It didn't seem like it would be one of those days when I got up this morning. All went fairly well and we were out the door in plenty of time. My son did miss the bus because I was writing a check for his book order, but that was really no biggie since I have time to drop them off at school with time to spare now that I don't do attendance window duty any more.
As I was heading around the back of the school to get to the teacher parking lot, I saw the school photographer setting up the outdoor camera and it hit me: Today was senior makeup day.
I never even went to my classroom. I headed straight to the main office to get the senior sign in sheet, but I bumped into the assistant principal on the way. He smiled at me and held up three fingers. Knowing that two fingers means "peace" and one finger can mean either "wait" or the opposite of "peace," I was unsure what his three stood for.
My puzzled glance earned me a clue. He said, "Covering."
My mind started its usual scramble to figure out what I should be thinking, especially since I was focused on the senior sheet and getting everything done before my students came to class. It finally clicked that he was reminding me I had to cover another teacher's class at 3:00. I intelligently replied, "Ohhhhhh..." as my befuddled brain began to send alerts that there was something I was supposed to ask him. I stood right beside him and stared at the corner of the roof blankly as I flipped the Rolodex of my neurological pathways and frantically tried to recall what I was forgetting.
Since he doesn't know me that well, the assistant principal thought my blank gaze was because I was still paying attention to his three fingers. When he kindly clarified, "You're supposed to cover Stacie's class at 3:00," he interrupted my thought train. Unthinkingly, I responded, "Yeah, yeah, yeah" with a dismissive flick of my hand.
Seconds later, I remembered the simple something I had wanted to mention to him two days ago that really had no relevance now. At almost the same moment, I realized what I had just said. I was horrified. It's not just that I was rude to him; it's that he's sort of my new boss and I was really rude to him. I immediately apologized, and tried to explain myself.
"I'm sorry. That was really rude and I didn't mean to say it out loud." (That wasn't really any better.) "I was trying to remember what I needed to ask you." (Getting there.) "Then I realized it really wasn't important enough and that you weren't the one who would have the answer anyway." (Eh....) "Do you know where Tony is?" (Tony is the head principal. In effect, I dismissed him with my apology and asked to speak to his supervisor.)
Luckily, it's a small school and he did know me a little from our previous years teaching together. *sigh* I hope he's forgotten all about the thoughts that the look on his face told me he was thinking. At least he was smiling when I walked away.
Come to think of it, that's the expression that many people have when I leave. Hmm...
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Teen Spirit
She woke me up at 12:50 the first time. The dog, that is. I had stayed up a little later than normal watching a TV show and it felt like I had just dropped into sleep. She was whining loudly enough for me to hear her over the wonderous white noise app I installed on my iPhone that keeps me blissfully unaware of all but the loudest of sounds from my children and pets. They have to really want me to wake me up.
Apparently, the dog really wanted me.
I accepted that there must be a problem out of the ordinary because she usually sleeps through the night. Once I stumbled through the kitchen and found the leash from the strange place my son had dropped it, I opened her crate and took her outside so she could sit and look at me pleadingly.
Two nights ago, after she'd been in her outdoor lot for all but two hours, she woke me up at three wanting outside. I let her out and watched her sprint into the distance. I gave her a few minutes to go to the bathroom and then whistled her back. She came with alacrity, charging full speed towards me in the door. To say I was surprised gives a new definition to understatement. It normally takes several calls before she decides to hear me calling, so I was pleased to be able to get back in bed so quickly.
Of course, she was only teasing. At the last possible second, she altered her trajectory so that she whizzed by me at a speed high enough for my nightgown to ripple. At the very edge of the porchlight, she screeched to a halt and gave me a mischievous doggy grin before heading into the pitch blackness of the front yard.
I whistled and yelled again, and then I heard the charge of claws coming my way. I prepared to grab her collar this trip by, but with puppy laughter, she raced by at the perfect distance for me to just feel the fur of her back. Damn dog. We kept this "game" up for at least fifteen minutes until I caved and got the treats. Right in the door she came when I shook the bag, and I got another three hours sleep once my temper chilled.
Hence the leash last night. I was not playing rocket dog another night. If she had to go, she could go while on the leash. It was her retractable leash, so she'd even be able to burn a little energy jerking my shoulder socket.
But no. She just sat beside me and gave me a pitiful look.
"Go pee," I told her. I got a lick on the hand and a whine in response.
I moved a few more feet out into the wet grass. "Pee!" I commanded forcefully. She took a few steps out, turned around, sat at my feet, and hit me with another pitiful look.
