Now, That's A Salad

It was teacher appreciation week last week. We got little treats and surprises and lots and lots of food. It's pretty fabulous. You already know how we feel about food in the teacher's lounge. We LOVE it. So, one day some of the parents brought lunch for us. There was fresh fruit, sandwiches, chips, lots of lovely desserts and salads. I filled a plate with salad and fresh fruit. What? I DID. The fact that I had a separate plate for my desserts is entirely irrelevant.

One of the salads looked really good, with cut up fresh apples and nuts blended together with a white, creamy substance that looked luscious. I took my first bite and - yum - that is really good! The apples, the nuts...and what is that delicious, chewy, substance? I took a few more bites and then I realized. That is a candy bar. A cut-up candy bar. Chunks of candy bar in my salad. Could anything be better? A salad with a candy bar in it. I'm still marveling over it.

I'm telling you. A candy bar. That's MY kind of salad.

Fair Game

Someone left a couple of big packages of chips in the teacher's lounge.

Unless you are a teacher, I don't think you can fully appreciate our obsession with food in the lounge. When someone brings food for us...well, can you picture a bunch of hyenas tearing into a zebra? Snarling and snapping, gorging and slavering, slinking back to the cave, tummies tight. Yeah, that's us.

Maybe it's because our stress level is high. Maybe it's because we feel so much pressure to make our students successful. Maybe it's because we work such long hours with few breaks for food or even the bathroom. Or maybe it's because we are just a bunch of hogs.

People bring us food for teacher appreciation week, several groups of teachers often bring snacks, and groups will put leftovers in the lounge when they have an event. So, food in the lounge is considered fair game. We are not sure who left the chips in there. They haven't been opened because we just weren't sure. We discussed it yesterday. But we left them alone for one more day.

We figured 24 hours is the absolute longest length of time food should be left alone in there. After then, it's fair game for the hyenas. We think that's perfectly fair.

Don't you?