[Mary] is the only septegenarian I know that says "fuck" almost as much as I do. Particularly if you get her talking about George W or people that don't properly take care of their kids or dogs

... I think I would have loved your friend Mary! She kinda sounds like a female me, only nice. What a moving tribute that was - and since you wrote it before I found your blog this is my first time reading it.

You're a good person.

Keep us apprised of any developments with the hub. Or just let us know if he stabs another inanimate object with a knife, because that's useful to know, too. When the machines rise up against us and take over, your hub will be the first person they go after.

Also, I know how to spell "charitable", so - Woo-Hoo! - this puts me ahead of SteveQ on points!

Phil Specter, Phil Specter, Phil Specter!1!!1!

Anne said...

Very touching post regarding your friend Mary...what a wonderful person.

Cool cake...you are definitely getting across to these kids :)

Diana said...

I wish we never had to dedicate our races to anyone!
Mary will be smiling down on you!

Nice brownies!
(for some reason, that sounds dirty but can't figure out why!)

Enjoy the last week of school, I know my son is counting the days!

Lindsay said...

who's that A bonding with that T? it's me. it's me. ok everytime you post about bio it reminds me of my hs bio class and we made up a little jingle to an SNL jingle. except now i can only think of AT/CG and not the original song. oh well. random.

you will make it these last few days!!

SteveQ said...

First brownies, then the recumbent exercise bike: http://erader.zenfolio.com/p527729321/e254c29b8

I'm sure you hate it, but I think this particular photo's charming.