Some Pig

The Family That Snarks Together ...

TO:  Caroline, Sarah
FROM:    Dad
SUBJECT:    Mother's Day

I feel a moral imperative to boycott Mother's Day & perhaps motherhood itself. I just heard that Dubya endorsed both concepts.

Dad

TO:  Dad, Sarah
FROM:  Caroline
SUBJECT:  RE: Mother's Day

Forgot again, huh?

TO:  Caroline, Sarah
FROM:  Dad
SUBJECT:  RE:  Mother's Day

Kiss my a*s - I remembered way back around Thursday. Smart-mouth kid.


TO:  Dad, Sarah
FROM:   Caroline
SUBJECT:  Mother's Day

Holy moly.  What brought on that burst of intellectual prowess?   Usually you wait to remember until  Saturday.  Around 5 pm, generally.


TO:  Dad, Caroline
FROM:  Sarah
SUBJECT: Re:  Mother's Day

Dad's just ticked because Dubya showed him up. I bet Laura Bush and Barbara Bush the Elder didn't have to settle for a plastic rose from the Big Apple for Mother's Day ...

TO:  Dad, Sarah
FROM:  Caroline
RE:  Mother's Day

Well, with wedding favors like this, I'm not sure the Big Apple wouldn't be the classier choice:

   

Nothing says undying eternal love like a monogrammed cow skull!

P.S. the roses at the Big Apple are made of FEATHERS, not plastic.  Sheesh.  You must think they have NO taste!

 

More Fun Than Should Strictly Be Legal

I dare you - double DOG dare you - to read this article on celebrity plastic surgery and not pore over every photo, saying, "I KNEW IT!" 

C'mon, Crazylainetrain, there's some golden Fan Letter Friday fodder in here!  They do come dangerously close to talkin' smack about my homegirls, Cher and Her Madgesty, but I'll overlook it in light of the huge entertainment factor.

Help

Hey.

I'm desperately seeking some inspiration.

We have five?  six?  weeks left of the school year left, and it's way, waaaaay too early for me to start going through the motions.  I should be teaching like my hair's on fire, and I try, but...

... I have a head cold (as mentioned in the previous post) that just won't get better.

... I'm tired.  Like, down-to-my-bones, can't-pick-up-my-pen, can't-think-of-anything-to-do tired.  It's not something that can be fixed by one good night's sleep or some vitamins or a night out without the kids.  I'm so tired I ache when I get up in the morning.  I'm sure that's not helping the head cold situation, either.

... I have my toughest, most challenging class LAST period of the day, when I need to be most on my game, and I spend all day pre-emptively dreading them, which makes it hard to get interested in the first two periods of the day.

... my students, though darling and lovable in their own ways, are not the most academically engaged children you'd ever hope to meet. Getting them interested is possible, but it takes a lot of mental and emotional energy to draw them out and get them involved in a lesson, energy that's in short supply (see above).

... I'm not teaching here next year.  I'll be at the middle school, teaching US History (my first choice) to eighth graders (an age group I love).  So it's hard to get all ginned up about writing good lesson plans and gathering materials and what-all when I know it's not something I'll use again.

... my kids (by which I mean my own genetic offspring) need me a lot right now, and, as important as my job is to me, the girls have to come first.

With all this, it's hard not to get into an Alfie, "what's it all about" mindset, and that scares me.  It scares me because that's exactly the attitude I've seen in every teacher whom I secretly felt should get the hell out of the classroom and let someone in who will actually teach.  It scares me because it makes it hard to walk into the building each day without mentally counting down the days and wishing they'd move along faster, and is that really any way to go through life?  It scares me because I worry that one of these days, I won't be able to bounce back and reclaim what I love about my job.  Usually when I'm feeling uninspired, the kids carry me through the content, or the content gets me through the kids, but when both are registering as a "meh," what do you do?

Send some thoughts, y'all.  I need 'em right now.

