Nice Day

I had a nice Mothers’ Day. It doesn’t take much to make me happy…all three kids and two significant others present is what makes it perfect. We really have a big family group for holidays now…me and my shadow, heh heh heh just thought of that, my three kids, my son-in-law and my son’s girlfriend of over 4 years, plus my mom, dad and brother. That’s 10 people and 11 when we are with the dog who (shhhhh) thinks she is human.

We had a nice brunch and hung out for awhile.
Squirt was serving mass at 6pm so mom and dad and brother went with us. What should have been a quick little mass was not! NOt only was is Mothers’ Day, and Pentecost, it was also CONFIRMATION!! I knew we were in trouble when I saw the Bishop !!! Between the Bishop, 3 priests, 1 deacon, 3 altar boys, and a standing room only crowd, it was quite the event…that lasted until 7:30 pm.

My mom nodded off several times and my dad, who isn’t even Catholic bless his heart, was pretty well done in. And my brother spent the whole time singing and responding WAY TOO LOUD in a fakey opera kind of way. Stupid baby brother. Trying to show off that you know the songs and the prayers when we all know that the best you’re going to do is a long stint in purgatory. You aren’t fooling anyone.

Okay, that was mean. I didn’t mean to be mean.
The Bishop talked about how we have to STOP looking for negatives in other people and be positive and filled with joy and happiness and hope.
So I will try that again - my wonderful brother was such an inspiration! Singling magnificently and leading everyone in prayer. Certainly a beacon of light that one!

Now I go to bed so I can get up at the ass-crack of freakin dawn to do some of the work I didn’t get to this weekend.

Adios.

Happy Mothers’ Day

One of the moms in my class sent the following email.
It touched me, so here it is:

Wishing all mothers a very Happy Mother’s Day

“Be followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.”1

Lee Strobel tells about a mother from Costa Mesa, California who told about the day her three-year old son was on her heels wherever she went. She was having trouble doing her routine chores.

“Whenever I stopped to do something and turned back around I would trip over him,” she said. “Several times I suggested fun activities to keep him occupied, but he would just smile and say, ‘That’s all right Mommy I’d rather be in here with you.’ He continued to follow me and after the fifth trip, my patience wore thin and I asked him why he was following me constantly.”

He said, “My Sunday school teacher told me to walk in Jesus’ footsteps but I can’t see him so I’m walking in yours.”

The greatest way we can teach our children about and show our loved ones the love of Jesus is through the example of how we live, and how we model his love in our everyday life.

As another has said, “We raise not the children we want but the children that we the parents are.”

Suggested prayer, “Dear God, please help me to so live that people, especially my children (and loved ones), will see Jesus in me and will want to follow in my footsteps and have Jesus in their life too. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 Corinthians 11:1 (KJV).

Merci. Grazie. Gracias. Danke. Domo Arigato.

You know, sometimes I get a little overly sarcastic, or act pretty jaded about things. Mostly in my writing, not so much in real life. I stay pretty nice and polite in company, although I tend to speak my mind. But even then, I try to speak my mind tactfully and with humor.

I know I was pretty flip about Teacher Appreciation here last time…but I have to revisit that because I feel so completely appreciated now that even I can’t be stone hearted and dismissive of it.

There were appreciative gestures all week.
At first there were three huge vases stuffed with flowers…moms collected the blooms brought to us by various kids and arranged them beautifully. And most of the kids made lovely homemade cards. And then there was a group card from the parents with the $250 in cash and restaurant cards.
But as the week wore on, we were also treated to neck and shoulder massages at recess complete with continental breakfast, a catered lunch yesterday, and a raffle in which I won a $25 Blockbuster card. I got a certificate and coupon for a free dessert from a local restaurant. I got $50 and a thank you letter from administration. And yesterday after school, some of the moms brought me a catered mexican dinner to take home, complete with a 6-pack of Pacifico (with lime), and a bottle of chardonnay. And more thank you cards. Oh and we had an extended lunch, so one of the moms came in to cover my class for the extra 20 minutes.

I am not a person who NEEDS praise and appreciation to keep going. I am internally motivated, and I NEED to do my best and I love the kids in my class. Those things, and the paycheck, are what spur me on. HOWEVER, feeling like a kid at Christmas time warms me in places I didn’t quite remember and makes me feel even better about my job and what I am doing.

I just wanted to go on record saying that. That and THANK YOU.

Just the facts, ma’am

Ima gonna make this quick, because I really need to go to bed soon, before my average number of hours slept per night dips into the negative numbers. But I have things to get off my chest.

