Not Your Average Day at The Park

I was ten years old the first time I ever smoked pot. It was on The Needle at AstroWorld in Houston, Texas, around 1977. In the following 12 years, I smoked a lot more, plus a few other things.
I was never a big fan of amusement parks. I don't really like the rides, I really don't like heights and hate being flipped upside down. It's hot and crowded, and over-priced.
But, can you imagine how terrible it would be to see this bad boy on a trip to Six Flags?

http://www.lovethesepics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Clownicide-abandoned-Six-Flags-New-Orleans.jpg

Talk about a Creepy Clown! I bet if I had seen this guy that sultry summer night in 1977, I might have stayed on the Straight-N-Narrow!

You can see more here at http://www.lovethesepics.com/2011/05/creepy-crusty-crumbling-illegal-tour-of-abandoned-six-flags-new-orleans-75-pics/

Risky business

At my work, the toilet is unisex. It's also an industrial strength flusher. If anyone ever sat down on that thing and got a good seal on it before they flushed...Well, let's just say the results would be something like you'd see in a bad B-flick about some guy who wants revenge on his ex-high school buddies, invites them over, sucks the intestines out of one poor schmuck's ass with his toilet, killes the next one with a Cuisineart, the two lovers with a flying blade that impales them like a couple of olives on a toothpick....

wait. What was I talking about?

Oh, the toilet. It's loud,  and did I mention automatic? When you sit, you don't so much as sit as you assume a runner's stance in the starter block. As soon as you are done, you have to grab your britches and lunge forward so that when it flushes you don't get soaked from the spray that will come out of that baby. Which is nasty to contemplate, no?

Get this- not every one washes their hands! I'll wait while you get over the skeeves.
.
.
.
So I walk in to the little anter room right outside the bathroom, see the light under the door. I wait my turn.
Three things happen:
1. The toilet flushes.
2. I think- about thirty seconds to washe hands and-
3. A man walks out.

This all happened in about two seconds.

Ewww.

He left the lid up, and the sink was completely dry, but he managed to turn off the light.

I grabbed a wad of paper towels, shut the door, locked the door, turned on the lights, lowered the damn seat, did my business. Washed my damn hands, grabbed more towels, dried my hands, used the towels to open the door, turn off the light, and then open the anter room door.

Gross, yuck, ickly, nasty, glech!

Some days I hate working with other people.

Where's Freud when you need him?

So I'm at this party at a house. There are people everywhere. Mostly long haired men, some with pot bellies, some missing teeth. It's at a house that's seen better years, all the windows are thrown open to the summer night, the doors are too. Everyone is standing around in the yellowish sodium light glow. There's a line of people, all men, waiting to get in the house. They are excited about something. Apparently there is a Whore, an African Whore, inside. And she's giving spankings.
To get in the house to get to the fridge for a beer, you have to cut through the line. So I'm trying to cut, when a man starts talking to me. He's got really stringy hair tied up with a bread tie. And Coke-bottle glasses. And he's telling me, very earnestly that "Sex is just such a serious thing for me. See, I still live at home with my mom, so whenever I have sex, it's really serious" Like his mom is there when he has sex or something. Which makes me start snickering at him. I tried to hide my smirk behind my hair, but I think he saw it. I just couldn't wait to tell Amy. I turn around and go inside and there she is, watching the African Whore give men spankings. And I'm laughing at the absurdity of it and what Creepy-Boy just told me and I'm trying to whisper in her ear above the very loud music what just happened and then...... I woke up. Laughing.

Last night I loaded Re-Pete up and we headed off to Wally-World to get shampoo, toothbrushes, body wash (it shimmers! I can't wait to try it) and the 700 other HBA things we ran out of all at once that I hate paying for thus making the trip to that horrible place necessary. I did get a coupla nice basil plants, though. My total was a little over a $121.

For stuff that we will only use in one room of the house!

I had a fleeting thought about how expensive everything is and how I needed to watch it.... then Re-Pete said something and I forgot about it.

Until I went to sleep. And dreamed that we lost our house and had to move into an apartment. A really small, old, outdated apartment. With a minuscule bathroom. Just one minuscule bathroom with a medicine cabinet for the mirror and orange tile on the wall. It only had a shower- with a curtain, not a door. You could stand in the shower and brush your teeth over the sink. You could sit on the toilet and spit into the sink, too. The rest of the place had wood paneling on the walls. Sigh.
Lots of cabinets in the kitchen, but they were all too high for me to reach. I woke up right after I was filled with dread- I had forgotten all the silverware at my house and had nothing to eat with.

