WNBP: Heebie-Jeebies With A Side Of Angst

Oh, I'm just about done now.  If I've ever complained to you about not knowing what day it is, then I apologize.  I had no idea.  This is Weekday Confusion.  If I had a nickel for every time I screwed up where I was supposed to be today or what I needed to accomplish I could afford a guy to just follow me around and smack me on the head periodically.

I'd probably have to invest a lot of time introducing this guy and explaining why calling the authorities is unnecessary, but I'd still consider it money well spent.

It's going to be an abbreviated Wednesday Night Bullet Post tonight, I fear.  I seem to have left a number of things to the last minute and now find myself in something of a pinch time-wise.  I really do need that head-smackin' guy...

*What was it I was going to mention?  There was something.  Something kind of important going on...

*Oh yeah.  I remember!

*Giant freakin' hurricane!!!

*Now, to be clear:  We here in Maine did not experience Sandy's full fury.  What we got was kind of like a tiny, ladylike burp following her otherwise hearty meal.

*I am not going to even try and compare what happened here to what others further south went through.

*But it was enough to close school early on Monday and keep us home again on Tuesday.

*The power is still out in several areas and one of the towns that make up our district had to keep the kiddies home for an extra day on top of that.

*I, of course, was fully prepared for whatever came my way because that is sort of what I do.

*I fretted over it for days.  I counted batteries.  I tallied canned food.  I located every single candle in the manse and placed them around strategically lest the lights go out and I not be in a position to provide illumination.

*My power never so much as flickered.  I was a tiny pinpoint of light in an otherwise darkened state.

*I was awake all night waiting for the lights to go out.

*Had school not been cancelled, I probably would have had to call in crazy.

*I also needed the day off because it took, like, ten hours to put away all my unneeded disaster supplies.

*I would evacuate if I was told to.  I might be grumpy about it, but I'd go eventually because that is the sensible thing to do.

*But I don't like being places that aren't my own.

*I further don't like being around lots of people because they will probably be touching everything and wanting to talk to me about stuff while I'm busy worrying about them maybe touching my food.

*I would be a lot of fun at the shelter...

*I have to get some training in Autism Spectrum Disorders.

*Mostly because I haven't had any in a while and that is kind of becoming my job now.

*I was told not to worry about that becoming my new job because I would get some updated training, something beyond the basic stuff I've already done.

*What I was not told was that this "training" would involve getting in a car that isn't mine and riding in it for three hours so I could check into a hotel with my roomie.

*Hotels are places where everyone there is "People."  "Other People."  "People Who, By The Very Nature Of Our Forced Cohabitation Will Be In My Space."

*Also not mentioned was the fact that this training would occur not once, not twice, but three times during this school year.

*In addition to the four to five required on-site meetings that will be held by our team of professionals in district.

*There was mention of graduate credit which I don't really need and will probably have to pay for.

*And did I mention the people?  Or the hotel with beds that other people have slept in?

*I have to leave the house at 5:15 tomorrow.  So I can get in the car that isn't my own and travel for three hours ...well, you know how it goes by now.

*I'd rather have the hurricane.  It was rather soothing by comparison.

*I have to pack tonight because I didn't get anything done earlier.

*Which isn't my fault because I was in denial about going and then there was this whole hurricane thing which led to school cancellations and my not knowing what day it is.

*Best Conversation Of The Week:

(Sheepie is getting ready to leave for the day, but stops in the office to speak with Mr. Principal and Mr. Assistant Principal.  She wants to follow up on the two emails and request for a substitute teacher that outlined in excruciating detail her upcoming absence.  Mr. Principal seems on board and ready to offer whatever assistance the classroom might need in Ms. Sheep's stead.  Now it is Mr. Assistant Principal's turn.)

Ms. Sheep:  ...so that should cover it.  If you have any questions, just refer to the emails and sub request and you'll be fine.  You can reach me at the conference, but it probably won't do you much good.  By the time I get back here, you'll have forgotten why you called in the first place.

Mr. Assistant Principal:  Er...what?  Oh, yes.  Thank you, Ms. Sheep.  You've certainly been most thorough.

MS:  And with that, I guess it's good bye.  I have to go get ready to get up at an ungodly hour and get into a car that isn't my own so I can share a room with someone who might not understand why I'm wrapping myself in sheets of plastic.

MAP:  OK.  Good luck with that.

MS:  (walks down the hall towards the door, calling over her shoulder) I'll see you on Monday!

MAP:  Yup, see you...wait.  WHAT???

*No.  I'm not making that up.  You'd think I am, but I'm not.

*I have some reading material for my trip.  I used some up during the dire hours where Sandy didn't really take up as much of my time as I thought she might, but there was some left.

*I finished  Wyrd Sisters.

*And now I'm reading Pyramids (Discworld Book 7).

*Truly, I am as dedicated as a person can be to getting through that Discworld series in some semblance of order.

*But I'm not rereading anything.  That just seems crazy given the number of books I have to get through.  I'm just catching up with the new ones.

*Also picked up a copy of Mister B. Gone, but that isn't a library book so I'm saving it.

*There's some audiobooks I'd like to mention, but I just realized that my short post isn't exactly that.  And I still have to pack stuff.

*Because I didn't do it before and can't seem to get a handle on how little time I have left...


I'm a mess.  But I managed to grab some packages of candy while I was stocking up on cat food and trying to find an automatic dispenser that was within my budget.  I'll be fine.  Just a few more Snickers and I'm sure it will all come together.

I should probably pack some candy, now that I think of it.  I might need them to bribe my roommate into not telling everyone about the plastic wrap...

SA

WNBP: Back To "Normal"

Last week was something of an anomaly.  I had sickness, a classroom break-in, assorted tragedies and an honest-to-God earthquake to report on.  I don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that all is back to some semblance of normalcy now.  I suppose it's good for the nerves.  No.  That's wrong.  I don't "suppose" anything.  It is definitely good for the nerves when all is quiet.

It's maybe not so good for the blog, though.  I'm just going to forge ahead and see how it goes.  Maybe I can take the same old same old and turn it into something kinda-sorta interesting...

*I am pleased to report that I slept lying down last night.

*That is probably not all that interesting to the average person.

*But, to me, it was a little slice of heaven.

*I've been sleeping sitting up for almost two weeks now.

*This requires a plethora of pillows and a true commitment to remaining upright.

*Sitting up in order to sleep is counter intuitive.

*But it is preferable to coughing so hard that it wakes the neighbors and I'm so totally not kidding when I say that.

*The pneumonia and I were at a stalemate for quite a while there, but I think I'm getting the upper hand now.

*I only use the inhaler once a day or so now and I believe I've already mentioned the whole "lying down like a civilized being" thing.

*I'm so giddy about all this that I'm gonna try lying down again tonight!

*It's all I've thought about most of the day!

*And you thought I was kidding when I said that my regular life might not be all that interesting...

*We've had a real problem at school with kids running willy nilly through the double doors with no thought whatsoever towards who might be trying to come the other way.

*So some brilliant individual thought to put green circles over the "in" side and red circles over the "not so much with in" side.

*Keep to the right.  That's what we're shooting for here.

*Kids can do it.  Adults forget.

*The Boy With The Cutest Lithp EVER was shocked by my doorway behavior as I was taking him down to breakfast the other day.

*I waltzed through the "red" door like it was my right to do so as decreed by the superintendent of schools himself.

*He made me go back and do it right.  He chuckled.

*He made me do it again when I forgot at the next door. He chuckled again as I dutifully did as he instructed.

*By the time we hit the third door and I STILL couldn't seem to get the hang of it, he wasn't as amused.

*And I was a little ashamed of myself as I trudged back to repeat the correct procedure yet again.

