Rob, Don't READ this...

See things happen to me during the day and I do think, "Oh that's a good blog topic." But then I hang out with Rob and tell him everything. So Robin, just don't read this one. You've already experienced the LIVE Version.



Yesterday I was in Target, my favorite store. First of all they had no pants appropriate for running in that were smaller than a large, so I was outta luck. They do have these capri type pants but they're definitely more the yoga type, not so much for running. I venture over to the Bedding section b/c new sheets would be cool. I hear a child screaming and think nothing of it. Children always scream in Target. So I happen to need to go on the aisle where the kid is screaming. His dad was standing there holding a toddler, his mom was just staring at him screaming, and his sister was saying repeatedly, "Why's he crying?? Why's he crying?" Mom responds hatefully, "Because I'm buying something for you," insinuating that he wasn't getting anything so therefore is being a brat. Well yea! He looked to be about 3-years-old. I'd cry too! Buy the kid some bubble gum and get on with it. So I was trying to ignore the screaming when the kid starts to run away so the mom grabs him, and happens to do that whole mom-kneels-to-make-scary-eye-contact-with-kid thing, which is stupid. He's screaming so his eyes aren't even open. She starts yelling at him, he continues screaming, and I throw my hands up over my head and walk briskly away, shooting mean looks from the back of my head. As I was leaving Target, I could still hear the kid screaming. I hate repetitive sounds like children screaming and alarms. When I made it to the parking lot, I got really worried that I would be a terrible parent b/c I don't know what I would have done either, just like the mom who just stared at him. That's probably what I would do too. My mom used to hold her hand over my mouth. I still screamed.



So then I went over to Dick's Sporting Goods, still in search of running type pants. Well who would've guessed that pants cost anywhere from 40-60 dollars. Give me a break! They're pants that I'm going to go get sweaty in, and occasionally sit on the ground in, and possibly even trip over a crack in the sidewalk and fall down in. $$60??? for pants?

I'm a cactus trying to be a canoe

"I could never imagine a place so beautiful"



So...it's Wednesday. I'm still on vacation; it's ridiculous. :::;;; My colon/semicolon key is a little sticky today. It took about 10 hits to get out six marks. I'm at the point of slight boredom, but I don't want to admit it. I have no clue what I'm going to do when I go back to school. I'm not going to be able to wake up before 6 like I'm supposed to. I should start practicing. Perhaps tomorrow.



I'm currently watching Dawson's Creek. I remember a time when I thought this show was actually worth something. Earlier, Dawson was going into a bar. The bouncer guy stopped him and stamped his hand with an "Under 21" red stamp. Dawson, the enlightened one, put his hand up and told the bouncer, "You have no idea; this stamp completely encapsulates my life right now." Behind the bouncer, Pacey's sister stood smiling at Dawson, hoping to get in his pants none the less. Oh the stupidity that I once thought was interesting. Does the bouncer care???



As I watch, let me provide some more key phrases from the CREEK:



"Tell me we can laugh about sex now. That's the only rational thing to do." This is Pacey trying to make Joey feel ok about not having sex. JOEY!! It's OK! Why doesn't he just say that?



"You know you're going to have to let go of these machoisms" blah blah blah. That'd be Jen and Jack.



"Well it's never nice when adulthood encroaches on your life," says girl over 21.

"I wish I could appreciate this on some philosophical level, but right now I can't," says stressed out Dawson.



"The average pleasure a teenage girl gets from a teenage boy at a random keg hookup is negligible at best." That'd be Potter.



ok this is getting sad.



I have nothing to do today except go meet Rob for lunch and go for a run to try out the ipod armband I got. Oh the joy!

Swimming in the sea

Daisy has to go live in Landrum for a while. She's got to get her head straightened out, meaning she has to stop being her usual self and stop biting off all of the hair on her tail. I think she's going to end up with a lampshade around her neck. Hopefully, this works out.



Animal control stopped by our house the other day, which is ridiculous. Probably poor Daisy was inside howling b/c she was lonely, and the neighbors who have none of their own hobbies apparently, decided we'd left her there for who knows how long. So we don't know why the Cayce Animal Control ppl came, but they did. Maybe they saw the fish tank through the window, and we're breaking a Cayce fish tank size law, since Will's is the size of a small sea. Hmmm, that could be. I bet there's a fish tank size ordinance.



