Entertainment, poop, and other drivel

Speaking of WWE, what is wrong with Jesse, “The Body,” Ventura these days? Did anyone see his interview yesterday? Nice fu manchu look, Jesse. The double braided beard thing is really working for you.

Apparently, formerly “The Body” and formerly “The Gov” is looking to relocate out of the country. He says something to the effect that, “I find that I have more freedom in other countries.”

Yeah, like the freedom to sport the fu manchu. Please. Take it elsewhere.

Is it because of Minnesota that he is so irrevocably messed up? Or was Ventura always this freaky?

I’ve got news for you Jesse, you’ve already re-located. It’s time for you to locate where you put that thing too…it’s called a brain; look for the pink squishy thing that can think.

As for my picks, well my dog wasn’t cooperating as I had hoped he would. Champ just doesn’t have the target command of some of those more expertly trained dogs. But you didn’t really want to hear my picks anyway, people. C’mon, who really wants to know what the housewife/teacher/married-sex-kitten thinks about who is going to win the game this weekend?

I do hope to get in some “stealth” blogging today, so hopefully I won’t be totally off the radar as I am most Mondays and Fridays. We will see.

Stupid Movie Faves

My all time favorite stupid movie? It's a toss-up between "Better off Dead" and Weird Al's "UHF." Of course "Uncle Buck" and "Princess Bride" are right up there, but I hate to don the moniker of "stupid movie" to either of those flicks. I don't have time this morning to list all that I like about each (though I'd like to mention that I once dated this drummer who looked and acted exactly like Stanley Spadowski). However, I will impart a few of my favorite lines from the top two:

"It has raisins in it. You like raisins."

"That's tentacles with an "n.""

"Look! I can't move my right arm!"

"Riiiiiiicky!"

"I'm thinking of something orange...it's and orange!"

"What's the matter!? Don't you like Bonanza!?"

"Mmm, this is good watermelon.........uhg...tastes like poop!"

"Hey mister, you got change?"

"It's TRUE, IT"S TRUE! I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME!"

"Pick up the phone, pick up the phone, pick up the phone...AHHHH...I'M IN HELL!"

"It's kinda hard to get a promotion around here when every other week you've got a new boss!"

"You just gotta run to the window and yell, "THESE FLOORS ARE DIRTY AS HELL AND I'M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!"

Hot Metal

Oh, taking a walk down memory lane...


Which reminds me, I had a class once that wanted to make a "no lycra" rule.
Thanks Mimi!

All About Breasts!

Apparently people from Mississippi and California want to know "all about breasts," and they are Yahoo searching that phrase and finding my blog.

Sorry, Miss, sorry, Cali, no breasts here. Well, I have them, but you don't want to see them.

I have four kids, and I nursed.

But if I decide to do the Brazilian, I might let you see that. Everything down there still looks fine to quite fine.

fun at work and other stuff

Mondays and Fridays are not good blogging days for me. Let's just say that my workplace is not a blog friendly place. Not only is my "space" a cubicle with two half-walls (not really a cubicle - more of a cubby), but the gal whose desk is twenty feet from mine is a nosy Nelly. Nelly has great distance vision; I know because she is regularly commenting on what site I'm on. "Oh, I see you are on Google over there." Thanks Nelly.

Next to her is Bertha. Bertha, a sturdy woman, has a number of issues. First, she has "chemical sensitivity." That means we can't wear hair spray or perfume, and we can't wash our hair with smelly shampoo either. Basically, we have to come to the office sweaty and ungroomed. Body smells apparently do not bother her.

Yesterday Bertha was having a "headache" brought on by a mystery substance, so of course I was giving her the third degree in regard to which substances bother her.

"What about deodorant. Can I wear deodorant?"

"Yes. Deodorant doesn't bother me."

"Lotion. Can I use hand lotion."

"Only if it is unscented. It can't have a strong smell."

"Is fabric softener okay? Can I use that on my clothes?"

"No, not if it has a strong perfume. Anything with a strong perfume gives me a headache."

"What about deodorant soap? Is that too strong of a smell?"

"Yes."

Then, like detectives, the six other people in that workspace and I tried to sleuth out the offending smell.

"I brought flowers today. Could it be the flowers?" came a yell from an unseen face at the other side of my cubby. "Are you allergic to pollen, Bertha?"