*After we'd procured his morning meal, we headed back towards the classroom.  And then...

Ms. Sheep:  Wait.  We just went through a door.  I did it wrong again didn't I?  Just say it.  I can take it...

The Boy With The Cutest Lithp EVER: (disgustedly) I don't know.  I thtopped trying after the fourth door.

*I don't remember the fourth door.

*Or why the heck we have so many danged doors in that school to begin with!!!

*But I think I can pinpoint exactly when I had to start working harder to earn the respect of a certain cutie with an adorable speech impediment.

*The Absurdly Gi-normous Kitty isn't handling the need to close off certain rooms now that the cold weather is upon us.

*Or perhaps he is.

*He is almost able to turn a doorknob now.

*Which is about fifty kinds of disturbing when I happen to be in the shower...

*rattle-rattle-rattle!!!

*EEEK!

*It's only a matter of time before I wake up and find my car keys gone and a note saying, "Went out for catnip.  Back in an hour."

*There was a time when only the major publishers could decide what we got to read.  Independent publishing was something only done for vanity's sake and not anything a "real" author would consider.

*But now, thanks to the digital revolution, we have more options.

*When I was asked to read Generation Z: Birth of the Zompire I was happy to do it.

*Not only do I get to read about zombies, but I get to support an indie author and that's all good no matter how you slice it.

*Be forewarned:  These are lighthearted zombies that chat amongst themselves and engage in what can almost be deemed high jinx.

*While they eat your face off...

*They are not the zombies we will face come the apocalypse.  Do not try to engage them in lighthearted banter while they eat your face off.  You'll just feel rejected.

*But I think it is perfectly OK to play with the genre a bit.  We will all need to learn a little flexibility when the dark days dawn and life as we know it comes to an end.

*And pizza delivery costs, like, a billion dollars because only trained ninjas or mercenaries will be able to get anything to you in under thirty minutes or less...

*Oh, and don't try to tell me you never wondered what might happen if an unlucky vampire ever got bitten by a zombie.  You know you have.

*I'm not going to tell you, though.  You can either keep wondering or read the book yourself.

*Now I'm reading Mort because I've never really read the DiscWorld books in any sort of order and lots of the early ones got past me.

*And also because everything else good was already checked out from the library.

*The commute is being pleasantly passed as I listen to Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson Novels).

*I know I keep saying I'm so totally over the vampires and werewolves, but somehow I keep getting sucked back in.

*Sucked back in..heh-heh.

*You know.  It's funny.  Because of the vampires.

*Maybe I'm not quite as far past the effects of the pneumonia as I thought...

*Or perhaps the abundance of "normal" in my life has gotten the better of me.


OK.  So that maybe wasn't the festival of awesome it might have been, but I did my best.  And no matter what anyone says, the part where I sleep lying down now is possibly enough to keep me awake just from the sheer joy of it.

I guess if "normal" is wrong then I don't wanna be right.  At least for a little while.

SA

WNBP: This Time I Have Something To Say!!

Sometimes it's hard to come up with things for the Wednesday Night Bullet Post.  Yes, even with my glamorous, high profile existence it can be a trial to put something together for my weekly nod to The Blog.

This week, however, I honestly don't think I can even find enough space on the web to report out the strange goings on around here!  I'm not even going to waste time blathering as part of some rambling intro.  I'm just gonna charge right ahead because, if I don't, I might just explode from holding it all in.

*When last we left our intrepid Sheepie, she was hacking, coughing, choking and wheezing.

*By Thursday, I'd had enough and called the doc's office in order that I might beg for something to relieve my drippy symptoms.

*Thankfully, she was open to the idea of calling in an antibiotic and some of that sweet, sweet cough syrup with the codeine in it.

*Bless her little heart and that of all her descendants from now until the end of time because I was at the point where, if I didn't get some sleep, I was going to start chatting with the purple monkeys swinging merrily from the ceiling.

*She also suggested that I come in.  Just as a precaution, she said, given how quickly I've succumbed to pneumonia in years past.

*I managed to snag an afternoon appointment, one that would let me stay at school until the last block of the day.

*The kids have gym and whatnot during that block so I wouldn't be missing much.

*Little Einstein's sad story was playing itself out in the worst possible way in spite of my hopes for better outcomes.

*I don't claim to know much about the inner workings of the universe and why bad things happen, but I did know two things at that point.

*First, he was going to come to school.  It's just what he does.

*And second, I was going to be there with him.  Tissues, cough drops and all.

*The doctor was double booked all day, mostly so she could see people who looked and sounded just like me.

*Now is not the time for a Maine vacation.  We are currently under quarantine.  Just daub some lamb's blood on the border, make the sign of the cross and run back to the place from whence you came.

*My visit with the doc went something like this:

Doctor Judy:  Well, let's see what we have going on here...

Sheepish Annie:  Okey-dokey.  Here's my face!

(Sheepie leans forward expectantly, pushing her blotchy, pale visage within inches of Doctor Judy.  To her credit, the doctor does not recoil in horror. )

DJ:  Um...I was thinking maybe I could listen to your chest first.  See?  I have this nice stethoscope and everything.

SA:  No.  You are supposed to do that thing where you tap on my face and watch me wince in agony when you hit that spot where all the snot clots live.  So, let's go.  Here's my face!

DJ:  Sure.  We can do that.  But how about I just get a little listen to the ol' lungs first?  Just to get it out of the way so I can concentrate on the face tapping.

SA:  Well, if it makes you happy...


*We never actually got around to the face tapping.

*We spent more time debating whether or not it made sense to get the chest x-ray or not.

*We finally agreed that it didn't make sense.  The treatment is the same either way and the doctor was leaving Monday morning for a week's worth of conferences.

*In my defense, viral pneumonia is not at all like the bacterial version with which I have such a long and not-so-happy history.

*And the sneezing kind of distracted me from the wheezing.  I somehow missed the pneumonia symptoms.

*I had to promise to use the stupid inhaler she prescribed even though I thought that was a little bit of overkill.

*The sinus problems cleared up within days of taking the antibiotic.

*The wheezing did not.

*And now I have to publicly apologize for all the mean stuff I said about the stupid inhaler because it is right and I am wrong.

*Breathing during the day is really rather nice.

*I still cough a lot at night.

*Which is why I was kind of on the stupid side come Monday morning.  Three hours of sleep will do that to a girl.

*And being stupid is not conducive to realizing that your classroom has been broken into as you are getting ready for your Monday classes.

*Seriously.  Took me almost fifteen minutes before I caught on.

*There was a doorknob ripped off and sitting in the middle of the floor.

*I picked it up and put it on the table in another room.

*Again, in my defense, they are re-keying and replacing a lot of knobs around the school.

*But failing to notice the jagged shards of metal sticking out of it was probably something of an error on my part...

*My students and I had to vacate the classroom for the day while the police processed all the evidence I'd spent fifteen minutes thoroughly contaminating.

*When I arrived at school yesterday morning, I discovered a little frog happily hopping his way up the stairs.

*This cause me to drop my teacher stuff, throw up my hands and cry, "First Little Einstein, next the plague befalls me, then miscreants invade my teaching space...and now it's raining frogs!!!  If I were a less rational person, I'd be pretty darned worried!!"

*Should have kept my stupid, codeine befuddled mouth shut...

*Last night, just as the narcotics kicked in, I heard a rumbling in the distance.

*Then it got closer.

*Then the building began to shake and sway.

*And the neighbors began yelling things like, "Whoa!" and "Holy sh**, dude!!"

*And the cats fled.

*Apparently the last item on the Armageddon Special menu is an earthquake.

