Gah! Air Travel!!

This morning, Ms. Without-Shopping and I woke up at o-dark thirty to catch a 6:30 flight to a conference. Flying anywhere for any professional reason almost never happens to teacher types (it involves money), so we're excited--until we get to the airport. We park and hustle into the terminal. Turns out the e-ticket is one of those "operated by" tix, so we're at the wrong airline. On the wrong side of the terminal, it turns out. While we're crossing over, we see that the TSA screening line stretches from here to Chicago (at 5:45 am?? Hello??). So basically, no plane for you!

So now I have a day off from work, but I'm spending it in the airport on standby. My life is an encyclopedic justification of Murphy's Law. Air travel FAIL.

Not. Going. Shopping. Today.

Period.

If I'm smart, I won't even get out of my pajamas.

Cripes, Tallahassee!

Today was the first day I attempted to foist the new state-mandated testing on my students, and let me just say that there are military terms that aren't for mixed company that perfectly capture the essence of today's fun. Terms beginning with the word "cluster" or expressed with the acronym FUBAR.

Needless to say, when the wizards in Tally tell the entire state to hold off on testing until later, then open the floodgates to a small window of completion, they're asking for trouble. They're asking for more trouble when they--knowing that the opening sequence will be accessed hundreds of thousands of times--advise the districts to purchase and maintain cache servers to make things run more smoothly. Um, clue. These are the same districts that have been laying people off right and left, but they have money to blow on purchasing, installing, and maintaining special servers just for your new brainstorm of a test?? Let the people say DUH.

I got my kids almost through second period, roughly 9 am, when things started to bog down (the Panhandle's awake!). By third period, the entire network crashed and didn't come back up until close to the end of the day. Brilliant planning, idjits.

So we're not done, and now the teaching part is equally FUBAR. Testing is, yet again, holding learning hostage. Data-driven my...

Hugging a Porcupine

DH brought a book home from the library about being the parents of an adolescent the other day. It had a perfect title: How to Hug a Porcupine. And since, more often than not, I'm getting a faceful of quills when trying to deal with Frick these days, it's proven to be sound advice, more often than not.

I always thought I'd be a better parent of a teenager than a young child since I have so many years of experience with teenagers at school. I love younger kids, but some of their habits (especially the whining) drive. me. up. the. wall. I was suuuuuure I'd be so much more effective once they started to creep up in the double digits, age-wise.

What's that old proverb about wanting to make God laugh? Yeah.

Anyhoo, Mr. Frick is becoming, more and more, Mr. Prickly. Everything's cool until I suddenly cross some unseen border, then WHAM! Quillface. Case in point, last night's homework. I'm trying to deal calmly with him, and he gets nearly apoplectic. And doesn't finish. So now I need to wake him up early so he can finish. Never mind that he asked me to wake him early; I'm sure to get zapped for trying it. Open House was last night, and I can see clearly what needs to be done, but he's not hearing it. He knows better (even though he's trying to make algebra do things that are mathematically impossible). He's offloading all his issues on a different issue that even he admits isn't the issue. It's maddening.

And then he turns around and is the most generous, hilarious, wonderful tween in the universe. It's enough to drive you crazy.

Someone who's survived these years, please let me know my face isn't going to be permanently perforated. I'm all for patience and forbearance, but let's face it, they don't sell those qualities at Targét. At some point, the tank'll be dry, and I'll still be in a faceoff with a bristling little rodent. Help!

Bringin' the Heat

'Scuse the baseball analogy, but I'm fixin' to make it do double duty in a sec. Today was opening day of fall ball for both Frick and Frack, since Frack's softball opener was rained out Thursday night. So it's been a loooooooooooong day at the ballpark. BallparkS, that is. Up early to take Frack to her away game, then 1-1/2 hours in the growing heat. By 10:30 we'd already reached the high 80s. Thankfully, the girls won, 9-2, so those hours of sweating it out in her polyester triple-knit uniform--with pants, no less--were worth it. Took her sweaty self home for some lunch, then off to our home field for Frick's baseball opener at 1. By then it was 92 degrees in the shade, with humidity of 63% or more, so the heat index was 101. Since Frick's now in junior baseball, we're talking seven innings of slow poaching. Thankfully, we had hitters and they had weak pitching, so we got called after the third batter in the sixth because of the ten-run rule. Yay!

Back home to find--instead of blessed air conditioning--a HOT house. The fan's blowing, but nothing's cooling. This happened the other day, too. Yegods. Flipped the breaker back and forth, praying that it'll start blowing cool, and hightailed it out of there for a Panera Bread. Free Wi-Fi and unlimited iced tea refills. And they've brought back blondies! Thanks to the Lord for tiny mercies. I may survive until bedtime after all...assuming the air kicks on.