First of all, 24 hours ago my dog was skunked. Is that a verb? Betcha know what I mean, anyway. What followed were 24 of the foulest hours ever. She is still vaguely musky smelling, but at least tolerable enough to be let indoors, even if confined to a small area.

Secondly, faculty meeting after school today, and tomorrow I have to stay to test incoming 2nd graders. I still have to come up with a “test” for them. Oh well, I have a prep time tomorrow. Apparently I get paid extra for doing that, so woohoo. I was going to do it out of the goodness of my heart, so there’s a perk.

Thirdly, I got a 6th grader suspended today. I may look gentle, but don’t mess with me. Even indirectly by messing with “mine.”

Fourthly, I was auctioned off on Saturday. I now feel vaguely like celebrity meat. Did you know that people treat teachers like celebrities? Sometimes that’s how it feels…in good times and in bad…

Fifthly, it is Teacher Appreciation Week. Way too many flowers in my room. Cute cards. $250 dollars in cash and restaurant gift cars. Luncheon on Friday. Hmmm….I wonder if they really appreciate us or if they are going through the motions. Or if they’re trying to bribe us. At this point, I don’t really care to be appreciated much. I just want JUNE to be here and to BE DONE. Seriously, I have the worst case of Spring Fever EVER.

Sixthly, Spring? what the heck happened to SPRING! We had some swealtering days and then poof, May Gray. It is freezing again. Unfortunately, that is spring here. Insert cussing. I actually SAW the May Gray roll in the other day. The temperature dropped 7 degrees in an hour, as a thick marine layer blanketed all. And stayed there.
So really seasons here go something like, winter, spring, summer, winter, summer, indian summer, more summer, summer, winter. More or less. It’s hard to pin these things down.

(upside down !)Ole!

Coincidentally, we had the same dinner tonight (Cinco de Mayo) as we did on St. Patrick’s Day…sushi. I guess it is our generic, fallback, default ethnic meal.

However, I did notice that tonight, Squirt had his two favorite desserts…Dulce de Leche ice cream and churros. I could claim some sort of pre-arranged festivity in that choice, but alas, he has been on a Dulce de Leche kick for a couple of weeks, and I bought a box of frozen churros recently after remembering that he used to like them. It was more or less a coincidence that he ate them on Cinco de Mayo. Or maybe it was serendipity.

Those wacky Mormons…

I just read the most bizarre phrase I have ever come across, I think.

“…posthumous baptism by proxy…”

Let that sink in for a minute.

***”Posthumous baptisms by proxy have been a common practice for the Latter-day Saints — commonly known as Mormons — for more than a century, allowing the church’s faithful to have their ancestors baptized into their faith so they may be united in the afterlife, said Mike Otterson, a spokesman in the church’s Salt Lake City headquarters.”

Done

Something I totally left off the To Do list was Dinner and a Movie.
Considering that those two things took about seven hours, they should have been the list.
We are so spoiled, and so well organized, usually our excursions are pretty streamlined. We tend to hit the restaurants, and the movie theaters, at less crowded times. And where we live, we don’t deal with enormous crowds of people, even though the summer does get a bit maddening with the touristas.

But we got adventurous today and headed into San Diego proper today. To a large mall. Where we had an hour wait for dinner. And since the next four showings of the movie we wanted to see, which was playing on three screens by the way, and at another theater like A BLOCK AWAY as well, were sold out, we had a three hour wait until the movie anyway. We took our time and ate slowly.

Anyway, it was all good and we finally did get into see Iron Man. Which was terrific. But we got home, finally, at 10:30 pm and we had left he house at 3:30. And seriously, all we did was eat dinner and watch a movie. There wasn’t even a random stop for ice cream, or a detour to buy gas. It was drive, park, wait, eat, walk to the theater, wait, watch, walk back to the car, drive home. Seven hours. That’s a whole school day. Damn.

Back to the movie.
It was good. It was fantastic. It was fun. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It maybe wasn’t terribly original. I saw bits and pieces of lots of movies from Tomb Raider to Spiderman to Fantastic Four to James Bond. But it all came together as something new and it worked. Well.

And speaking of Robert Downey, Jr., I never knew he was so, umm, hot. I had him categorized under “druggie loser” in the back of my mind and never bothered to LOOK at him before. He had a lean, mean, Sylvester Stallone thing going on, and since he is still on the south side of 45, well, he pulled it off. Just another enjoyable facet of the movie.

To Do, and then some

This is sort of a litany of things I need to do, all of them boring, so maybe I should just skip it and go do them.

1. Lament how boring, in a busier-than-I-know-how-to-deal-with-it way, my life is.
2. Decide that regardless of how much I should be doing, I want to blog a little.
3. Put some laundry in the washer.
4. Take a shower/wash my hair/debate rinsing Natural Instincts into it.