Rob has to take me to Starbucks. I'm just letting everyone know, and maybe making sure he remembers. You owe me big ROB! $4.00 big. Got it man!?





Obviously I'm grasping at nothing here. I'm in Woodruff. No one is hear anymore. I'm going to spend the next 2 days with an ipod and a stack of books. BLAH!



I'm out.

lappy slappy daisy

Yesterday Will rationalized with Daisy. He said, "if you can't be a good dog, you'll be an outside dog," with extra emphasis on outside. I came home yesterday, and Daisy was hunched down in the floor, refusing to make eye contact. This means she's done something stupid and I have to go on a scavenger hunt to find out what it was. So after last week, I'm expecting poo. But no, the pillows were all in the floor & so I guess she'd just been on the couch, which is indeed bad b/c then the couch smells like her flea collar. Does anyone else hate the smell of flea collar? It's like this chalky, stale pudding smell. (I have a problem with smells. They bother me. In the book I'm reading the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, the narrator, who is autistic, says he has a smelltrack, which is much like a soundtrack. that, to me, has a positive quality, but to me, smells are bad. LAST NIGHT, Will put some garlicy stuff in his fish tank. I thought, "Is someone making garlic toast??" But apparently these garlic drops kill parasites!? Dunno. But it smelled terrible, and I thought I would never be able to get over the fact that it smelled. I have a problem. I'm aware of it. That's the first step.) Back to Daisy...When I fall over onto the couch to continue being on vacation, I get extremely annoyed when flea collar smell accompanies me.



So, what if Daisy DOES become an outside dog? Those of you who have met Daisy will understand my worry b/c you know how she's slightly neurotic and extremely needy.



So her saga continues...

Reindeer Spotted in Cayce

I just cleaned the house. I'm high off of chemicals. I bought that Clorox Teflon crap, knowing it was a scam. It made the bathtub shiny, but this whole teflon concept is faulty I'm sure. I'll be watching, surely to be disappointed. There's currently no dog hair on the floor, and if any of the other animals even hint that Daisy has dropped some hair, I'm moving out. Every time I clean, I think to myself just how disgusting we are. I don't remember my mom ever cleaning as much as I feel like I do. Probably I wasn't paying attention. Perhaps I made less dirt as a child b/c I took up less space. Oh the woes of being a grown up.



In Cayce, the most current site of my home, there's an unspoken rule that you are supposed to have Christmas lights/decorations in the front yard. We don't, however. After a while, I find myself thinking maybe we should get some, but then after driving about and seeing some of the tacky decor, I'm whipped back into reality and feel better. Last night on the way home from Rockaways, home of a great Cola burger, I noticed a new array of lights on Frink Street. In front of a brick house there were plenty of candy canes aglow, which is a normalcy. I have named them the Cayce Candy Cane Soldiers b/c they really are all over the town like an army, hence the name. So, up near the road, these people have placed a Mary & Joseph. Mary's holding Jesus of course. There's no stable, no wise men, no shepherds, no donkeys or camels. Alas! I thought, this is no nativity scene! But then I noticed these two animal like figures beside the Mom and Pop, and realized that Prancer and maybe Blitzen had come to join the new parents in the Cayce Bethlehem. So yes, this nativity scene WAS complete with reindeer in place of the ordinary folks, and I was fooled. Perhaps they were doing the best they could. Perhaps Wal Mart or Walgreens had run out of the other nativity scene characters. It's OK, it's still Christmas, and in Cayce, as long as it lights up, it's perfect for the front yard.

oh happy friday

Finally! School is done done done for two weeks. I sent those little kids packin' today. Very nice feeling. I made it through a semester, 5 months, as a grownup.



Only one stupid thing happened today. After they had an exam this morning, there was like a 90 minute period where they had nothing to do. So...they sat in my room and hit each other with rubberbands, threw airplanes, straightened one another's hair, etc. I knew, the whole time, that at any moment, an administrator was going to come in and see the mayhem. And sure enough, one did. I just looked at him and said, "Hi!" as an airplane flew by. It was like a bad scene from a video in an education class. Ha! I asked if he needed anything and he said, "Nope. JUST looking." I said OK and looked away, now unable to make eye contact. Oops! Oh well. They had a good time. And I can only say "stop hitting one another with rubberbands" SOO many times until I don't care anymore. It was just one day, just one day. I'm still a good teacher I hope.





