Sometimes I'm pretty smart

I had a stroke of brilliance at work last week.  I have this kid who I love, but who honestly, drives me absolutely nuts.  He is anal and needy and a total butinski.  Because he is so anal, he is super organized and always has his work done.  This leaves him lots of time to point out everyone else's flaws which drives his classmates NUTS.  If he sees a discrepancy between what another student said they did and what they actually did he literally cannot stop the loud, annoying, tattling words from spewing out of his mouth.  He MUST correct the situation.  His neediness manifests in asking me a question every 1.5 seconds no matter what else I'm doing (talking with another teacher, teaching the whole group, working one-on-one with another student, going the the bathroom, etc. etc.) which drives me NUTS.  I bet he has said, "Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl..." a billion times this year. But generally, he is a sweet kid and a good student.  Just annoying.

I have another student who I also love, but who also drives me nuts.  He is a very bright kid, but is so slow-moving and dreamy that he is always ten steps behind the pack.  I passed out lists of missing work last week and this kid's list was looooooong.  I was trying to motivate him to do his missing work, but every time I turned around he was off in La La Land again.

How could I get Kid 1 off my back for two seconds and get Kid 2 to finish all his work?  The solution:  Assign Kid 1 to "help" Kid 2 finish his missing work list.

As soon as I proposed the idea, they both thought it was brilliant.  Kid 1 went from being on my heels every second of class, to tenaciously nagging Kid 2 in ways that I'm sure nobody has ever been nagged and cajoled and browbeaten ever before.  The result were wonderful:

1. Kid 2 finished about 2/3 of his missing work, bringing his grade up considerably.
2. Kid 1 was off my back for a few days which was a welcome relief.
3. Kid 2 was WORN OUT after a few days of having someone relentlessly dog him about every little thing.
4. Kid 1 and Kid 2 both privately expressed maddening frustration in having to deal with the other every day which gave me unbelievable satisfaction because I successfully deflected their annoying behavior off of me and on to each other.

Brilliant.

Annoying

I'm kind of irritated with Kira today because she keeps doing an annoying voice that for some reason gets under my skin like I just stepped on a mound of fire ants and then my legs turned into the legs I have in my dreams when I can't run anywhere because my legs weigh 400 pounds each.  I should have known better than to let HER know that the voice bugs me so much, but it bugs me so much that I couldn't help myself but to say (scream), "STOP DOING THAT!!!!"  Which for Kira (or anyone between the ages of 11 and 15) means OMG KEEP DOING THAT! 

Also, I took the time to clean, fill and remember to bring my special water bottle to school today.  I had it in my bag and hauled it up to the fourth floor and just as I was unlocking my classroom door, she grabbed the bottle out of my bag, said, "My throat hurts, I'm getting a cold," and then took a long, sloppy swig off my pristine water bottle that I prepared especially for myself.  Now I can't drink it.  I wanted to push her down the steps.

However, I don't need to resort to child abuse because we spend every day in the same place, and by merely being the woman who birthed her and who takes care of all her needs, I am a total embarrassment.  As a teacher at her school I can simply go on the computer and get her schedule and see where she is every minute of the day, and now I am contemplating going into her 1st period class and pretending I'm having a stroke by limping and drooling and possibly peeing my pants and begging her to help me.  But you know what?  She wouldn't help me (and that would piss me off), and if I did that she'd keep doing the voice forever and ever, and I'd be stuck in pee-pants for the rest of the day.  There is no winning with a middle school kid.  They can't lose a contest of annoyingness. 

Also, there are only ten days left until the end of the school year and I may be just a tish touchy because every kid I come across is upping their own personal annoying factor exponentially each day and it's pushing me over the edge. 

Before my classes every day I prop my door open because I LIKE IT LIKE THAT and every single day the same kid comes in and pulls it shut behind him.  Every day I make him go open it up again.  It drives me fucking crazy. 

The kids in this school are all issued new beautiful free planners on the first day of every quarter.  They are to keep this planner with them to write down important information for classes, for parent correspondence, and to use as a hall pass during class.  I made it abundantly clear the first few days of school that if they don't have their planner, they weren't leaving my room.  I have one girl who asks me EVERY SINGLE DAY to go to her locker/go to the bathroom/get a drink/talk to a teacher/etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc, and EVERY SINGLE DAY I say, "Do you have your planner?" and EVERY SINGLE DAY she gets huffy and says, "NO! GOD!" and then sits down and pouts.  EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. 

Don't believe me that they are increasing their annoyance-level?  Yesterday the journal question was "What do you think is/will be/was the best age to be?  Explain."  And I came across these gems when I was correcting them:

"I think the best age is when you are a baby because at that age you don't have to go on the toilet.  You can go in you (sic) diaper."

And:

"I think that the best age would be a baby so I didn't have to go on the toilet." 

They don't even want to use a toilet.  In light of that, I'm pretty impressed that I can get them to do schoolwork.

I've been trying to get my students to FOCUS these last few days of school and you know what?  It is really really hard.  They are starting puberty and have spring fever and their brains are shutting down for the big sleep until they are in their early 20s.  The only super active parts of their brains are the parts that turn everyday items/phrases into inappropriate and not-very-clever sexual innuendos.  That part is spot on.  One day someone noticed that it was 69 degrees in the room.  HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Hilarious. One of my little angels learned the phrase "friends with benefits" and thinks that she made it up and nobody over the age of 13 knows what it means so every time the word "friends" is said, she says, "with benefits!"  and everyone laughs and thinks I'm not laughing because I don't get it.  I GET IT.  If it was even remotely clever, I'd give them my kudos, but it's just annoying. 

I remember the good old days when kids were sweet and not annoying.  Right before Kira started middle school she was shopping at a t-shirt shop with her grandma.  Grandma said she'd buy Kira any shirt she wanted.  Kira chose one with a cute bird on it, but Grandma refused to get it because it said, "I froze my pecker off in Minnesota."  Kira didn't know that pecker was a euphemism for penis, she just thought he had a really cold beak and that was the joke.  Grandma had to explain it.  After Kira knew what it meant, she didn't think it was all that funny.  She thought a bird freezing its beak off was funnier.  She just wanted a shirt with that bird on it.  The good old days. 

Never mind about my pecker.

Why I wish it would stop snowing:

1.  I made a snowman for the joy of watching it melt and I hurt my back lifting up the giant balls because I'm so out of shape because...

2. When it snows I would rather be drinking beer or wine until I fall asleep than doing housework, working out, parenting, being a good human being, etc. etc. (anything really).