*We don't get earthquakes in Maine.  At least not ones that ring in somewhere around a 4 on the magnitude scale.

*We don't handle that well.  We get all excited and start posting on Facebook before the last quiver of the tortured earth.  We make lots of phone calls.

*We talk about it for days.

*It's kind of like a snowstorm in Florida.

*Plus I had that whole Plague/Frog/Other Horrible Stuff going on so I might have been attaching a little more meaning to the event than others.

*Actually, I was kind of loopy when the thing went down and it took me a while to realize that it wasn't just me falling off the couch.

*Everything is fine.  The worst part was trying to figure out what that plastic cap sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor went with.

*Eventually narrowed it down to the pepper grinder that fell from its perch over the stove.

*That took over an hour.  Blame the cough medicine.

*Kitties got extra treats for surviving the horror that was The Kind Of Great Quake Of 2012.

*The library patron who snagged Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War ahead of me finally relinquished his/her hold on it and I was able to secure it for myself.

*Since I was already at the virtual library anyway, I figured I might as well download the audio version of  Moon Called (Mercy Thompson) again.

*I never finished it when I had it over the summer and was wondering what was going to happen.

*Only have one day left on the loan, though.  Might not make it this time either.

*But checking it out again is free so I suppose that's not going to be a big issue.

*Reading has been slow since the plague came into my life.  I'm either too miserable to concentrate or too stoned from the medication to focus.

*But I'm persevering.  I'm nothing if not dedicated.

*Besides, I'm thinking the end of the world is nigh and that zombies will soon be strolling the streets so I might as well get in as much of the reading and listening as possible before civilization crumbles utterly...


Yes, it's been busy over here.  And I mean busy in the weirdest possible way as opposed to the kind of busy where you have to go shoe shopping, eat bonbons and juggle simultaneous dates with male supermodels on the same Friday night.

Of course, if simultaneously appearing male supermodels suddenly showed up at my door looking for dates that might also signal the end of the world but I think I could live with that...

SA (who now has the hiccups and is also blaming that on the Armageddon Syndrome)

S'not Me

It has been one week since I reported my burgeoning cold symptoms and I can now safely say that we are in full swing.  It may even be that we have passed from the mere "common cold" stage and into something more dire that will eventually involve calling in some sort of specialist to excavate my sinuses.

Who do you call for that?  A plumber?  A miner?  I don't know.  The local phone listings have been less than helpful.  There isn't a heading for "worst head cold of the century" in there at all...

However, since I've somehow managed to survive to this point, I suppose I should take responsibility for this week's Wednesday Night Bullet Post.  If I have enough energy to whine and wheeze endlessly, I don't suppose I can claim to be too weak.

Here's what's going on in my tissue-filled corner of the world:

*Thank heaven this past weekend was of the three day variety.

*Columbus Day: Twenty four hours dedicated to a man's steadfast refusal to ask for directions.

*I needed the extra day.  Sleep was becoming something of a fond memory by week's end.

*Part of the problem was the antihistamines.  They make me jittery and it is hard to get just the right dosage and timing with those things.

*The other part of the problem was my not taking antihistamines.  Without them, I am a miserable mass of symptoms and that didn't work well for sleep either.

*I managed six hours on Friday night thanks to off-brand NyQuil.

*Of course, I went to bed at 9:00 so six hours meant a very early rising.

*After that it was back to sleeping two hours at a time if I was lucky and, by Sunday, I was bordering on idiocy.

*Went to visit my parents.

*And their new car.

*And some pork chops.  Which were very tasty and just the thing for a girl with a head cold.

*Mommy Sheep took me for a ride in the shiny red Mustang!

*She even offered to let me drive!

*But I couldn't because I was a sleep deprived idiot who would probably end up launching the shiny red Mustang through the display window of the local shopping center and that didn't seem like the right thing to do to the people who raised me and cared for me so very well.

*No sleep Sunday night either.  I was getting desperate.

*Thankfully, I was able to figure out the whole antihistamine to jitter ratio by Monday night and sleep enough to be functional come the workweek.

*Speaking of which...

*There.  Off-brand NyQuil administered.

*You may recall that all this seemed to start when Little Einstein showed up with a ball of his own used tissues and a desire to play catch with the staff.

*My original plan was to shun him or force him to wear a hat made from an empty Kleenex box and which bore the words, "I am a snotty child who shares too much."

*But the day after the snot ball incident, he received Part One of some devastating and life-changing  news.

*And then all I could do was look at him and say, "Oh, sweetie..."

*I'd rather hoped he'd have some time before the inevitable Part Two happened, but his mother called me yesterday afternoon with the bad news and that was that.

*Now he is just breaking my heart into tiny sodden bits and I can no more blame him for my horrible cold than I can kick a puppy.

*The Organized Teaching Assistant has the same cold only worse.

*The New Teaching Assistant doesn't have the cold at all, but she doesn't seem to want to hang around us as much anymore so I think she might have developed some kind of psychological disorder that makes her scared of co-workers or something...

*I had to go to a meeting this morning.  It was at a school waaaaaay out in the boonies and started at 8:00 this morning.

*To get to waaaaaaay out in the boonies, one has to leave at 7:00 in the morning.

*You'd think that would be bad, but I normally leave at just before 6:00 in the morning so it was actually kind awesome.

*Until it was time to find my way back to my own school from waaaaaay out in the boonies and then I got lost and ended up in New Hampshire.

*I don't want to talk about it...

*I was very late to school this morning.

*Sad news:  Alpha Betta, my long lived fish is no more.

*Two years, almost to the day.  That's a pretty good stretch for a fish.

*Especially one that didn't necessarily always enjoy regular bowl cleanings...

*He was a good fish.  I will miss him.

*It was a solemn burial at sea.  I was going to sing an ode or something but I have a horrible cold so I just sort of sniffled and blew my nose mournfully.

*Best I could do...

*My school pictures came today.  I have to get them taken because I have to update my security badge every year.

*And you know what?  I do not hate them.  They actually look kind of good.

*They remind me of those carefree days before I was stricken by the worst cold ever to hit a nose.

*I might get one of them blown up and wear it as a mask or something...

*My commuter novel these days is Deadlocked (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood, Book 12).

*The series has taken many twists and turns and maybe isn't quite what it used to be but I still enjoy it.

*I would have sworn that I read Abarat at some point.  But then I doubted myself so I checked it out of the library just to be sure.

*I hadn't read it.  Now I am on the waiting list for book 2.

*Any book about a girl named Candy Quackenbush who hails from a town named for poultry is all right by me!

*I also finally picked up Whispers Under Ground, a book I've wanted to read for a while.

*Sadly, my snuffly state has prevented me from really enjoying it as bedtime reading.  I'm either too tired to focus or too busy blowing my nose to hold the iPad.

*From what I can tell, it is really very good, too.  So sad...

*Maybe I'll try it again when I'm less dribbly.



I think that is enough for tonight.  One more reference to my dripping nostrils and I'll probably lose the few readers I have left.  And it is really only a matter of time before I get to describing the wracking, hacking cough that sounds like I'm about to expel a lung or two and that can't help matters at all.

So I'll just go see about some dinner and enjoy the soon-to-be-kicking-in effects of my off-brand NyQuil.  Hopefully I'll be less with the symptoms next week and the conversation will be lighter.

Or I'll still have this stupid cold but then I can talk about how I'm a world record breaker so at least that will be nice...

SA

WNBP: Can't Put A Label On It

I can't quite figure out how to file this week.  Is it bad?  Is it good?  There doesn't seem to be a pattern here, at least not one I can discern.  I suppose I shouldn't question it too much.  Sure, the whole thing could come together and suddenly land in the "good" column and that would be just ducky.