Cold Comfort

Mr. Cold Virus
Somewhere in My Sinus Cavities
My Head
First in the Nation Primary State, USA

Dear Mr. Cold Virus,

First, for the sake of verisimilitude, I guess this should state, "Dear Bister Code Virus," but writing that will get old fast.  I suppose I'm overanthropomorphising your germ-ridden little self, calling you by a male title.  Still, that's how I see you, all hunched over like Snidely Whiplash and rubbing your (many, many thousands of) hands maniacally as you chortle evilly over my sinuses the way your namesake did over the young maid tied to the railroad tracks.  I gather you think you're in for a reprise of the infamous pre-birth-of-Celeste epic head cold, but since I'm allowed drugs this time, I say, HA!  Take THAT, Mr. Virus Man!   That'll teach you and your little phages and ... and ... whatever-they-call-em from Bio class ... to do ... whatever it is you do that makes people sick!  [Ed. note:  I just referenced the Hawley-Smoot Tariff in the previous post, people, I can't remember everything y'all were supposed to learn in high school in every subject, ya know!  At least I do remember that there's no point taking antibiotics for viruses because viruses aren't biotic anyway.  Which isn't the same thing as 'bionic,' either, you nitwits, so if you were picturing Lindsay Wagner leaping around my nasal cavities, just STOP.]

Oh, I know you think you're so clever, you head cold you, lurking around in my kids' day care classrooms, waiting for the juuuuuust the right moment to hop onto a sticky finger or a damp face.  You already knew that neither hand-washing nor surface-wiping nor gloom of night will stop you from your appointed rounds when a soggy toddler wants a hug.  You thought it was so much fun watching me go to work in a cold-induced haze, the kind of sick where everything ... takes ... a .... really ... long ... time ... to ... process.  I had to mentally coach myself through every move I made (Okay, now we're going to pick UP the pen.  That's it, thaaaat's it.  Good!  Now let's take off the cap.  Yep, here we go.  We're doing it now.  We're taking off that cap.), only to discover I was staring off into space for moments at a time (Huh?  Whu?  What was I?  Oh yeah.  Pen.  Cap.  Here we go.)  I know you think it's so funny when I go to class looking like Rudolf, thanks to the cheap, scratchy tissues, and sounding like Elmer Fudd, thanks to - well, thanks to YOU. 

But you know what? 

The joke's on YOU, my friend! 

Wanna know why? 

First, my period seven class?  My hyper, annoying, unmotivated, school-skipping, authority-flouting, work-not-completing period seven class?  Is MUCH, MUCH MORE BEARABLE when I'm out of it than when I'm fully functional and alert.  Which leads me to my next, and more important point, which is:

PHARMACEUTICALS, BABY!! 

I got one of every kind of cold capsule, liqui-gel, gel-cap, gel-tab, day formula, night formula, tussin and phedrine product going.  I got expectorants making things runny and decongestants drying them up.  I got the zinc tabs for the homeopathy, the vitamin C drink for the immune system, and the plain ole over-the-counter meds to round things out.  I got the extra-fawncy tissues with the lotion AND the aloe (not that it's doing my poor sore beezer any good at this juncture, but I'm sure it'll kick in soon).  I got so much crap in my bloodstream, you're going to be crying like a bitch and begging - BEGGING - me to let you leave and go infest some other poor sucker with a houseful of snotty-nosed babies.  And if worse comes to worse, I got so much "nighttime cold aid" sloshing around in my system, I'll be rendered unconscious long enough to forget (for awhile, anyway) that I'm playing unwilling host to a frat party of disease in my cranium. 

And if you ask me real nice, maybe I'll even autograph a pair of boxing gloves for you on your way OUT. 

Smell ya later (at least, when my sense of smell returns, thank you),

Some Pig

Skip This If You Flunked US History

If you liked third period US History, you'll love Bob in Portland, Maine:

CHEERS to bold vision.  The more I listen to John McCain, the more my support for the DemocRAT party wavers.  In his latest groundbreaking proposal, the straight-talking maverick suggests that the best way to deal with Iraq and Iran is to form an organization called a League of Nations. I like it.  Sounds international but also evokes the pinstriped can-do spirit of American baseball.  Today McCain is expected to unveil his new economic proposal, which he calls a "Smoot-Hawley Tariff."  Sounds muscular!

