WNBP: Weird, Wild, Wacky Times!

Well, I'm not afraid to admit it when I don't understand something.  And weather?  That is just a mystery to me!!  It changes at a whim, causes odd atmospheric pressures that affect mind and body, then just when you think you've found a way to live with it, decides that it couldn't care less about the state of my hair!!!

Mother Nature, indeed!  No self-respecting woman would take a perfectly good hair day and throw it to the four winds.  I simply refuse to believe that.  "Bad Boy Juvenile Delinquent Nature" is more like it.

It's an odd kind of week all around here in Sheepish Land.  I darned near missed the Wednesday Night Bullet Post what with all the confusion...

*The past weekend was of the "long" variety.  The kind that comes in a 3 pack as opposed to 2.

*I spent much of the Monday holiday preparing for the mega-storm bearing down upon us.

*By the time I went to bed around 10:30, we were looking straight down the barrel at about a foot of snow.

*I set the alarm and packed a lunch anyway.  Sure, there was no chance of school given the dire forecast but it never hurts to prepare either way.

*Good thing.  By the time the alarm went off, the weather people were saying, "never mind" and balmy breezes were wafting past my window.

*There was no snow.  Not so much as a flake.  It was, in fact, a rather sunny day.

*Which is why you should always pack a lunch.  Sometimes 12 inches = 0.

*Math.  Something else I don't always understand.

*Of course the sub-arctic temperatures they forecast managed to make their way to my corner of the globe quite nicely.

*When I drove to school in darkness this morning, the car told me it was 12 degrees outside.

*When I drove home during the daylight hours, the car reported that it was 6 degrees.

*I realize that, to some, this is just a January walk in the park.  Nothing to write home about.  Why, they can clearly recall the time the mercury sank so low it drove the thermometer clear down to the bottom of the eight foot snowbank just outside the front door!!

*I, however, am not built for this.

*The cats are happy, though.  All that icy air triggers the monitor heater and it's been blasting away all day trying to compensate for the chill.

*Which is why I now have two furry heater-huggers sucking up all teh warmz.

*Various icky, nasty, boogery type germs have been making their way around my classroom of late.

*I am using disinfecting wipes like they are going out of style.  My hands reek of cleanser and are dry enough to sand paint.

*You can tell kids fifty thousand times to wear plastic baggies on their hands, but they'll still wander around touching everything with their bare, crusty digits.

*And laugh at you while they do it.

*I'm planning on duct taping them all under a protective plastic coating.

*It's just a matter of waiting for school board approval which I'm certain will be no problem.

*Jolly Boy came into the main classroom the other day as I was diligently wiping down all the pens and pencils available for student use.  He stopped, stared for a moment and then said:

Err...I hate to interrupt your anal retentive behavior but I had a question about this math paper.

*I had no idea he knew words like "anal retentive."  Much less how to use them in context.

*Either I'm the greatest teacher known to mankind or the little rascal has been goldbricking it for over a year now...

*With one staff person out for most of the past five school days, it's been kind of tiring over at The Learn-a-Matorium.

*Yesterday, after answering the billionth question of the day, I couldn't handle it anymore.  It was the last period and I was spent.  I put my head on the disinfected table and told them all I was done.  Mama was tired now.

*I guess I'm not the only one because He Who....PROJECTS looked up blearily and mumbled, "Daddy's tired too..."

*And today he suddenly became overwhelmed by the fear that God was going to strike him down for offenses committed during the holiday break and we had to bring him up to the classroom to show him funny cat pictures on the Internet for half an hour.

*Funny cat pictures can pretty much cure what ails ya.  Except for the boogery virus things.  Those require disinfecting wipes and a diligent teacher.

*Otherwise, funny cat pictures will cover it.

*For those who are keeping track of my Not-A-New-Years-Resolution, I have remembered to eat dinner before 7:00 every night this week.

*Once it was 6:57, but that counts.

*Tonight is a toss up since I just remembered I forgot to put dinner in the oven but I still think two days in a row is pretty good.

*Especially with all the preparing for storms that kind of don't really exist.

*I am loving the heck out of the audio version of Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress, Book 1).

*Of course, the author could probably have used a grammar brush up at the time of its writing.  I kind of can't help but catch these things.

*But the story is so darned compelling that I forgive a little bit of over-writing and why one should proof read with one's direct objects in mind.

*I'm hoping the library has a few more of this series in stock.  Haven't checked yet.  But I still have a few commuter miles on this one before things get dire.

*In the realm of the printed word, I've become somewhat charmed by the Black London books.

*Street Magic (Black London, Book 1) started off a bit slow and I feared the worst but was hooked by the time it wound itself down to the conclusion.

*Demon Bound (Black London, Book 2) was safely snuggled in my Nook before the weekend was out.

*Remember, I thought there was going to be a storm.  I feared being trapped under a foot of snow whilst 6 degree temperatures threatened to freeze my nostrils shut should I leave the house.

*I needed something to read.

*However, as I noted earlier, the weather decided to go from Armageddon to Blindingly Sunny in the period of a few hours so I suppose I might have purchased in haste.

*But I'm OK with that.  A good book is never a bad purchase even if you have to read it during Sustained Silent Reading period and surrounded by middle school boys who don't much care if the protagonists ever get together or not.

*Middle school boys, much like the weather, are kind of incomprehensible to me...


And that's the week so far, at least the parts that are fit to print.  And by that I mean the stuff that isn't so boring you'd fall asleep right there at the keyboard, soon to awaken with a space bar imprint upon your cheek.  Which isn't going to benefit anyone, now is it?

I'm off to see if I can make dinner hot before the 7:00 deadline and try to figure out something I can wear to school tomorrow that affords warmth without bulk.  Bulk is bad so soon after the holidays, methinks.

Or I may just throw caution to the wind and lay out a pair of capris with a matching scoop neck tank.  At this rate, that might actually work.


SA