Sunday, October 31, 2010

I Used To Have Two Rosebushes

Goats really like rosebushes. Really.

They find the roses quite tasty.

Red, pink, yellow...the flavor doesn't matter to the goat.

Goats really like rosebushes. REALLY.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

A Camera In The Hand Is Worth A Bird In The Car

I did not post anything last night because I was not having a good day. I am sure Mabel is incensed that I had a whole day off from school, and still could not manage to write something on her own personal blog. Mabel will have to get over it.

Friday dawned dark and early, when Farmer H made sure I was awake when he left for work at 6:00. No need for me to catch any extra ZZZZs just because I had a day off work. No siree, Bob!

The Pony and I set out to collect the #1 son from his grandma's house, where he had spent the night after watching hockey. Darn that Dish Network and their withholding of Fox Sports Midwest, home of the Blues. At least it has been restored since yesterday. Once in town, I traded The Pony for #1.

#1 son and I stopped by the bank to reset the PIN on his bank card. That was a comedy of errors, necessitating three trips around the building to shove that slacker card into the ATM and be told that the transaction could not be processed. I'm glad we walked instead of driving, though I felt bad that cars had to wait in line for us pedestrians. The problem was that the card was not yet activated, which I couldn't do because I didn't have a PIN, which couldn't be reset until the card was activated. I'm buying it a watch fob for Christmas, and hoping for some hair combs.

From the bank, we T-Hoed over to another town to pay the Mansion payment, and to a Devil's Playground to pick up the new camera that #1 has been saving for. Of course The Devil was fresh out of expensive cameras. We did, however, snag a phone for The Pony. The lady who sold it to us was a complete nincompoop, but acknowledged such in her tirade against The Devil. I felt her pain. She whined to her co-worker, a young man much more electronic-savvy than she, "People don't know what it's like to look like an idiot." Au contraire. I told her, "Um, I pretty much do it every day. In fact, it's kind of expected of me."

After calling around to many different Devils, #1 realized that his camera dream had been squashed. The Devil keeps one on the display shelf, but does not stock it, apparently. It's some kind of Canon Rebel T2i fancy schmancy doohickey. The only place he found one was at Creve Coeur Camera, and Mrs. Hillbilly Mom was not driving to the city on her day off.

Sonic made me wait in line for 10 minutes for my free Route 44 Diet Coke with Lime. You'd think they would have waived that free receipt and given me one on the house for my trouble. But no. They must have been taking lessons from The Devil. My very special waitress was not there, or she would have set things right. The dudes are clueless. They'll never get a tip from me.

This day followed a bad evening after conferences Thursday night, when 7-11 held me hostage for about 20 minutes. I waited in line for gas, for two cars to move away from the pumps. The drivers had come out of the store and were sitting in the cars. One finally left, so I wove my way like a blindfolded psychic through the tight confines of the parking lot, narrowly escaping a ramming from a big red Dodge pickup who thought he could back up at will with no consideration for wending blindfolded psychics. That pump-blocker sat in his car and watched me cut in and maneuver my T-Hoe toward his front bumper and the pumps. That mystery was solved when I went in to pay, and got stuck in line behind his woman, who was jawing about lottery tickets.

At the next stoplight, waiting to make a left, a guy in front of me sat through 30 of the 60 seconds of our arrow. I honked to steer his attention from texting to turning, and he went all hillbilly passive-aggressive on me, flipping me the bird and then inching through that intersection at the speed of salt-sizzling slug. Some people! I was doing him a favor, actually, by honking instead of jumping out of T-Hoe to beat the living snot out of him.

Which brings us back to Friday, and the rest of the afternoon, in which #1 pouted like a baby robbed of candy, because he wasn't getting the camera he had already counted before it hatched. His cousin who drives him to the city sometimes was in Cape Girardeau for the day, and I decreed that he was NOT going to ask his grandma to take him.

Even Steven smiled on the boy, though. Farmer H was finagled into taking him, upon arriving home from the near-city where he works. I don't even demand a Stevening for myself. It makes me happy when my kids are happy.

But not enough to drive one to the city.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

A Scathingly Brilliant Idea

After two evenings of Parent Conferences this week, I am feeling a bit sore. Because a genius in the maintenance department went around last year installing light switches that turn themselves off after 10 minutes of no motion, I must move constantly about my classroom. Like shark must keep swimming or die. Except it's not so easy to actually kill Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. Though she can be made mighty uncomfortable by newfangled technology.

