Mamacita's Mamacita Has A Birthday
Happy Birthday, Mom.
You’re the best mother in the world, and any one of the four of us would fight anybody who said otherwise.
We love you, Mom. We’ll be at your house in about an hour to take you out to Sunday birthday lunch.
Now, please put the gun down.
It's Just A Piece of Paper
I’m sitting here watching my students take their final exam, and they all look so scared and serious. . . I want to hug them all and scream, “It’s just a piece of paper! It doesn’t define you!” but I guess that would hardly be PC. Not that I care about PC; I just don’t want to get sued.
The class next door is having a very loud party. I wish I’d thought of that That’s actually against the rules, so next semester, maybe I’ll just take my students across the parking lot to Pizza Hut instead of being really, really loud in a room with thin walls during the official college finals week celebrating in the regional campus building itself where we might get caught we might disturb someone.
Oh, students dear, don’t take it so deadly seriously; it’s just a test. You’re all lovely people no matter what a percentage on a piece of paper might end up being.
Dear people: it’s just a piece of paper. It doesn’t measure worth. It doesn’t measure attitude. It doesn’t measure talent, or propensity for lending a helping hand to people in need. It doesn’t measure your capacity for love and devotion and caring. It doesn’t measure personality traits, or good manners. It doesn’t even measure work ethic, although application of such might help relieve some of the stress of the moment.
I want you all to do well on this test, but even if you don’t, you’re the best class I’ve ever had, collectively, and some of the finest people I’ve ever met, individually.
Relax. Calm yourselves. Take a break and run down the hall and get a Sprite. It’s going to be all right. Really. You’ve all been out of school for a very long time and your nervousness is natural. Just try to tone it down; this test really isn’t worth the strain you’re putting on yourselves. Chill, my darling students.
It’s just a piece of paper.
Ice Cube Tray: Half Full or Half Empty?
Honestly, in this hot weather, with the central air turned off because we can’t afford it, and the ceiling fans raising a little bit of muggy breeze, much like Rick’s Café Américain in August, is it too much to ask that when I reach into the freezer for a tray of ice cubes, that it be full of ice cubes, and not half-full, or even completely empty? I’m not a violent person, but an empty ice cube tray when it’s a hundred degrees outside and 99 degrees in this house, really makes me angry.
We do have an ice maker in the freezer but it hasn’t worked since that fateful morning a few years ago when we awoke to ankle-deep water in the kitchen and Niagara Falls in the family room below. The plastic water pipe had burst in the night, and we’ve never had it repaired. At first, we could never remember its existence until we wanted some ice, and then we couldn’t afford that, either.
Hence the three Rubbermaid ice trays which I empty and refill at least twice daily, and which I grumpily and very bitchily DEMAND be full every single time I want ice.
Last night, I wanted ice and the tray was half full/half empty (pick one; I don’t want to offend either optimist or pessimist; you all know how thoroughly PC I always boast of being) (Yeah, right; like I care about being PC. . . .) (Bite me.) (Sorry, being iceless makes me mean.)
So my question is, who did it? I want names. WHO DID IT?
I want the names of the guilty! I want them NOW!
Oh, wait. I think it was me. The phone rang as I was getting some ice last night and, um, I got busy and, um. . . . oh poop.
Never mind.
