I drove by an accident today on my way home from work. I couldn't watch close enough to see what happened, but my friend who was riding with me could observe more closely. They were directing traffic around and gawkers were slowing down trying to see. My friend only observed that it was a bicycle laying down near a car. A reporter was on the scene taking pictures from the frontage road. We'd hoped that they were merely overreacting, but to no avail. Kind of gives me the willies knowing that someone was laying there dead as I was rushing to get home from work. Kind of puts things in a new perspective, doesn't it?

I hope that you Mondays went well.

A

The Heart Break Kid

I think this year is going to be even more difficult than I thought. Working with a volatile special education crew, supervising people in ways I haven't before, and working with the Heart Break Kid, a poster child for everything dark and evil in the world. Devastating. Then there is the Master Manipulator. It was a full moon, but we won. At the end of the day, we won. Math was done, our HB worked out stuff with his teacher, sanity was maintained. Some humorous stories in the meantime. Although, in the world of special ed, we have a sense of humor like no other! Perhaps I'll tell some stories some day to test my theory . . . Not today, though, because my hands hurt too much from holding kids, door knobs (not the students) and having a student try to split and twist my fingers like a wish bone. My fingers are intact, said student was suspended. Like I said, we won!

Beat, and beat up.

Yours,
A

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!

Such was Cindi Lauper belting out of my radio speakers on the drive from church tonight.

Have you ever cut your hair, worn a new outfit, done just a little sumthin' out of the ordinary, only to have everybody you see throughout your day, down to the beggar on the street, comment on it?

The outfit I wore today had such affect. Perhaps it was the leather skirt and fishnet tights? I'm not sure . . . seriously, I usually dress up for work. Although I seem to have an abundance of black dress pants, I'm fairly consistently dressed. Up, dressed up! Today I wore a long denim skirt and a new shirt that I bought on sale this summer, a white "blouse" with a pink sort of pin-stripe with a black line on either side of the pink. A rounded collar and some slightly puffy short sleeves. Yeah, it took a while to work up to keeping it, much less wearing it. The tags came off as I was walking out the door to work! It really is pretty, and not as far-out as I feared it might be. I paired this with a pale pink sweater.

The reactions varied from, "It's swedder wedder" from my withered-blog friend Lizard Princess (although her blog seems to be dead, she is indeed alive and well!) to "you look nice" to "wow, you're wearing pink. You look very . . . teacher-ish" to "a whole lotta pink" (listen sister, I'm a big girl, any pink I wear is a whole lotta pink!). My favorite response was the near hysteria of one of my old roommates. As we were standing talking about buying a motorcycle with a brother at church, she couldn't keep up with the conversation. Finally, she says "I can't believe you're really standing here talking about buying a motorcycle and you're dressed all in pink!"

Ahh, the irony!



BTW- I've only seen 3 crickets since I learned that my coworkers had kids who have to have bug collections. They are now happily (well, for me) encased in gladware in the depths of my freezer! Hopefully they'll have died for a purpose, other than being in my apartment!

A

A collage.

Response: Jen, it was meant to be a collage, a collection of random things, all stuck on one page! I ran out of steam, though, before you could get the full effect!



Hmm. My brain hurts. It has been running as fast as my feet.

We interrupt this blog post for an important message! Did you know that Milky Way candy bar now has more caramel? Good choice Mars! Seriously- it's the bomb!

I was going to say more, but I gave my brain permission, in fact commanded it to shut down in preparation for bed. It's 10:45 and I do need to sleep! I can't think of anything else right now!

Hasta manana, or maybe next weeko.

Eh.

I'm too tired for this!

I just about had me a heart attack just now. I updated to the newer version of Firefox (my drug of choice, thanks) and I thought that it lost all my bookmarked links. That's all of you, y'all. A nightmare, really. Then I realized that they'd just hid them in a folder. Bad Firefox. Don't play with me that way.

We're officially back to school as of today. Unofficially I was back yesterday, but all staff returned today. The only time I sat down was to eat lunch(more of a working lunch) and during our long drawn out meetings. Painful, really. Tomorrow begins dealing with tough parents, and will be the 3rd day in our painful scheduling process. We've got 3 teachers and 6 para-educators to schedule over 3 different grade levels. It's an exhausting process. I think I'll turn in and get a good nights sleep. Well, right after I set up my coffee fix for morning . . . . a woman has to have priorities!

A

Seriously.

Seriously. I still have crickets.

Seriously. Summer is over, I have a scheduling meeting tomorrow and inservice and classroom time scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Seriously.