My desk, you see, had to be moved this year. I now sit in the back corner of the room, enclosed in an open fortress. That's where all the wires that bring life to my laptop, wifi, projector, printer, dvd, vcr, sound box thingy, and telephone drop down from the ceiling. Not in a tasteful, conduit kind of way. I mean they drop down through a hole in the ceiling tile, like vines in the rain forest, and dangle over the table which holds my electronic accoutrements. On the table, they entwine themselves into knots and filigree, coiled and ready to strike. It's a big freakin' eyesore. But that's not what I'm here to complain about tonight.

My classroom light goes off while I work at my desk. It is a distraction, and a hindrance, in the evening hours, when the sun begins to set. Just when I'm whizzing along in the grading of papers, or entering columns of scores from my old red gradebook, the light goes off. I've tried waving my arms. I've tried standing up. My classroom lights do not respond. They, like the rest of the world, ignore me. I must transform myself into a squeakier wheel. If I take two threatening steps away from my desk, toward the front of the room, the lights come on. Sounds simple, you say? "Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, why don't you just stand up and feint toward the light every ten minutes? That would solve your problem." Yes. But it would create another problem with my creaky arthritic old-lady knees. All that hopping up and down like a rousing cake-walk game of musical chairs would cripple Mrs. Hillbilly Mom.

In the two evenings of conferences, I discovered a new solution. Short of tracking down that dim light dim bulb and beating the pulp out of him, I devised a system to turn on the light AND keep me out of the crossbars Hilton.

If I lean way over in my rolly chair, and hold a sheaf of paper dug out of the printer in my right hand, and wave it in a wide, circular motion--the light comes on. Yep. All it takes is a bit of contortion from Mrs. HM. I feel like Martin Short and Harry Shearer doing their synchronized swimming routine on the old SNL during the years when it was painfully unfunny. I'm like a spritely Asian tween cavorting to please the international judging panel in the gold medal round of rhythmic gymnastics, tumbling and twirling a ribbon on a stick. If this teaching career thing doesn't pan out, I might make it as a signal flag dude on a top gun aircraft carrier.

Why does teaching have to be so hard?

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

On The Outside Of The Loop, Looking In

Fresh from her four-hour live show at Newmentia's Parent Conference last evening, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is now ready to be interviewed by the local press:

LP: Did you have a large audience?

HM: They were normal size. Nobody needed to take a chainsaw to the side of their mobile home to facilitate their trip to my show. There were only five of them, though. With seven students to discuss.

LP: Enough of the business jargon. Let's get to the meat and potatoes of this interview. How was the evening meal?

HM: Let me expound on this subject at length. I am not a fan of the House of Greasy Beijing Great China Wall. I asked Mabel to recommend an entree. I know that Mabel would never steer me wrong. I appreciate all she does for me. I appreciate her invitation to join her and her new best friends for an evening of fine dining in the Newmentia cafeteria. But it is here that our tastes diverge.

What Mabel may not realize is that at least four people poked their paws into our Shrimp and Broccoli with Straw Mushrooms. It was an unfulfilled feeding frenzy in the teacher workroom. "Where is mine, where is mine?" The faculty milled around that table like a multibodied dog chasing its tail. "I don't know my number. What is my number?" Never mind that only TWO meals had a number, number 36, the meals of Mabel and Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. Which made me want to say, "If you didn't order by a number, then your food will not have a number on its carton!!!" PennyP herself opened our cartons twice. Like the food in them might have changed between times. Or not realizing that some type of sauced breaded chicken pieces looks nothing like shrimp, broccoli, and mushrooms. No matter how many times you peep at it. I finally had to hiss sharply at PennyP, "Would you please stop fingering Mabel's and my food?"

Upon entering the cafeteria, to which I had been invited by special Mabel invitation, I saw that only one table was occupied. NotACook and Headshrink sat on opposite sides. Two spaces were taken by a drink and a food carton. Recognizing Mabel's beverage, I chose a seat across from it, next to NotACook. We go way back.

Because the food had soaked in grease spilled from the food, I went back to my room for some paper towels. I returned to find PennyP had shoved my stuff over and pulled in a chair. When I went to sit down, PennyP and NotACook humped their chairs away from me like I was going to leprosize them, or maybe chomp off one of their pinky fingers in a spate of unchecked gluttony.