OHHH! and this kid, he's a big boy and has odorous breath, but I still like him, he's a good kid. Well he comes to school today and gives this girl a present of Twinkies and a toothbrush. She started to cry. So basically, for the whole day, his classmates were mad at him and he wrote this letter to apologize. To quote, it said, "I was so stupid to give you that prsesent and I'll give you a much better improve gift soon. I can't loose your friendship," blah blah blah. Yes, he wrote improve instead of improved and loose rather than lose. BUT I didn't take my purple pen to it, no no. It was heartfelt. He then proceeded to tell me, "I'm good at love notes, but not friendship notes." I almost fell out of my rolling chair and crawled under a desk imagining the grammatical errors in those!



None the less, it's done and I'm happy happy....ON TO VACATION!

favorite pants and chicken dance

I wore my favorite pants today. They're brown and I love them and I get to wear birkenstocks to school and the kids call those potato shoes or muffin shoes. I find that odd. so yes, in my favorite pants, I had a ridiculous day. See it's semester exam time, which is supposed to be REAL scary or something except most kids only have their earballs on like 17% of the time at school, so I think that the majority probably don't know that I'm going to be handing them an 85 question test tomorrow. Then I'll just walk away and giggle quietly to myself.



So I was trying with all my might to get all THREE tests finished by 6th period b/c I wanted to leave after school, and freaking Microsoft Word wanted to ruin my day. I was convinced that someone else was controlling it. You know how it always thinks you're making an outline when you use numbers or letters. Apparently, it's programmed to think that the only reason you'd do something rather than write paragraphs is if you are outlining. NO ONE OUTLINES! I don't even really teach that b/c well it's just stupid. Who wants to worry with what order the A. i. 1, 2, 3. a. b. c. comes in. No one, except Word. Seriously, at one point I shouted out curse words just 30 seconds before my service learner kid came rolling in to tell me his last day was Thurs. I like him, and on a normal day, I would have been highly sentimental and like discussed how great he'd been and all. But no, b/c of Word, I just said, "Oh, ok. Well will I see you tomorrow?" All the while, I pressed Delete, Delete, Delete. NO space bar space bar space bar until I thought about unplugging the whole thing and just scrapping the whole exam thing all together. I think that'd be fine. Finally though, I just quit and figured I'd play along tomorrow if there's formatting errors. I ate a Christmas tree debbie cake and called it a day!



Woopity! I'm going to sleep.

oh fair lady daisy

So today was an eventful day for the dog named Daisy. She's currently being held prisoner in the kitchen where her dirty, dirty day began.



Apparently at some time today, probably this morning based on the scent, Daisy felt sick. So, with no one home to beg from, she tried to open the back door herself. In effect, she ripped the remaining blinds in half. (a couple of months ago, she ripped them for some unknown reason. who knows, stranger at the door? misses us??) So the blinds don't have hands either and couldn't open the door, as Daisy's paws couldn't. So, she went to the refrigerator, next closest door, and pooped in the floor. Not ONCE, but TWICE. However, she was so sweet because she pulled the little rug, which was covering the unsightly hole in the linoleum, over the poop and proceeded to squash it. Yes, squash it. So that was lovely. I had to talk myself through cleaning that with a couple of breaks in the back yard. In the end, I determined I might have some trouble being a mother, but with a little internal convincing, I can make myself climb mountains and clean poop. yea.





THEN...hours later after a movie and old friends reunion at Dutch Square theater, I get home to continue working on the dumb semester exam, which I have to turn in to my department head tomorrow, just in case I guess. Of what, I don't know. Soooo...Daisy and I say "hi!" I've forgiven her at this point. She walks by a couple times we smile, then from the other side of the coffee table, I hear, "Hack hack, barf, gargle," and I think I even heard an "uh oh" in dog voice because "this time people are home and it's on top of the rug, not under, so how in the hell can it be hidden? uh oh." I opened the door for air, then decided to help by moving the table and actually cleaning up the leftover. I got lucky because Will hit the pile first. OH MY LUCKY DAY, so I just had a few little sputtery spots. No big deal.



I'm going to bed happy tonight. I climbed TWO mountains. MMhmmmm...Who's the winner this time?



Daisy will be sleeping in the kitchen and hopefully there will be no surprises over our morning coffee.

Is this real?

So the question here is, "Have I really fallen into this trap?"