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 |  Welcome to Whatsit's Wild World. |
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Sometimes I think we're all tightrope walkers suspended on a wire two thousand feet in the air, and so long as we never look down we're okay, but some of us lose momentum and look down for a second and are never quite the same again: we know. ~Dorothy Gilman The Tightrope Walker |
Hey peeps. (I've always wanted to say that!) I've been letting my blogging slide because I was going to let my account expire as of noon yesterday, but thanks to RAOK I have two more months. Which is fortunate: I was wondering when I would lose the habit of looking at every situation bloggishly. For example: Friday, Matt was sick. He woke up Thursday with his face and lips swollen up, so my mom took him to the doctor, and it turns out he had a little place inside his nose that was infected. The doctor didn't want him back at school until Monday, so I was with him Friday. Around four I go in the kitchen to think about what to cook. I turn on the water to make rice. My faucet said "Bluuurp" and refused to emit anything the least bit water-ish. I'm running around the house turning on faucets and getting the same thing. I get in a panic and call the water department. I'm saying "I know I paid my water bill! I KNOW I did!" The whole time, I'm trying to think if the water bill slipped up on me somehow - I'm fairly obssesive about gettting my bills paid immediately, so I was pretty sure I HAD paid it. My thought is that they better get it while it's in there. The lady checked and found that I had, in fact, paid my bill and said she would send somebody. Anyway, I get off the phone and hear a knock. I was in my kitchen where my back door is, and that's where the knock sounded like it came from. Nobody was there. I am wondering at this point if I'm losing it. I go to the front door: nobody. However, there is a black pickup truck in my driveway. I walk all the dern way around my house and see nobody. I make it back to my front door and go back through to the kitchen. There in my backyard is my plumber, Ronnie. I holler "I'm gonna whip you," having seen in a flash that he is the cause of all my troubles. We have been building a back porch onto our house, and my husband had asked him two months ago to come put a faucet on it. While I'm pointing my finger in the air and ranting at Ronnie for scaring me to death, Matt comes out there and tells me that some man on the front porch wants to talk to me. I go apologize to the water department. If something had been spewing, they STILL wouldn't be here. Anyway, Ronnie had gone under the house for some reason and heard me ranting at the Water Department. Good thing I'm not the type to automatically go to ugly words since he's a deacon in our church. I was just in a panic at that point. That was when he knocked on the underside of the floor.  My point: always be careful what you say, since you never know when somebody will be under your kitchen floor listening. Other than that:  I am reading Lonesome Dove and The Green Mile. Both are splendid, you should try them, but wait until you have time since you won't be able to keep your eyeballs off of them. I just got through with The Other Boleyn Girl: it is superb. We have a new principal, Dr. Brown. He is exceedingly nice. This year is going so much better. It's surprising how much difference a nice, professional, supportive supervisor can make. Emily is on the cross-country team at her junior high. The other day she ran two-and-a-half miles in twenty-seven minutes. Anna Claire is in 4th grade and she's cheerleading. Matt is in second grade and he is playing flag football. I don't remember if I blogged about my new dog or not, so I'll go ahead: our beagle, Katie, passed away. We still have Wimzy, our beagle/Jack Russell mix. Our new dog is a little black puffball named Little Bit. She's super snuggly, and her favorite time to snuggle is just as I'm supposed to arise to get ready for work. Now you know what I know, except for the fact that I am going to my bed as soon as my little legs will get me there. Nighty night!" . . .my doctor says I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber . . ." Douglas Adams |