On the other hand, there is at least a fifty percent chance it could all go into the dumper upon closer examination and no one wants to see that happen.  I think I'll just call it what it is:  A week without a label.

Sometimes it's best to just let these things be what they be.  It will certainly add an extra touch of randomness to the generally all-over-the-place Wednesday Night Bullet Post.

*In case you were wondering what it is like to be a Very Complicated Kitty, I can give you a simple road map to follow.

*First, completely of your own volition, get up and walk out of the room.

*Once you are in whatever location you have selected as your destination, begin to howl inconsolably because you are all alone in this world with no one to whom to tell your troubles.

*After ten, twenty or thirty minutes of this, return to the room where you started where you will see the human and Absurdly Gi-normous kitty with whom you live and looked shocked to find them there as if nothing has happened.  Like you didn't just go through the most horrifying experience of your young life.

*Yowl at them for another few minutes to express your indignation regarding their disregard for self-imposed abandonment issues.

*Ignore all dirty looks.

*We at the Learn-a-ma-torium are fully engrossed in mandated achievement testing.  Historically, this has been a time of great stress for both staff and students.

*This year is no exception, but I have to say that the new job has given me a caseload where kids are far less likely to throw their pencils at my head rather than fill in bubbled test forms.

*In fact, they mostly just sit and take the test.  I'm not really sure what to do with that...

*Little Einstein (a returning student from last year, but not really so little anymore) has a cold.

*He is also one who, until certain chemical processes take place in his body each morning, is prone to a marked lack of good judgement.

*Hence, it wasn't really all that surprising yesterday when he showed up carrying a ball he'd crafted from his own used tissues and trying to involve us all in a game of "catch."

*No one wanted to play.  He seemed kind of surprised by that.

*He also dumped out the container we use to hold the glue sticks so he could capture a spider and pretend to dump it on the heads of anyone who passed by.

*On the plus side, when he was finally able to access his inner calm person, the combination of snot ball antics and congestion left him so tired he wasn't really much of a problem for the rest of the day.

*The New Teaching Assistant took care of the spider.  I took care of using bleach wipes on all snot-ball-touched surfaces.

*The Organized Teaching Assistant just sat at her desk and snuffled because she has the same cold and isn't really functioning well at the moment.

*Today we had our regularly scheduled morning staff development meetings bright and early.

*Then we taught stuff all day.

*Then we went to our regularly scheduled faculty meeting once the teaching day was done.

*Long day...but not so long as it was back when we had to do all our meetings after school.

*It was thirty minutes into the meeting when it occurred to me that I was congested.  And that my throat was all itchy.  And that my sinuses were pounding out the drum solo from Wipeout.

*Great.  I was too late with the bleach wipes.  The snot ball got me.

*But at the end of the meeting, I won a fifty dollar teacher gift card from a local department store.

*Which made everything confusing since I honestly didn't know whether I hated this meeting or loved it.

*Right down the middle...just like the rest of this week!

*Since deciding to devote my morning commute to audio books, I've found the whole experience ever so much more pleasant.

*Even last year when I was driving to work to duck flying pencils.

*But today, I found myself pulling into my driveway during a seriously heartbreaking and crucial part of Beautiful Chaos (Beautiful Creatures).

*I try to not listen ahead since I want to make sure I keep up the Happy Commuter Experience instead of ending it too soon.

*But jeez!  This was just torture!!!

*I have thus far maintained my resolve, but prime time television viewing had better be darned good tonight, that's all I have to say.  It won't take much to tip the scales in favor of listening to the rest of it and commute be damned!!!

*I had a hard time finishing Taken (An Alex Verus Novel).

*Not because it wasn't really good but because I was trying to read it in bed and I've been so tired that I  kept falling asleep.

*Finally got to the finish line last night!  Yay!

*And totally worth the struggle to keep my eyes open.  It isn't the best book in the series, but still darned good fun.

*I fall asleep really well these days, but staying in that state has posed a problem.

*For whatever reason, my brain seems to think that the hour between one and two in the morning would be a great time to start thinking about stuff.

*Which is why I was perusing the library website the other night and discovered that The Magician (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel) was recently returned by a diligent patron and ready for download!

*Truth be told, I perused this one years ago, but I was reading the series out of order.  Without the first book, the second made little sense to me.

*Ever so much better now that I've finished The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.

*It literally picks up right where the first book leaves off which, as you can imagine, might cause some confusion if you don't have that background.

*Guess that insomnia paid off...



And here we are on this most confusing of Wednesdays.  We are fast approaching 7:30 and I've suddenly realized that I forgot to eat dinner.  I guess the cold symptoms kind of overshadowed my usual inclination to begin grazing as early as possible.

Which could be a good thing, I suppose.  Or bad.  I don't know anymore.  It's just that kind of week...

SA

With Both Feet

The thing I really hate about September is how everything seems to go into overdrive.  I barely have a minute to appreciate the change of seasons and the beauty of the autumnal leaves because my whole life becomes consumed by the return to school and the four billion things that all have to be done right now lest we all perish in a horrific judgmental fire.  Which is why we have ten fire drills per week, I guess.

I might be exaggerating just a bit there.  But not by much.  We jump in with both feet and to heck with anything remotely resembling a "transition period."

Fortunately, I have a nice little blog to come home to.  It doesn't ask for much, only that I stop by once a week to give it a little attention.  The Wednesday Night Bullet Post seems to make it happy and it is a mighty fine thing to be able to say you spread a little joy around midweek.

Here's this week's bullet points:

*Today was Wear Full Shoes Instead Of Sandals For The First Time Since April day.

*I whined about the blisters on my heels all the way to my car this afternoon when school let out.

*The people still in sandals somehow looked very smug and superior to me, but I don't care.

*They'll get theirs any day now!

*We are almost finished with the school district achievement testing.

*My class usually gets tested last due to smaller numbers so we will probably still be doing that when next week rolls around.

*That is something of a problem given that we start state mandated achievement testing on Monday.

*That is the Very Big And Challenging Test That No One Likes And For Which Every Student Blames His Or Her Teacher.

*We, in turn, blame the administrators because proctoring and administering these things is a nightmare.

*I don't know who the administrators blame.  I assume they just wander around town pointing their fingers accusingly at anyone who dares to make eye contact when testing time rolls around...

*Achievement testing in the fall doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.  Kids haven't learned much in the way of new stuff yet.

*And they've managed to forget half of what they learned the previous year.

*Heck, I barely can recall what I taught them back then but that could be more of an age related thing on my end.

*The other thing I hate about going back to school is that it is time for my feet to go all puff-i-fied again.

*My feet are fine in the summer.

*The minute they see where are back at school, they suddenly go all third trimester on me.

*Stupid feet.  I've tried explaining to them that I am not standing or sitting for any more time than I did during the summer.  I'm careful about that.

*They just get excited or something and don't want to see reason.

*A couple of weeks ago, my phone rang after 8:00.

*My phone does not ring after 8:00.  Not on a school night.  Everyone knows about school nights in my world.

*School nights require the locating of matching shoes and shirts that do not have holes in unseemly places.

*That takes some time...

*Only emergency calls come after 8:00 on a school night and I feared the worst.  Especially when it turned out to be Mommy Sheep on the phone.

*I braced myself for the worst.  The last time I got one of these calls, I had to go out and buy a whole new funeral outfit since it turns out I don't have anything remotely mournful enough.

*And I can't wear that again because everyone has seen it and besides the seasons have changed.

*She was only calling to ask how I felt about Mustangs.

*I like Mustangs.  Both the horses and the cars.

*This wasn't about horses.

*For those who haven't caught on, my parents have a new car.

*For those who have caught on and are wondering about the details, they include, "cherry red," "2013" and "convertible."