3.  If I have to scrape ice of my goddamn windshield one more time I will slash my own tires and set my car on fire.

4.  The watery dogshit in the yard is multyplying exponentially with every new snowfall we get.  I can feel it. 

5.  The pure depression of yet another snowfall almost caused me to impulse-buy a baby duck.  Kira was all for it.

6. I'm sick of Mitch telling me how many inches I'll be getting every night.   

Hell

Well, I had my completely-brought-on-myself horrible day, thinking, of course, that it couldn't possibly be as bad as I thought it might be because how could it?  In case you didn't read yesterday's post, I stupidly took a job at the Catholic middle school.  It was stupid because A) they only pay about 2/3 what I could get anywhere else (believe it or not, my prime motivation for substitute teaching is the money.)  B) They told me about two days before the job that it wouldn't be a full day, it would be a half day, and paid for a half day.  C) The day before the job they told me there would only be two regular classes, the other THREE HOURS of the day would be an outdoor basketball tournament.  D) my job during the basketball tournament would be bathroom monitor.  By the time I got that email that told me all this, it was too late for me to cancel or else I would have.

It was worse than I could have ever imagined.  The first hour, however, wasn't bad at all.  I was subbing for a math teacher and she was very organized, although over-prepared which I think teachers think is a good thing, but I don't have time in the 15 minutes from when I get to school and when the kids come to read multiple three-ring binders about all the minutia of how the class is run.  I just need a list with times on it that tells me what you want me to do, seating charts, page numbers and worksheets.  That's it.  Oh, and maybe a post-it telling me if you have a crazy kid in your class and what to do with him when/if he loses his mind. Six inch thick binders I get; the thousand-times-more-helpful post-it, I never get.  Anyway.  The kids were very nice.  They were helpful and polite and as good as you can ask seventh graders to be.  The first hour was math class and we learned how to convert numbers of things to degrees to make a pie chart.  It was pretty fun.

Then it was time for the stupid tournament.  At first I thought the Catholics were kind of cute because I read the info I was supposed to read to the kids and it said, "Boys report to Mr. O's room, and girls report to Mrs. L's room to change into your costumes,"  and I thought there would be some kind of play or skit or something, but it was referring to the basketball costumes.  Gym clothes.  (lol you silly Catholics!)  The note to the teachers about the tournament logistics said,

9:00 - 9:15 - kids change into costumes
9:15 - 9:30 - give kids directions for tournament
9:30 - 12:00 - have 12 seven-minute games
12:00 - 12:30 - have lunch with the kids outside

I've never been to this school before so I was in no way going to point out what I thought were the obvious flaws in the schedule because apparently they do this four times a year, but this is what I was thinking:  No way does it take kids 15 minutes to change into gym clothes.  It takes them about 3 minutes to do that.  Then what do you do with the other 12 minutes?  I'll tell you what they did:  they all came back to my homeroom and hung out, which was fine, but I started having ominous thoughts right then about the schedule.  Next we went down to the courts for the fifteen minute giving-directions portion of the day.  It was 40 degrees outside.  That might be a warm winter day but it is a mother-effing cold spring day.  I didn't look how long it took to give the directions, but it felt like 15 minutes.

Then the first game started.  I was told to stand on the outside stairs and keep the kids from going in the building.  Basically it was my job to watch kids freeze to death and then deny them shelter.  It told them they could go in the building, in the little space between the outside doors and the inner doors.  I was then scolded by a teacher (who was inside the building) that the kids had to stay outside.  You should have seen their little hands.  Red, stiff, frozen solid.  They were forced to change into their "basketball costumes" so they were all in shorts and t-shirts, with a sweatshirt or jacket.  Not warm enough!  I looked at my watch, thinking it must be at least 10:00.  It was 9:30.  I couldn't believe it.  It felt like a punch in the stomach.  But being the bitch-they-never-met-that-is-making-them-stay-outside-on-a-stupidly-cold-day really takes a lot out of a girl and time was going torturously slow.

About six hours later, at 10:00, the teacher who told me I have to keep the kids outside said that the library was open for kids who wanted to warm up, but they had to be silent.  Yeah, that's realistic.  Was I supposed to enforce that too?  No, he stayed in the library with the warmth and the chairs.  I had HAD it with standing outside in the freezing cold and figured I could just as easily shoo kids out of the building from the inside as I could the outside so I stepped in the inner doors and watched out the window.  Then library-enforcer came out and told me I had to do my job from outside.  What the fuck is the difference?  He said I should try to keep them from running in and out.  Seriously?  Has anyone taken into account that these are KIDS we were dealing with?  Running in and out is WHAT THEY DO.  I felt like they were picking on the sub because none of the other teachers seemed to be doing the shitty shitty job of denying kids warmth and shelter so I was just trying to ignore it (and stay inside) and occupy my mind with something else.

I did a little quick math in my head:  12 seven-minute games = 12x7 = 84.  Allowing two minutes for transitioning between games makes that 12x9 = 108.  This tournament should take no more than an hour and 45 minutes.  They had allotted two and a half hours.  I asked a teacher walking by, one of the many who said, "Hee hee, It's not usually like this!!  You must hate us!!"  You're fucking right I did.  But I didn't say that.  I asked one of them:  What do the kids do after the tournament is over?  Surely they weren't going to make them stand outside with nothing to do for 45 minutes.  She said, "They have lunch.  But we decided to let them eat inside since it's so cold!"  Then I said, "But what about the time between when the tournament ends, and lunch begins at 12:00?"  She didn't know what I was talking about and looked at me like I was an idiot, (what did I know?) and walked back outside.  She was wearing a blanket.

Sure enough the tournament ended about 40 minutes early.  The kids ran upstairs back to their homerooms.  I was so happy to be back in a room with heat and chairs I could have cried.  Then another teacher came into my room and started barking orders at the kids in my class.  Apparently we were all going to be sitting there for 40 minutes until the cafeteria was free.  She wanted ideas for what the kids wanted to do.  One kid said he wanted to watch a Magic Schoolbus episode and this teacher told him it would take him about ten minutes to run to the library to get one so it probably wouldn't be worth it.  First of all, a seventh grade boy can retrieve a dvd from a room two floors down in about 90 seconds (what is with these teachers and their total lack of knowledge about how long things take?) and for another thing, they had a smartboard and Youtube.  No need to run anywhere.  I found a full-length episode of Magic Schoolbus and started it up.  I thought that teacher would leave my room and go back to her own, but she didn't.  She sat down.  (WTF?)  Was I done?  Why was there another teacher with me? Who is watching her class? Is it because I let the kids in the stairwell when they were hypothermic against "orders?"  She sat down in the chair next to the computer and bumped the keyboard.  The movie paused.  She got all flustered and tried to fix it by turning the volume all the way down.  When she saw that didn't fix the problem, she came to the conclusion that the "internet was probably broken."  I pushed play and it started again to her utter amazement.