| I am about to kill myself re-reading Marjorie Morningstar. The author is Herman Wouk, who is more well-known for The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Both of these were made into mini-series, but I haven't read them. Yet. Every now and then I must return to what I call the Books-Of-My-Heart. These are the books I can't keep my eyeballs off of once I open them up. I re-read them over and over, and have for years. Most of the books listed in "My Favorite Books and Authors"  are Books-Of-My-Heart. I return to them again and again when I need perspective, consolation, entertainment, or simply a book that won't end too quickly.Nobody else I know does this - re-reads books. "If I've read it one time, that's enough." Aw, pshaw! Just because you ate pizza one time doesn't mean you'll never eat it again, does it? Just because you talked to a friend one time doesn't mean you'll never talk to them again, does it? I'm the same way about books. I am just as entertained by them this time as I was last time. How can people watch reruns on TV over and over and not be able to understand reading a book more than once? Having unburdened my heart on this, I feel better. |
| We had a funeral today - a member of our church. Tammy was a young lady in her mid-30's who had a brain tumor. She left two devastated parents - she was the only girl out of three - a husband and a three-year-old little boy. This is one of those things-that-make-you-say-why. On the positive side, another member of our church had a baby. She named her Jaylie. I said that she should have named her Betsy, after Betsy Ross, since she was born on Flag Day. Ah, well. I can't run the WHOLE universe. |
| Happy fourth Writing.com birthday to me. Wahoo! |
| My first official day of summer. Last night I typed out chore lists for the kids. What a miracle! Just this simple thing has inspired them to go ahead and do what they need to do because they want to hurry up and check everything off and be through for the day. This is something I can definetly recommend if you have kids. They are back in their bedrooms even as we speak practicing their violin for thirty minutes. Reading for thirty minutes is on there too. A few minutes ago they took a break and played Frogger on this game that you plug into the TV. Earlier, we were playing Scrabble and singing along to the songs on my iPod. They will be mini-Mrs. Whatsits before you know it. Guess what else? I typed up another sheet where they have to get fined for arguing, whining, not listening, etc. That way, when they get their allowance for completing their chores, so much per infraction will be subtracted. Mwahahaha! Hubby is preaching a funeral. I am reading Cheaper by the Dozen and The Return of the King. Blessings! L " . . .my doctor says I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber . . ." Douglas Adams |
Allow me the tell you the saga of the hole-punch. Back in the fall I ordered a fancy hole-punch for my library. I spent around twelve dollars of the school's money for it. It is much better than the little pitiful $2.00 hole-punch I had been using that would only do one page at a time. Some time in October, my principal wanted to borrow my nice new hole-punch and took it across the hall to her office. She returned it that same day, placing it on top of the bookshelf closest to the door. Stupid me just left it there instead of putting it up. I stayed late that afternoon working on something that needed finishing before the next day. I look up and the principal's best friend, a third-grade teacher, was getting my hole-punch to take across the hall to the office. I keep my mouth shut. A few months go by. Spring comes. I come up needing my hole-punch. I decide to play stupid and go ask the principal's secretary if she has a hole-punch I can borrow since mine has "disappeared." She starts cutting her eyes toward the principal's door to let me know what happened to it. I said "Oh!" and just pretended that I wasn't worried about it. About five minutes later, here came the secretary into the library with the hole-punch. I was impressed. In my mind, that was the end of it. The hole-punch had come home. I had been putting it into my desk drawer when I wasn't using it so it wouldn't be in plain sight. Imagine me thinking that it would be safe in my desk drawer. When I came in to work yesterday, I went to use it and it was gone. My principal had evidently come into the library and looked into every drawer until she found it. This is outrageous to me. Going through my desk drawers when I'm not here? And she doesn't care that I know it. My assistant and the secretary are good friends. My assistant went and talked to the secretary. Once again, the secretary came in here within five minutes carrying the hole-punch. I now have it under lock-and-key. I haven't said a word to her about this. She hasn't said a word to me about it. She's retiring at the end of the year. I'm hoping we can slide through to the end of the year without words about this. Looking through my desk drawers! Did she not know how unprofessional this made her look? |
| You know what gripes me? People with second accounts. For one thing, why do they put a great big "2nd" on the little suitcase? All that does is make people wonder who is trying to skulk around in here without anybody knowing who they are. Just saying. |