*Yes.  It is true.  My parents are cooler than I will ever be.  Ever.  When they jump, they jump big.

*I drive a crossover station wagon.

*The kind you see soccer moms tooling around in...

*I don't hate.  Mommy and Daddy Sheep worked hard and deserve to enjoy life in a convertible.

*Plus they can drive it when they head south for the winter and that will be fun.

*Florida. Where, as Daddy Sheep puts it, you can't throw a rock without hitting an old fart in a sports car.

*::giggle-snort!::

*The home improvement frenzy here at the manse continues unabated.

*Except for the part where I have to go to school on my puffy feet and test kids.

*I'm not sure if I was motivated to do this too late or if the summer ended too soon...

*Last weekend, I painted an accent wall in the living room.

*Which sounds easy but it wasn't because I have a Very Complicated Kitty who stripped most of the wallpaper for me a while back.

*And more of the drywall than I care to mention.

*Repairs took a while.

*But the wall is now painted a lovely shade of Toasted Pumpernickel.

*The bathroom, if you will recall, was painted in Belgian Waffle.

*I told the people at the hardware store that I'm going with a Modern Carbs theme.

*Had I known I was going to suddenly feel a desire to do all this, I might have forced my summer-not-puffy-feet to move a little quicker.

*Weekends are getting a bit tiring for me.

*I am redecorating on a budget.  Something along the lines of...wait a minute...

*Carry the one...now subtract the other number...and...

*Oh, yeah.  That'd be a budge of "close to nothing."

*Hence, there has been a great deal of repurposing and recycling of stuff.

*Like those brass (ish) switchplate covers I thought were ever so sophisticated back in the 90's.

*And which now seem so very garish on my nice pumpernickel wall.

*I found a can of matte black spray paint in a clearance bin and figured the budget might stretch to cover it.

The need for a flash means the wall color isn't even close to what it is in real life.  But you get the idea.

*There wasn't a can of polyurethane on the clearance rack so I had to be careful with the screwdriver.

*And still managed to  put a little gouge in it.  I just squint when I look at it and then everything gets blurry enough to make it all look nice.

*I'm only ever going to invite very nearsighted people over from this point forward.  It will be fine.

*Reading hasn't been much of a priority since I decided to jump into the whole home improvement thing.

*And test kids until they cry.

*But I managed to find time to finally read The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel.

*Somehow, I ended up reading one of the later books in the series years ago and I really wanted to go back and experience the first one.

*Yay for digital library loans!

*I also picked up my own copy of Taken (An Alex Verus Novel).

*Slow progress on that one, but not because I don't like it.  I do like it.  Love it, in fact.

*But that one is on my iPad and not the less expensive reader I can carry anywhere without fear of dropping it in the tub.

*I read about the trials of Alex Verus at bedtime and I'm tired from the testing, painting, foot massaging and being less cool than my parents.

*Tend to fall asleep before I get past three pages.

*Still, I highly recommend this series.  Great fun and a fabulous premise.

*I might even get this one finished sometime before Christmas break.

*When I can finally put my feet up and stop jumping around like a crazed grasshopper...


And that just about covers it.  If it doesn't, then it will have to do.  I haven't gotten to the point where I know what I'm wearing tomorrow and that has me just the slightest bit concerned.  It is also after 7:00 and I still haven't managed to cobble together some dinner.  If too much more time passes, I might have to settle for getting only one of those things done before bedtime and that isn't going to end well no matter which way I go.

One needs strength and appropriate footwear if one plans on continuing to jump...

SA

WNBP: One Week Was Enough

Hello, Wednesday!  Nice to see you.  It is really impressive the way you roll around once a week like clockwork.  You are an incredibly prompt day and I salute your responsible ways.

That said...I surely do wish you had more of a Friday vibe going on.  This whole "working full time, five days a week" thing is really starting to wear thin.  And I'm saying that after having only really worked for one full week since the school year started up again.

No offense intended.  You are what you are, dear Wednesday.  And I shall give you your due since it's not your fault you aren't Friday.  Here is your weekly Wednesday Night Bullet Post as a reward for all your hard work and relentless dedication to showing up once every seven days!

*I worked five days in a row last week.

*This week, I have a dentist appointment on Friday so I won't be working five days in a row.

*I think that it is perfectly reasonable given that it was never my idea to make the work week five days long in the first place...

*I went to a training this morning.  Thought I might get to see the Cheerful Teaching Assistant and visit for a bit before we both went back to our respective new jobs in other buildings.

*I didn't.  But she caught the Organized Teaching Assistant and sent a hello my way.

*The New Teaching Assistant is working out very well.  I really like her.

*But I haven't come up with a nickname for her yet.  For now, we'll just stick with NTA.  At least until I come up with something better.

*Those of you reading this blog from The Way Back will recall the time I had the monkey pox (which was really pneumonia) and how I had to call in sick for days and days.  Then for another day when I suddenly spiked a fever of 104.

*A lot of people were out sick that day.  The poor school secretary was overwhelmed by the time I chimed in with my request for an absence.

*That was the NTA.

*Odd how things come full circle...

*I didn't even know she'd switched from the front office to the classroom.  Apparently, it's been a while.

*Glad she did, though.  She's really very good.  Used to work with the more severely disabled students.

*Which explains why she found a go-normous diaper in her school bag today.

*We don't often find a use for those in my classroom, but I am getting closer to that age where continence might be compromised.  Maybe it's a sign of some sort and I should be looking into restocking my own school bag...

*Last night was Open House Night at my school.  Parents were invited to come and see the glory of public education in all its finery from 6:00-7:00.

*I had a few visitors, more than is usual.

*But still a long night and I was dog-tired when I finally made it home.

*Since I haven't been sleeping well due to some tummy troubles for several days now, it was no surprise that I fell into a sleepin' and droolin' state the moment my head hit the pillow.

*I can't be certain, but I think I might have either slept in one position without moving or spent the night rolling boulders up a hill.

*It's one of those because my neck and shoulder are killing me today.

*And I'm still exhausted which further props up my point regarding the foolishness of the five day work week.

*Never been so glad to have a dentist appointment in my life.  And I hate my dentist so that is saying something!

*The New Teaching Assistant would like some fingerless mitts.  The simple crocheted kind.

*I said I could do it easy-peasy and meant it.

*But it is still about a billion degrees outside, so I didn't feel too pressured to get going on this project.

*Today, whilst cleaning out the school bag, the NTA found a pair of mittens.

*They were right under the gigantic adult diapers.

*Thinking she might be embarrassed to find mittens in her school bag under the adult diapers during the warm weather months, I said, "Well, those could come in handy now that we have recess at our school.  It's really good of you to be prepared like that."

*Her reply?

*"Well, I wouldn't need them if I had some crocheted, fingerless mitts now would I?"

*See why I like her?  Even if she couldn't find me a sub during the horrible Monkey Pox days.

*The dealership where I get my car serviced just sent me a reminder that I will die if I don't get my tires replaced soon.

*They pointed out that they pointed this out several weeks ago.  That is a double point.

*The fact that I have already paid them oodles of dollars to replace those tires seems to be beside the point over at the dealership.

*If I do end up dying over not replacing the tires I already replaced, I am going to feel really stupid.

*But I'm taking that chance.

*I guess that is a reason for working five days in a row:  paying for new tires and the postage needed to mail me reminders about tires I don't need.

*I've been listening to the audio version of Beautiful Darkness (Beautiful Creatures, Book 2) to help pass the commute required for a five day work week.

*Since driving around for five days takes a long time, I was able to finish it and am now listening to Beautiful Chaos (Beautiful Creatures).