"Yes, but that's not it. For some reason, cut flowers don't
bother me."

"When did the headache start? What time? Who walked in the room prior to the headache. I opened a tube of lotion today, put a dab on, and then washed it off. Could the remnants of that smell be it?"

Finally, we decided that we would all make note of our morning routines and measure that to the headache/non-headache ratio. Aye, aye, aye. Going into the office is such a hassle.

Oh, and Bertha is our local union rep. too. A few weeks ago she mentioned that she wanted to chat with me about some union issues before I left for the day. I quipped, "Does the chat involve a club and a beating?"

Bertha wasn't really amused by that. I'm not sure why. Later that day I heard her whispering into her phone. If my house gets egged, I'm going to be suspicious.

*******************************************************************

Here's the verdict as far as my game picks go: 8 wins, 6 losses. Is that good? If so, it was beginner's luck. I did watch a lot of football on Sunday, and like the good wife that I am, I didn't ask a question about the game.

more signs

Three things for a dollar. Six things for a dollar. Free (not this chair).

Or so that's what the signs say.

A person who lives on some property that I frequently pass when I drive around town - and I say person because I'm not sure if it's a girl or boy (at least the gender can't be determined with even a hard stare on the drive by) - has a practically perpetual garage sale going on there. Mostly on the weekends, hundreds of boxes filled with stuff litter the front lawn. Recently, the sale has been raised to table height, tarped, and re-located to the backyard by the barn. At the end of the sale, there is always a pile of misceleneous items (lamps, desks, furniture, knick-knackish stuff) that lies prostrate at the foot of an old high chair. On the high chair sits a sign that reads, "Free (not this chair)." Sometimes only the sign and chair are there for days on end.

With shoulder-lengthed, stringy hair and daily wearing the same dingy shirt and dungarees that were once white and now are tinged with red earth stains, I was surprised one day when Poetroad and I drove by to see the person wearing what appeared to be a black prairie skirt.

"It's a girl," I said convinced. "She's wearing a skirt!"

"That's a kilt!" Poetroad retorted.

"A kilt?"

Lot's of signs, more questions, and no answers.

Girlie Picks

Not to be undone or outdone by any of the Manscapers over at the Wheelhouse, here are my picks as promised (I don’t know what that means exactly, but it seems to be the appropriate amount of Mantalk that should precede one of these things):


Atlanta (+3) @ Buffalo - Falcons I know what a falcon is and I know what a buffalo is, but what’s a “Bill”? What is that? Were they last in line when mascots were handed out on the day?

Carolina (-3.5) @ Miami - Panthers Panthers are cool, sleek, and sexy. Dolphins are the sea mammals on crack; they’re jumpy and they make funny noises. Plus, if dolphins are so smart, then why are they always getting caught in tuna nets?


Cincinnati (-3) @ Chicago - Bears First off, I’m not a fan of the orange uniform. I don’t personally look good in that color. Though I’m a fan of the original WKRP (Johnny Fever ROCKS; gotta love the Herb), is there anything else to like about Cinci?


Dallas (-6.5) @ San Francisco - 49ers I have nothing against Cowboys in general (I’ve dated my share), but if diamonds are a girls best friend, someone’s got to foot the bill. I’m going with the gold miners over the rootin’ tootin’ crowd.


Cleveland (+13.5) @ Indianapolis - Colts Again, I’m not a fan of the orange – even if it is a darker, poopier shade of orange. And “Browns” just sounds like a team that Sanitation workers from around the world could really get behind. Also, I’ve always loved horses, especially baby horses.

New Orleans (+3.5) @ Minnesota - Saints Although I’m betraying my own Nordic heritage, I have to go with the team that’s currently homeless. In the face of Katrina and now Rita, I’m sure the boys are tired of being senselessly beaten by a bunch of women.

Jacksonville (+3) @ NY Jets - Jags Even though I’ve seen West Side Story a hundred or more times (“When you’re a Jet…”), I’m going for the team that also has a sleek, sexy and fast mascot that can take me for a ride to the supermarket in style.

Oakland (+7.5) @ Philadelphia - Eagles People, haven’t we had enough of the looting in the aftermath of Katrina? Enough of the Raiding! Let’s fly.