The other dogs came up. The happy-to-see-you-here nose sniffing and licking commenced, and when I told her to go pee a third time, the two outdoor dogs looked at her as though waiting for her to get on with her business so they could go back to bed too. She hid behind my legs and wouldn't budge.
At this point, it was one o'clock in the morning and I was tired, so I took her inside and she willingly went back to her bed and laid down. I shut the door and breathed deeply when my head hit the pillow.
Ten minutes later she whined again.
My response was a bellowed, "SHUT UP!" and she did.
Fifteen minutes later, I hear a whine followed by my daughter's dulcet call: "Mama, I think Vivie had an accident."
Grumbling and thinking havoc and mayhem, I took the four steps from my bed to the door when it hit me.
Up to that point, the worst smell ever caused by my husband's digestive system really not liking the barium cocktail required before his CT scan resulted in my husband and I riding with our heads hanging out the window during a sleet storm in below freezing weather while driving to a friend's house.
The smell assaulting my hallway was at least that bad. With an oath, I flipped on my daughter's light and saw the dog, head hung low and a miserable expression on her face, sitting on the top corner of her doggy bed, as far from the string of diarrhea as she could get.
With a more serious oath, I opened her cage and she made good time tracking the diarrhea down my hall in little, wet, brownish paw prints. That's when I really started cursing. The first time anyway.
I let her outside and decided that I didn't care if she ever came back in. Since I was in the kitchen anyway, I opened the cabinet under the sink to get out my cleaner. My Mr. Clean wasn't there.
My housekeeper usually brings her own supplies, but I figured it was possible that she had moved mine somewhere else. I looked next underneath the bathroom sink. Nothing. Not even extra shampoo. I was more than a little pissed off now, both at the dog and at the housekeeper, since I know that I had a bottle of some sort of cleaning solution somewhere, but furious at 1:00 is still stupid tired at 1:00. I headed into the basement where I might find anything. She doesn't normally go down there, but occasionally she leaves a note about doing some laundry so I thought it possible that she might have left my cleaner there. It wasn't.
I finally found a little bottle of an old cleaner supplement that smelled strongly if not well, and decided it was the best I had. Then I turned to look for my mop bucket. I still haven't found it.
I went upstairs, grumbling to myself, grabbed the mop, and ran a bathtub full of suds. After a few swishes to be sure it was wet, I lifted the mop from the water with my hand on that little lever that squeezes the two sides together and gets out the excess water. The sponge wasn't there. The glue had simply turned loose and the sponge fell right off that little plastic bit that holds it to the mop. I stared at it in stupefication for a minute or two and then my brilliance shined right through.
I plunged my hand into the scalding hot water, grabbed the scalding hot sponge, and pushed it back onto the plastic thing as though the nonexistent glue would suddenly hold it there. When it fell off again, I just stared at it dumbly while flapping my scalded hand in the air.
I'll admit to a few tears at this point. I'll also admit that I really don't function well in the middle of the night. Most people wouldn't still have the sleep-time fog after the stench and the burn. I had wised up some and woken up mostly. Just not enough.
I tried again with my unburned hand.
Eventually, I got the paper towels and a bottle of window cleaner and cleaned up the majority of the semi-solid matter with that, shoving everything in a plastic grocery bag. I only had to stand up a few times from gagging at the smell, and the dry heaves only took a few minutes once. I'm very proud that I didn't throw up. The smell when I walked in the room was nothing compared to bending over enough to get it up with paper towels.
And bending over was nothing compared to kneeling on the rug and feeling a squoosh underneath my knee. That dog got distance with this shit. There was at least a foot and a half of clearance between the cage and the rug.
As I am a forced-positive person (I'm a natural-born pessimist who refuses to let myself stay that way), I turned my poop covered knee into a good thing by realizing I would never have looked under the little dresser stacker for stray poop if my knee hadn't gotten gooed. I would have searched for the smell for days, missing the stream that somehow made it under there. (See how good I am at silver-linings?)
About 30 minutes and one roll of paper towels later, I tied off the grocery bag to hold in the stench to the bottom of the biggest trashcan I own where I shoved it and went back into the bathroom for the mop head. It only took eight trips to scrub my daughter's floor by hand with the mop head.
In only more ten minutes from finishing a deep scrub of the floors, walls, and furniture, I had scoured every inch of my arms and legs, glad for the scalding since the germs couldn't live through it and even if they did, they would be sloughed off with the top layer of my skin. I changed my nightgown, gulped several glasses of water, checked to make sure my daughter was sleeping well in the recliner since her room was unlivable with stench still, and went to turn off her light.
