What you do with freedom

The evil zombie job is over. On Friday I had to train the sub who will be taking over that little corner of hell. More power to her! The word now is that the real teacher won't be back until after Thanksgiving. I wrote the new sub two days of plans and gave her a crash course in SmartBoard use. She confessed to me at the end of the day that she's fine with the curriculum, but she's never dealt with the behavior issues that this room presents. Yeah, well, welcome to the jungle.


This job has not left me unmarred. My skin is a wreck and I need to re-do my hair color ASAP to cover the gray. I'm not joking here. Two weeks should not do this much damage to a person. At least last night I didn't dream about it. The road to healing widens!


This weekend The Girl ran her 5K in 26:25. W00t! That same afternoon The Boy and I attempted to sell Boy Scout popcorn outside of Home Depot. It was a bust but we has a big goofy time together trying to get people to just look at us. Later that same night (after a long nap), The Girl went to Homecoming with some of her girlfriends.
While The Girl was at the dance The Man, Boy and I went to see Zombieland. (Fitting, no?) It was just what I needed. A movie that's funny and gross at the same time.


Yesterday the kids and I went with friends to a corn maze. I enjoyed the maze. The kids enjoyed pelting each other (and me) with corn.
As you move through the maze you find stations that give you clues to the final secret word which earns you a prize. We only cheated at the very end of the maze because we were too tired to go back and find the last clue to solve the puzzle. After two hours of wandering, I just wanted my prize and go home!


I didn't go to work today and I'm not going tomorrow. We'll see how I feel about everything by Wednesday. But I'm not holding my breath.

Sick Saturday

Those creepy zombies got me sick!

All week I've been dealing with an little annoying cough. No big thing, just annoying. But Friday night it turned into something much uglier.

By Saturday morning my head felt like it was a stuffed with cotton and there was a brick on my chest. I was running a little fever as well. But I had to get up to get The Girl on her bus for her cross country meet. After I saw her off, I went back home to wake The Boy so we could go to the meet. He woke up as sick as me. It was going to be a good day.

So the two of us headed 0ff down the back roads of Ohio maneuvering around Amish buggies sneezing, sniffling and coughing all the way. At the meet it was cold and raining. We huddled under our umbrellas, shivering as we cheered The Girl on.

She ran well. Despite the weather she came in with a time of 26:36. That's her second best time of the season and not too shabby to boot. Last year she had her best time during a meet that was driving rain in bitter cold, so that must be what works for her.

The race wore her out and she slept all the way home. Then the three of us took a nap later in the afternoon. I was supposed to go out to lunch with old friends. I was supposed to go on a movie date with The Man. None of that was going to happen. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt myself starting to fall asleep. In between naps we watched mindless television and passed the tissue box back and forth. The Man, who was the only fully functioning human in the house, went out and rented movies and brought home Subway. He was the hero of the day.

Back to my zombies tomorrow. I'm taking hand sanitizer.

Too much too soon

Usually this time of year my zombie sitting duties are few and far between. I start getting busy around mid October. So on Monday when I got called into the favorite school for a three day gig I jumped at it. But right away things started going wrong.


First there were no plans. The teachers in the next room were tossing ideas back and forth on how to fill the day. It was all sounding stinko. I was saved from all of that when another teacher brought my teacher's plan book all filled out. Seems that they are neighbors and she sent it in. Crisis one averted.


Now here comes the principal. He wants to know how long I've been called in for. When I say it's three days he tells me it's probably going to be more like three weeks. My teacher has done something serious to her back and she won't be returning any time soon. Crisis two identified- Job with no foreseeable end.


Hmmm. That's a lot of work for early fall. But it should be okay.


Now the other teachers come in to check on me and that's when they drop the bomb. It seems I have just inherited the roughest group of kids that this school has seen....ever. They say things like "You know those sixth graders from two years ago? These guys are worse."


Hmmmmmmm. More stinko. Tres stinko.


In my head though I thought, Pah. What do these teachers know sitting in their ivory tower? I've seen rough. Bring it on.


Yeah.


These kids are rough. If you didn't have the view out of the window, you could easily forget which school you were working in kind of rough. It's such a shame. There's only a hand full of them but they have pretty much destroyed the education process for everyone in the room. The rest of them are all a bunch of sweetie-pies too. I've known most of them since kindergarten and they are great zombies. But I can hardly see them. And favorite school has a shocking lack of policy when it comes to discipline. They are just not prepared for this kind of behavior.


It's been such a long week. I'm just dead tired physically and emotionally. It's hard not to bring that kind of frustration home. I'm snapping at everyone around here, so I think I'm just going to go hide in the bathtub.


I'm scheduled in the same room through next week. When they ask me to extend it, I'm going to politely refuse. Feeling like this is not worth it. I want to be me again.

Class Reunion

Yes, I went to my high school class reunion over the weekend. The more I tell people this, the more I find that going to your reunion is not what most people would consider a good time. Most usually have an all over body shiver and say something along the lines of, "I didn't like those people when I was forced to be around them. Why would I want to see them now?".

I did like who I went to high school with. Well, some of them. When you graduate with 500 people it's not really possible to know all of them. I wasn't involved in a lot of activities in school either, just choir and drama, so that really limits the pool of kids you're exposed to as well. But of the classmates I did know ultimately know, I did like quite a few them. So of course I wanted to go to my reunion.


My reunion was planned through Facebook for the most part. That's how we found out about it, were invited to it, RSVP'd for it, the whole works. Now that's it over that's where all the pictures from it are being posted. It didn't take me long to see a pattern going on with all the picture taking. I would be standing with a group of five or six, smiling and posing for one camera after another. A picture would snap and someone would shout, "I'll put it on Facebook!". Everyone would smile and nod and then someone else would say, "Take our picture with my camera too!".