My own inadequacies

I just can't read this guy's site any more.
I refuse.
He reminds me that I write like a retard running around on stilts in a pool full of chocolate pudding trying to solve calculus problems out loud to the buzzards that are waiting for me to die. Really.
I bet we have something in common, though. See, I wonder how on Earth anyone cannot be blown away by science. And not see the sheer beauty and wonder of the world. And he probably wonders why I write like the above referenced retard.

And not only that, but there are so many of my own inadequacies staring my down with a 1000 yard stare that I don't need anymore. So, Tommy, I'm sorry. I just can't read you anymore.

But come to think of it, I could solve the easy calculus problems.

Dumbassery

3 Doors Down has a song with the lines

"Your mistakes do not define you, they tell you who you're not"

I'll think of the name of the song soon. Tip of the tongue and all that.

I've been thinking about that line and how it could be true.

I am my own harshest critic, something I'm sorry to say I've passed on to my children. I can still remember and beat myself up about the stupidest shit.

For instance.

I love hearing about how couples meet. It's so romantic to hear about. One fine day I was sitting at the lunch table with several other teachers and we were all talking about the first time we meet our spouses (all of us being married) when Ole Dumbass Here asked the youngest of us, "So tell us about the first time you slept with your wife."

You could have heard a pin drop.

I was so embarrassed. It wasn't what I meant to say. I wasn't even thinking about it. (At least not consciously. But he was a newlywed, so mayhaps that was were it came from). He got really offended, and our friendship forever changed.

That happened about 12 years ago. And I'm still embarrassed and pissed off at myself for having said that. Every time I think about that day, the words "Stupid Shit", "Dumb Ass", and other derogatory words pop into my head unbidden. It would be nice to finally forgive myself.

I haven't seen the guy in years, he has long since moved out of teaching, every now and again the memory will rise and smite me. I would still love the chance to tell him I'm sorry.

To Gardisil or not to Gardisil

Pete is 10. It won't be long till the pediatrician asks us if we want her to have it- Gardisil. If you've been living in a cave and don't know what it is- it's a vaccine to prevent a girl from being infected by HPV, a virus that causes a large percentage of cervical cancer. Should we get Pete's opinion? Should we wait for more data? Will it make her more likey to have unsafe sex?
It will seriously reduce her risk of a few types of cancer, but we're hearing about problems. I read a review over at Web MD.

So by the end of this year, Merck, the company that makes the vaccine should be reporting their findings. I have asked every doctor I can their opinion about the vaccine. One of the arguments against it is that girls might get a false impression of safety- which I'm pretty sure I can dispel. It's about her health. Not her ability to have sex more often or unprotected (oh, man, that one's gonna give me nightmares)
I know the risks are very small that she might have a reaction to the vaccine. (The most common one is pain at the injection site. Heh. My husband will have to take her for that shot... ) But what are her chances of getting HPV? If she's anything like me, sheesh, we'll need body guards soon.
So, all you parents out there- what say you? And BTW, I've been told that boys can get the vaccine too so's they don't pass it on to their conquests, er, I mean wives.

I do believe I'm getting better, a little better, all the time

Sometimes getting older is not all bad.

When I first started teaching I relied heavily on several teachers for several years. How do I do this-and-such? Where can I find a whatnot? There was so much I didn't know, I didn't even know I didn't know it. You know what I mean? Now, there are a few teachers coming to me looking for answers. It's nice to be able to give that back and help out the new guy.

I remember trying to fix things when I was in my 20s. I always seemed to make matters worse, nothing was ever easy to fix. I'd have to call my Dad, then I would still have to take an extra trip to the store for another part. Or someone would have to fix it for me. Or worse yet, one of us would end up in the emergency room for stitches or metal in an eye.

But in the past year I've fixed my dryer twice and my washing machine once, without injury. And without further fuck-up-ery.
Way to go!

Now, to work on those preventative maintenance and redecorating skills.

random thoughts

Random thought #1


I was walking the dog through my neighborhood today. It's a nice neighborhood. Some people take really good care of their yards, some not so good. Most of the kids are pretty cool. But, someone broke a glass bottle in the road, shards galore. So I'm walking Riley and I see the glass strewn about. I try to get him to go around, but oh, no! He smells something on the other side of it and away he goes right through it. Here's the thing. All 4 of his feet missed the glass completely. How did that happen that a dog that can't look down as he passes over a thing can stride through glass and not get cut? Those are some mad navigational skills, bro. And some people think dogs are stupid?