That was when I brushed off some poop that had gotten on the door jamb on my mad dash with the crate bottom out the door. Another tub of suds and serious scrubbing of every door jamb I passed through whether I saw poop or not, I finally scrubbed up again and went to bed.
I couldn't sleep because I could still smell it. I would turn my head to the side and catch a whiff. Each whiff resulted in me sniffing another body part for fear that I had missed some on my skin. I did both elbows first, then tried to smell my short hair, and when I realized that I had folded double trying to sniff my own stomach, I called paranoia and decided that if it was me and not just lingering odor, it was going to wait until morning.
It took only thirty minutes of talking to myself to convince my brain to believe me.
I have, of course, bought a new mop head, some Mr. Clean, another mop bucket, several sponges, rubber gloves, and a spray bottle of some sort of degreaser since last night. I have taken the cage and everything that might possibly have been touched by the explosion out of my daughter's room and scrubbed every nook and cranny again. Only one element for my peace of mind remains:
Where do I hide my Mr. Clean?
Apparently, the dog really wanted me.
I accepted that there must be a problem out of the ordinary because she usually sleeps through the night. Once I stumbled through the kitchen and found the leash from the strange place my son had dropped it, I opened her crate and took her outside so she could sit and look at me pleadingly.
Two nights ago, after she'd been in her outdoor lot for all but two hours, she woke me up at three wanting outside. I let her out and watched her sprint into the distance. I gave her a few minutes to go to the bathroom and then whistled her back. She came with alacrity, charging full speed towards me in the door. To say I was surprised gives a new definition to understatement. It normally takes several calls before she decides to hear me calling, so I was pleased to be able to get back in bed so quickly.
Of course, she was only teasing. At the last possible second, she altered her trajectory so that she whizzed by me at a speed high enough for my nightgown to ripple. At the very edge of the porchlight, she screeched to a halt and gave me a mischievous doggy grin before heading into the pitch blackness of the front yard.
I whistled and yelled again, and then I heard the charge of claws coming my way. I prepared to grab her collar this trip by, but with puppy laughter, she raced by at the perfect distance for me to just feel the fur of her back. Damn dog. We kept this "game" up for at least fifteen minutes until I caved and got the treats. Right in the door she came when I shook the bag, and I got another three hours sleep once my temper chilled.
Hence the leash last night. I was not playing rocket dog another night. If she had to go, she could go while on the leash. It was her retractable leash, so she'd even be able to burn a little energy jerking my shoulder socket.
But no. She just sat beside me and gave me a pitiful look.
"Go pee," I told her. I got a lick on the hand and a whine in response.
I moved a few more feet out into the wet grass. "Pee!" I commanded forcefully. She took a few steps out, turned around, sat at my feet, and hit me with another pitiful look.
The other dogs came up. The happy-to-see-you-here nose sniffing and licking commenced, and when I told her to go pee a third time, the two outdoor dogs looked at her as though waiting for her to get on with her business so they could go back to bed too. She hid behind my legs and wouldn't budge.
At this point, it was one o'clock in the morning and I was tired, so I took her inside and she willingly went back to her bed and laid down. I shut the door and breathed deeply when my head hit the pillow.
Ten minutes later she whined again.
My response was a bellowed, "SHUT UP!" and she did.
Fifteen minutes later, I hear a whine followed by my daughter's dulcet call: "Mama, I think Vivie had an accident."
Grumbling and thinking havoc and mayhem, I took the four steps from my bed to the door when it hit me.
Up to that point, the worst smell ever caused by my husband's digestive system really not liking the barium cocktail required before his CT scan resulted in my husband and I riding with our heads hanging out the window during a sleet storm in below freezing weather while driving to a friend's house.
The smell assaulting my hallway was at least that bad. With an oath, I flipped on my daughter's light and saw the dog, head hung low and a miserable expression on her face, sitting on the top corner of her doggy bed, as far from the string of diarrhea as she could get.
With a more serious oath, I opened her cage and she made good time tracking the diarrhea down my hall in little, wet, brownish paw prints. That's when I really started cursing. The first time anyway.
I let her outside and decided that I didn't care if she ever came back in. Since I was in the kitchen anyway, I opened the cabinet under the sink to get out my cleaner. My Mr. Clean wasn't there.