Dumbass, Party of One

Ever have one of those days? Today was mine. I'm ferrying Frick and Frack and a friend to a skating party on an end of town I try never to explore, if I can help it. Then, while trying to get turned back around in the second most badly-designed parking lot in the world, I get distracted and WHAM! I hit a curb, Inga lurches unbecomingly, scrape, curse, I manage to cut a hole in the sidewall of my tire. Hole in the sidewall means I have to buy a new tire. Let me remind you, August is ramen month for teachers. I don't have $136 and change for a new tire. Even if I did, I wouldn't want to spend it correcting an act of dumbassitude like hitting a freakin' curb--despite the fact that it was one of those stupid curbs in the middle of an ocean of asphalt. You know, the ones they put there for pretty, or something. Like the big white lines aren't enough to alert people to PARK THE CAR HERE.

And of course, it's a special order tire, so I can't get it put on until Monday. Poor Inga has to creep around town at fewer than 50 mph (her Fast is sooooo not liking that idea) with the full-size spare and its yellow Look! I have a FLAT! sticker. Gah. If I go back to bed, can I wake up to a re-do?

IB Pissed

I don't know about you, but sometimes professional conferences are a pain in my considerable behind. Today's is no exception. I'm at a gorgeous beach resort--no complaints there--with nice food and a room that's about a hundred feet from the Gulf of Mexico. Fine. Dandy.

What's not fine, or even approaching dandy, is the veritable avalanche of paper I got this morning, all badly organized and comb-bound, which makes it impossible to reorganize. Top that all off with a room full of people from rank beginners (moi) to twenty-year-plus veterans, and you have a recipe for a very confused room. Especially in my seat.

The situation: I'll be teaching the first year of an IB course this fall. I come to get teaching strategies and make sure I'm on the right path to help my students do well. Within the first half hour, I'm unsure I'm in the right place, thanks to the aforementioned mix in the room, and then I discover that the syllabus I submitted, which I thought had been vetted and approved, was wrong. As in "violates the rules and would disqualify my students' scores" wrong. How the hell did it pass muster, then??

Let's just say I'm never--never--the dumbest girl in the room. This morning, though, I sure felt like it. And I was. Not. Happy. At. All. Pitch a fit not happy and embarrass myself in front of everyone, which made me even less happy. This is the kind of thing that gives teachers chronic headaches. Good thing I have the beach to stare at.

If It's Not One Thing, It's Another

Adding to the insult of no money coming in all summer (two teacher household, remember?), today I hear this weird griiiiinnnddd-CLUNK sound from one of my back windows. Yep, now it's stuck down. All the way down. And this is Florida, where we have a thunderstorm every day at 4:00 p.m.

Great. Lacking the several hundred bucks it will take to fix the window (stupid VW window regulators are pieces of plastic trash that are cheap but take like three hours to fix because you have to disassemble the back seat to get to them), and since it's thundering, now I have to spend two hours cleaning out the garage (it's been mid-project for a while now) so I can get my car in. OMG the leaves. OMG the nuts and bolts and screws. OMG the papers that go from school to car to garage and possibly the house. This would be so much more fun if there were a ceiling fan. Scratch that. It wouldn't be fun.

Let me just say, the shower afterward was water straight from Mount Olympus.

Life Imitating Art?

Okay, this is freaky. The other day, I was cleaning out my storage room at school, and one of the charms on my bracelet (the bagpipe) got caught in the large spiral binding of a book. Pull, pop, the bagpipe goes flying, and my bracelet ends up in two pieces. After some choice vocabulary words that will not be on my students' next test, I scooped it all into an envelope and took it to my jeweler for repair. Fine. Dandy.

Today, I pick up the bracelet, and it has issues. One part's been soldered on in reverse, so now the typewriter is on the end instead of the Cosmo glass. That can be fixed. But then I notice--horrors!--that MY COURT JESTER HAT IS GONE!!!!

It's only a charm, of course, and I can get another one for $15.95 plus tax, plus shipping, but that's not the point. The totally random thing is that Robin, the heroine of The Five Step Plan, realizes that her life is going to hell because she's lost her court jester charm. You know how you include little details of your life in your books? Well, Robin wears my charm bracelet. Her jester disappears, her man cheats on her with her boss. I lose mine...

No worries there. Sparky is the coolest of husbands. Still, it's creepy! Ever realize that you're living your own fiction?