CHEERS to great deals.  382 years ago, on May 6, 1626, Manhattan was purchased from Native Americans for around $24 in beads, trinkets and wampum.  Or as it's known today: A medium espresso. Or a Euro.  Or funding for 1/100th of a second of the Iraq war.  Or twenty grains of rice.  Or your savings from the McCain/Clinton "gas tax holiday."  Shall I stop now?

What?  Doesn't everyone find a reference to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff a thigh-slapper?  Huh.  Maybe I am a history geek...

Do I Have To Do This? Is This Homework? Can I Get Extra Credit?

Oh sweet Christ.  I've been tagged for a meme!  I got tagged for one once, by Carrie.  It was only slightly less complex than nuclear fission, so I passed; unfortunately, this one's pretty straightforward, so I guess I should play nice and do it.  Let me just say that when I first started blogging, I would have died to be tagged; I saw that as confirmation that my presence in the blogosphere had been noted and found worthy.  It was the bloggy equivalent of having the cool kids invite you to sit at their lunch table.  However, over time, my natural laziness and curmudgeonly tendencies reasserted themselves and I got to the point where I took a sort of perverse pride that I *hadn't* been tagged much in my blogging life.  Oh well.  Now the only reverse-cool cred I can cling to is my refusal to go to BlogHer.  Having said all this, I am glad my friend Robin tagged me because I like her.  So, with no further ado, I present:

SIX QUIRKY THINGS ABOUT ME

1.  On the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, I used to be an extrovert, but over time I have moved farther and farther into the introvert category, to the point where I now score right up there with those cave-dwelling shrimp who have lived in the dark so long, they're transparent.  I used to be a cheerleader in high school, and now I'm so averse to doing anything that would attract attention, I won't even dress up on Halloween except for the token witch's hat, which I whip off at the earliest opportunity.  I find interacting with people so draining at times, I won't answer the phone unless it's Warren or my parents.  People who know me from school generally don't believe me since I'm fairly outgoing there, but that's because it's a structured environment and I know I can go home at the end of the day and not talk to anyone.

2.  I am quite possibly the most socially awkward person you've ever met.  [Here's proof:  I really, really wanted to end that sentence with, "who's not identified on the Aspberger's scale," and it was only through an extreme act of will that I managed not to.]  I grew up in a family that prized sarcasm and wisecracks.  In college, it took me a long time to realize that these were not valued attributes, and that, as a girl, I was supposed to squeal and jump up and down a lot when I ran into other girls I had just seen fifteen minutes earlier.  Now I make dumb jokes in front of other moms I just met at the playground and, while I often feel horribly embarrassed for the moment, I accept that as the price of doing business with the real world.

3.  Despite the fact that I have a goofy sense of humor, I don't find fart jokes funny.  As my friend Linda says, there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who enjoy fart humor and those who don't.  I'm in the latter group.  I don't even want to hear about farts, except for the phrase, "I'm sorry about that."  The only exception is that I nearly die of cuteness overload when India talks about "toots".

4.  Even though my fashion sense can charitably be called "average," or more realistically "boring," I am attracted to anything pink, glittery, sparkly, or shiny.  I think I'm part crow. If  it didn't look ridiculous for a forty-year-old woman who is not the Queen of England to wear a tiara as part of her everyday wardrobe (with jeans and a sweater, of course), I would.

5.  I am almost completely and thoroughly devoid of common sense.  That, combined with the demise of my short-term memory after my second pregnancy, means that I am a walking hazard to life and limb.  It is only a matter of time before I burn the house down whilst leaving the baby unattended in the bathtub as I walk around holding a knife held blade-outward. 

6. I didn't tie my shoes until I was seven, ride a bike until I was nine, kiss a boy until I was sixteen or drive until I was eighteen.  Yeah, I'm the quintessential late bloomer. 

The Rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you: Hi, Robin!

2. Mention the rules on your blog. (I just copied them wholesale from Robin's post, because, did I mention I'm lazy?)

3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.

4. Tag 6 bloggers and link them. I tag:  Madge, Nitro Vista, Elaine, Becky, Carrie, and anyone else who needs a blog post idea and wants to do this.  I would tag Anonymous Co-worker, but he probably hates this kind of shiznit and would make horrendous fun of me on his blog, and I'm too proud/insecure/afraid of the power of his rapier wit to do that.