My housekeeper usually brings her own supplies, but I figured it was possible that she had moved mine somewhere else. I looked next underneath the bathroom sink. Nothing. Not even extra shampoo. I was more than a little pissed off now, both at the dog and at the housekeeper, since I know that I had a bottle of some sort of cleaning solution somewhere, but furious at 1:00 is still stupid tired at 1:00. I headed into the basement where I might find anything. She doesn't normally go down there, but occasionally she leaves a note about doing some laundry so I thought it possible that she might have left my cleaner there. It wasn't.
I finally found a little bottle of an old cleaner supplement that smelled strongly if not well, and decided it was the best I had. Then I turned to look for my mop bucket. I still haven't found it.
I went upstairs, grumbling to myself, grabbed the mop, and ran a bathtub full of suds. After a few swishes to be sure it was wet, I lifted the mop from the water with my hand on that little lever that squeezes the two sides together and gets out the excess water. The sponge wasn't there. The glue had simply turned loose and the sponge fell right off that little plastic bit that holds it to the mop. I stared at it in stupefication for a minute or two and then my brilliance shined right through.
I plunged my hand into the scalding hot water, grabbed the scalding hot sponge, and pushed it back onto the plastic thing as though the nonexistent glue would suddenly hold it there. When it fell off again, I just stared at it dumbly while flapping my scalded hand in the air.
I'll admit to a few tears at this point. I'll also admit that I really don't function well in the middle of the night. Most people wouldn't still have the sleep-time fog after the stench and the burn. I had wised up some and woken up mostly. Just not enough.
I tried again with my unburned hand.
Eventually, I got the paper towels and a bottle of window cleaner and cleaned up the majority of the semi-solid matter with that, shoving everything in a plastic grocery bag. I only had to stand up a few times from gagging at the smell, and the dry heaves only took a few minutes once. I'm very proud that I didn't throw up. The smell when I walked in the room was nothing compared to bending over enough to get it up with paper towels.
And bending over was nothing compared to kneeling on the rug and feeling a squoosh underneath my knee. That dog got distance with this shit. There was at least a foot and a half of clearance between the cage and the rug.
As I am a forced-positive person (I'm a natural-born pessimist who refuses to let myself stay that way), I turned my poop covered knee into a good thing by realizing I would never have looked under the little dresser stacker for stray poop if my knee hadn't gotten gooed. I would have searched for the smell for days, missing the stream that somehow made it under there. (See how good I am at silver-linings?)
About 30 minutes and one roll of paper towels later, I tied off the grocery bag to hold in the stench to the bottom of the biggest trashcan I own where I shoved it and went back into the bathroom for the mop head. It only took eight trips to scrub my daughter's floor by hand with the mop head.
In only more ten minutes from finishing a deep scrub of the floors, walls, and furniture, I had scoured every inch of my arms and legs, glad for the scalding since the germs couldn't live through it and even if they did, they would be sloughed off with the top layer of my skin. I changed my nightgown, gulped several glasses of water, checked to make sure my daughter was sleeping well in the recliner since her room was unlivable with stench still, and went to turn off her light.
That was when I brushed off some poop that had gotten on the door jamb on my mad dash with the crate bottom out the door. Another tub of suds and serious scrubbing of every door jamb I passed through whether I saw poop or not, I finally scrubbed up again and went to bed.
I couldn't sleep because I could still smell it. I would turn my head to the side and catch a whiff. Each whiff resulted in me sniffing another body part for fear that I had missed some on my skin. I did both elbows first, then tried to smell my short hair, and when I realized that I had folded double trying to sniff my own stomach, I called paranoia and decided that if it was me and not just lingering odor, it was going to wait until morning.
It took only thirty minutes of talking to myself to convince my brain to believe me.
I have, of course, bought a new mop head, some Mr. Clean, another mop bucket, several sponges, rubber gloves, and a spray bottle of some sort of degreaser since last night. I have taken the cage and everything that might possibly have been touched by the explosion out of my daughter's room and scrubbed every nook and cranny again. Only one element for my peace of mind remains:
Where do I hide my Mr. Clean?
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
There Must Be a Full Moon
I'm tired. I have no particular reason to be so tired, but I am. I slept well last night and got my usual hours. I did nothing particularly strenuous at work today, and when I came home, I sat on my new porch swing and read a book. Yet I'm tired.
And I'm kinda pissed. I had the greatest yearbook theme ever for this year's book. We create the master for the next year in the spring so that the second semester class can complete the spreads for the events that happen in the spring. (We have a spring delivery book, so each year's spring sports appear in the next year's book. A March deadline pretty much necessitates that process.) I have four unusual editors who share my sense of humor while spanning the different social groups in the school. There's one from just about every clique in a high school. Luckily they all get along well and were ecstatic over the theme. We even had the cover ready to go.
