The Long, Long Vacation

My sister-in-law’s suffering through a week-long camping trip in a pop-up camper (mosquitoes are probably harvesting her hemoglobin in their diabolical scheme to take over the world as I type), reminds me of the Lucy/Dezi film The Long, Long Trailer where newlyweds forgo a honeymoon in a hotel for what they believe will be a less expensive option: purchasing an oversized trailer and traveling across the country. It’s a funny movie.

My sister-in-law has red hair, like Lucille Ball. I can only hope that she is laughing as she recalls the film while her red hair is whipping wildly around her head as she dodges bears, bats, and blood-sucking insects (deer ticks, spiders, etc.) on her way to the overflowing port-a-potty at 3:00 am. (Again, why can’t I stop giggling when I think of her out there in the wilderness??)

Family skeletons have a tendency to come out of the closet during times of extreme stress because psychological filters fall away when humans are placed under duress. As my sister-in-law and her family travel into their own savage Heart of Darkness, I wonder what bones my nephews will uncover during this vacation. What family secrets will be revealed, perhaps, when the pop-up camper refuses to pop-up during torrential rains, or when Michelle realizes that Marty forgot to pack the matches and they have 20 pounds of raw hamburger approaching dangerous levels of Salmonella bacteria in a rapidly warming cooler?

I remember traveling to Alabama for my husband’s cousin’s wedding. My in-laws decided to drive from Chicago to Huntsville with their keeshond barking in the backseat the whole way. (Imagine this in your rearview mirror for 48 hours: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By6rI5Ps_60. By the way, “Little Blue” isn’t “smiling” as the title of the video suggests, lady….) They met us for lunch in Huntsville and when the server asked if Pepsi was okay instead of Coke, my mother-in-law suddenly turned to my father-in-law and blurted, “This never would have happened if you hadn’t smoked pot in high school.” See? Family secrets have a way of slipping out when things get dicey.

I am keeping my cell phone at my bedside and the car fully gassed in case I get a call from Michelle asking me to help her bury Marty.

It's Called Laughing WITH You, Michelle....

Subtitle: We need to pray for my sister-in-law.

My sister-in-law hates it when I remind her of her age. In deference to her, I will refer to Michelle as “The Sister-In-Law the 30’s Left Behind.” Michelle, like me, is a mother of two boys. When hubby is included, that’s a lot of testosterone with which she must deal. Also like me, Michelle has to put up with many, many male inspired interests. Since Michelle is, um, more advanced in years than I (insert hysterical laughter here), I am learning from her mistakes. I’ve watched as baseball, hockey, computer gadgets, cars, fireworks, videogames, etc. have all made their way through her household. From her experiences, I’ve learned what I should encourage and when I should voice some opposition.

However, I don’t need to wait for Michelle to report back her experiences on this one in order to make some educated guesses as to the outcome. Michelle is (drumroll) going camping. Michelle, who can identify wines by smell and/or taste, who works in the technology industry, who enjoys pedicures and scented lotions is going camping.
For a week.
In a pop-up trailer.
With her husband.
And two teenage males who will in all likelihood turn surly when their Ipod and cell phone batteries run out.

Try to control your giggling.

She started drinking last night in order to prepare. I told her to forget drinking; she should pack some barbiturates. (I’ve never smoked marijuana, but I’ve heard it is medicinal in certain situations. I bet this is one of them. ) And a shovel. A shovel can come in handy when fending off snakes or burying one’s husband, who thought up this whole pop-up trailer camping vacation, by moonlight. (By the way, check out the photo of the camper in my slide show, below.)

Anyone care to make some predictions?

(Dang! I just can't stop giggling! She is sooooooooooo screwed.... She seriously needs our good thoughts. --giggle! giggle! Why can't I stop laughing??)

Flipping Out Redux

If you think your boss is a little...high maintenance, watch this clip. Chris, one of Jeff's assistants, calls Jeff at the most recent house flipping site to tell him that Jeff's cat, Monkey, is missing. After searching the house and grounds twice, Chris leaves in order to make an appointment.

This clip should be used as a public service announcment. For what, I'm not sure. But for something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4cvzwpRB5s&NR=1

Outsourcing: It's Not Just For Call Centers Anymore...*

Okay, okay! Apparently I AM the only one who has ever had an embarrassing teenage moment. Nice. And I, alone in my humiliation, just shared the story with the world, ripping off the scab that had formed over the years and exposing my shame afresh. That’s not awkward…much. (Though I KNOW there is at least ONE person out there who has suffered a crippling purple nurple at the hands of her high school boyfriend, but I won’t reveal her name…KUJ.)