Random thought #2





Shit I never ever need to see again:






Even if those scary claims about these freaks turn out to be not true, even a 6 inch spider running at 10 mph is gonna make me shit my pants.

Random thought #3

Living in a small town is a mixed blessing. Sure everyone knows you, but damn, everyone knows you..

beating a dead horse

Education is like beating a dead horse. It's insanity defined, really. We have these expectations of our students and ourselves. And parents and communities. We want our students to love learning and want to better themselves. We want to inspire all of our students. We want the parents to support us and hold their children accountable, that what they do in school is the minimum, not the max. We want the community to support us.

Dead horses cannot give us what we want. We beg the horse, give it water, food, berate it, even beat it. My high school students only do the minimum, many only because we hold their feet to the fire. They don't see the rewards of hard work over time.

But why should they? TV shows them solutions to life in 3o minutes or less, many actors/artists/whatevers have 30 days marriages, jump from cause to cause, lead these crazy ass life styles.These are our children's role models.

Even their forms of communication are truncated- OI812, CUL8R, ETC, TTUL8R,LOL, fer fuck's sake. Everything has to happen right now, with little to no work on their end. Where did we go wrong? Was it when we decided we wanted them to have a better life than us? No wants, all the toys they can handle. New, better, faster, more gigabytes.

I've said it before, Jerry Springer marked the beginning of the end.

What's the solution?

I quit

I told my department head that since our county office/administrator's were going to keep changing the rules and not tell me, and the order that we're doing stuff, and expect all this other shit outta me, then I have had enough. Add that to the yottaPMS (that PMS with 24 zeros added to the end, I'll have you know) AND YOU HAVE A RECIPE FOR DISASTER. I'm drinking Mohito's and if I'm not at work tomorrow it will be because I am still drunk. Sue me and give me a PDP and see if I care! We're having cheesy ravioli's, garlic bread, and chocolate for dinner. In front of the TV, watching chick flicks. No men for miles. And trust me, that's a good thing tonight.

I'm off to kick my (male) dog.

CYA

Scary shit

A while back, I got to thinking that I don't do enough quality things with my girls. And that makes me feel really guilty, of course. Which makes sense since my mother was Catholic and doled out guilt like peppermint.
I often have dreams to deal with the stuff that floats around in my mind. It's my way of mentally taking out the trash. So this post is about a couple of scary dreams.
As background, Pete was born with intestinal issues (this is a little graphic, but pretty close to what she had) and had to have some surgery right after birth. Her intestines are placed a little different as a result. We have to be careful now what she eats, since gas can be Very Painful for her. She is also a drama queen and prone to theatrics. Sometimes it is hard for me to tell if she is really in pain, or just being a pain in the ass. I feel guilty sometimes for not believing her, but get frustrated when she carries on about every scratch.
I had a dream some time ago that Pete (my oldest girl) had been put in the hospital for some tests. I wasn't worried because I thought the doctors would just find out she had bad gas again. So I went to my meeting, only to get the horrible call. It turns out, in my dream, that she had an intestinal infection that had been undiagnosed and her intestines had burst and she had died. It was horrible. I woke up crying.
The dream faded, only to make a cameo at last night dream. I'm outside, at some function. People are dressed very nice in summery dresses and lightweight slacks. It's some kind of memorial service. Then I remember it's a service to remember our dead children. The American flag is waving in the breeze and I turn to a woman who is crying and say to her, "I know how you feel. When my [Pete] died, I couldn't believe that the flag could even still be raised. I couldn't understand how the clouds could still move. She died of an intestinal infection."
And I woke up crying.

I think I keep dreaming of death and separation because that's what I worry about. My children's health, my husband's health (Please Stop Smoking!!!). I obsess about my husbands' health since both my parents died of smoking related diseases, heart attack and lung cancer (PLEASE PLEASE Stop Smoking).

Re-arranging the furniture

My parents, mostly my mother, were freaky about the furniture. I mean, we moved a gazillion times growing up, but even so, my folks would rearrange the living room at least once a season.

I've got that bug. Poor hubby. He just has to do the grunt work.

It's like an itch. I just feel compelled to rearrange furniture.

I've been trying to rearrange my room, but sheesh, what a mess.

So I'm just gonna be satisfied with my blog.

Hope y'all don't stub your toe in the dark getting used to the new setup.