Addendum to #4 - re: Natural Instincts…this is how I cover my gray, which is debatable in a way. I am not terribly gray, especially for almost 50. Gah. Gah. Gah. That photo of me on the right is me a couple of months ago, needing to redo the Natural Instincts. In other words, it was washed out and that was my natural color. The gray is a bunch of individual little strands all around my hairline. I hate seeing them, but they aren’t too noticeable until/less I pull my hair back off my face. Which I do all the time when I am home and around mirrors, so I see it all the time.

I don’t dye my hair because I don’t want a different color, and I want to know it can wash out and be ME again. Also, I can never settle on the right shade to use, so I always put off doing it - the lightest blonde is too light. The middle one is too gold. And the darker one is too dark. I have tried them all individually and have combined every combination of two shades. I settled on liking the lightest and darkest together because they aren’t gold at all and it comes out looking pretty natural on me. My hair is naturally a medium golden blonde, but adding a gold color rinse makes it WOW too gold. My natural highlights come out looking yellow at first. HOWEVER this time I am going to mix all three and I am deathly afraid that it is going to come out — purple or something. I know that is crazy, but I am not a chemist. I am not even a hair stylist, cosmetologist, whatever. I had one bad experience with highlighting my hair when I was 20 and that put me off hair color for 25 years. This isn’t an area I march into bravely, and it is one where I wouldn’t go at all except for one thing…silver hair looks really funky next to gold hair.

5. I will of course need to get dressed and probably do more laundry.
6. I realize I left out a quick trip up the street to get Starbucks first. I am out of cream, and like Cardiogirl, I can’t drink coffee without cream. And unlike Cardiogirl, I don’t have a backup fridge with an extra gallon waiting for me.

On that note, I am out of here.

I’d rather take the low road

I have a little girl in my class that I am starting to refer to as a “flake-in-training.” This is because her mother is bonafide, first class, uber-flake. And she is teaching her daughter well. Skipping school, being tardy, not completing assignments, etc. I know she’s proud.

So anyhoo…my biggest beef is with mom, not little girl. Little girl is 6 and well, it’s my job to whip her into shape, no?
But MOM?
Wow. I have already been her counselor and taught her her parenting tips. Informally , of course. But what really chafes me is how she volunteers for EVERYTHING and then doesn’t follow though, show up, keep up…as the case may be. Yet she was the ONLY mom who tagged along by herself on the zoo field trip even though she wasn’t an “official” chaperone. I didn’t dare make her a chaperone, because you know if I had, she would have not shown up that day!

1. At this point, she is supposed to come in to help out Thursday afternoons…something arranged because she was upset at not being one of the “regularly scheduled moms.” But she was already room mom and has a baby. I thought I was being nice…anyway, she NEVER SHOWED UP FOR THAT. NOT ONCE!

2. When a mom quit coming every-other Wednesday am to work in her husband’s office, Flaky took her place. Came a couple of times.

3. When a different (almost as flaky mom) quit coming every Thursday am (her choice to do all that, I didn’t schedule them that way) Flaky took her slot too! Hasn’t been in weeks.

4. When the mom who helps during computer class was leaving to have a baby, she took that slot too. She makes it about half the time. Maybe.

So here’s the deal…I don’t care how much anyone volunteers…they are VOLUNTEERS. But if I am counting on you to run a small groups with my 6 year olds, you should show up or else chaos ensues while I am trying to read with a small reading group. And when the computer teacher specifically asked for parent help because of the class dynamics, and she expects to have help, PLEASE don’t just pull a no-show. CALL ME. I’ll get another mom. Really. You aren’t the ONLY mom who wants to help. You are just hogging all the time slots and then abandoning us!

So, I started going around her and now she is all put out.

I sooooooo wanted to tell her off and call her on the carpet read her the riot act and then give her what for.
But I took the high road.

Quick like bunny

Had a wonderful day today. Oh, it’s Monday? I must have had a Substitute Teacher substituting for me on a substitute basis.
Almost forgot I had a job.
Played mom to my kid who had a day off. We worked on his book report and then did some touristy type things involving things like lunch at the beach and a rollercoaster.

I got a little walking in and it is still so hot and sunny (although not as bad as yesterday) that I got some sun too.
Ah. I will try to keep this feeling as I go back to the dark dreary depressing classroom tomorrow.
Oh, I am just kidding. My classroom is lovely. I have the teacher who is taking my job following me around for a couple of days, so I better get my p’s and q’s in order, not to mention my b’s and d’s.