It’s also for husbands!**

Me: Honey, did you mow the lawn like you said you would?

Scott: I was going to, but I couldn’t get the kids to go down for their naps while you were at class.

Me: A-huh. I see. (sigh.) Unfortunately, it is my responsibility to inform you that you are being outsourced.

Scott: What?

Me: I’m sorry, but we are going to have to replace you. Look at it this way: You are overqualified for the job. We can’t afford your hourly wage. In short, I’m afraid we are going to have to go with someone else.

Scott: I don’t understand….

Me: Thank you for your interest in our lawn, but we are going to have to go a different way on this. I have a bottom line to look at here and, frankly, you just aren’t meeting your performance goals. Perhaps you’ll find some luck in the hedge trimming field? In any case, you are being outsourced for the duration of the season.

Scott: Huh. Hmmm. You are either being really, really good to me or incredibly mean. Which is it?

Me: (kiss) Happy anniversary, darling!

Scott: (nuzzle) Mmmmm-mmmmm.... I pick really, really nice…. (snuggle, snuggle)

Me: (giggle) Oooo-oooooh.... Thank you....

Scott: I know what we can do with the time I save NOT mowing the lawn.... (nuzzle, nuzzle)

Me: So do I! Those gutters aren’t going to clean themselves, and the garage needs to be cleaned. Chop chop!

Scott: (grumbling and walking away) I knew there was a catch….

Me: Love you, honey!


I have found more and more often that, though my significant other is well intentioned, he is too preoccupied to get most of his “I’m-going-to-get-to-that-this-weekend” list done. It’s not that he MEANS to make empty promises; he’s just busy with other things. Enter: Outsourcing.

Thank you, Tomasillo’s Lawn Care. The last guy just wasn’t working out.


*My mother works at a call center. If you are facing call center pressures, my heart goes out to you.

**And, honey, if you are thinking of outsourcing any of MY duties, go right ahead! Anything OUTSIDE THE BEDROOM is up for grabs. I am particularly adverse to laundry, so if there is a service that does that, GO FOR IT!!

Flipping Out

If you get a chance to watch this show on Bravo, do it. Something about this delightfully candid, homosexual, narcissistic, OCD home flipper fascinates me. I love his STYLE, but I shudder to think what it is like to live in his head. I mean, MY head can be a scary place, and I've only got the narcissism with which to contend. Dear Lord, if I were narcissistic AND OCD, I might start plucking my eyebrows...and never stop. How does the man keep his eyebrows?? Forget about that-- how does he obsessively MANSCAPE without going (gulp) overboard with a razor in the nether region?? AND he lives in LA, which is the MECCA of perpetual youth. The poor man must be Botoxed out of his gourd....

It's worth a look.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hQJ7fi8c8CU&feature=related

Offering. Basket.

The problem with friends from your adolescent years (And, KUJ, I’m talking to you.) is that they remind you of your moments of teenage folly. Being a high school teacher, I am frequently reminded of my own foibles because I see my students making the same ones I did. History does, indeed, repeat itself. Because I was such a dork/dufuss/nerd/geek/insert slur of your choice here, I am particularly empathetic to my students’ plights. Perhaps a student vomits in front of the whole class? Been there. Vomits ON THE TEACHER? Been there, too. On a LAB PARTNER? A-huh. (I had a very, very bad case of the flu my sophomore year and took out a lot of people on my way to the nurse.) Love sick to the point of complete lack of concentration? Yup. Been totally flummoxed by something the whole rest of the class understands? Right here. Been a bad friend? Got it. Been treated poorly by a friend? Yep. Loved and lost. Many times. Failed at something I really wanted? Over and over again. In short, I messed up and learned from those mess ups, as we all do.

Kuj’s comment to my last post was meant to remind me of a particularly embarrassing teenage faux pas. And it has. Here’s the story:

My family is Roman Catholic. (I suppose I am, too, but I’m not a very good one by any stretch, so don’t look here for advice on that topic.) Having been raised in the Catholic church, which is grounded in tradition, I kind of floated through religious ceremonies on autopilot. Ever got in your car at work, faded out, and came to as you pulled into your driveway? That was me at mass. I knew the routine and didn’t have to think about it. Until…

My friends were almost all Lutheran. Apparently, the Lutherans had cornered the market on Lake Park High School, and I was in the minority. Now, as far as I can tell, the Lutheran church is sort of, say, Catholic-lite. Diet Catholic, if you will. It’s really, really close to Catholicism. But it has just enough differences to TOTALLY THROW ME OFF MY GAME.

