I Might Have A Few Lawn Issues
Mood over.
I feel a lot better today. I think it’s because I went out late last night and cut down the tall weeds that were choking the house.
We’ve had so little rain that the newly-trimmed areas are already crunchy and brown but it’s still better than before. When the grass gets tall, I become disoriented and embarrassed, and I picture a city block wherein every lawn is maintained except one, right smack in the middle, with grass a foot high and assorted lawn gnomes barely visible and old men in wifebeaters a-settin’ on the porch with cans of beer in their hands, an ol’ hound dawg under the porch peekin’ out, and a couple of rusty pickup trucks up on concrete blocks, all greeting the neighborhood spokesman who is navigating to the door with a petition signed by everyone in the known universe, begging these people to mow their lawn. I guess it’s safe to say that I have lawn issues.
We’re driving up to the Pizzaria in a couple of hours, too. How could anybody be in a mood with that prospect before her?
I’ve cut my grass but I’m not going to water it. We’re in the midst of a very extreme water shortage here, and UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE, I am not going to waste water on grass when people need it to drink and to shower. I’ve never understood people who insist on watering their lawns in the middle of a shortage. I want my grass short and trimmed but I refuse to deprive someone of a drink or a shower just so I can have my grass green. How selfish.
Pizzaria. Mmmm, don’t you wish you were coming with us? So do I.
Anti-piracy warning. Johnny Depp. Heh.
I'm Bad
I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately, but I can’t seem to stop baiting the teachers on the educational forum I like to hang out on sometimes. Devil’s advocate is always fun, but on this forum? It’s almost too easy. They’re mostly very young, and most of them teach lower elementary, and I can’t stop toying with them. They take everything so incredibly seriously and so far I haven’t found very many with a funny bone. And I honestly do believe that too many parents are giving their kids stupid names with too many apostrophes and too many capital letters and too many ignorant spellings. So there.
Do you really love your baby? Back off with the apostrophes, limit the capital letters, and spell the damn name correctly! Unless you WANT your kid to be flipping burgers at Wendy’s when he/she’s forty years old, and living in your basement. Sheesh.
I also think that if you name your innocent child “Nascar Bill” or “Hewlitt-Packard” anything remotely resembling “Britney” or “Paris,” or you spell it “creatively,” (Trenadeigh, Jenafer, Jerame, Shan’Iqua’Del’Ima’Victim’O’Momconceit, or Meyqualle) you should roll up a newspaper and whack yourself over and over and over and over, until your eyes start whirling like a startled cartoon character and you fall on your knees and beg forgiveness of random strangers on the street, because you’ve done a bad, bad thing to a little baby who only wanted you to love him/her and what did you do instead? You marked him/her for life and condemned him/her to 12 years of everybody in his/her world mispronouncing his/her name. Shame.
One more thing: I was watching a DVD tonight and the previews were for “Pirates of the Caribbean.” The very second they were over, the screen lit up with the official “Anti-piracy policy” of the movie company.
I found it very funny.
Why, yes, I might be in a mood tonight. Why do you ask?
Call Me Ishmael. I Wasn't Pregnant. Tiny Appendages.
The new post over on my blogfriend Sparky’s * blog reminds me of something that happened on the very first day of my very first teaching job, ever.
I was 21 years old, so it’s been a while back.
Fresh out of college, and still believing all the malarky that was in my textbooks, I entered the high school feeling like a grown-up. This lasted until all my old teachers started greeting me, and, oh my gosh, asking me to call them by their first names now that we were colleagues.
“Call me Helen.” “Call me Valera.” “You can call me Byron now.” “Please, call me Pat.”
I couldn’t. The level of fear respect was still so high that to call these people anything that didn’t include a title was beyond my comprehension.
Also, whenever a student called ME by a title, I got the giggles. I hadn’t yet made the big crossover, you know, to the OTHER SIDE OF THE DESK. That took several years. I mean, the first time I chaperoned a dance, students asked me to dance and I DID. Mistake. But I digress.
Still on that first day of official adulthood, I was trying to navigate the huge new building my old high school was now using. Schedules be damned, the brand new building still wasn’t quite ready to be populated, but that never deters school corporations from opening right up anyway; after all, it’s just kids, not voters PEOPLE.
In other words, the stairs had no banisters and the restrooms were not labeled yet.
I could deal with the banisters, but the restrooms were important; when I have to really, really “go,” I look pregnant. By mid-afternoon, any stranger would have taken me for eight-and-a-half-months, so I decided to take my chances and run for the nearest one before someone called an ambulance and rushed me to obstetrics.
I peeked inside the unlabeled room and the coast was clear. I went into a stall and did my bidness. When I emerged, ten pounds lighter and with a flat stomach (which I really miss. . . .) I noticed for the first time that one wall was covered with urinals. Standing at two of the urinals were two of my former teachers. Two of my former male teachers.
I was in the wrong restroom.
“You might as WELL call us by our first names, now, Janie,” said one of them.
I ran away and sucked my thumb in the corner for a while, and then I emerged, all grown up and unafraid.
Here’s why, and I’ve never confessed this to a living soul until now.
Anyone with a penis that little was not to be feared.
*I call her Sparky because, wherever she goes, she sets something on fire. I find this endearing, but after she visits my house, which I sincerely hope is soon, I might not. Fortunately Unfortunately, almost everything with moving parts that resides in my house is broken right now, and awaiting the arrival of trained personnel with large tool boxes ** so there really isn’t much she could do in the way of arson unless she comes armed with a pack of matches.
** Is this a euphemism? I don’t know yet. I’ll keep you posted.