New England (+3) @ Pittsburgh - Patriots Same thing here – I’m tired of all the Steeling! Let’s get behind the men and women who have done so much to make this country free for God fearing folks who may occasionally marry a cousin or two.

NY Giants (+5.5) @San Diego - Chargers I love eating the corn nibblets and sundry vegetables that Mr. Jolly Green farms, but the girls at EM love to shop more than they love to eat. Charging it takes my vote hands down.

Arizona (+6.5) @ Seattle - Seahawks Seahawks are big, goofy birds. Cardinals are little red birds. Seems like a Cardinal just would be an easy target for that much bigger bird. Since when do Cardinals live in Arizona? I’ve got to consult my Western Birds handbook on this one.

Tennessee (+6.5) @ St. Louis - Rams I’m going for the tough and cool animal that’s not afraid to but heads with the enemy.

Tampa Bay (-3.5) @ Green Bay - Buccaneers Wrap my cheese, slice my cheese, put my cheese in a pressurized can, but don’t Pack my cheese please. Besides, I really liked Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean – he’s hot. So in honor of my fantasy man, Orlando, I’m going for the Buccaneers.

Kansas City (+3) @ Denver - Broncos There is no other choice when the Broncos are playing – my husband told me so. He’s the slightly sober guy sporting the orange and blue face, a big “B” on his bare belly, and whipping a tee over his head while he does something akin to the hula. And folks, that’s just the pre-game prep. Die-hard doesn’t even begin to describe his fanaticism over the team.

catch phrase

I’m adding a new catch phrase to my “platform.” Okay, I’m neither a beauty queen nor a politician, but it’s nice to have a platform regardless in case I might need it some day.

Which brings me back to my platform catch phrase: options. I always want to have them. Options are good because without them I only have one choice.

Some people flat out don’t like “options” because having them can seem to undermine “faith.” I say it takes more faith to have options – a multi-directional plan means that you have to be ready to full on change directions at a moments notice. Opting for the unknown and dumping the current path mid-stream takes a tremendous amount of faith.

Also, options are good if what is going on right now seems to be spiraling down into the crapper. I would prefer to jump off that boat ride and avoid the final flush if at all possible – and having options gives me that alternative.

Yes, the “options” piece is going to really fit in nicely with the “Up with People” plan (you remember, “I am for people…whatever it is that works in the advancement of and for people, I am for it”). Options are definitely “pro-people.”

signs

Quite a few homeless people call this city home, and often a guy or a couple of people (sometimes with a dog and sometimes not) will stand on a busy corner and beg for change. Most often there is a sign crafted from tattered cardboard that reads “Will work for food, Veteran, no job, I’m hungry, anything will be appreciated, God Bless.”

One time I gave a guy a spare can of Spam I had in my car. Don’t ask why I had a can of Spam in my car or why it was a “spare.” I’m not really sure why. But the guy didn’t turn down the gift Spam – nor did he look it in the mouth.

I could write and write for weeks about the homeless people holding their signs and being homeless and the conversations I’ve had with quite a few of them (and the conversations I’ve had with some of the mental patients that I cross paths with who live in half-way houses, which we also have quite a few of in this town).

But the other day I saw something a little different. Same type of guy, same traffic-y type of location, same tattered sign tucked under his arm, only this time the sign read, “One dollar a bag.”

I looked on the ground around the guy’s feet in an effort to ascertain what he was selling. I saw a coat. I saw his shoes (with feet inside – although I didn’t really see his feet, so it is just my best guess that they were standing there inside his shoes). I didn’t see any bags.

Darn it! I really wanted to know what that guy was selling for a dollar a bag. I wasn’t particularly interested in buying it, but I wanted to know just the same.

As I sat two lanes away waiting for my light to turn green, I noticed that his lips were moving, and I thought for a moment that quite possibly he was yelling out the slogan, “For sale! One dollar a bag!” I wanted to read his lips (not that I know how to read lips, but I always imagine I could if I really needed to know what someone was saying from across the room).

No such luck; the guy was merely talking to himself. When his eyes met mine, I didn’t let that glance linger.

Years ago I learned not to do that. On the other side of town, a woman who had the opposite of cross-eyes, styled a frightening looking frizz mullet, and needed a shave made her living by asking motorists, “Ya got a quarter; I need to make a phone call.” If you made eye contact, then you were next in line for the approach. She was a harmless bag lady, but the experience was frightening just the same.