Kuj and I had a mutual friend named, say, AMElia. AMElia’s family invited me and KUJ to their church one Sunday. Now, AMElia’s family was nice. Needless to say, I didn’t want to embarrass them at their place of worship.

My Sicilian grandmother did not like the idea of me participating in any way in another religious sect. Perhaps she thought they would corrupt me? I don’t know, but I got flak from the grandparents about going to a Lutheran Church. You’d think I would be participating in animal sacrifices the way she carried on. She made me wear my cross, my Mary medal, and carry a rosary with me.

Swaddled in my Catholic armaments though I was, I didn’t want to stand out any more than necessary and embarrass AMElia’s family, so when they chose to sit in the SECOND PEW FROM THE FRONT (Who does this??) I determined that I would be honoring my own upbringing and AMElia’s family by making a good impression and being the perfect visitor. I decided blending in was the best course of action, so I asked Kuj, who is also Lutheran, to keep my religious affiliation on the DL (DL= “down low,” as in “don’t tell everyone I am Catholic and make people stare at AMElia’s family, or AMElia’s mother will likely set me on fire after the service.”).

Everything was going GREAT. Sure, the Lutherans kind of rocked it out with an electric guitar and amp while my Catholic church solemnly intoned our songs to an organ, but there were many similarities. I could ALMOST go autopilot. Until it came time to tithe.

AMElia’s church sent around an offering basket from the back of the church to the front; in contrast, my church had an offering basket on a long pole, keeping parishioners hands free, and started from front to back. AMElia’s church also took attendance, sending a clip board around; my church used the honor system, I guess. By the time the offering basket got to the second row, it was tres’ full-- and there was a sign-in sheet with a clipboard to go along with it. I was not used to handling either of these things, but I gamely took the sign-in sheet and pen. I was signing my name just as the offering basket was passed to me and…

…my grandmother’s rosary around my wrist caught the edge of the clipboard as I reached for the basket pulling my reach just a hair short of actually coming in contact with the overly full container. Thus, the tip of my finger clipped the edge of the offering basket, launching it skyward. For the briefest of moments, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies glistened in the shaft of sunlight entering through the windows on either side of the enormous crucifix mounted behind the pulpit. Emerald dollars, brightly colored checks, and assorted white envelopes hung suspended in the air above my head. AMElia’s eyes widened in horror. Kuj, always one to recognize an opportunity for humor, snorked.

Time returned all at once and assorted coinage crashed loudly on the stone floor as paper money rained down, ticker-tape fashion, on the worshippers in the surrounding pews. The electrical guitar hit a sour chord, all eyes turned my way, and a collective gasp echoed throughout the cavernous room. It was at this precise moment that Kuj stood, pointed at me, and announced—Salem witch-hunt fashion—“She’s CATHOLIC!” To which I, in my embarrassment, shouted, “Jesus Christ, Kuj, what the hell?? I told you to keep that quiet!”

You could have heard a pin drop in that church.

Thus, I embarrassed myself, my heritage, and my church by blasphemously using Christ’s name in vain in a place of worship. AMElia’s mother obviously didn’t burn me at the stake—not because she didn’t WANT to—but because she couldn’t catch me. I, I believe the expression is, “hauled ass” out of the church.

And that, my friend, is the meaning behind Kuj’s comment of “Offering. Basket.”

Feel free to share your embarrassing teen moments here. I mean, I can't be the ONLY one to vomit on classmates and faculty, and get excommunicated from a church to which I don't even belong. Can I?

Why Karma Should Dictate That My Old Dentist Develop A Latex Allergy

In answer to Cheryl’s post, I am taking TWO courses this summer: Instructional Media and Technology; and Introduction to Educational Research. I have just begun a master’s in Instructional Technology that will in all likelihood take about four years to complete. The result of my superhuman efforts to manage my children, husband, home, self, work, and class work is that I will be certified to work as a Technology, Research, Assessment, and Media Specialist in secondary education. (This is a fancy way of saying I will be qualified to be a librarian. I know, I know…you are sooooooooooo impressed.)

This admission means that I may as well just fess up and admit to my profession. (Though I suspect a fair number of you have already guessed.) I have sort of dodged this issue on numerous occasions because my job is one that invokes strong feelings from others. When people find out what I do for a living they have one of two reactions, and I don’t like either of them.