This Is Why Banks Are in Trouble

I'm currently at war with one of my credit card companies. A few months ago, they decided to jack up my interest rate from a reasonable 7.9% to a just-this-side-of-outrageous 19.9%. Since my payments are withdrawn automatically, I didn't know anything about the switch until I got a special note telling me my payment was late. Hmm. So I check the statement, and sure enough, I'm apparently "late" because my payment--which was safely larger than what the 7.9% rate required--wasn't quite enough to fit my more-than-doubled new rate.

Of course, now the bank decides that my payments--which are withdrawn early, mind you--are late because they don't meet the new minimum. So now I get whacked the $39 late charge. And since I have a couple of late charges, they jack my rate up again to 27.99%. Apparently no one in the banking business has a working definition of "usury," but there you have it.

I call them and ask for a rate reduction because of my solid payment record. No dice. Now I have to show financial hardship. Well, geniuses, I didn't have financial hardship until you decided to start charging me nearly four times my original interest rate!! So now you have less money coming in, I have more headaches, and now the bank's decided the way to ensure my customer loyalty is to turn over the late charges and such to a collection agency.

Way to install confidence there, American banking system. When I finish paying this card off (since I am honorable, even though late, and won't declare bankruptcy and stick it to you as you so richly deserve), it'll be a cold day in hell before any of my money works its way through your doors. Not that they'd be my bank of choice anyway, considering that a chunk of my tax dollars have paid for custom-loomed rugs and antique breakfronts and ginormous bonuses to a bunch of executives who have basically run the company into the ground and all. But there you have it. Tank the economy, get a bonus and a bailout. Teach kids in the inner city, try to pay your bills, and buy school supplies and Kleenex and whatnot out of pocket with the raise and step I didn't get, and worry about whether we'll be employed next year--since schoolkids don't fundraise or donate to political campaigns. Go figure.

Yep, that makes sense.

Ennui

One of our Canadian friends sent me a link to a touching children's book, so of course I had to visit. True to form, Mr. Sarcasm had directed me to an online version of Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies, an abecedarium only a Goth could love. It's also one of my sister's favorite books--she's an Eeyore anyway, so I'd bought her a copy for Christmas one year. (mimi couldn't even begin to explain her family's sense of humor)

Gorey, of course, is not sentimental at all, so Gashlycrumb features rhymes like "A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs/B is for Basil, devoured by bears" and the like, accompanied by line drawings. Here's the panel that makes me laugh out loud:

You have to understand that DH and I use "ennui" as code for "I have this general malaise with life, work, and everything in general, so I need to disappear by myself for a couple of hours and figure out how to get my equilibrium back...you're on kidwatch. Don't forget to walk the dogs." And that's pretty much the land I find myself in this week.

No, I don't plan to die of ennui. mimi is far too interested in life to waste away pining for some unidentified something that will make things easier. But let's say life has been taking it out on me and I. Am. Whipped. So I am, finally, admitting that I am not, indeed, Wonder Woman (although on occasion I have wielded her lasso of truth with Frick and Frack and have used the bracelets to ward off the slings and arrows of life in the new century to great effect), and must attempt heroic measures for self so that I have the fortitude and patriotic bustier (even if imaginary) to save my little world.

With that in mind, I offer this wee addition to the Gashlycrumbs:

M is for mimi, morose and depressed,
who is keeping her butt home
and getting some rest

Lightfingers

One thing owning a convertible teaches you is to put things away. Lock them in the trunk, take them with you, whatever, but put 'em away. Especially if you park with the roof down.

I'm pretty good about putting things up when I leave the top down. But there are some things I just don't worry about, like my parking tag, the flower in my vase (Inga is a Beetle, after all), and my goggles. Ah, the goggles. Bright yellow obnoxious biohazard goggles Mrs. Comic Book bought me from Hot Topic when I got Inga. I've worn them. Frack has worn them (and had her picture taken by strange people while doing so). I've been parking with the top down for three years now, and the goggles have been fine. Normally, they hang from the rear-view mirror.

Until today. Some jerkface took 'em right out of my car. While we were at Little League, no less. Reasonably, the culprit is either 1) an adult with no morals, 2) a kid. I'd think a kid, since bright yellow goggles really aren't an adult thing (unless you're me, and you have a silly side). If it is a kid, though, that makes it an adult problem: What adult, when realizing that a child of theirs is now in possession of something the adult in question didn't purchase, lets the child keep it? If my kids came home with some stray sunglasses or whatnot, you can bet they'd face the Spanish Inquisition about the new item. Stealing is trés uncool at Chez mimi. Too bad more people just don't get it.