One of the most frustrating things about the day was that people thought I was so stupid. I know I'm not exactly a genius, but when stupid people think I'm stupid, that's discouraging.  Needless to say I will never go back there again.  Oh, and another thing:  I was told I would be paid for a half day: four hours.  I was there from 7:15 to 12:00 and I was supposed to stay until 12:30 to eat with the kids but I ducked out.  That is 4 hours and 45 minutes.  If I don't get paid for that 45 minutes I'm going to raise a stink.  I normally wouldn't, I'd just make a note not to do the half-day for them again because it isn't really a half-day, but this time I'm going to make a big deal about it because the day was so incredibly shitty.  I've already gotten the bit about how the Catholics don't pay as much because they just don't have the money:

To which I say, "Bullshit."

Hulky

I was out of town for the weekend, visiting with family and old friends. I got up this morning to work what I thought would be a super easy day. It was a job for a second/third grade split class, which would normally be hard, but I know/(knew) for a fact that there was an excellent student teacher in that class so I thought I could breeze through the day listening to the occasional crazy story and helping individual kids with math or reading.  Well, the student teacher has strep throat so she was gone.  It was all me today.  It was fun, but exhausting.

I've been working so much or been gone, so I have totally ignored anything domestic for over a week.  That fucking laundry really piles up.  I don't know why but lately the sight of piles of dirty laundry makes my blood pressure rise and makes me actually ANGRY.  I feel like David Banner.  I see damp towels, and inside-out pants, and dirty socks all over the laundry room floor and I can practically feel the seams of my purple pants ripping and my skin turning green.

I need some more goddamn Downy AAAAAHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGG!

I never liked doing laundry before but now it actually makes me mad.  Stupid clothes, getting dirty, day in, day out.

Kira's path of destruction also makes me angry lately too.  I shouldn't be able to come home and see everything she has done and every place she has been based on the litter she has left behind, should I?  Is it too much to ask a 12 year old to pick up her own shit?  I found two flute-o-phones in the bathroom today.  TWO!  My latest domestic peeve is the fact that she leaves her dresser drawers hanging open with clothes draped out all over the place.  I've been telling her for months and months to SHUT THOSE DAMN DRAWERS! and still they are left open.  The other night around midnight I was going to take her book off her sleeping face and give her a little kiss, and when I walked in I accidentally ran into the open bottom drawer.  HUUUUULK MAAAAAAAD!

I flicked the overhead light on and said, "GET UP!" I think she probably thought the house was on fire or something.  When I was finally able to wake her up and drag her ass out of bed and tell her to SHUT HER GODDAMN DRAWERS she looked at me like I was a crazy person.  I upped the crazy by telling her that if I see them open like that again I'd take the dresser.  She looked at me like I had finally lost my marbles and carefully asked what she would do with all her clothes if I took her dresser (also implicitly asking where I would put an extra dresser), as if I hadn't already thought that through.  I actually hadn't thought that through.  I hadn't thought any further ahead than causing her some inconvenience and annoyance.  So I guess the consequence of her losing her dresser would be piles of her clothes all over the floor.  The very thing that causes my total hulk-like irrational rage.  Also, I'd have an extra piece of furniture cluttering up my house.  What kind of a corner have I painted myself into?

Let's all hope she keeps her drawers shut.

I'm an idiot, did you know?

Sam is fifteen now and a full-fledged teenage boy with everything that goes with it.  He thinks he knows eeeeeeeverything and that 99.9 percent of the rest of humanity are total idiots who don't know what they are doing.  Teenagers are annoying.  I hope with all my heart and soul that this is a phase and he is right now at the rock bottom of it and on his way back up to his old careful, sweet self because frankly I'm tired of being the idiot mean mom who is ruining his life.  What do I do that is so mean?  I'll give you an example.

The other weekend he told me he had plans to go ice fishing with his friend.  Okay, whatever.  That friend lives right on a lake so I had envisioned them walking out a couple dozen yards and drilling a hole and fishing. No problem. The days leading up to said fishing trip Sam leaked out some more details of his plan.  They were going to have to snowmobile out to where they wanted to fish.  It was just going to be the two of them.  Sam was going to borrow his grandpa's ridiculously overpowered snowmobile that goes over a hundred miles an hour.  I had to put the kibosh on the plans because it was a recipe for disaster.  The ingredients:

1) stupidly overpowered motorized vehicles
2) wanting to use these machines and drive them too fast over a body of frozen water where neither one of them knows about currents and the subsequent varying thickness of ice.
3) No adult supervision except maybe the friend's mom's boyfriend-of-the-month who I've never met which I suspect was just something Sam made up to make me feel better about the whole thing, but had the exact opposite effect.
4) The tendency of teen boys to try to out-macho each other which in this case would, of course, manifest itself in a high speed race.
5) When I expressed my concerns to Sam, he assured me that he knows absolutely EVERYTHING about ice and snowmobiling on ice, even though he's only ever done it once.  And he thinks I'm an idiot for thinking that ice can vary in thickness.  (Insert sarcastic tone here) "It's all four feet thick, Mom. There's nothing dangerous about it."  I told him a story that still haunts me about a family (mom, dad, baby) driving on the ice roads on Rainy Lake about ten years ago.  Their car went over a patch of thin ice and went through.  The car sunk in about 20 feet of water.  The baby was strapped into her carseat.  The dad dove down over and over until he was almost dead trying to get their baby out, but he couldn't.  Sam's response:  "That's too bad, but that guy was an idiot.  You don't strap a baby into a carseat on ice.  Everyone knows that; and cars don't sink, [idiot], they have tires filled with air." I love him dearly, but sometimes when he talks I just want to punch him in the face.  And then I feel bad for wanting to punch him in the face.

Ugh.

So there was no snowmobile trip.  Now I'm the mean bitch that is keeping him from having any fun in his life.  I miss the safety conscious little boy who built a tree-house on the ground because he thought a rickety dwelling built in a tree by a nine-year-old wasn't a very good idea.  I miss the boy who used to do the limbo like this:

And surfed like this:

and had the humor and self-deprecation to make fun of himself and his safety conscious ways by riding around on his scooter like this purely for the entertainment of his mother:

I'm convinced that is unfounded confidence in his abilities and the ridiculous assumptions he makes about things he knows nothing about are going to get him maimed or killed, and I'm still his mother, right?  It's still my job to raise him and protect him, right?  Yes.  Unfortunately in his eyes I'm just a fun-ruining worry wart who is dragging him down.

