she sat under a blanket like a crocus under an april snowfall

While using the awesome-search-function of gmail, I came across these in an email. This is from teaching 8th grade 3 years ago. Brilliant.

Bad Similes

• Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
• His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
• She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
• The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
• McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
• Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
• Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
• Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
• He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
• The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
• Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
• The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr. Pepper can.
• They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
• John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
• The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
• The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
• Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.
• The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of "Jeopardy!"
• Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
• The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
• He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
• Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter."
• She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
• It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
• The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.
• The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
• The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
• It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
• He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
• Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
• She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
• She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
• Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened.
• It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
• Every minute without you feels like 60 seconds.

Several times during the day, Julie goes into me-time, and just sits quietly intently reading books.  Sometimes she entertains herself like this quietly, and sometimes she 'reads' aloud (I've got a video!).  Sometimes she does this for over 30 minutes.  Sometimes she sits on the potty (with or without her pants on) and every once in a while, she gets herself into a tent while reading.  Her love of tents is close to my heart.



This from just 10 minutes ago.