*I think I might have had a bad download because the audio was horrible at first.

*The reader sounded like he had the worst lisp in the world.

*Everything straightened itself out today, though.  And the enjoyment continues!!!

*I think I would have liked this one in print form just as much, but I have to say I'm pretty hooked on the audiobook.

*Almost makes me wish I was commuting to work on Friday.

*Almost...


Yes, I worked one whole week before caving.  And I'm not going to apologize for my weakness, although I still sort of feel like I should.  For what it's worth, I am not the one who suggested that dentist appointments come every six months any more than I am the one who dreamed up the five day work week.

It just turned out that way, darn it all.  What else can I do?

SA

WNBP: Back In The Swing

There isn't much to say about being back in school full time.  It is what it is.  Getting up every morning pays the bills and it is actually kind of nice to have a routine in place.  Sort of.  I mean, let's face it.  The pace you set for yourself is always much more palatable.

But the time for that is over.  This week is the first full five days of school in a row and it's time to get back into the swing of it all.  I don't think the sunny days of summer would be half so sweet if I didn't have the school year for contrast.

At least that's what I'm telling myself.

And, as part of my dedication to looking at the bright side, I am forced to admit that a regular work week makes Wednesday easier to spot.  This year Wednesday should actually stand out a bit more, given that it is going to be a different kind of work day.  I might even start remembering the Wednesday Night Bullet Post before the sun starts to set and prime time television begins making its way towards my screen!

Here's your bullet points for this week:

*Our school district is using Wednesdays to accommodate two hours of staff development time this year.

*That means a two hour delay for students.

*But a longer work day with less prep time for staff.

*It's worth it, though.  We are saving literally tens of thousands of dollars on subs and finally able to keep up with the teacher training that needs to happen in any given school year.

*Daycare is being provided for families who need it.

*The community, for the most part, is on board with this.

*Today was the first delayed start day.  It went fairly well.

*Only one staff person forgot and, by my count, only one bus screwed up the later run.

*Of course, it happened to be my new teaching assistant's daughter that got left standing by the curb.

*Which meant that my new teaching assistant had to leave school to go get her because she was hysterical at the thought of missing school.

*I honestly don't understand the kids of today.

*In my day, when the bus didn't pick you up you stayed home, watched cartoons and you liked it, by God!!!

*Wait...I have to go get the lumpy, misshapen biscuits out of the oven.

*There.  Now I have lumpy, misshapen biscuits.  Life can go on.

*I brought the car back in on Saturday to finish up all the work required for my state inspection.

*I'm in for five hundred bucks now but the car passed.

*I spent Sunday driving around so I could wave gaily at the local police on patrol.

*I think they appreciated my pointing out my shiny new inspection sticker.

*The Absurdly Gi-normous Kitty loves the shiny new sticker.

*The cost of the car repair meant I had to cancel the dental cleaning he had scheduled for today.

*I love the AGK and it shames me to no end that we have reached the point where a dental cleaning is necessary.

*It costs more to clean a cat's teeth than it does mine.

*I do not require full anesthesia for a cleaning.

*Although, considering my dentist, I should probably consider it...

*I'll be bringing the foul-mouthed feline in next month, lest you think I am a bad mother who doesn't care if her baby has gingivitis.

*For all my grousing about the new school year, I really do have to say that I kind of like my new job.

*Still an intensive caseload, but intensive in a different way.

*Like I said in the teacher's room today:

I can't believe no one has thrown a chair at my head yet!

*Tomorrow we have been invited to shuck corn in the cafeteria's kitchen.

*It's Celebrate Local Produce Day.

*I don't have to come up with a lesson plan for shucking corn in the kitchen.  I just take the kids down and we shuck corn in the kitchen.

*Which is good because my school-issued laptop isn't printing with any kind of reliability and lesson planning has been something of a crap shoot now that I can't share any of my brilliant materials with the eager pupils.

*There is a fire drill tomorrow.

*Which I have only just realized is scheduled right in the middle of corn-shuckin' time.

*That should go well.  A bunch of kids still getting used to the new schedule...corn...shrieking alarm bells...

*Yeah.  I can't possibly envision a scenario where things go badly.

*The cats don't seem disturbed in the least that I am leaving them every day.

*In fact, they seem kind of happy about it.

*Which makes me wonder exactly what the heck goes on around here all day when I'm gone!!

*I have less time for reading these days, but I'm doing my very best.

*I finished A Great and Terrible Beauty (The Gemma Doyle Trilogy).

*With time to spare before it needed to be digitally returned to the library, I might add.

*Probably going to cut it a little close with the sequel, though.

* Rebel Angels (The Gemma Doyle Trilogy Book #2) is really good, perhaps even better than the first in the trilogy.

*But I've had the whole school thing going on and that has seriously cut into my reading time.

*We have a sustained silent reading period at school, but it seems that I spend most of my time signing bathroom passes and telling people they should be reading.  

*Oddly, I find I can't make much progress on a story while at school.  Weird, that...

*But, the bills will be paid this month (if you don't count the whole crusty-mouthed-cat-thing) so I'm going to accept the situation for what it is.

*And remember that there is bound to be a vacation week hidden in the school calendar somewhere.


Well, I must dash.  Part of staying in the swing of things is making sure that I have clean underpants for the work day and figuring out if there is anything in the fridge that might constitute a lunch.  You have to allow enough time for that or you'll end up with underpants in your lunch bag and no one wants that.

Trust me.

SA

WNBP: Not Into It At All!!!

This year's summer vacation was longer than is usual.  That is good.  We like the vacation time.  And, while it took me a while to get into the summer groove, I like to think I did the season proud when all was said and done.

I'm good at summer vacation.  If my stuttering re-entry into the world of teaching is any indication, I should probably consider doing summer vacation on more of a full time basis.  Seriously.  This whole "getting up and going somewhere that doesn't allow bedroom slippers" nonsense is really just not working out for me at all.  I can't seem to get into it and I suspect this is going to be a problem if I don't get myself together soon.

Here's your bullet points for this lovely Wednesday.  If nothing else, I can say I've managed to keep to the blogging schedule in these dire and uncertain times...

*I almost said, "forget the blog" tonight.  I'm all flustered and out of sorts and perhaps thought that punishing the blog would do something about that.

*It's not the blog's fault I spent the last few days of summer vacation in complete and utter denial regarding the need to get up at 5:00 on Tuesday morning in order that I might start another school year. The blog had nothing to do with that at all.

*Hence, I shall feed the blog and do so with something resembling good grace.

*After yesterday's lengthy round of teacher workshops, I was spent and not looking forward to the kids arrival come Wednesday.

*The best line of the day, "Um, Ms. Sheep?  You don't think we have kids tomorrow, do you?"

*I did.

*How the heck did I manage to forget that we have an extra day of workshops this year due to all the building changes?????

*That is a fairly significant detail, the whole kids vs. no kids thing.

*My school used to be a 7th and 8th grade middle school.

*Now it is a 6th and 7th grade middle school and this honestly did require a whole extra day of discussion.

*I'm not being facetious.  There were great differences between how the 6th grade school was run and how the middle school went about its business.  We still haven't completely come to agreement on how we are going to manage some of it.

*I just sit back quietly and nod sagely, like I really have deep thoughts on the matter.

*I've moved classrooms, schools and school districts about five billion times to date.  It's all the same to me.

*Yesterday, Mr. Principal introduced each of the new teaching teams and handed out school t-shirts sporting our respective team colors.  Everyone had to say what they taught, how many years they've been teaching and how long they've worked for the school district.

*I don't quite know how I feel about being forced to admit I've been doing this for a quarter of a century...

*The last day of summer vacation was not relaxing.  I had no car, having left it in the tender, loving care of the dealership the previous morning.