So now I'm goggle-less, pissed--at myself for being a trusting soul in an untrustworthy world, and at nameless thief for being a jerkface--and forlorn. What could possibly have the same cachét as bright yellow biohazard goggles?

Big Yellow...Taxi?

Yesterday, DH broke down and bought Frick a cellphone. I've been anti-phone, mostly because this is a kid who can't find his own shoes half the time, and also because, well, he can't find his own shoes half the time. I wasn't too keen on having him have to keep up with a phone. Plus, he loses his natural mind around electronics, so I had these nightmare visions of phones going off in class, him answering, then shushing the teacher because he couldn't hear the bonehead on the other end. But DH was worried about contact, and let's just say testosterone won the day. Frick came home with a Motorola RAZR, and we have a bigger cell bill.

Today, I had to revisit my anti-cell bias. Frick spent his first afternoon at the YMCA aftercare program at school. Fine. He was having fun. Fine. We were on our way to get him--late, since we have to break our "stay late at school" habit still--when he texts to say "Go home. I'll meet you there."

Huh??

So I call. He tells me "I got on the bus." At that point, about three thousand neurons in my brain, all of them in the protective mom lobe, melted. "What bus??" I'm screaming. "Oh, I'll just have the driver drop me off at the corner," he says blithely. This is sixth grade logic working. Since a bus picks him up at the corner, clearly a bus leaving school will be happy to drop him off at the corner he specifies, right?

Nightmare visions of missing kid ending up at the bus depot in the dark, clutching his 15-freakin'-pound backpack hurtle through the cortex. I can't get a straight answer out of him about where he is. I order him to hand the phone to an adult. The adult--the driver--has a thick Jamaican accent. So now I'm trapped in a calypso nightmare that still ends up with my kid alone in a dark bus depot.

Finally we suss out where he is. We tail the bus down the road and finally spot it. We follow it until it stops, and out pops Frick. He looks none the worse for wear. I decide to kill him. DH plays the voice of reason (a new one for him in cases like this--usually he's the one playing the role of freaky parent) and instructs me to be gentle. Good thing, too, because Mr. Frick had scared himself nearly to death, quivery lip and all. He won't be jumping on any strange buses anytime soon.

And now I have to take to my bed with a cold compress on my aching head. With a side of whiskey, thanks.

Dog Paddling

It's wet here in Central Florida. This is our fourth straight day of rain, and it doesn't look like it'll be slowing up anytime soon. At least we're not in Brevard County. They had a freakin' monsoon yesterday--25 inches in one day! They had to close the Melbourne airport because of all the snakes and gators on the runways. It's not quite as bad in our neck of the woods, but we did hold walk/wade/swim in registration for fall Little League this afternoon, hahaha. Poor kids at school looked like drowned rats most of the day.

If this keeps up, we'll all have webbed feet. We already have raisin toes.

Ouch!!

Today was the big go-to-the-Convention-Center-for-some-learnin' day (aka "Professional Development Day"). These are all-day extravaganzas with breakout sessions and usually a vendor exhibit with all manner of educational items for sale. Not that anyone has any money to buy anything in this lean year, but there you go.

So I'm strolling the booths when I get accosted by a salesman for a giveaway. Fill out this pink card, and you'll be entered into a drawing for a free iPod! I guess I didn't exhibit the requisite excitement over his offer (we're a four iPod family already), so he decides to pitch the closer: "...if not for you, then use it as a gift...maybe for a grandchild!!"

Okay, I know I'm going grey and all, but this is not a grandma face. Besides, if I were having a grandchild, you'd already know since I'd be all over the National Enquirer. My kids are 11 and 9. Yikes!

I guess the first week of school's taken more out of me than I thought!

Creepy Crawly

Last night, DH and I heard two of the most dreaded words in parenthood: head lice. Seems a good friend of Frack's who spent the night the other night got a call from another friend about creepy crawlies. Good friend has them, and lo and behold, so did Frack.

Let's just say that a full hour and a half of wash, sit, rinse, comb, comb, comb ain't too fun either for Frack or her mama. Tears and recriminations all around. Mostly tears. What can you say? Not to mention the fact that any mention of a creepy crawly of that sort makes everyone itch whether they need to or not. Lurvely.

Poor baby. We had to bake chocolate chip cookies to get over the horror. Poor waistline.

As God Is My Witness, I'll Never Garage Sale Again

I'm not a complete Philistine. I know that garage sales are a Great American tradition. Some people plan their whole weekends around which garage sales are where and what they hope to find while browsing.