Then, over the summer, the elementary school secretary said something to me about how she was excited that her daughter was going to get the special 50th yearbook I was doing. I was all, "HUH?" and she was like, "Yeah, it's the 50th graduating class, so I figured you were going to do a really special book."
Hence, I'm pissed. I was excited about the coolest theme possibly ever, had completed the masters, designed the cover, and was more than ready to rock and roll when school came back in. Instead, I'm now scrambling to try to revamp the masters and come up with a theme that, no matter how good, will never be the awesome theme we had. My editors are all fairly broken-hearted and could give a real rip about their senior book now. I'm with them.
My sense of social justice tells me that I absolutely have to make it relate to the 50 years. My sense of satisfaction and total geekery says screw it. The internal battle between the me-that-is and the me-that-my-mother-wanted rages on.
And I'm pretty sure there's a full moon. A full moon encourages my creative side to stab the logical side with a large serrated blade because that does more damage and leaves scars.
So, I'm tired. Too tired for a decent conclusion to this blog, actually.
And I'm kinda pissed. I had the greatest yearbook theme ever for this year's book. We create the master for the next year in the spring so that the second semester class can complete the spreads for the events that happen in the spring. (We have a spring delivery book, so each year's spring sports appear in the next year's book. A March deadline pretty much necessitates that process.) I have four unusual editors who share my sense of humor while spanning the different social groups in the school. There's one from just about every clique in a high school. Luckily they all get along well and were ecstatic over the theme. We even had the cover ready to go.
Then, over the summer, the elementary school secretary said something to me about how she was excited that her daughter was going to get the special 50th yearbook I was doing. I was all, "HUH?" and she was like, "Yeah, it's the 50th graduating class, so I figured you were going to do a really special book."
Hence, I'm pissed. I was excited about the coolest theme possibly ever, had completed the masters, designed the cover, and was more than ready to rock and roll when school came back in. Instead, I'm now scrambling to try to revamp the masters and come up with a theme that, no matter how good, will never be the awesome theme we had. My editors are all fairly broken-hearted and could give a real rip about their senior book now. I'm with them.
My sense of social justice tells me that I absolutely have to make it relate to the 50 years. My sense of satisfaction and total geekery says screw it. The internal battle between the me-that-is and the me-that-my-mother-wanted rages on.
And I'm pretty sure there's a full moon. A full moon encourages my creative side to stab the logical side with a large serrated blade because that does more damage and leaves scars.
So, I'm tired. Too tired for a decent conclusion to this blog, actually.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Front Porch Dreamin'
I didn't realize how dark it's gotten. I've been sitting on my not-quite-finished front (and a little around the side) porch, cruising the internet on my laptop with my dogs all around my feet. When I first sit down, they run up and rub wet noses all over me. The biggest even snotted on my keyboard a little tonight. After a couple of pets, I make a shooing motion and they turn a couple of circles and claim their spot nearby where they can watch me. I love this porch.
Earlier today, my daughter and I set up our canvas chairs on the side deck and relaxed in the late afternoon. A storm was rolling in, with scary gray skies punctuated with sharp lightning bolts every now and then on one side and sunshine and blue skies on the other side. The line of storm was quite clear. Wind rushed back and forth, and the green bellies of the leaves changed the color of summer to a softer pastel for a while as they cupped themselves, anticipating the sweet deluge.
Just off the porch is a huge patch of flowering thistles that were home to dozens of butterflies this evening. We watched their bright yellow, black, blue, copper, and orange colors move lazily from purple cluster to purple cluster. With the storm's winds, a handful of early down took off and floated out toward the orchard.
My daughter asked me what type of butterflies were out there, so we spent a few minutes on my smart phone searching to discover their names. We couldn't see quite clearly if the yellow butterflies had one tail or two, so we hopped off the porch and snuck up as best we could with a butterfly-chasing puppy at our feet. Much to our delight, after some observation and surfing, we found out that the yellow butterflies are the same as the black butterflies! Eastern Tiger Swallowtails have a light and a dark type. As we exclaimed and reveled in this knowledge, thunder rumbled and my daughter, who is terrified of lightning, grabbed my hand for a mad dash back onto the safety of the porch.
The chocolate lab puppy didn't follow; she'd found a Swallowtail that was leading her a merry chase across the back field.