Dinner conversation turned to ridiculing people who attended college classes with some of us. Just because they might have no teeth, or speak hillbilly grammar, does not mean that they are unemployable. According to my aunt, one of the guests at our very table is a witch who dresses out of the ragbag and talks like an illiterate. So it seemed a bit mean-spirited to make fun of people who were at least enrolled and attending college. It's not like they were slurping off the teat of humanity, laying around the shanty and getting a good buzz on. The next topic was students who stink, another round of mean-spirited bad-mouthing, in my opinion. Times are tough. Maybe there's not enough money for deodorant or soap, after the parents dole out that dollar for soda to go with the free lunch every day. The custodian says he has kids asking him for toilet paper to take home, and he has to tell them that it's not worth losing his job.

It's a wonder I even heard the conversation. On my right was NotACook, who was also NotAChineseEater. She had, as memory serves me, two burritos and two orders of cinnamon twists, after persuading someone to run to the border for her. I like her. I really do. But she was chowing down like a stallion chewing the wood off his stall door. Like a hippopotamus pulverizing styrofoam pancakes. On the other side, I had PennyP bemoaning how she ate too much (after two bites), and opening and closing that carton to nibble again and again until it was all gone.

I tried several times to contribute to some less offensive topics. Apparently, I do not fit in. Each time I spoke, there was the sound of crickets not even chirping. Silence. They stared at me like I was a toothless hillbilly in a teacher education class. Apparently, I am out of the loop. Farther out than Inman, on his Civil War odyssey, taking one step forward and two steps back on his way to Cold Mountain and Ada Monroe. I am not used to such abuse. My lunch buddies welcome me. Or at least tolerate me. Mr. S even listens to me, when he's not busy talking. I would have been better off sitting at the newly-populated man's table. I may or may not have let one single Indian garbage tear slide down my cheek on the way home.

LP: Well, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, it's a shame you can't tell us how you really feel.

HM: Yes. I'm the kind to keep this sort of stuff bottled up inside me until I explode.

LP: Too bad you can't start a blog to let the crazy out.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

In Absentia

I am not here. Not here, I tell you! Stop talking to your monitor like I can hear you. I am at Parent Conference Night. Not for my own children. They are parentless on conference nights. Teachers are not allowed to be parents. We work selflessly for the future of our nation. Just not for our own futures.

Oh, we are allowed a few minutes to dash off to other buildings to make the appearance of conferencing. But we don't actually get to conference. The teachers slap you on the back in the good ol' boy way and joke about how it's a shame that your kid can only get A s and whatnot. Then they give you the bum's rush because HELLO they were in the middle of a game of trivia or listening to music or making fun of someone playing the dulcimer and singing America the Beautiful or eating supper that was delivered at 3:30. So you have to go on back to your own building and do the same.

Parents only show up when the food arrives. It doesn't matter if you sit down at 3:30 in an effort to miss the 5:00 after-work rush. They have a nose for food, and they follow that wafting aroma right up the road and into the building and to your table and say, "Oh. I didn't mean to interrupt your supper." Like they hadn't planned that all along.

Then there will be a long dry spell just like the long dry spell between the parents who show up before school is even over and the supper sniffers. The last-minute rush will begin around 6:45, because parents know that we can leave at 7:00 IF all the parents are out of the building. It's a passive-aggressive-fest.

But I DO enjoy my job. I have a built-in audience for my stand-up routine. The favorite gag so far this year has been grand theft calculator. Closely followed by, "You may be rule breakers, but you're not ruler breakers."

The school year is almost over, you know. 25% down, 75% to go. And it's getting closer to snow day season, by cracky!

Monday, October 25, 2010

Somebody Is Cranky After Walking All The Way To The Back Of The Store To Buy The Pony A Sprint Phone That Is No Longer Carried By The Merchant

I grow more annoyed with The Devil each day. Is it too much to ask that you can push a cart down the aisle without having to back up an entire department if somebody else comes your way? What's with putting displays down the middle of the aisles? If two carts can't pass, it impedes progress.

Shopping at The Devil's Playground is an exercise in futility. The Devil has a crappy selection of crap made by toddlers in third world nations that cost 50% more than they did last year. The crap, not the toddlers. I haven't priced toddlers lately.

Driving a cart that may or may not serve as your walker from one end of the Playground to the other is like working one of those number tile puzzles that my mom used to keep in her purse to shut me up at junior college basketball games. That and Teaberry gum. Only without the gum. And more dangerous. Kind of like the Death Road Truckers show that replaced the ice road after it thawed.

Whoever is CEO of The Devil's Playground, since the old man kicked off 18 years ago, needs to hie himself to the Undercover Boss show and see what he hath wrought.

If The Devil hadn't already put everyone else out of business, I would shop elsewhere. But not at the Sprint Store, which is 30 miles away and has obnoxious salesmen and very long waits and lackadaisical stocking practices.

Sunday, October 24, 2010