My sister decided a month ago that the two of us, our mom, and her MIL would combine for a multi-family, colossal garage sale. So far, so good. I'm in purge mode. Purge resulting in cash in my hand sounded pretty good. So we've been stockpiling things in the garage for the upcoming garage sale, imagining dollar signs floating upwards like they do in cartoons. We have some high quality stuff, too--coffee makers, stuff from Williams-Sonoma, nice clothing (from a smoke-free home!). My MIL kicks in some things from her recent move, too.

Lately, Florida weather has been acting like real summer weather--hot and humid all day, le déluge sometime in the afternoon. But this weekend was supposed to break the pattern and be lovely and sunny. Wrong! We're planning to set up yesterday afternoon, and Noah's flood arrives. It rains for two solid hours, then clears up justlikethat. Beautiful, clear starry skies. We're up late setting up tables and labeling and pricing. Still got those dollar signs floating.

Oh, how wrong I was!

This morning, the sprinklers had hosed a good portion of what we set out, so we started the day wiping down half of everything--and there was a lot of everything--and fending off rude early birds who don't understand that we meant 8 a.m. Eastern standard time. Folks come by. They browse. They leave. They aren't buying! Meanwhile, it's Tennessee Williams weather (hot as hell and humid to match) and cloudy. This does not bode well. Plus, everyone's snippy and cranky because they were up late last night.

We get four or so decent hours of sale before we have to haul out the visqueen and cover everything up again because it starts freakin' pouring. To add insult to injury, after all that work last night, plus getting up at o-dark-thirty this morning to set up, my take of the pitiful total is about $51. I could make better money than that working at Target!

So that's it for me. No more garage sales. Tomorrow, I'm packing up my stuff and taking it to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. And that will be my policy from now on. You can bet the dramatically clutched dollar bill in my raised hand (while the camera sweeps back on the sunset vista to the strains of dramatic theme music) on that one.

Yoga Meltdown

Threw a fit in yoga class today. Quietly, of course, not to disturb the others in the class, but a fit nonetheless. I sneak in and set up, and the first position off the bat is one that's impossible for me to do. Virasana--hero's pose.


Bending the knees is no problem. It's the thighs and calves. All those years of Highland dancing gave me calves like baseballs. They do not play well in that position. Plus, I'm short. I'd have to fold up a blanket the size of a milk crate to get my butt (and there's quite a bit of that) high enough off the ground to make this pose even remotely comfortable. But I'm a tough gal. I teach in the 'hood. I figure I can put up with it for long enough to move out of position, but noooooooooo. Apparently, we're going to do all kinds of arm and shoulder stretching, all while in virasana. So my thighs are screaming, I'm pissed, I rearrange myself into half-lotus until they move. They don't. Now my head's full of screaming and self-loathing and lots of other words that really don't belong while you're in a yoga class. And they are not going away. So I did. Took my asana right out of there.

Then I sat by the pool, watched my gorgeous daughter swim, and cried.
Maybe I'm PMSing. I hope I'm PMSing. If not...well, let's not think about that too hard.

That Last Post? Forget I Said Anything.

So last night we're at church for the kids' program. Fine. DS (also known as Frick, as opposed to his sister, Frack) brings a friend. Also fine. I'm cleaning up after dinner when Friend comes in the dining room. "Um...mimi? Frick bit through his lip? And we need some ice?"

Not so fine. The words "bit through his lip" don't sound promising. I get upstairs with paper towels and ice. My son is standing over a sink, bleeding profusely from his cut lip. More fun in store: one of his front teeth is chipped in two places--the bottom's off, plus a chunk out of one side. Beautiful, and all thanks to Wii Sports. Turns out Friend rared back to whack a ball and instead whacked Frick right in the dental work. He couldn't have aimed and done a more thorough job.

Thankfully, Frick's not freaking out too badly. We get him wiped down, calmed down, find the pieces of tooth: one's on the carpet; one's still stuck in his lip. He's calm by the end of the night and goes to bed with a band-aid and his father's bracing words: "Chicks dig scars."

They don't prep you for this with all those "having a baby will be marvelous" books. Nor do they prep you for the $400 of cosmetic dentistry and nitrous oxide fun that Frick has undergone today, thank you very little.

Can I quit now?

That Figures.

Spring Break's starting.
It's gorgeous outside.
I have a temperature of 102 and have to go to the doctor.

Is it just me, or do the karma gods save up this stuff and laugh their metaphysical asses off at us?