*When I got it back, it still hadn't passed its state inspection and required many, many dollars to release.

*Also a promise to return it for the rest of the work next weekend.

*Then I had to go register said vehicle with the town and pay my excise tax.

*All this irked me beyond belief because I wanted to keep those dollars with me.

*Furthermore, there was a Dr. Who marathon on.

*I do not feel that I should be running around doing things I put off doing until the last minute when there is a Dr. Who marathon on.

*That should be a law.

*My bathroom startles me.

*I go in there and it's not my bathroom.

It's clean and someone painted it!!!

*I think I like Belgian Waffle as a paint color.

*Almost as much as I like Belgian Waffles...

*Over the last month of summer vacation, I cleared my bedroom of a great deal of outdated clothing and furniture.

*I cleaned the kitchen and got rid of more useless gadgetry than any one person should ever have.

*I have come to accept that I am a stupidly sentimental person who will save a candy wrapper if I can attach meaning to it.

*No.  Seriously.  I found a Sentimental Candy Bar Wrapper Of Great Emotional Import in a kitchen cupboard.

*I no longer own the wrapper.  There has to be a limit to sentimentality.

*And now I have a place to put my yogurt maker!

*My Nook account doesn't have much in it.  But, since I was rummaging around in that particular section of my electronic library, I figured I'd read some stuff.

*I found the first three books in the Dulcie O'Neil series and decided to re-read To Kill A Warlock: The Dulcie O'Neil Series (Volume 1).

*What the heck?  It's there and it's a fun little story that comes with other fun little stories.  Why not give it a read?

*The start of the new school year is a good time for fun little stories, just to keep things light and whatnot.

* I need "light."  Most of my focus really needs to be centered around getting up in the morning and remembering what I have to do to be presentable.

*That isn't going well so far.  Good thing we had the second workshop day or I would have been sunk this morning.

*The good thing about commuting again is that I get to listen to the audiobooks I've been saving for just this time of the year.

*Thrilled to be finally listening to Beautiful Darkness (Beautiful Creatures, Book 2)!

*Finally allowing myself the pleasure almost makes me forget that I am in the car and wearing shoes.

*At least I hope I wore shoes.

*The way things have been going, there is a good chance I wasn't but I don't want to think about it too much.

*Nothing I can do about it now, right?


Well, tomorrow I can only hope I've come to terms with my new reality.  The kids will be arriving whether I am shod or not and me showing up in slippers might just set a bad tone for the rest of the year.  I'm going to get to bed early tonight and think positive thoughts for me getting out the door sometime around the scheduled 6:00 departure time.

I figure I have a 50/50 shot but that's better than I expected...

SA

WNBP: Covered In Waffle...

I am absolutely stunned to suddenly find myself in the last week of summer vacation. It's been a long one this year.  We got out early and are going back later than usual.  That said, the whole thing seems to have passed in a blur.

My sudden and obsessive need to Finish All Things Or Die Trying continues unabated, but I fear I might be reaching the point where a bit of a sit down is in order.  Since I've been able to reset my router enough to make internet happen for a while, I'll kick back and enjoy a nice Wednesday Night Bullet Post.  Maybe that will be enough to reset my internal router and let me stop with the "doing of stuff" for a little while...

*I've been doing stuff.

*Today should have been Farmer's Market Day, but it wasn't.

*I was obsessed with doing stuff and decided that trip would be more stuff than I could handle.

*Fear not.  I went last Saturday.  I got tomatoes.  I made sauce.

*I've done the math and figured out that this sauce rings up at roughly twenty dollars a pint.

*It's not about the money.  It's about making tomatoes into liquid.

*That amuses me beyond all reason...

*So yesterday I found myself in a kind of weird situation.

*I was standing in the middle of my bathroom and covered in Belgian Waffle when I suddenly said to myself...

*HOLY CRAP, I AM PAINTING MY BATHROOM!!!

*I've been thinking about it for a while.

*I'm good at thinking about stuff, but usually not so good with the follow through.

*How I ended up standing in the middle of my empty bathroom with a paint roller in my hand and peachy/brownish paint up to my elbows is something of a mystery.

*I found the receipt for the paint so clearly I purchased it that morning.

*But I refuse to believe that it was I who did such a meticulous job of taping the edges.

*That just doesn't sound like something I would do...

*The paint color is really called Belgian Waffle.

*I'm thinking about getting some Fresh Baked Pumpernickel to do a couple of accent walls.

*I firmly believe that walls should have a high carb content.

*I'm not going to buy any of the paints named after fruits.

*We'll see if I suddenly end up in the middle of a some other room with pumpernickel on my elbows any time in the near future...

*Meanwhile, the bathroom walls look pretty good except for that one spot.

*You know the spot...the one that never seems to come out the same color and you have to go back over it.

*Yeah.  That spot.

*I haven't gone back over it yet.  I'm hoping the magic that is drying paint will somehow even it all out.

*Painting the bathroom walls means everything else looks kinda grungy.

*So I had to scrub some stuff.

*Then I took a nap.

*Then I woke up because my back was so sore I thought I'd suddenly aged forty years over the duration of a forty minute nap.

*On Monday, I finally broke down and went in to school.

*A classroom will not set itself up without teacher assistance no matter how far we've come as a society.

*It was hot.  It was sticky.

*It was infested with hornets.

*Lots and lots of hornets.

*They come in through the spot where they had to board up that window.

*You know...the window.  The one that kids break and that they keep telling you they will fix so you'll stop complaining, but they never do.

*I finished setting up the room over the course of three hours, killed a dozen hornets with my flip flop and headed down to see Mr. Principal.

Ms. Sheep:  Hey, Mr. Principal.  How are you?

Mr. Principal:  Why, hello Ms. Sheep!  I've missed you and your sunny disposition over these dreary summer months.  What delightful news do you bring me today?

MS:  Well, I thought I should give you a heads up.  My room couldn't have any more hornets in it if it were an actual hornets nest.  I've been up there for three hours and now I have to clean my flip flop.

MP:  That is horrible!  We should do something about that!!

MS:  Yeah.  It might be a good idea.  They keep coming in through that boarded up window.  The one with the rain soaked plywood over it.  I haven't gotten around to stuffing it with paper towels yet what with having to set up the whole room and all.

MP:  Paper towels?  In the window?  Ms. Sheep...that is ridiculous!  We should fix that!!

MS:  Well...I may have mentioned that once or twice over the last few years.

*With my luck, the hornets will all hide when the custodians get in there to check it out and they will have taken with them the bodies of their fallen comrades previously littering my office floor.

*Or they will discover that the hornets are coming from somewhere else and I STILL won't have a window in the main classroom area.

*If I am lucky, one of them will sting me and I can fake an allergy or something.  That could be good for a sick day or something...

*My idiot neighbors are working on their car and revving the engine with great gusto.

*There is also a great deal of whooping and chortling involved.

*My back hurts too much to go down there.  I'll just glare at the window periodically and I'm certain they will get the message.  They'll probably feel just horrible about their behavior...

*Do you realize that, this time next week, I will be back to school full time?

*With the kids.

*And the hornets.

*Neither of which really want me around long term.  It's more fun for both kids and hornets when Ms. Sheep isn't there.

*And neither understands that I don't really have a choice in the matter.

*I'd much rather be home covered in Belgian Waffle even if I don't fully understand how I ended up in that condition.

*I was pleasantly surprised by A Dirty Job: A Novel.

*Most of Mr. Moore's stuff is on the edgy side and more than a little irreverent.  Sharp witted and sarcastic but in a good way.

*This one had all that, true.  But it was, dare I say it...sweet.