We sat back down in our makeshift patio furniture and laid our heads back against the canvas. The crickets chirped, the cicadas hummed, and occasionally a bird would call. I looked over at my beautiful little girl and watched the sunshine turn her strawberry curls to pure fire. I love this porch.
Earlier today, my daughter and I set up our canvas chairs on the side deck and relaxed in the late afternoon. A storm was rolling in, with scary gray skies punctuated with sharp lightning bolts every now and then on one side and sunshine and blue skies on the other side. The line of storm was quite clear. Wind rushed back and forth, and the green bellies of the leaves changed the color of summer to a softer pastel for a while as they cupped themselves, anticipating the sweet deluge.
Just off the porch is a huge patch of flowering thistles that were home to dozens of butterflies this evening. We watched their bright yellow, black, blue, copper, and orange colors move lazily from purple cluster to purple cluster. With the storm's winds, a handful of early down took off and floated out toward the orchard.
My daughter asked me what type of butterflies were out there, so we spent a few minutes on my smart phone searching to discover their names. We couldn't see quite clearly if the yellow butterflies had one tail or two, so we hopped off the porch and snuck up as best we could with a butterfly-chasing puppy at our feet. Much to our delight, after some observation and surfing, we found out that the yellow butterflies are the same as the black butterflies! Eastern Tiger Swallowtails have a light and a dark type. As we exclaimed and reveled in this knowledge, thunder rumbled and my daughter, who is terrified of lightning, grabbed my hand for a mad dash back onto the safety of the porch.
The chocolate lab puppy didn't follow; she'd found a Swallowtail that was leading her a merry chase across the back field.
We sat back down in our makeshift patio furniture and laid our heads back against the canvas. The crickets chirped, the cicadas hummed, and occasionally a bird would call. I looked over at my beautiful little girl and watched the sunshine turn her strawberry curls to pure fire. I love this porch.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Anger Management
For some reason, my not quite seven-year-old has taken to screaming at everything. She yells at me, her brother, the dog, the toothpaste... I'm not sure what prompts this rage. She'll be laughing one minute and then a satanic voice blares from her throat, frequently followed by her lowering her head and charging like a bull, if a bull had windmilling fists, that is.
The mood swings are killing me. I'll be all snuggled up with her, watching TV, and I'll compliment her hair. Then the yelling starts.
I finally lost it today and told her that if I heard that tone in her voice directed at anyone at all, including the dog, she was gonna get it. This technique is really not good parenting since I'm supposed to give her a specific "it" that she's gonna get, but I mostly wanted her to stop screaming at the bathroom doorknob for hitting her elbow.
She did stop screaming and even attempted to control her eye rolling as she asked me if I really meant it about the dog. I said I did, along with a few choice wisdomly tidbits about controlling her temper, treating people with respect, and thinking about how her words would sound before she let them pass her lips. She got in the bathtub with only one eye roll, conversation ended.
After she finished her bath and brushed her teeth, I sent her to her room to get ready for bed and told my son to make his bed. I did my nightly shut-it-down routine, which includes letting in the dog, locking the doors, and feeding the cat.
My daughter started yelling that she had a splinter in her foot just moments after I scooped the cat food, so I ordered the dog to bed and went for my handy dandy needle. I remembered a bandaid (the magic cure-all for any pain) as I stepped into her room, so I turned and headed back down the hall. Then I heard the crunching.
That blasted dog was eating the cat food, not because she was hungry since she'd been fed less than twenty minutes ago, but because it was CAT food and therefore tastier than her food. More than just eating it, she had surreptitiously snuck back into the kitchen to eat it since this battle ended months ago. She will not touch that cat food bowl if I'm anywhere near after the last time I caught her eating it.
I erupted, screaming, "Bad dog! No!" and various other imprecations not fit for print. She cowered in a corner, knowing my displeasure. When I commanded her to bed, she tore off, straight to her crate this time.
Bandaid forgotten again, I went back into my daughter's room and picked up her foot to look for the offending splinter, still irritated, but controlling it, partially as an example to my daughter since the lecture on maintaining her temper was still fresh in my ears.
"When you said I couldn't yell at the dog, can I yell at her if she's eating the cat food?" she asked with syrupy innocence.
I was so proud of myself. I didn't stab her even a little with the needle. I did think about it though.
The mood swings are killing me. I'll be all snuggled up with her, watching TV, and I'll compliment her hair. Then the yelling starts.