| . . .that you didn't necessarily want to know. 1. I hate cutting my toenails. 2. I feel like I will die if I don't have a sausage, egg, and cheese Mcmuffin from McDonalds for breakfast every morning. With a Coke. A LARGE Coke. If I start my day pleasantly, the whole day goes pleasantly. 3. I don't want to be bothered while I'm eating it either. I like to read whatever my current book is while I'm eating. At lunchtime, I pass right by all the other adults at the faculty table and sit by myself to read. 4. I am not a TV watcher. I don't like CSI or anything else currently on TV. I tend to like old stuff like Frasier and Seinfeld. Or even older stuff like Sanford and Son and the Golden Girls. The most recent show that I like is Boston Legal, and it went off the air. Thank God for reruns. 5. There are one or two people everywhere I go that don't get on my nerves. There are one or two at work that don't. There are one or two at my church that don't. There are one or two at the public places I frequent, like the public library and Wal-Mart, that don't. This says more about me than it does them: namely, that I can't tolerate stupid people. 6. I can't stand smoking. I don't want to be within a hundred miles of a smoking person. This said, I will fight to the death for your right to smoke. 7. One time, when I was a teen-ager and had a Camaro, I had three girls in the car with me. This old man in an eight-hundred year old pickup truck wouldn't let us on the interstate, just to be contrary. So when we were finally able to pass him, all four of us stuck our tongues out at him. 8. I love those rotisserie chickens you can get from the grocery store. I love them more than anything else in the world, even chocolate. My favorite thing to eat with it is Rice-a-roni. 9. I wish I had gotten a tattoo when I was young and stupid. Now that I am old and not stupid, I feel like I don't have an excuse to get one. 10. Working for a living sucks. |
| I had pneumonia. Can you believe it? I've hit forty and started doing things like contracting pneumonia. I have no idea what brought that on - possibly a sinus infection that I was too stingy to go to the doctor for. I got some old yucky bitter cough syrup, but which I have swallowed religiously since it does the job. I had coughed so much that all my muscles hurt. I had a Hyundai Sonata that had almost 174,000 miles on it. We bought this new Ford Expedition, so we really needed to get rid of the Sonata, even though it still ran good. The insurance was too much. I wasn't even trying to sell it because in the back of my mind I wanted to keep it. A teenage girl at our church told us she wanted it. I got started telling her everything that was wrong with it, which really wasn't much: it wants to skip when first starting, high mileage, crumpled front fender that makes the driver door not open all the way. She wanted it anyway, so now she has it. I really didn't need it, but I still wanted to cry when that heifer drove it out of my driveway. This morning my dog was still in my bed when I got out, so I made the bed with her in it. The third, fourth, and fifth graders at our school are taking their yearly standardized test starting tomorrow and going through Thursday. They are in the auditorium right now having a pep rally. I can hear all the yelling all the way down to the library, which is precisely why I didn't go. A pep rally for a test? Do they really think that is going to raise scores for all these little crack babies? Please. If their were a reality show called Extreme Stupidity, that would be on it. My little boy is playing his violin in the talent show Friday. He can play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Summer is coming. That is all that has floated to the top of my brain. Bye bye. |
| My principal announced her retirement today. This is the woman who told me not to teach the fifty states. "They don't need to know it because it's not on the standardized test at the end of the year." This is the woman who refuses to deal with any of my discipline problems. "I don't have time for that right now." This is the woman who gets on the intercom and gripes at the teachers while children are in the building. Once when I sent a student back out of the library because he had slammed my door on his way in, she called me into her office instead of him. I can't say that I am disappointed at today's announcement. What CAN I say? "Wahooooooooooo!" Heh heh. What killed me about the whole thing was all the fake tears she was trying to cry. If I weren't killed already, the other thing that would have killed me was this: all the teachers who have talked bad about her got up to hug her. I don't care if Godzilla's old funky mama comes to be our principal, I'll be happy about it. |
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Well, it is the time of miracles I guess.