So I was sincerely frightened for a moment that Mr. Dollar-a-bag would make his way across two lanes of traffic in order to chat awhile. I chat best over coffee.

The light turned green, and I made my way to the highway. I never did find out what that guy was selling – if he was selling anything at all. It’s quite possible that he didn’t know what he was doing there exactly, except to hold a sign that read, “One dollar a bag” and to have a nice little chat with himself.

"Prayerful Moment:" An Easy Habit to Break

Yes, it’s true. As I mentioned previously, Selene and I were nothing but common housekeepers when we were in undergrad school. It was a perfect little business we had going for the most part. Our fame spread across the grey set, and pretty soon little old ladies in ginormous Cadillac’s were cruising the college campus just to get a chance to bump into one of us and contract our employment.

For the most part, these ladies lived in clean houses already. It’s no lie; most every week the meticulous vacuuming lines that I labored to make the week before remained untouched…as if nary a house slipper shuffled its way across the carpet the entire week.

Well there was Matty Catootsa…that job I did alone. Not even in one of those cop shows where they break into a house and take the kids away because of the uninhabitable conditions of the home have I seen living conditions worse than this. Although Matty and her family did flush the toilet – they had that going for them. Still, the mounds of pee filled diapers lying around the bathroom and bedroom floors from the six-year-old bed wetter were a bit of a distraction each week.

But I digress…

Selene and I made good money for three hours of our time per home. Most weekends one of our clients would throw in a nice homemade lunch as well.

Marillis was one of the sweetest ladies a person could ever meet. She had a soft southern drawl, and one could detect just the slightest warble in her voice. She was a tiny, fragile woman too; almost a q-tip frame with a puff of white hair on top – the kind of woman that you are almost afraid to hug for fear of breaking her.

One morning, Selene was in the front room dusting the extensive brass candlestick collection while I was dusting sundry knickknacks in the back bedrooms. She had a habit of beginning the dusting there. I knew immediately there was something wrong, however, when Selene stepped into the room doe eyed and on the verge of completely falling apart.

I seriously wondered at first if she found the husband – in the last stages of emphysema – dead in one of the bedrooms.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” I pleaded.

“Oh man. Oh man. Something happened. I don’t know what happened. I mean I didn’t mean too. Oh, this is bad. This is very, very bad,” Selene mumbled in an almost catatonic state.

“What?! What happened?!”

“I can’t say. Just come here and look.”

She led me into the front room where she had been dusting and parked me in front of the fireplace mantle. At first I didn’t notice. There were at least fifty different kinds and sizes of brass candlesticks on that mantle, and I didn’t see anything wrong with any of them. They just stood there erect and lifeless as always.

And then I spied the problem as I scanned the perimeter of the collection. There it was with hands folded reverently as if caught in mid prayer.…a headless porcelain Lladro Nun statue tipped at a forty-five degree angle and gently resting her stump of a neck on the corner of a brass candlestick. The holy head sat neatly below, resting quietly on it’s newly severed stump.

I wondered silently if there was a special place in purgatory for nun killers. And then I burst out laughing. It was really one of the funniest sights I’d ever seen.

Of course Selene didn’t think it was so funny, particularly as she considered how much it would cost to replace this expensive collectible statue.

When Marillis returned home, Selene confessed through her tears her accidental misdeed. Marillis thought nothing of it.

Later, Marillis confessed to me, “Oh Selene shouldn’t worry about that little ol’ statue. It’s only worth about a hundred dollars. And anyway, thems just things, honey. You can’t take ‘em with ya when ya die.”

All I could think of in the moment was, “A HUNDRED DOLLARS?! That would take us four weeks to make enough money to pay her back!”

But Marillis knew something about life and possessions that we were only beginning to understand that day. Life is definitely more than the things we can accumulate, and it took a fragile little old lady to give us a glimpse of what it meant to be content regardless.

(To see the little Nun statue, enter the number 01015500 in “Search by Reference” space at the Lladro site.)

EEEWWWW

Yahoo search phrase that brought someone to my site:

Dick Van Patten Shirtless.

Let me be the first to say, "That is just wrong." I do not even want to consder the demographics behind that search.

Crappyglue

This just in: superglue is not super. It’s not even good. It’s really more like “crappyglue.” I don’t even know why I have that crap in my home except that having it gives me reassurance; if something breaks, I will be able to attempt to glue it back together before eventually I throw the broken thing away.