5. Notify taggees by leaving a comment on their blog. AND DON'T ANYONE ELSE THINK ABOUT DOING THIS TO ME, ESPECIALLY THAT ONE ABOUT TURNING TO PAGE WHATEVER IN THE BOOK.  I'm reading a book on toilet training right now; do you really want to go there??? 

Lest You Think I Exaggerate

I had to break out the early-winter parkas today to go to the playground - not the heavy-duty, snow-on-the-ground parkas, true, but winter parkas nonetheless.  Also, while we were there, I found a pair of mittens in the car and gladly put them on the baby's hands because, after ten minutes of holding onto metal swing chains, they were turning blue.  And none of this would be worthy of any note, except that it is MAY SECOND and there's just something fundamentally wrong about putting mittens on your kid on MAY SECOND. 

Also, I had to take the facking rubber sheet off the bed for laundering AGAIN.  I just got done wrestling it back onto the bed and I swear I tore a lat.  At least, I think it's a lat. It's been so long since I've done anything remotely resembling organized exercise, I've forgotten what a "lat" is.  I swear, I'm just going to wrap the whole damn mattress in Saran Wrap and be done with it.

Unreality Check; Or, How I Spent My Spring Vacation

Any of my regular readers will tell you that I am a busy, busy girl.  To prove it, here is a partial list of things I've done with my time off this week:

• Spent way too much time on the interwebternets
• ditched left my kids at day care on alternate days for "quality" time with the other kid
• Finally saw A MOVIE with GROWNUP PEOPLE at my friend Robin's hizzouse (holla!)
• Discovered a GREAT $10 red wine at the above and NO, I will not tell you the name of it
• Sat and stared into space more frequently than I care to remember
• Sat and stared at the clutter and chaos I call my house without lifting a finger to do anything about it
• Washed pee sheets (see previous post)

What do all of these have in common?  They are productive uses of my time.  Even the staring blankly into space served a purpose, which was to remind me that I saw the cat hork up a hairball in that very spot not too long ago and I forgot to scrub up after removing the solid chunks because Celeste was evincing way too much interest in the evidence and it needed to be disposed of toot sweet, preferably in a cement vault whose defenses she couldn't breach.    Unfortunately, I also have to fess up to a terribly embarrassing truth, which is that I also did the following:

• Watched part of an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians

I know! I know!  I'm really, really ashamed of myself, too, and you are talking to the girl who had a standing date with her roommates each week to watch Chains of Love on UPN.  It's bad for my self-image as an aspiring Bobo, one with an advanced degree and the college loan bills to match, but I am a sucker for reality TV.  I will willingly admit to spending an entire half-hour?  hour?  enthralled by an episode of Ace of Cakes (you know, the one where they make the birthday cake that looks like a meatball), and this is a show about people who spread frosting on cake to make a living.  I don't claim to be a Survivor aficionado, but I like it and usually watch about every other season, and I'm always thrilled when PBS coughs up a Frontier House or Colonial House so I can cloak my love for voyeuristic trash in a thin veneer of historicity. 

So as you can see, I am not immune to the siren song of the unscripted program.  But, geez, even *I* have standards, low though they may be, and KUWTK fails to meet even that lowest of thresholds.  My main requirement is that the people involved in the show actually have something to do with themselves, whether it be to attempt to cheat on their partners guilt-free or climb the social ladder in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world.  A successful reality show has some kind of hook -  that other slice-of-family-life show The Osbournes was incredibly compelling because of the so-warped-they're-normal vibe it had going on.  What do the Kardashians do, aside from mangle the spelling of perfectly fine names like Courtney and Chloe?  Well, judging from the fifteen minutes-minus-commercials that I watched, the Kardashian women, um, go out, text people who aren't on camera to the exclusion of talking to the people in front of them, and bitch about other family members when they leave the room.  The busty one thrusts her chest forward like a pouter pigeon and sulks a lot, and the tall one lumbers off to the corner to sob quietly when the busty one gets mad at her.  On this they base a reality show???!?!?  Hello, development execs, they run this show 180 days a year, give or take, in every town in America - it's called high school.  The only notable difference between KUWTK and, say, sixth period study hall, is that the famille Kardashian throws around gobs of disposable income while they engage in these ultimately not-terribly-interesting behaviors.