Okay, here goes: I am a high school teacher. That’s right, I teach the youth of America. I don’t know a thing about what to do with my own children, but I’m paid to educate hundreds of others on a yearly basis. For some strange reason teachers are not well thought of in America. Most other countries LOVE their teachers, but Americans put teachers in much the same category as the French. (By the way, I apologize to all of you French out there. My husband is a quarter French, so I know of your plight.) That is to say, Americans barely tolerate them. Sure, Americans love some of the things teachers/the French do, but after simple phonetics and rudimentary math are covered or the français frites are enjoyed, they question our worth. It’s sad, really, because I never walk around questioning the value of, say, financial advisors or office managers. I believe all professions are important in their own right. Perhaps most people assume that because they have BEEN TAUGHT and BEEN A STUDENT that teaching is a no-brainer involving very little skill? The jury is still out on that, but I can tell you that when people bug me to the point that I finally must reveal my chosen career, they often force me to:

1. Listen to long personal narratives about how twenty years ago XYZ teacher made a bad call and ruined his/her life forever (i.e.: The teacher didn’t believe the dog ate said person’s homework when everyone in town knew the dog was a ruthless paper-vore, dropped the speaker one letter grade in class for not putting his/her name on a paper, graded all of his/her work harder than everyone else’s work because the teacher “didn’t like me,”etc.). This narrative comes in many forms. Sometimes a teacher embarrassed said person at a pivotal time in his/her life and he/she has never been the same. Lots of people kvetch that Mr. or Mrs. X “didn’t give me an ‘A’ when I had an 89.96% in the class! I was only 5 points away!” (Dude, you didn’t earn it. Period. Other kids did. That’s life. Er, rather that is how numbers crunch. Let it go already.) There’s always the “that teacher picked on me” story in which the speaker was a hapless, completely innocent victim of some teacher’s rage on a daily basis. (Oh yeah? What were you doing to get the attention of said teacher? Constantly talking to a friend and distracting the rest of the class perhaps?) Don’t get me wrong, in any profession there are a few bad apples. But there are also two sides to every story. Yes, there are some teachers who don’t deserve the title of educator, but they are comparatively few. Ultimately, these drama queens who whine about their past teachers need to get over it already and start rebuilding their sad, mopey lives. They had a problem with one teacher out of many, many, many teachers. Ever had a bad boss? I have. It happens. Move on. Want an apology? Okay. On behalf of all teachers everywhere, my sincere condolences. My advice to these people: Stop wasting your energy on an isolated experience long, long ago and go make your life something fabulous.

2. Answer pop quiz questions or point out every little mistake I make related to my field of study. For some reason there are a surprising number of people who hear the title of “teacher” and it sets their competitive little mouse running around the competitive little wheel in their competitive little heads. They long to catch me up (or some other teacher) to prove they are smarter. I don’t know why this is. I often wonder whether astrophysicists are cornered at dinner parties and quizzed about the theory of general relativity’s impact on space-time or mocked because they distractedly messed up in balancing their check books. In any case, these competitive freaks are often the same people who find it perfectly acceptable to tell me that teachers make too much money and/or get too much time off…often shortly after they brag to me about the amazing financial haul they pulled in with their new stock options and fabulous yearly bonus. The really strange thing is that these people who think teachers are a.) dumb, b.) overpaid, and c.) have fabulous schedules are the same ones who shudder and protest when I suggest that they become teachers themselves, so they can revel in their perceived teacher glory.

True story. I once had a root canal done by a dentist who asked me what I did for a living and then spent the entire TWO HOURS of root reaming hell telling me about teachers he hated as a young person and how teachers are overpaid. What kind of sick bag of pathetic hubris produces behavior like that? I have news for you, buddy: those teachers who “wronged you” were doing the world a favor. Clearly, this guy is—and has always been—an uncouth boor. May you (and you know who you are!) develop a sudden allergy to your latex gloves and they burn you like fire. Like fire!

By now it may have crossed your mind that it is odd for a teacher to struggle with childrearing. After minutes upon minutes of soul searching, I have come up with an answer: I teach teens, not babies and children. Clearly, there is a huge difference. If an adolescent comes up to me with an issue involving curriculum, bullying, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts, friendship dilemmas, parental pressure, college/career concerns, family troubles, or predicaments with a significant other, I know exactly what to do. I am in my element. But when it comes to potty training, I have no relevant experience. Worse, none of the research I apply to my parenting problems seems to work. What the books say to do and what actually ends up happening are often miles apart.

Oooooooo-ooooooooh.... I see I have rambled. Forgive me. Um...how do I get off this soap box?

In short, Cheryl, I am studying to be a librarian. (A librarian with excellent shoe wear!)