Ugh.

Oh, and this is the year he gets his driver's license.  Is there any way I can put him into a drug-induced coma to protect him from himself for the next five or six years?

In my opinion mosquitoes are annoying, but that's just me.

I have a mosquito bite on the hardest, thickest part of my big toe.  It might drive me insane because if I scratch it, it just makes it itch more, and it can't really be scratched because the itch is way underneath the thick skin.  I have even gone outside and scraped it on the sidewalk thinking that would give me some relief, but it didn't.  The itch is way inside there.  While I was out there scraping away I noticed a branch clipper leaning against the garage and thought, hey, if I clipped my toe off, I bet it wouldn't itch anymore!  Then I reconsidered because that seems a bit drastic.  I really have no tolerance for slight discomfort.

Actually I have about twenty mosquito bites just on my feet because apparently when I slathered my entire body in bug spray the other night I forgot to put any on my feet.  I have one bite on the arch that's really itching right now, about five on the backs of my heels, and the rest are on my toes.  How did I not even notice this was happening?  I'll tell you why.

I read about mosquitoes and in their little tiny proboscis they have two tubes.  One for stealing your precious blood, and one for administering anti-coagulants, pain killers, immunosuppressants, along with the occasional case of yellow fever, dengue fever, and malaria.  Yuck!  And how is that little proboscis strong enough to penetrate any of our skin, much less thick toe skin?  It's really thin and sharp, that's how.

earth's biggest asshole

Mosquitoes have been around for about 30 million years, honing their craft, so we really don't have a chance against them.  They are disease carrying, thieving little bastards.  If they were humans they would be the kind of people who would kidnap you in South America and steal your kidney to sell on the black market, and you wouldn't even know what happened to you.  You would just wake up in a hotel bathtub with a terrible headache and a sloppy incision in your side.  Do you think they'd care if they gave you hepatitis or sepsis?  No they wouldn't care at all.  All they care about is your precious kidney.  That's what kind of people mosquitoes are.  You wouldn't put up with someone injecting you with dirty needles or stealing your organs, so why is it okay for someone to inject you with drugs and gorge themselves on your blood every chance they get?  I know it's not PC to call for the extinction of an entire species (like pandas), but I don't care.  I say we kill all the mosquitoes.

Shoot

Ever since the shooting on Saturday in Tucson, the back-and-forth between gun lovers and gun control advocates has gotten heated back up.  This is one of the stupidest arguments I've ever heard of.  If you think about it logically in a risk vs. benefits type of way, guns, especially handguns, are the stupidest idea in the world.  It's a tiny cannon that you can carry in your pocket, and if you don't accidentally shoot your own balls off, you can go into a crowd and kill twenty or thirty people in a few seconds.

One of the arguments for guns is that the right to bear arms is protected by the constitution.  So is owning slaves.  The constitution is fantabulous and all, but it was written when the most technological weapons around were muzzle loaders.  Do you know how much time and effort it takes to fire a muzzle loader?  And the accuracy is horrible.  If you wandered into a crowd of people with a muzzle loader you'd be able to kill one person at most (and it would be a lucky shot, probably not the person you were aiming for) before everyone would run for their lives while you reload.  Technology has rolled right along in the last 200 years, and now you can stand at the edge of a crowd, or in the door of a classroom, and pretty accurately kill several people before anyone has a chance to react.  I don't think that's what the founding fathers had in mind.  

Muzzle loaders were an important tool when our country was young.  You could shoot at the British, or bears, or runaway slaves.  All important to the man of the 1790s.  What's the use of a handgun today?  The only thing it is for is killing people.  Bears aren't much of a problem to the modern man, and runaway slaves are a thing of the past. Why does anyone want a tool specifically made to kill other people?  And why do we want to let the crazies who do want it have it?  I think the reasonable people are just afraid of being shot if they get too loud about it.

Another argument gun defenders use is that "guns don't kill people, people kill people."  They say that this kid who went on a rampage, and the other young men who have gone on rampages in the past several years are mentally ill and would kill people anyway regardless if they had guns or not, but they all had guns.  Maybe it's true, but it would be a lot harder to stab 20 people than it would be to just point and pull a trigger.  It doesn't take a lot of thought or imagination to load a gun and shoot.  I think the first time that crazy person grabbed another person and sunk a knife into their flesh, it would maybe seem a bit more real and a lot grosser and horrifying and less glorified than they built it up in their mind.  (Also, as a teacher I think it would be good for the crazy kids to think of more creative ways to kill their classmates than to simply bring guns into school.  Come on crazy kids, do a little thinking!)  If you're going to go so far as to kill another person, you should at least have to get a little dirty doing it.    

I've heard that people keep handguns for "protection."  Protection from what exactly?  Who is after you?  Do you think maybe you might be just a tad paranoid?  Is it worth keeping a deadly weapon around your family because of the one in a million chance someone will threaten you to the point where a gun would be your only solution?  If someone did come into your house and threatened you, is your gun handy?  Can you get to it in time?  Is it loaded?  And if it is loaded, what the hell is wrong with you keeping a loaded gun in your house!? And if it is handy and loaded, what would keep this obviously desperate person from simply snatching it out of your hands when you hesitate at the thought of killing another person, and shooting you in the brain?  

The nursing home, Hooters, and live-blogging Mitch's sick obsession with pantomime horses

OMG you guys, it's been a few days since I blogged!  I usually don't go more than a day or two between blogs.  (Is that obnoxious?  A lot of blogs I read are once a week.  How much of me is too much of me?  I know I get pretty sick of myself sometimes.)  Anyhoo... nothing funny has happened to me this weekend because I spent the better part of it in a nursing home visiting my grandma.  Aging and slow death: not that funny.  There was one old lady who was calling for help to get her door open.  My dad helped her with the knob and I held the door open for her to shuffle in with her walker. There was a SET OF TEETH on her walker seat, and she had a wad of toilet paper hanging out of her pants.  Goodbye dignity!  Every time I walked down the hall past the rooms, there was one man sitting in a chair in his room and he would fart loudly, and I mean LOUDLY, almost every time I went by.  Was it just for me or does everyone get the special fart treatment?  I nicknamed him Sir Fartsalot in my head.

My dad and I went to pick up my grandma's sister, Ogie, at her assisted living home.  Ogie, like my grandma, is sharp as a tack, but frail, and before today I thought she was probably the nicest person on the planet.  We visited with her for a while in her room and asked her how she was and how her neighbors were.  She told us about a lady with alzheimers who sits in the lobby all day and hollers at people.  She told us this lady startles really easy and then gets riled up and wants to talk non-stop which Ogie finds annoying.  Then, as we were walking out through the lobby, Ogie was wheel-walking herself through, and I saw her covertly SLAP THE ALZHEIMERS LADY ON THE HAND and then wheel-walk as fast as she could to the door.  The alzheimers lady jumped and started yakking and hollering, but Ogie was long gone.  She can really move that wheelchair when she wants to. 