*Really sweet.  And a little bit sentimental and I couldn't help but genuinely like almost all the characters even if they were representing Death's interests on earth.

*I found Fire Burn And Cauldron Bubble: The Jolie Wilkins Series (Volume 1) hiding in my Nook library last weekend.

*I don't use that account very often and totally forgot the first two books in that series were in there.

*I've already read them, but I like a nice re-read every now and again.

*And, with commuting season almost upon me, I borrowed an audio copy of Moon Called (Mercy Thompson) from the library just to get myself back in the swing of listening to stuff in the car.

*Surprisingly good and adequately read.

*Will probably try to get others in the series at some point.

*Summer is short.  The school year is long.  A girl needs something to pass the time once the Waffle High wears off.


Well, that's about it for me sitting in one spot.  My back doesn't seem to like it and I'm getting the urge to go see if there is anything that needs "touching up" on my waffle-walls.  Besides, no one is really sure how long my internet connection is going to last (the techs at my service provider included) so I suppose I should upload while the uploadin' is good.

Tomorrow I am taking the car in for service but that is all I have on the docket.  For now anyway.  It's the last week of summer vacation.  Who knows what urge will overtake me in these dwindling moments of freedom?

Or if it will come with a side of bacon?

SA

WNBP: A Clean Sweep. And Mopping. And Dusting.

Oh this should be a good Wednesday Night Bullet Post.  I am following my usual pattern of summertime insomnia: issues at the start/issues at the end.  If I managed two hours of snooze time last night, I'd be shocked.

First I was too hot.  Then I was too cold.  Then I couldn't stand to be in the bed and had to get up.  This, of course, caught the attention the resident felines and scrambled their simplistic understanding of feeding times.  For the record, just because I get out of bed, this doesn't mean it is time for breakfast.  By the time, I was ready to hit the sack again, they were frisky as all get-out and racing about like graceless dervishes.

This went on for most of the night.  I would imagine my downstairs neighbors are less than thrilled.  I'd feel badly about that, but I am too tired to work up a good care.

I'm just going to head right into this week's bullet points and let them take me where they may.  Apologies in advance for any lack of clarity.  And trust me.  There will be a lack of clarity.  I fail to see how it can go any differently right now.

*I made brownies today.

*I know what you're thinking:  Sheepie!  Brownies on a Wednesday?  That is just wrong on so many levels!!!

*I have been doing a great deal of housecleaning lately.

*And I don't mean "straightening up and a little light dusting."

*I mean "heavy duty cleaning that involves gloves and squirming underneath furniture."

*The whole thing started with the smoke detector.

*A couple of weeks ago, the combination of steam from the bathroom and the already humid weather conditions set off the smoke alarm several times.

*Hint:  It is really a heat detector.  And it really hates my bathroom being right next to it.

*I really hate it, too.  Even more, I hate that my smoke detector is wired into the electrical system.

*It was going off so often on this particular Sunday morning, that I actually ended up flipping the breaker to reset it.

*This was harder than you think since the breaker box is located behind my bedroom door and I've stored quite a bit of stuff in that general and somewhat hidden area over the years.

*Then I got to thinking, "Gosh, what if there was an emergency and they needed to get to the breaker box?  I'd be just mortified if anyone saw my storage area!  I should move all that to the closet where it will be out of the way and invisible to prying eyes trying to locate my breaker box."

*That would have been a good plan save for the fact that I was already storing stuff in the bedroom closet.  And under the bed.  And in every other closet, nook, cranny and corner of the manse.

*I've lived here a long time.  I found myself visiting stuff I haven't seen since I was a young slip of a girl with my whole life ahead of me and lots of shopping to do.

*Apparently, I have shopped quite a a bit over the years.

*We are two weeks into The Great Purge of 2012.  It has sort of been a "one thing leads to another" kind of deal.

*You clean one area and suddenly another looks dingy.  Next thing you know, you are scrubbing down the bathroom walls and wondering exactly when things got so completely out of hand.

*I have removed approximately twenty bags of stuff from this place.

*Big bags.  Contractor sized bags, in some cases.  We can only hope that the condo association spies don't have someone watching the dumpster because I'm not entirely certain I'm supposed to use it for this level of purging...

*I haven't gone to the Farmer's Market for two weeks straight.

*I was going to go today.  Made it as far as the grocery store and that was all I could stand.

*Two hours of sleep is kind of like being intoxicated, sick and stupid all rolled into one.

*That said, two weeks is too long to forgo my regular Visit With The Vegetables so I am going to have to suck it up and go on Saturday.

*I hate going on Saturday.  The other humans are there.  They get in my way and hog all the good tomatoes.

*Early yesterday evening, I heard Christmas music.  Being that this is August, I found that odd.

*Even more disturbing, however, was the fact that it was coming from my own computer.

*The Absurdly Gi-normous Kitty somehow managed to open iTunes with his hindquarters and send out a little holiday cheer.

*This is alarming and could possibly account for the insomnia situation, now that I think of it...

*Yesterday, was my absolute limit regarding my slow Internet speed.  I finally broke down and made the call for assistance.

*Step One:  Explaining a Mac.  And why I am not using any form of Windows.  And how they haven't updated their manuals since Apple put out version 10.8.

*And that my name isn't Kristy.

*A repair ticket was issued and I was assured that it was highly unlikely a home visit would be needed.

*Message on the machine today said a technician would be at my home sometime before 7:00 pm on Thursday.

*Internet is working rather well today.  Quite speedily, actually.  Debating whether I should cancel the tech, but I can't help but believe that the moment I do, the whole system will suddenly implode.

*The realization that a technician was coming to my home forced me to start cleaning the living room.

*I wasn't going to do that.  I was going to wait.

*But the amount of stitch markers and yarn snippets in the general area of the router made me rethink that plan.

*Have we gotten to the point where we forgive me for eating brownies on a Wednesday yet?  I mean, I was crawling around the wires and dust bunnies for over an hour, people!!!

*I have used my library card more in the last couple of weeks than in the past ten years, I think.

*Yay for finally being able to get digital library loans!

*I started reading Perdido Street Station.

*It is very good.  Very, very good.  Exceptional, really.

*But I found it disturbing.  I could see it going to a dark, dark place.

*With the insomnia situation and my new found obsession regarding people judging my storage habits, I decided that this was the wrong time to read that book.

*Returned it with a click of the mouse and checked out The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove instead.

*I read the first book in this series years ago.  That one wasn't available to refresh my memory, but I figured I'd catch up.

*Lighthearted and inappropriate in all the right ways.  A good choice for my sleep deprived brain!

*And, as it was a quick read, I was able to head right into The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror without missing a beat.

*Except for the times when I was crawling around rescuing dpns and cable needles from the dust bunnies, that is...

*I don't love all of Christopher Moore's stuff, but he does have a witty way about him.

*If you are OK with a great deal of irreverence.

*Which I am.

*The Cheerful Teaching Assistant loves Christopher Moore.  She went to Boston to hear him speak last spring.

*I wish we were going to be working together this year so I could tell her I read about the Lust Lizard and the Stupid Angel.  Maybe I can email her...

*God, I'm tired.  And I am itchy and sneezy from all the dust I've battled today.

*And, if I'm being perfectly honest, I really kinda, sorta want another brownie.


That is probably my cue to close this down for the night.  Once you start yawning, itching and craving carbs, there is little hope for further blog sense.  With any luck, I'll be able to convince my brain to power down tonight and the sandman will come for a visit.  I could really use some sleep right about now.  I'd welcome that particular guest with open arms.

If sleep cannot be had, I guess I could invite Mr. Sandman in for a brownie and show him my very organized storage areas.  That could be fun, too...

SA