On Saturday, I found a little kid toy that was almost chomped clean in half by Champ . Great, I thought. This toy is a good candidate for that special glue.

So I removed the “push-pin” lid from the glue bottle, but I was unable to squeeze out the pin drop sized amount of glue that I needed to fix the toy. That’s okay, I’ll just apply a little more pressure on the bottle of glue, I thought.

Of course you know what happened – glue gushed out of the bottle (and this happens every time; it’s like having clowns in a bottle – when you think there is nothing else in there, more comes out). This time, though, my hands were entirely drenched in glue.

The situation was not good. For a moment, all of my fingers were stuck together on my left hand, and the toy was stuck to my fingers in my right hand.

By sheer willpower I was able to free the fingers and the toy, but my fingers on my left hand were beginning to crust over. I couldn’t bend one finger, and my ring was glued to my skin.

I abandoned the fix the toy idea.

Does this glue ever work? I mean, does it glue things that we intend to glue? I’ve heard that many doctors will now fasten some wounds with superglue rather than with stitches, and I am guessing that someone had a similar experience to mine to figure out how great superglue works on skin.

Other than closing a wound and gluing a hard hat to a steel beam so some weirdo can dangle precariously over a vat of human waste, are there any good uses for this glue?

The Wedding

I am happy to report that the wedding went perfectly. The bridesmaids behaved, the fairies were adorable, and the bride, as always, was calm, cool, collected, and gorgeous. It was nothing less than a fairytale wedding – the bride being Cinderella, only with raven hair.

Even the weather seemed to cooperate. The young couple, going the low budget route (smart thinking), planned an outdoor wedding at a historical home and garden on a nearby college campus. Of course the first stormy day of the year – thunder, lightening, torrential rains and all – blew in yesterday. I’m sure the mood was a little tense throughout the day as the rain had not relented up until two hours before the wedding was supposed to begin. And the sun never did come out, but it was not raining.

I don’t even think I could describe how magical everything was. The guests were seated under a canopy of three 100+ year-old elms. White lights were strung around the trees and over an arbor draped in tulle. The only thing that was missing was the fairy dust.

Oh, and I did find my spirits…they just weren’t where I was looking originally. Location, location, location… Self, you are so distracting!

The Rehersal

A good friend of the family is getting married today, and one of the little poets will be a flower girl. I say “a” because there will actually be seven – that’s right, seven – flower girls in this wedding. The girls, who range in age from eight to one, will be dressed up like little fairies, wings and all, and will prance up the aisle barefooted. It will be a sight to see! And since the wedding will begin at 7:00 PM, let’s hope that all of the little fairies cooperate in spite of how tired they may feel.

Truth be told, I am more concerned as to whether or not the six bridesmaids will behave. If last night at the rehearsal is any indication as to how things might go tonight, I’m bracing myself for disaster.

This is a wedding of youngish people (early twenties) who are all pretty and self-absorbed. I find that ironic that the bride would choose such a set. She is pretty – she is down right gorgeous, but she is neither bratty nor self-absorbed.

Back to the rehearsal dinner/rehearsal…it was at a friend’s house; the actual wedding, though, will take place out doors about forty minutes from here. My clan was invited to this shindig since my little fairy needed to practice her entrance and exit. Mistake one on my part, I took all four of my kids to this thing by myself. Poetroad was at a conference thingy last night.

The night began to unravel almost immediately. Although it was a big house, there were many, many people and many, many children crammed in there. At one point I heard the host blurt out, “This place isn’t baby proof ya know!” Nice.

Slated to begin at 6:30, there didn’t seem to be any movement towards eating or practicing the wedding half an hour later. At around 7:15, my kids were getting hungry and tired. So were the other six kids that were there.

Mistake two on my part, I only brought a handful of animal crackers as a snack. Those didn’t go very far. When the bride asked the person doing the food (family of the groom) for some snacks for the kids, the food lady declined. Not one little chip could be spared for the cause. I took three-fourths of the kids outside to distract them from their hunger pangs. We struck gold – blackberries. I spent about twenty minutes foraging for berries and doling them out one by one to the hungry fairies and to the rest of my clan. After I picked all that I could reach, we headed back in.