Now I'm sitting downstairs in my basement watching Undercover Boss and the CEO of Hooters is on and is seeing how his company is run from the undercover perspective of a low-level peon.  Riveting.  Is Hooters about owls?  Boobs?  Wings?  They don't really address that eternal question on the show.  Oh, wait a minute, the CEO just told me:  It's about respect.  Hooters is not about profits, or wings, or owls, or boobs; it is all about respecting Hooters girls.  Naturally!  How stupid of me.  When I want a good dose of respect I'll throw on some orange shorts and stand in front of some fat fuck manager so he can tell me that I don't have enough make-up on to pass out chicken wings effectively.  Then I'd feel like Susan B. Anthony.

(If this was a full-body picture, you'd be able to see her tiny orange shorts-of-respect.)

I'd really like some Hooters wings right now.

Mitch is sitting next to me now doing intense research on pantomime horses because that is what he and Kira are going to be for Halloween.  I think he is actually going to spend $400 plus on a pantomime horse costume.  He says he's not, but he is really invested at this point and every night I hear him justifying why it would be "so worth it."   He just said "I bet you could get a panto-horse costume in England for next to nothing because they love the panto-horse."  He keeps calling it a "panto-horse" because he's so familiar.  He and Kira want to put the suit on, and then go and trot around Mitch's brother's yard and freak out his nieces.   They also want to enter this race:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Ajq0W7P1A

Now he just said, "If Kira and I get this costume, I want you to enter us in the fair with all the other horses.  We might be a little anxious at first, you know, because of being in a strange place around all the other horses, but we'll calm down."  Now he's laughing his head off at a video of a pantomime horse laying on the floor trying to get to its feet.   Now he just said, "I bet I've looked at a thousand panto-horse costumes."  Now he just said, "This thing [panto-horse obsession] is bigger than me.  I can't help myself."  Now he just said, "The panto possibilities are endless."  Now he just said, "There's a lot of planning and responsibility that goes into being the front half of a horse."

Enough live-blogging.  I have to go to bed.  Maybe something funny will happen tomorrow.  Here's to hoping.

Summer vacation is too long.

The kids are driving me nuts.  Today I got into an argument with Sam in front of my mother-in-law because he was going off on one of his "I am thirteen therefore I know everything and I will share my vast stores of knowledge with you in choppy non-sequiturs" rants about how all Apple computer products come with self-cleaning screens.  My MIL just sort of nodded her head like, "whatever you say" but for some inexplicable reason I rose to the bait.  I wanted to say, "You just made that up in your head and now you are spouting it as truth, Sean Hannity." but I didn't.  I made the mistake of actually saying, "No, Sam, they don't."  So then he, in his teenage way, took this as an affront to his intelligence and burgeoning manhood and decided on a full-blown argument.

Sam: "Haven't you ever noticed when you lick your finger and touch the screen, it gets clean in a few seconds?  IT'S SELF CLEANING!" 
Kira: You LICK your iPod?
Sam:  Kira, stay out of it, I said when I LICK MY FINGER!
Me:  No, sorry, you are wrong on this one.  I have an iPod myself and clean the screen manually (like a total sucker.)
Kira: Remind me not to touch his iPod.
Sam: Kira SHUT UP!
Me:  Kira, go play outside.
MIL:  Well, I better head home.....
Sam: I'll prove it!

Sam then marched off to his room and retrieved his iPod to show his grandmother and me what happens when you lick your finger (with a dramatic flourish) and rub the spit on your iPod.  The spit evaporated and he said, "SEE!"

Then the neighbor kid came over to play with Kira.  She has decided she's sick of him and tries to weasel out of playing with him by telling him she has "chores."  I said, "If you don't go outside and play with Kolten, you actually will have endless chores until you go to bed, now please, for the love of god, GO OUTSIDE!"

I really admire women who can do all their mothering and household chores and also have fun activities planned to entertain their children every day.  I don't know how they do it, or how they can put up with the kids' attitude that whatever you planned for them could be just a little bit better if only... (insert complaint here). Like when we took them to Rainy Lake last weekend to spend two fun-filled days with their cousins and uncle swimming, knee boarding, etc. etc. and then they had the GALL to pout about leaving on Sunday instead of Monday.  That striving my kids have for me to do just a little more for them than I actually do is what kills any desire for me to attempt to entertain them toward the end of August, other than to repeatedly offer them ALL OF THE OUTDOORS FOR THEIR PLAYING PLEASURE ALL THE LIVE-LONG DAY.

"You Should....."

...Those are the two words I hate hearing more than just about anything else.  Actually, I guess I would rather hear a "you should" statement than hear "you have head lice," but those statements both evoke very negative feelings.  I would be more panicked about the head lice and would be considering the extensive cleaning-of-the-house I'd have to do and I would be contemplating burning everything my head has ever touched, including my hair.  I guess "you should..." is more annoying than alarming.  When I hear that statement I assume that the person that said it thinks I'm an idiot.  Someone telling me I have head lice would be doing me a favor (if it was true. It would NOT be a funny joke, FYI.)

Some people can be forgiven for the "you should" statement.  My grandma is constantly telling me what I should and shouldn't do but she's in her nineties and has been around the block, so I will actually either listen to her, or ignore her (mostly ignore).  When my parent's "you should" me, I choose to think of it as being funny as opposed to incredibly annoying because they still think I'm 14 and their "you should" statements are usually so stupidly obvious.  "Are you going to cut that watermelon?  You should use a knife." or "Are you going outside?  You should bring a jacket."

The only time I appreciate a good "you should" is when it comes to books I should read, although I've been pointed to a few real stinkers, so I'm inclined not to listen anymore.  "You should read Left Behind!  It changed my life!"  (Nobody should read Left Behind.)

What really annoys me is when people who have no kids tell me things I should be doing with my kids.  Or people telling me obvious things, like I should get in shape, or visit every continent, or recycle, or floss, or take a shower.  No duh.  Do I look like I need to be bossed?  I don't.  And I'm just obstinate enough to do the opposite of what was suggested which is counterproductive for everyone because the "you should" suggestions are usually pretty good.  I wanted to quit drinking diet Coke a few years ago and then someone said, "You should stop drinking that.  Even the diet stuff rots your teeth."  I thought, oh GREAT!  Now I have to drink this for the rest of my life and I can't even go to the dentist because somebody told me I should do that too!