After watching half an episode of this show, I felt like clawing the eyeballs out of my sockets the way Oedipus did after realizing he'd schtupped his mama, it was that revolting.  It doesn't help that throughout the show, Bruce Jenner - Bruce Jenner!  The Olympic hero!  The man on the Wheaties box! - wanders in and out appearing totally oblivious to everything except his radio-controlled helicopter and what he looks like.  It doesn't help that I've been watching the series Carrier on PBS, which shows people, most of whom are barely out of high school, struggling to cope with life and love and career and families and relationships, all while getting paid squat-diddly and, oh yes, putting their lives on the line for their country at the same time.  When I snapped off the TV I felt like I'd lost about fifty IQ points and a whole lotta self-respect (and again, you're talking to the girl who watched AND enjoyed Joe Millionaire ).

I'm thinking of suing E!.  I want those fifteen minutes of my life back.

The Slippery Slope

The first couple of times your kid wets the bed, you strip off every stitch of bedding, compromised or not, and wash it with bleach and borax on the "sanitize" setting of the super-ultra-fawncy washer you bought specifically for that feature.

Later on, you settle for the "hot" setting because, damn, your electric bill's not cheap.  After all, your mom never had no "sanitize" feature and you survived, didn't you?

Then you get to the point where, before you strip the bed, you give the outer layers the feel-n-sniff test, because, hey, why wash something that doesn't need to be washed if you're going to wind up washing it in the near future?

After awhile longer, you just strip off the sheets and chuck them in the washer on "warm" with a bunch of other stuff that needs washing anyway. 

You know you've hit rock bottom when you find yourself eyeing the rubber sheet from hell that takes three people to wrangle on and off the mattress and thinking to yourself, do you really think she'd notice if you just let the sheets air dry?  It was just a little bit of pee...

Vomitrocious

Sweet weeping Jeebus.  The NYTimes has an article up today asking why schools suck worse now than they did when "A Nation At Risk" comes out, and then Slate runs this article about a mom who does everything for her son up to and just short of wiping his bum when he gets off the potty.  Anyone out there want to connect the dots?

Somewhere along the line, middle class parents decided that their kids should never, ever, ever encounter any hardship, difficulty, or challenge because, hey, they're middle class kids from nice families!  Somewhere along the line, they came to the conclusion that anyone who tells their kid "no," or "that's not good enough," or "you can do better" is a big, bad meanie who needs to be stopped!  Somewhere along the line, middle class parents began infantilizing their kids, hovering and monitoring and second-guessing and overriding any situation in which a kid might make a bad choice and (gasp!) suffer the consequences.  Somewhere along the line, middle class parents decided that their kids would never be cut from the team, fail to make honor roll, get fired from a part-time job, or have anything happen to them that could be construed as unpleasant, and if that were to loom on the horizon, why, mommy and/or daddy will step in and fix it!  Somewhere along the line, middle class parents came to the conclusion that their particular child is unique and special and precious and fragile, so much so that they must be coddled and swaddled and held by the hand at all times, figuratively if not literally.  Somewhere along the line,  middle class parents arrived at the conclusion that it was their job to run interference and defend their child at all times no matter what the circumstances.  No way could their child lie, cheat, manipulate, shirk, or just plain fail - everyone knows [insert person or issue here] is unfair/mean/biased against their child/[insert justification here]. 

For the love of Mike, this woman filled out eleven college applications on her son's behalf!  No WONDER he washed out of his first try at adult life.  He didn't even have an IDENTITY OF HIS OWN that isn't somehow an extension of HER!  She paid for private school for a kid who RARELY DID HOMEWORK!  Then she marveled that, gee, he didn't want to live at home and go to a juco in his hometown!  Gee, I wonder why not??? [Insert eye roll here here, followed by supercilious snort.] 

I'm truly surprised.  I've had two kids of my own, and as far as I could tell, they CUT that umbilical cord before we left the HOSPITAL.