Embarrassing Things I Have Somehow Survived
My college lecture classes were almost always in a room made of concrete steps, with a curved row of nailed-to-the-ground seats on each step. As one walked to the back of the room, one went up steps. Many steps. I liked to sit in the back, because I have this thing where I don’t like to think of people sitting behind me looking at the mess that the back of my hair always is, and on the aisle, in case the building caught fire or my boyfriend beckoned to me from the hall, or a huge radioactive mutated Japanese monster was seen coming this way and we needed to exit quickly. (What, you don’t have those nightmares?)
One day, I reached into my backpack to get a pen and a tampon fell out and rolled all the way down all those steps and came to rest against the podium behind which the professor was standing. He stopped lecturing, came out from behind the podium, and picked it up.
“Did someone lose this?” He asked the 500 students in the hall, 499 of whom were dying laughing. “I’ll put it right here on the table and you can pick it up after the lecture.”
And because I had another long lecture immediately after this one, and because it was the only tampon I had with me, and because I didn’t have any money for the firecracker machine in the restroom, I walked up to the table after class and claimed it.
I tried to sit in a different spot in class after that, but my fear of Godzilla, fire, the back of my hair, and missing the boyfriend’s beckon won out. For the rest of my life, however, I have always had a quarter in my pocket, just in case gravity decided to put a hate on me again.
Not One Of My Better Ideas, Pt. 1
Run -on Sentences and Admissions of Laziness
The latest Carnival of Education is up, over at Learn Me Good. Get over there now so you can keep up on what’s going on in your children’s schools, and in the heads of their teachers.
I bought a bag of organic lemons and a bag of regular lemons last night, to see if there really was any difference. There was: $1.25.
That’s enough of a difference to make me buy regular lemons.
I looked at the organic oranges but holy cow, they were so nasty on the outside, I wouldn’t have been able to get past it no matter what the inside looked like. As for the organic bananas, well, I’m not even going there because the memory might make me puke. Seriously. Throw some spray on those babies so they won’t look like open sores.
I recycle pop cans – as many as we go through in a given week, that’s some real money! – and I ask for paper sacks at the grocery store – we use them over and over; they’ve got handles are are really nice and heavy! – I use Repell-em trash bags because they’re 100% biodegradable and keep all the animals and bugs away and are simply wonderful in every possible way, and I pack my husband’s lunch in old K-mart bags, but I guess, if I had to put a checkmark in a box, or not, about it, I’m not exactly a treehugging greenie.
I don’t mind ingesting a few chemicals if it means my corn doesn’t have those creepy little white worms wiggling around in the ends of the ear.
I bake my own bread and cook almost everything from scratch, but I’m not Ma Ingalls, either, although I did once try to make her green pumpkin pie which is supposed to taste like apple pie but mine sure didn’t. I love to make jams and I can make my own witches’ yeast (no comments, please; it’s just another name for sourdough starter) and if ever a television network decided to produce a REAL survivor show, where they just dumped people in the forest to see how long they would really survive, ie do they know how to make a fire, cook over it, create a shelter, etc, everybody would want me on their side because I used to work at Camp Towaki in the summers and I know how to do all that stuff. Quite well, too. My tree-climbing skills have deteriorated along with my thighs, however, so if there is any “gathering” to be done, one of you would have to do it. I can point out which trees have something worth gathering, though. And I know what kind of wood burns beautifully, even when green.
Camp Towaki was cool.
Since the cats love all things “bread,” we have to hide the bread, buns, pies, etc, in the microwave or the oven or the breadbox, because if we forget, we wake up to a terrible mess in the kitchen. These three cats can sniff out bread from a mile away.
What kind of cat obsesses over bread? They don’t get this excited over pot roast!
Keeping all the bread-ish food hidden can backfire on you, though. A few days ago, I made a sugarless cherry pie for Hub and hid it in the oven. He had two pieces of it, and then we forgot all about it until today, by which time it didn’t look quite as good any more, so I threw it out.
The cats sensed it in the trash and went berserk.
However, once I closed up the bag and set it outside, they were not able to smell anything or see the bag at all because of its coloring. I’m telling y’all, those Repell-em trash bags are absolutely awesome!
It was funny, too, to see the three cats going nuts over the contents of the bag, but walking right past it as if it wasn’t even there once I closed it and tied it off.
I made a chocolate cake tonight. It will have to be kept in the oven, too. I hope we remember its existence before it goes bad and throws the cats into another fit.