So when I hear someone say "You should..." to me (unless it's a dare. I love a good dare. Or if it's something sensible like "you should let a doctor cut that off instead of doing it yourself."); the first time is an alarm and I'm really listening, and if I hear another, it's over, my bossy non-friend who thinks I need the direction only you can give.

Nature makes me look foolish

I know it's popular to be green and be in love with the earth, and I agree with it (for the most part) but come on, people, I think we are starting to get blinded by our love of unspoiled habitat and clean water.  Let's not forget that Mother Nature has a really ugly side:

  Nature's ugly side

She needs to be put in her place every once in a while, and if that has to be done with deadly chemicals SO BE IT.

 (Nature also has a stupid-looking side)

"Why are you so mad at Nature now?" you ask me.  It's the usual, spiders.  Nothing can ruin a stay at the cabin like a gigantic spider crawling across the dock 6 inches in front of your face as you are coming up the ladder in the dark.  Did it make me scream in a manner that was totally out of proportion to the event?  Why, yes it did.  Did it make my sisters think I was being brutally murdered by "Skeleton Hand" who Amy is pretty sure lives under the dock?  Yes.  Did it make me have the heebie jeebies and totally ruin my relaxation from the sauna?  YES.  Was I awake spastically slapping random itches and lint for several hours?

I think you know the answer.

While I was awake, I was mad at myself for being so afraid of something so small and supposedly beneficial.  As I've been told a million times (by smug know-it-alls), we NEED the spiders because if they weren't here we would be completely overrun by other bugs. But why do we need the other bugs?  I spent the afternoon on the dock fighting with ONE fly that kept landing on me over and over and over and over.  Annoying.  You'd think the fly would get tired of doing that, but it didn't. I tried to ignore it by thinking of how people in Australia are so overrun with flies that they totally ignore them even when they are crawling around in the snot trails going from their baby's noses to their mouths.  But I couldn't because my friend Pete sent me something the other day that said,

"Houseflies feed on feces, open sores, sputum, and moist decaying organic matter such as spoiled food, eggs and flesh. Houseflies can take in only liquid foods. They spit out saliva on solid foods to predigest it, and then suck it back in. They also regurgitate partly digested matter and pass it again to the abdomen."

Enchanting!  Are you still in love with nature?

When I wasn't slapping at that one annoying fly that preferred to spit and predigest on me over everyone else including wet dogs, I was scratching the mosquito bites on my ankles.

Besides spreading disease and being food for terrifying spiders and equally horrifying bats, what good are the flies and mosquitoes? I know that being in favor of causing the extinction of species is not a popular position to take in the current cultural climate, but really, would anyone be sad to see flies and spiders (and bats, and pandas, and leeches) gone?  Think of all the good outdoor time you could have without them.

"I sleep in your patio umbrella and scare the life out of you when you go outside to read your book!" 

Why I hate the dentist

Hypothetically speaking, because we are all SICK TO DEATH of hearing about my personal dental issues, this is why I hate going to the dentist.

Let's say that you get up at the crack of dawn to go and finally get the permanent crown for the tooth you had to have a root canal in last month.  You remind the assistant that you have an irrational fear of all things dental and ask about novocaine.  She says you won't need it because the tooth has no nerves in it anymore so it couldn't possibly hurt. (silly!) Your dentist comes in and chats with you for a while about the Stanley Cup and how much he hates the early morning and then he gets started.  He can't get the temporary crown off and almost breaks all your other teeth when his torture tools keep slipping off said temporary crown and then he begins to sweat uncontrollably and says to the assistant, "Is it HOT in here?  I am so hot!"  He keeps trying and keeps saying, "It's almost there" and you can tell, because the tooth is in your head, that it's not any closer than it ever was.  You're remembering him saying how important it was to have a crown put on because the tooth is so very weak and could break at any time, and that you shouldn't eat anything sticky with the temporary crown because it could just slip off.  You realize that the tooth is way stronger than anyone ever thought, and the temporary crown will never in a million years just slip off, and he's going to have to break it if he wants to get it off.  After another five minutes of sweating and pulling, he says, "Well, I think we're going to have to break it off."  And then he breaks it off.

Hypothetically speaking, that's why I hate the dentist so much.

Update on my teeth that you forgot to ask for

I just realized that I had my oral surgery consultation and I never updated the blog about how it went. I guess you all FORGOT TO ASK about it, or maybe you were just being polite, because I know everyone loves to hear about other people's disgusting maladies.

You know how my doctor told me a few years ago that I'm approaching middle age (bitch) and I should start to take preventative measures against old-lady problems like osteoporosis? (she did) She told me I need to take a daily calcium/vitamin D supplement, so for about two years I have been faithfully doing just that. Guess what? It's working! My bones are harder and denser than anyone could ever expect bones to be even though I drink gallons of Diet Coke which supposedly weakens bones with all the delicious acid. That's why I weigh so much, dense bones. But, there's a down-side to being the anti-osteoporosis poster gal, and that is that my bone-impacted teeth will have to be chipped out of my rock-like jaw, and I can expect extensive swelling and pain after surgery! Isn't that fucking fantastic?

My doctor is kind of cute which is also bad because now, on top of being completely freaked out by the entire ordeal, I have to be embarrassed that a handsome man is going to be smelling my infected tooth sockets. I bet that's going to be really stinky.

Oh, and the tiny bits of the teeth that have popped through the gums have cavities, so if I were to just leave them in, eventually I would have to get the cavities fixed or look forward to root canals.

Life is SWEET these days!

I wish the pandas would all just die already

I know this seems to be coming out of nowhere, but it's something that's been on my mind a lot lately. I'm really sick of pandas. I guess it all started when I went to the San Diego Zoo a few years ago and I wanted to see the pandas because everyone always makes such a huge deal about pandas so I wanted to see what the fuss was about. There was a line that was about a mile long of people waiting to see a panda in its den sleeping. What? Why? I didn't stand in the line, but I was intrigued and decided to learn more about pandas.

They live in China, obviously, everyone knows that, but what I didn't know was that they live in a very specific spot in the mountains and only live at specific elevations. Not too high, not too low. (picky picky) Of course, their historical habitat has been taken over by more ambitious and adaptive species, so I guess that's not one of my major beefs with the pandas.

What really drives me nuts about them is this:

Despite its taxonomic classification as a carnivore, the giant Panda has a diet that is primarily herbivorous, which consists almost exclusively of bamboo. However, the Giant Panda still has the digestive system of a carnivore, as well as carnivore-specific genes, and thus derives little energy and little protein from consumption of bamboo. (from Wikipedia)

They will only eat bamboo. And bamboo is not even that good for the stupid pandas. And they are defined by their very genes to be carnivores but don't eat any meat. They won't even eat other plants that might be a little more nutritious. Idiots.