I finally lost it today and told her that if I heard that tone in her voice directed at anyone at all, including the dog, she was gonna get it. This technique is really not good parenting since I'm supposed to give her a specific "it" that she's gonna get, but I mostly wanted her to stop screaming at the bathroom doorknob for hitting her elbow.
She did stop screaming and even attempted to control her eye rolling as she asked me if I really meant it about the dog. I said I did, along with a few choice wisdomly tidbits about controlling her temper, treating people with respect, and thinking about how her words would sound before she let them pass her lips. She got in the bathtub with only one eye roll, conversation ended.
After she finished her bath and brushed her teeth, I sent her to her room to get ready for bed and told my son to make his bed. I did my nightly shut-it-down routine, which includes letting in the dog, locking the doors, and feeding the cat.
My daughter started yelling that she had a splinter in her foot just moments after I scooped the cat food, so I ordered the dog to bed and went for my handy dandy needle. I remembered a bandaid (the magic cure-all for any pain) as I stepped into her room, so I turned and headed back down the hall. Then I heard the crunching.
That blasted dog was eating the cat food, not because she was hungry since she'd been fed less than twenty minutes ago, but because it was CAT food and therefore tastier than her food. More than just eating it, she had surreptitiously snuck back into the kitchen to eat it since this battle ended months ago. She will not touch that cat food bowl if I'm anywhere near after the last time I caught her eating it.
I erupted, screaming, "Bad dog! No!" and various other imprecations not fit for print. She cowered in a corner, knowing my displeasure. When I commanded her to bed, she tore off, straight to her crate this time.
Bandaid forgotten again, I went back into my daughter's room and picked up her foot to look for the offending splinter, still irritated, but controlling it, partially as an example to my daughter since the lecture on maintaining her temper was still fresh in my ears.
"When you said I couldn't yell at the dog, can I yell at her if she's eating the cat food?" she asked with syrupy innocence.
I was so proud of myself. I didn't stab her even a little with the needle. I did think about it though.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Night Before the First Day
Tomorrow my students come back. I'm excited about the school year because this year I finally have my own classroom, sort of. I've got three sections of mass media in the year and two of them are in first semester. I begged the newly promoted principal to let me have my English 12 class in my computer lab too, and he said yes!
I got so excited I put up a bulletin board. It has a border, and colorful construction paper-backed quotes, and a space for all the changing information I'm required to post when the administration sends it out. I haven't had my own bulletin board in six years. There's no particular reason that I should be this thrilled, but I am.
The first day of school is a unique experience that's repeated over and over, which seems to create an oxymoron: unique repetition, but it's true. Every year there's a hope that the students will miraculously transform from hormone filled twerps into young adults who eloquently express profound thought and proclaim me the most inventive and wonderful teacher to ever educate in the history of the world.
Inevitably, at the end of the day, I'm glad they didn't cause me bodily harm because my brain's so fried that I couldn't take two problems at once.
Maybe this year will be different. Since I'm teaching seniors and have my creative outlet not once, but twice, maybe this will be MY year. All the hours and hours of organizational preparation that I put into coming up with a class that encompasses actual media instead of just finishing the yearbook will translate into a smoothly running, deadline-meeting machine. The other teachers in the school will actually read the email I sent out to accompany the name list they got in their homeroom packet and will turn it back in completed correctly and I won't have to chase down any students. Betty will wear clothing that covers all her body parts.
They may seem like simple dreams, but they're mine. You may mock me, but this career is a calling. I'm pretty sure you have to be mentally damaged to hear it, but teaching calls you.
Perhaps I should try a tin foil helmet. I'll let you know tomorrow.
I got so excited I put up a bulletin board. It has a border, and colorful construction paper-backed quotes, and a space for all the changing information I'm required to post when the administration sends it out. I haven't had my own bulletin board in six years. There's no particular reason that I should be this thrilled, but I am.
The first day of school is a unique experience that's repeated over and over, which seems to create an oxymoron: unique repetition, but it's true. Every year there's a hope that the students will miraculously transform from hormone filled twerps into young adults who eloquently express profound thought and proclaim me the most inventive and wonderful teacher to ever educate in the history of the world.
Inevitably, at the end of the day, I'm glad they didn't cause me bodily harm because my brain's so fried that I couldn't take two problems at once.
Maybe this year will be different. Since I'm teaching seniors and have my creative outlet not once, but twice, maybe this will be MY year. All the hours and hours of organizational preparation that I put into coming up with a class that encompasses actual media instead of just finishing the yearbook will translate into a smoothly running, deadline-meeting machine. The other teachers in the school will actually read the email I sent out to accompany the name list they got in their homeroom packet and will turn it back in completed correctly and I won't have to chase down any students. Betty will wear clothing that covers all her body parts.