Seriously, I walked around the back of my apartment today and stopped to check out some of the items left by previous tenants. A nice table top gas grill? I think I'll open it up and see what shape it's in. And peering back at me are several pair of beady little eyes. After steeling myself up to knock over this newfound mouse condominium, I discovered that these prolific little buggers are, well . . . prolific. Seriously, more than a dozen? Seriously. And they all RAN. FOR. THE. BUILDING!!! Had you been out back of my building today, you'd have peed yourself laughing! One dove into the window well of the basement apartment, so I had to fish him out with a stick, well, at least chase him out. He later ran up the side of the stucco building, right up to the roof line, where he stopped and hung out for a while. Others ran for my weber grill that was laying on the ground and others ran for my potting soil and still others ran for my neighbors fake lawn indoor/outdoor carpet in the natural shade of grass green. I chased them all away from my immediate area anyway(read: I REALLY hope I chased them all away!).

Seriously. I have just added more certainty to my suspicion that I was shorted a weeks worth of pay from summer school. I'm in the odd position of being a recent employee, but not a current one for that district, so I can't access my pay stub online like I used to be able to do. I was also in the position of needing to fill out a time card for a position that I should have been punching the time clock for. I think one of the weeks got lost. Seriously? How cool would that extra added little bonus be now? It would have probably been cooler if I'd been able to use it to buy food this last month. SERIOUSLY!

Anyway, I'd seriously better go now. Seriously. I've got so much to cram into this last night of summer . . . see you again real soon! SERIOUSLY!

A

Three's Company . . .

Fall is almost here. I love Spring, blooming flowers, the much awaited green of new grass. Yep, my favorite! Fall is a close second, with the cooling nights, cooling days and turning leaves. Beautiful! Winter is not my friend. It's far too long for this Wisconsin girl. Disproportionately long compared to the other seasons, if you ask me. Summer? Hmm, summer vacation, boating, fishing, fans in the windows bringing in any hint of a cool breeze? Still not my favorite. Heat and me just don't get along too well. I tolerate it, and can even enjoy it, though, with certain accommodations. Accommodations such as: 1. Ice cream. Ice cream in the morning, ice cream in the evening, ice cream at supper time. Yummm! 2. An air conditioning unit available for days above 90 degrees or so. Some times I don't use it, just knowing it's available is comfort enough. 3. Swimming, fishing and pontooning. Out on the river has become my preferred location. 4. Extra showers. Yes ma'am, er, sir? I like to take a good shower in the morning and hose off again in the evening, right before bed. How ever can a person sleep when they are all sticky and hot and stinky? I sleep so much better when I'm clean.

The last point brings me to the subject of this post.

I arrived home from church and settled in to check my internet and watch me some Olympics. I grabbed the bucket of ice cream from the freezer, dished up and went to the sink to rinse my sticky fingers. I looked expectantly at the sink, finally seeing the too familiar jump in the sink when I started the water. I have crickets. Nope, not the sport, I don't play cricket for Pete's sake! And no, these are not pet crickets! It seems that my new apartment building is infested. Yes, infested. Like- if I set up a camera I might get a five generation picture! I hosed the beast until it drowned and maneuvered the carcass until it went down the drain. Have I mentioned that these are no ordinary crickets? Not the little noisy black ones(thankfully) but the big brown house crickets, or were they field crickets? Doesn't matter, except that they come inside and are very big. Big enough that you'd be best to take caution if you plan on squishing one of them.

Finally getting sleepy I went into the bathroom to take a quick shower. Pulling the shower curtain aside, I saw one little critter sitting on the cool porcelain. I reached over and turned on the hot water, grabbed the fly swatter that has taken permanent residence by my bathroom garbage and batted the little beast into the stream of hot water. Down the drain it went. With a sigh of relief, I turned the water to a reasonable temperature and climbed in. I'd begun to get wet when I noticed a familiar tangled shape of legs and antennae through the interior shower curtain. Ugh! I was fine with just one. But TWO? And when another cricket dropped down with the second bugger? With the running water, they were jumping for dear life! And let me tell you friends, when there are more of THEM in the shower than me? I picked up the nearest weapon I could find . . . my comb. For some reason this didn't seem to be effective. Now- lest you're all worried about this post going X rated, imagine me wearing my swimming suit, because don't we all bathe in our swimming suit? Oh, and imagine me tall, blond and skinny, okay?

Back to the point. When I realized that two of them were not going to be as easy to drown, I leaped out to grab my fly swatter friend! Standing outside of the shower (in my swimming suit of course) I batted each of the little critters, in turn, towards the scalding water now coming out of the spigot. Hey, perhaps I was playing a form of cricket? After several hits, one went swimming down the drain, followed by his little friend (or not so little?). I was free to continue my shower in peace. Alone. Boy, events like this make me glad that I live alone! How do you explain jumping around and squealing in the bathroom in the middle of the night to a roommate or spouse?

Anyone have any tips to get rid of these little beasts? I really do prefer to shower alone!

Sleep well my friends! Hey, what do you all do to survive the heat and critters?

A