They are mostly sedentary because they derive so little energy from their diet, yet they have to be constantly eating so they can get the tiny bit of nutritional value from the bamboo. They have developed their giant (some say "cute," I say "freakish") heads as adaptations to their ridiculous diets because they had to have stronger jaw muscles to chew the bamboo. You'd think that instead, they'd adapt the digestive system of something that thrives on bamboo if they're so insistent on eating nothing but bamboo, but no, in another example of why intelligent design is such a stupid theory, they have instead developed giant jaws for chewing their worthless food. I'd love to eat nothing but chocolate cake and pita chips but if I did that, I would be malnutritioned and fat, (like a panda) but nobody would think it was cute if I did it.

My last problem with the pandas is the fact that they won't reproduce to save their own species. So humans have tried to get them to mate in captivity by showing them panda porn. (I'm not even kidding. Look it up.) Zookeepers show the pandas videos of other pandas doing it hoping it will get them in the mood. They won't get in the mood because they are too tired from eating nothing but bamboo. They don't have the energy to do it. They'd rather just go to bed and read their book. Then on the off-chance that they do mate, and a baby panda is born, it is teeny and helpless and it's not easy to get the mother to look after it. The fathers have nothing to do with them. If there are two cubs born the mother will let one die so she only has to take care of one. Nice parents!

You need to re-think why you're so in love with pandas.

If this panda would spend more time planning a healthy diet of a variety of foods, and less time playing the flute, I might have more sympathy for the entire species. 

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

A few weeks after writing this post, I learned about a blog called Animal Review on NPR.  They review animals and give them letter grades.  I think they gave the panda an F-.  Their blog is hysterical and I highly recommend reading it.  The review of the porcupine is one of my favorites. 

How much Advil is too much Advil?

I don't know yet, I'll let you know when I hit the overdose wall. I've been having jaw pain for about the last two weeks because of my impacted wisdom teeth. The two on the bottom are in and have been in for years but they keep moving around. Of the two on the top, one came in about 18 years ago and was pulled because it didn't fit in with my other teeth, meaning I literally couldn't shut my mouth so if I wanted to talk or chew I had to have it pulled. The other upper wisdom tooth is hung up behind my last molar (I saw it on an x-ray) and I was hoping it would just stay there forever and never move. It's moving. I think it's growing sideways and pushing the roots of all my teeth together which is super duper painful!

I know what your thinking, you're thinking 'Why the hell do I continue to read about someone's wisdom teeth problems? Gross and who cares?' and you're also thinking, 'Hey dummy, just go to the dentist and have them taken out.' (don't call me dummy)

That's easy for you to think because you obviously aren't as afraid of that whole procedure as I am. First of all, I'm afraid of surgery in general. Anesthesia scares me because what if it just paralyzes me and I am still conscious and can feel everything? What if it just kills me? Secondly, this is surgery on my HEAD. I live in my head and like it just the way it is and don't want anyone messing with it. Thirdly, it's bone surgery - ew! bone surgery! and fourthly they will be doing all of this through my MOUTH. They will be stretching my jaw and peeling back my lips and cutting through my gums in order to dig through my skull to get out a tooth that is lodged right next to my sinuses and ear canal.

I'd rather have a colonoscopy. I'd rather have an abortion. I'd rather both of those things on the same day because for me, they would be less invasive and less traumatic. In fact, if I could solve my jaw problems by having a colonoscopy and an abortion, I think I might do it.

And finally, I don't have health insurance. We had MinnesotaCare insurance before which is the state public insurance, (which is a hell of a lot more than most states have), but they kicked us off (as they do every year) so I re-applied in July and between their slow processing and their constant need for more information, the application still hasn't been processed. So until that happens, no jaw surgery, no colonoscopies and no abortions. I faxed in what will hopefully be the last piece of information they will need today, and was promised that our case will be expedited so perhaps I can see someone about this tooth before it pops through my palate, or sinus cavity, or eyeball.

I know what you're thinking now, 'OMG, why don't you have health insurance? Are you poor? You are such a terrible parent!' Oh, hang on, don't get judgemental, stick with me here: No, technically not poor, but we have a small business and to get private insurance we would have to pay around $600 a month (that was about 8 years ago, I'm sure it's way more now) just in premiums, with a huge deductible for any health expenses we incurred. We are four healthy people who incur about $400 total in health expenses all year long, so it would be stupid, not to mention financially impossible to pay a health insurer $7500 a year on top of the $400 we pay in health care costs anyway.

'But,' you say, 'what about a catastrophic event, or even a non-catastrophic but expensive event like jaw surgery?' Exactly. Now you see where I'm at! The way private insurers work, getting the coverage you paid for is like squeezing gold coins out of Scrooge McDuck. (actually, I think if you squeeze Scrooge McDuck, gold coins do pop out here and there.) Heck, if they paid all their claims they wouldn't have enough left over for advertising and swag! I'm sure my tooth, for example, would be considered a pre-existing condition, since it's been there since I was born.

MinnesotaCare is a really good program. It has a large group of people, so the premiums are kept moderately low and when they say you're covered, you're covered. The tricky part is getting on it (the application process is a bitch) and staying on it (you have to reapply every year). THIS IS WHY WE NEED A SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE PROGRAM LIKE CANADA, GODDAMMIT! Okay, sorry, sorry about that. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10... I'm calm now. Breathe breathe.... okay.

I have a consultation with an oral surgeon on the 5th so I hope the insurance application is processed before then, but if not, it's all out-of-pocket. Which is still cheaper than private insurance.

Now you're wishing me the best of luck and hoping I don't overdose on Advil, and begging me to please, never EVER write about my teeth problems again. Well, I can't make any promises about that! You want to know how this whole thing plays out don't you? You want to see a picture of what a tooth looks like punched through the roof of someone's mouth, don't you? If it wasn't me, I'd want to see that picture! You're so sweet! Thanks! It's been nice having this little chat with you!

Negative Nelly

Did you know that was a saying, Negative Nelly? I just looked it up because I'm feeling so very negative today. Mitch pointed out that many of my recent sentences start with "I hate..." So I think I'll just make a list of all the things I hate lately, and then I'll concentrate on being more of a Positive Polly starting tomorrow.