They may seem like simple dreams, but they're mine. You may mock me, but this career is a calling. I'm pretty sure you have to be mentally damaged to hear it, but teaching calls you.
Perhaps I should try a tin foil helmet. I'll let you know tomorrow.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Summer Days Are Gone
Summer days pass by in singular similarity. Something (kids, dogs, father phoning to see if I'm up yet) wakes me up. I hobble into the bathroom to empty my bladder (never mind that it woke me up at 5:30) and then stumble to the La-Z-Boy. My handy-dandy laptop seems to magically appear on my lap and the next thing I know, hours pass as I lose myself in Facebook updates and surfing all the blogs I love.
At some point, I think that I should be writing something. Usually, this occurs as my children begin some game that only they know the rules to. For me, the casual onlooker, the rules seem to be: 1) trounce each other and tickle/squash while laughing hysterically; 2) get irritated and/or hurt; 3) slug each other repeatedly while screaming invectives; 4) cry and scream loudly to demonstrate how badly you've been hurt; 5) yell incoherently at me about what the other did, expecting divine justice; 6) flip into off mode when the show comes back on; 7) repeat at the next commercial.
Sometimes I dream of spiking their food with calming agents. Usually around round ten of the game. Then someone (me) uses the newly discovered magic word ("Minecraft") and they disappear into the basement where they explore and build together in little geek heaven for as many hours as I will let them. Best $20 I ever spent.
Eventually, I run out of new posts on the blogs I love and then start exploring the blogs that the authors I love recommend because they love them. This is how I end up reading blogs for so long. Generally, I love the new blogs too and bookmark them.
When the laptop battery begins to die, I plug it back in and watch a TV show on Netflix or Hulu. Other than birth control, TV on DVD may be my favorite invention of all time. May be. At some point, someone (the daughter) lets the dog into the house and I end up with a lap full of 60ish pounds of wriggling puppy love. If I happen to be on the couch, she will actually use the big picture window to spring off and complete a circuit around my head and shoulders. You've experienced nothing in life until you've been buzzed by a chocolate lab puppy while sitting on a couch.
I just heard from a giant thud outside that the construction workers are here to begin another day of banging and screwing. (*sigh* I wish!) My lovely porch comes along nicely, despite the dirt clod fight the kids decided to have on the fresh, clean, unsealed boards yesterday. I need to get moving anyway. I have to make sure that my mother-in-law is up and getting ready to get here in time to babysit as I return to school for another year. Good day to us all.
At some point, I think that I should be writing something. Usually, this occurs as my children begin some game that only they know the rules to. For me, the casual onlooker, the rules seem to be: 1) trounce each other and tickle/squash while laughing hysterically; 2) get irritated and/or hurt; 3) slug each other repeatedly while screaming invectives; 4) cry and scream loudly to demonstrate how badly you've been hurt; 5) yell incoherently at me about what the other did, expecting divine justice; 6) flip into off mode when the show comes back on; 7) repeat at the next commercial.
Sometimes I dream of spiking their food with calming agents. Usually around round ten of the game. Then someone (me) uses the newly discovered magic word ("Minecraft") and they disappear into the basement where they explore and build together in little geek heaven for as many hours as I will let them. Best $20 I ever spent.
Eventually, I run out of new posts on the blogs I love and then start exploring the blogs that the authors I love recommend because they love them. This is how I end up reading blogs for so long. Generally, I love the new blogs too and bookmark them.
When the laptop battery begins to die, I plug it back in and watch a TV show on Netflix or Hulu. Other than birth control, TV on DVD may be my favorite invention of all time. May be. At some point, someone (the daughter) lets the dog into the house and I end up with a lap full of 60ish pounds of wriggling puppy love. If I happen to be on the couch, she will actually use the big picture window to spring off and complete a circuit around my head and shoulders. You've experienced nothing in life until you've been buzzed by a chocolate lab puppy while sitting on a couch.
I just heard from a giant thud outside that the construction workers are here to begin another day of banging and screwing. (*sigh* I wish!) My lovely porch comes along nicely, despite the dirt clod fight the kids decided to have on the fresh, clean, unsealed boards yesterday. I need to get moving anyway. I have to make sure that my mother-in-law is up and getting ready to get here in time to babysit as I return to school for another year. Good day to us all.
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