At 7:40, still nothing was happening inside. Well there were a lot of hungry, cranky, complaining adults milling around, but nothing organized was happening. I began making plans to take my kids to get something to eat and return later so my daughter could practice. The wedding coordinator finally decided, however, that we should get going on the rehearsal – dinner wouldn’t be ready until another half-hour after the rehearsal was finished, I was informed.

What was the hold up, you wonder? Several of the bridesmaids weren’t there yet. They didn’t show up until almost 8:00. I don’t know what was taking the bridesmaids so long, but I don’t think that holding up a wedding rehearsal for an hour and a half is a good idea. If you are in the wedding party and plan on showing up that late, there better be tales of ghastly car wrecks, broken limbs, and stitches to show. I didn’t notice any of that when the holdouts sauntered in looking all pretty.

Luckily, not long after the rehearsal portion of the evening we were allowed to dip into the taco buffet. I made sure my kids were fed, and then I scooted out of there as my one-year-old was fading fast. There is something about a screaming infant that people don’t like no matter how late at night it is.

I live five minutes away from where the rehearsal was held, and by the time I got home and got the kids in bed, it was 9:30ish. I know, I know…for the twentysomething crowd, you are just getting started. This is way past the witching hour for kids. Believe me childless people, there is a window of opportunity to get your kids in bed, and if you can’t make it happen before the window closes, it’s not pretty folks. When little ones get very, very tired, you would think that they would magically lie down and fall asleep as you tip toe out of the room.

Wake up people! This is not freakin’ la la land!

Keeping kids up late actually has the reverse effect. They get more wound up. Pretty soon everyone is screaming and crying and jumping on the beds and falling out of bed – parents included.

Luckily, my kids fell asleep almost instantly. Just in time for me to pursue some serious drinking.

Mistake number three on my part, I didn’t have anything spiked enough around here to take me to the drunken state where I wanted to be after enduring that rehearsal. We are mostly an alcohol free zone here. I had snagged some hard lemonade yesterday, though, that my older brother stashed at my parents house (don’t ask why; it’s a longer and more boring story than this…in fact, why are you still reading this?!). The hard lemonade sufficed, but even on an empty stomach, I could not physically consume it quickly enough to do the job.

By 10:00 PM, I was on my third bottle before I even felt a little tingle in my brain. Darn it, I’m not even good at getting drunk. Of course it wasn’t the effort that was flawed; it was the execution of the plan that had problems.

Hopefully the wedding will be better than the rehearsal. I have it on my list to snag some real spirits while I’m out of town.

Try this on for size

Michael Jack got me thinking. Is "underachieving" synonymous to "mediocrity"? Sorry, MJ. Sounds like a personal problem to me - one that I whole-heartedly would say to, "Good luck with that. And I'll see you at the end of the line; I'll be the stylish looking brunette right behind you."

Then I wondered, what would be a good synonym for "mediocrity" anyway? Try these on for size.

Mediocre: characterless, colorless, common, commonplace, conventional, decent, dull, fair, fairish, humdrum, indifferent, inferior, insignificant, intermediate, mainstream, mean, medium, middling, moderate, ordinary, passable, pedestrian, run-of-the-mill, second-rate, so-so, standard, starch, tolerable, undistinguished, unexceptional, uninspired, vanilla

No wonder "Vanilla Ice" didn't go far - it was the name that did him in. Might as well be "Mediocre Ice."

I also liked this little side note synonym entry from thesaurus.com:

Cheap: bad, base, blah, bogus, catchpenny, cheesy, common, commonplace, crap, crappy, crud, cruddy, dud, flashy, garbage, garish, glitzy, junky, lemon, lousy, mangy, mean, mediocre, meretricious, no bargain, no good, ordinary, paltry, poor, ratty, raunchy, rinky-dink, rotten, rubbishy, second-rate, shoddy, sleazy, small time, tatty, tawdry, terrible, trashy, trumpery, two bit, valueless, white elephant, worthless

Sleazy, tatty (don’t know what that means exactly, but I like the look and sound of it), trashy....oooooooooooo...now those words definitely have some possibility here. Oh, and I see my favorite adjective "crappy" right there too. I'm really starting to dig this mediocre thing!

from "Think Geek." Yeah, that seems about right.

Here is my new motto...

Tiiiiin roof...rusted...