I hate winter
I hate snow
I hate cold
I hate wisdom teeth that don't fit in your mouth but come in anyway and squish all your other teeth together
I hate the snow plow, (but I also love the snow plow)
I hate subbing for kindergarteners (but I love kindergarteners, just not being in charge of them for more than 5 minutes at a time)(because they're crazy)
I hate being torn
I hate jaw pain that radiates into your sinuses and gives you headaches that no amount of Advil can relieve
I hate the guy on the radio today that said that when he hears people call music "funk" he re-educates them and tells them that it's really soul music.
I hate Mario Lopez
I hate how dirty my car is
I hate shoveling
I hate getting up before dawn
I hate being beaten at Mario Kart
I hate Michael Buble
I hate that I'm going to have to schedule an appointment with someone (ideally a doctor of some kind) to dig around in my skull and fish out my impacted wisdom teeth
I hate running out of milk
I hate when my glasses get dirty
I hate the phrase "a lick and a promise" yuck
I hate when I tell someone that I hate something trivial and they say, "It could be worse! You could live in Haiti!" Well, no shit.
I hate hockey
I hate that the laundry is never JUST DONE ALREADY
I hate nostril scabs
I hate when I forget to make the kid's lunches until 11:30 at night, every single night
I hate wet socks (no duh, who doesn't)
I hate dry skin
I hate that I can't wear my robe in public
I hate the word lavatory (there's no lava in there)
I hate all these snowmen mocking me constantly
I hate that all my pants have shrunk ( shut up)
I hate turtle-heading
I hate neck zits
I hate running out of Diet Coke
I hate that song (you know the one)
I hate being a grown-up
I hate when I say that I hate being a grown-up and someone says, "Well, what's the alternative?" Being a kid, you idiot.
I hate squash
I hate caraway seeds
I hate the lady judge on So You Think You Can Dance
I hate the male judges on So You Think You Can Dance
I hate that show So You Think You Can Dance
I hate knowing that there is a chewed up Hot Tamale somewhere on the floor of my car because it fell out of Kira's mouth
I hate Ted Bundy
I hate John Wayne Gacy
I hate the word crux
I hate the word cusp
I hate when guys try to dictate where their jaw line is by shaving beard jaw-lines halfway up their face
I hate when people yank my chain
I hate even thinking about litter boxes
I hate even thinking about hemorrhoids
I hate how hard hemorrhoids is to spell
I hate how negative I am
I hate this list

Okay, from now on nothing but sunshine from me.

No Internet Connection!

Our server has been down for days so we haven't had internet for a while and I'm having withdrawal symptoms. So to feed my addiction, today I brought my computer to UMD to catch up on what's been happening.

What a pain! I forgot how hard it is to find parking on campus. That sucked. Then I found a nice spot to sit so I got everything set out just the way I like it, and then in about fifteen minutes I had to go to the bathroom which was only about 20 feet away, but I can't leave my computer just sitting out, so I had to pack everything up and go, and when I came back about three minutes later, someone else had taken my sweet spot. Darn! So I went and fed my parking meter, came back in, found a not-so-sweet spot next to some douche who sat next to me about five minutes after I sat down, and has his headphones on so loud I can hear his crappy music, and he keeps unwrapping candy in LOUD cellophane wrappers. He kid, grow up, I'm trying to read some blogs and catch up on Facebook! Why does he have to sit RIGHT NEXT TO ME. I was here first and there are lots of other places to sit. Maybe I should fart.

Then I wrote my movie review on Rescue from Gilligan's Island (the post below) and now I'm writing this post. Right this second I'm writing this line. Now this one. Just kidding. That was annoying, but this is what happens when I lose my internet connection. I get annoying and boring.

Kira's birthday was yesterday and she had a great day. That should be it's own post. Stay tuned.

I have a new nemesis

A person should always have a good nemesis don't you think? I hardly ever see my previous nemesis because our kids go to different schools now. She became my nemesis when Sam and her kid were in kindergarten and I ran into her at the grocery store and she asked why Sam wasn't in the all-day class because she thought all the slow-learners were in the all day class. She didn't actually say it that bluntly, but almost. Since then she was my nemesis. We actually became sort-of friends through the years. Turns out she is just a bit of a social moron, but otherwise pretty nice. So I have been without a nemesis for a while and when a person is without a nemesis, the universe just isn't balanced.

I have actually mentioned my newest nemesis before in the post Sports Fan, but in it you thought she was a fictitious combination of all obnoxious hockey parents. You were wrong. It's one person and she's very very real. I shall from now on call her "Emesis." (What? It's because it rhymes with nemesis, get it?)

She reached official nemesis status today when I went to pick Sam up at the arena where he was working at a high school event. He wasn't waiting for me so I was going to go in and pick him up. Emesis was working the entrance which wasn't really even an entrance, it was just a caution-tape-barricade in the parking lot, and she stopped me and told me I couldn't go any further without a ticket. I told her I was looking for Sam. She said it didn't matter, I still couldn't pass without a ticket. She said she would go in and have a look around and tell him I was waiting, presumably because she didn't want me stealing any hockey joy when everyone else paid for a ticket. Then she never came back.

Now Emesis is my nemesis and I am going to think VERY bad thoughts about her, and blog about her, and talk about her behind her back. She'll never know what hit her. (Seriously, she'll never know.)

Who's your nemesis and how did you get together?

Sports fan

The weirdest thing happened at hockey tonite. First of all, let me preface this story by saying that today was the 650th consecutive day of hockey. (It's getting a little tiresome.) So anyway, one of the team dads was hitting people up to buy raffle tickets for a team fundraiser, so everyone got some. Then one of the team moms went around told everyone that "we" were throwing a little party after the scrimmage tomorrow night (consecutive day #651) and everyone owes her $10 for the food. Annoying. So I gave up the only cash I have had in weeks. Then I watched as she moved along to the next parent and I actually saw the straw that broke the camel's back.

Super-duper hockey Mom (SDHM): Hi! We're hosting a party for the kids after the scrimmage tomorrow night and I'm asking everyone to pitch in ten dollars for the food!

Sick-to-death-of-goddamn-hockey Mom (STDOGDHM): I just bought raffle tickets!

SDHM: Yeah! The party is going to be really fun. We're having taco in a bag! And do you think you'd have time to make brownies tomorrow? We'll need about six pans so if you could make two pans that would be great!

STDOGDHM: Taco in a bag and brownies huh? Sounds GREAT! I can't wait! Let me get you your money. Hey, on second thought why don't you just take my debit card, my PIN is 5780, just take out what "the team" needs whenever. Then you won't have to ask me for something every goddamn night and I won't have to look at your perky goddamn face and fight the urge to rip your hair out.

Then SDHM started crying and ran out of the arena.


Just kidding. That didn't really happen. But it would be so great if it did.