Random Tuesday Thoughts

Boy, what a relief to get back online. Some mystery bug had the computer down yesterday and I couldn't sign on for anything. No blogging, no cooks.com to figure out what to make with a pound of hamburger, no access to the school website to see what important things I might be missing...

It must have been in sympathy for all the other sicknesses that have descended on our house. Finally it seemed that all the people were better, and the appliances started getting sick. The fridge has had an odd odor for weeks, though we have gone through it three times and chucked out any food that could possibly be making a stench. The washing machine does the watusi in the spin cycle so bad I have to sit on it to keep it from moving into the kitchen. And just for company the dryer makes this screechy cat-in-heat noise every now and then that brings tom cats to the door.

But, I have control of the computer again just in time to join the random fun.

I went on a field trip with Jones last week. Field trips are fun; between being a teacher and having kids I've been on quite a few. Why is it that the rottenest-behaved kids never have their parents volunteer to be chaperones? And I always seem to end up with at least one of them in my group. It's no secret why; the teacher always says "I gave you Little Sid Vicious because his mom isn't coming and I know you can handle him..." Well, crap. Sometimes I've hit the jackpot and gotten two or three of 'em. So I have my own child and the Demon Squad. Yee-haw. Last year the teacher asked if I needed anything and I asked for Valium and a cattle prod. She thought I was kidding...

Snow. I moved to the beach for moderate winter weather. Last week I was trying to teach a group of second graders and looked out the window and it was SNOWING in MARCH. AGAIN. Snow here used to be an anomaly, a rare treat. Like "I bought these snow pants for my young daughter and they haven't been used again till now, when I pass them on to you, my sweet granddaughter." If we wanted snow all the time we would have moved to a snow zone. One with a Target. And a Red Robin.

Laundry is fun. It must be because I do it so much. And it's o.k. because S.P. goes out in rain, wind and snow to shovel horse poo and feed the pony when I don't feel like it. But how come I check the pockets 99% of the time and find nothing, and the one time I don't check there's CHOCOLATE in the pocket of Pony Girl's coat and it goes through a hot dry? Ooh, gross. It looked like, well, crap. Used it as a visual aid:"This is why you must never keep candy in your pockets, kids..." Maybe I'll remember to keep checking those pockets.

EEHAW! Got a call to teach eleven days in April for one of the second-grade teachers. Good money, should provide a good story or two, and get to be at the school to keep an eye on Jones and his headaches. However, several of the kids in the class are either teachers' kids, or kids of friends, or of parents who have reputations for making things difficult for the teacher. So it may be more work than just teaching the class and doing the prep. Teaching your friends' kids, or your fellow teachers' kids, can be a huge headache if they don't respect your professionalism. Bring on that Valium...

We have a problem in our sixth-grade class this year with some of our young men and women. Some of the boys think it's perfectly o.k. to slap the girls in the face and say "oh, we're just playing around". That for me is enough of a problem, but it gets worse because the girls who are being slapped are allowing it: "No, that's o.k., I don't mind." As far as I can see it's not all of the girls, just the ones who want the boys' attention so much they don't care what kind of attention it is. It's finally being addressed, but I can't believe this would have been coming up with twelve-year-olds.

Gosh, I guess this should have been Random Tuesday Rants. Gripe, gripe, gripe...

I can end on a positive note because we have been playing "Mad Libs" with the kids lately. Pony Girl got some for her birthday and her teacher has been wanting her to spice up her writing assignments with more adjectives and adverbs, so we started doing them for practice. Now we do them because they're so dang fun. Even Jones gets into it. When their grandparents come over he just HAS to read them the latest Mad Libs we've created. A bit of wisdom from our last game? "When you make a promise, make a sailor's promise. Say yo-ho, yo-ho, near the bum cheeks I'll never go!"

There's a rule to live by...