I’ve been having some long telephone conversations with a married man (not my husband) recently. A few times we’ve talked for at least two hours late into the night.

Don’t get any crazy ideas though. I’m not having an affair or anything fun like that. I’m revamping one of our online courses, and it needs to be done before next Tuesday. The guy I’m chatting with, Larry, is the web master, and I am one of the curriculum specialists (that’s a fancy title for “girl who writes the crap that everyone teaches”).

Larry is a “Nervous Nelly” – that’s Poetroad’s characterization anyway, but I’d have to agree. Larry gets a little anxious about things (ha ha…isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black), and when we work on a project together, he calls two or three times a day on the days that he is webbing my stuff. I’ve finally figured out, though, that when I want something done on the site that a conversation will ensue. I always email the directions and the material, but he is a verbal processor. Larry needs to hear me say it in order to understand what I mean. Often I am simply reading straight from the email, and every time he responds as if he never “heard” me say that before. It’s not a criticism; he’s just quirky that way.

But this post really isn’t about Larry. It’s about how I’ve slowly begun to own up to my steady migration into geekdom. Often I find myself chatting with Larry about the course – talking through the problems and working the kinks out of the course navigation (our courses are a little bit like textbooks online because they are designed so that students can work on the work in an asynchronous fashion) – and the epiphany comes in short bursts. “I know what the word asynchronous means. I care about what the word means. He is speaking in computer speak. I understand him and I care.”

The descent was long in coming. Actually, I think that I was always there, and the veil is finally being lifted. I was a closet geek in high school. I’ve been in denial for a lot of years. When I had to purchase my first pair of reading glasses, that should have been a huge clue. Nothing is wrong with being a geek. I just tended to characterized myself as “athlete” or “parent” or “girl who likes to read and talk about literature” or “girl who likes to wear black and wishes she had a tattoo but won’t get one for fear that she will be seen as one of those large ladies who gets a cute little tattoo on her ankle to somehow make her jumbo calves look smaller” or just “sexy lady.”

Okay, I just threw that last one in for fun.

School is in

One summer down, one school year to go. It was the first day back to school for two of the four little poets. I’ve never seen two children more excited to get back to school than these two.

Back to school prep begins back in July when Mom hits the sales and buys school supplies before the Labor Day mark up. Which is crazy because I am guaranteed to find the 10-cent Rose Art 24 pack o’crayons at Wal-Crap any day of the week any day of the year.

But the volume of glue sticks required in this school district is what always sends me to the stores in July when I can buy a pack of 3 for 20 cents vs. the 2.00 per pack I would have had to pay had I waited. Plus, there was a year or two when I waited too late to get the supplies, and then there wasn’t a glue stick to be found in the city – even at Wal-Crap. God knows that the kids need the glue sticks to fashion the menagerie of paper art work that I am seriously considering using to wall paper my house with due to the sheer tonnage of the stuff that gets sent home.

Anyway, the fourth grader was up, dressed, down stairs with her backpack on (that has been packed and ready to go since July), and was eating breakfast by 7:00 AM. School starts at 9:10. Half way through the morning, I had to kindly ask her to stop updating me every two minutes on what time it was.

Needless to say, everyone was in class and set way before the bell rang for school to start. Completing the parent/student first day of class stuff was a little tricky, though, for a parent who has multiple children. I just want to get my girls to their desks and orient them to their new classroom without having the extra assignment piled on top of that task, thank you. Plus, there were a few kids who didn’t have a parent there to help them out…one little guy looked at me with big fearful eyes and said, “Hi. I don’t know what to do.” So of course I helped him out too.

Then as I hurried home with the two younger poets so I could take my four-year-old in to get immunized. All and all, it’s been an interesting morning. I need another cup of coffee.

And I thought I was a good kisser

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At the office

School is in, and that means that I am back at the office. Had an in-service yesterday that was ever so joyful – particularly when one crabapple threw a fit when our supervisor neglected to purchase a “team” shirt for her. Ms. Crabbypants only works on site five hours a week, so she doesn’t get a shirt. Neither did any of the other five hour a weekers.

I offered to give Ms. C the shirt off my back, but my supervisor wouldn’t have it. Work could have been fun yesterday, but, alas, I had to keep my shirt on.

I guess Ms. C is just another one of those angry “man-haters.” Does she wonder why her divorce was ever so ugly?