Because of this through coverage in picture taking by everyone else, I only took seven pictures all night. Why should I bother taking pictures when every angle of every moment was being captured by twenty different cameras? Once they were all posted all of the pictures belonged to all of us. Makes sense to me and going through Facebook today I see that I played the night exactly right. There are MORE than enough pictures of me with my eye doing that wonky thing it does when I smile and my mouth wide open like a happy Muppet.


But here's one picture that I took for Mom and Pop. The Man with one of his oldest friends. What a couple of cuties!

Cross Country- Meet 3

The Girl took a minute and a half off her time this week from last week. That's huge! Lots of stars were in aligned to make this happen. It was much cooler today and the grass wasn't wet. The course was hilly but the stretch to the finish was all downhill. She finished in a sprint! It was mighty impressive.



The meet was an hour away this morning. She had to be at the school this morning 6:15, which meant getting up at 5:30. This is inhuman in my opinion. While she's doing fine, I am still dragging and have taken two cat naps this afternoon.




It's still weird for me to have a kid involved in a sport. The Man and I were both thoroughly inactive in school and liked it that way. When the kids were little we put them in T-Ball because we thought that's what you were supposed to do. Neither of them liked it very much. The Boy did karate for awhile and The Girl, of course, still dances. But that was the extent of athletics for us.




I dream of running you know. Not the longing and wishing kind of way but in the actually asleep at night type of dreaming. I dream of running through parks and woods. I dream of running down paths and roads. I'm fast in my dreams and the running is effortless (dream-like you could say). I have a running dream a couple of times a week.




When I wake up from one of these dreams the only thing I want to do is put on my shoes and go for an actual run. But it doesn't take long to realize that dream running and real running are extremely different things. I usually just end up taking a long walk. Much more me.




Five more meets to go!

Am I a plant or a zombie?

I've been meaning to write.

I wanted to write about taking the kids to Taste of Cleveland. I would have gone on in detail about the prizes we won (and didn't win). I would have described all the different food we ate: What was good and what was disappointing. I would have raved about seeing Cowboy Mouth rock the house right down to the ground and how we all danced.

But I'm not going to write any of that.

I have a post-it that I've been collecting all the things we did, big and small, over the summer. Some of the things you know about like the camping, NYC and Marco's skunk attack. But some of it I never mentioned like the agony we went through over getting a new lawnmower and watching all five seasons of Alias. The post-it is just crammed with stuff and I was going to list it all out on Labor Day as a salute to the end of summer.

Yeah, you're not getting that either.

I'm not going to write about any of that because of this...

Plants vs. Zombies has taken over my life. It's all I want to do. I think about it all the time. And it's not just me. It's all four of us. We are all possessed by this game. I loaded it on the laptop as well as the desktop so two of us can play at the same time while the other two linger around the edges waiting for our turn. It's pathetic.

The road that led us all here started when I broke my foot two years ago. While I was laid up, Weaver sent me some websites links to cheer me up. One of them was Cakewrecks which still cracks me up everyday. One day it featured an amazing Lost cake that was made to celebrate the 100th episode of the show. That post was linked to Jorge Garcia's blog, who plays Hurley. Jorge does quite a bit of world travelling when he's not filming and puts up lots of pictures and little movies. Last week Jorge was in despair because he had discovered Plants vs. Zombies and couldn't do anything else.

I went to check it out. Found it on Pogo. The rest is history.

I would love to write more but I've got zombies to smash.

Cross Country Has Begun

For the next two months every Saturday will consist of the following:

• Waking up early while it's cold, wet and not-quite-yet daylight


• Driving to some far away town


• Milling around giant fields

Oh wait. That's just for me. For The Girl please add:

• Running a 5K

After that, we will be returning home where we will absolutely nothing for the rest of the day except nap, eat and watch movies. Well, maybe I'll get some laundry done. But that's about it.

The Girl ran two 5Ks this week, Wednesday and Saturday. She did them both in less than 30 minutes which was her goal. Goodness knows I couldn't do anything even close to that. Not ever!

A subscription in begging

(It's that time of year again...sorry.)


You know all those magazines you get? And you know how each magazine bombards you bi-monthly with their friendly reminders about your subscription expiring in seven months? Please just throw those letters in your paper recycling bin as soon as it hits your hands and instead renew your subscriptions with The Girl.


For the past three years Girl Scouting as taken on magazine sales to go along with the silly nut sale. This sale ends just in time to dovetail nicely with the cookie sale starting and for me overlaps Boy Scout popcorn. Fun, fun, fun!


Adding magazine sales to the mix has been a bumpy road for Girl Scouting. I didn't get to attend the Kick-Off this year, but I'll never forget the screaming voices bouncing off the rafters from last year. Many leaders I've personally met have told me that they just don't do the magazine part of the fall sale and focus only on the nuts. But those nuts are a rip off, I tell them. Just go after magazine renewals instead of new subscriptions. It's so much easier, I plead.


No, they say. Not going to happen.


Come to find out that I personally love the magazine sale because a giant pile of product doesn't end up stacked my dining room waiting to be delivered. If I have to be stuck in the non-stop world of fundraising (which I am), then at the very least I would like to support the one product that inconveniences me the least.


So if you have any magazines that you are considering for renewal anytime over the next two months, you know your hook-up!

Back to the Zombie Ranch

Yesterday was the second day of school for the majority of the zombies in the city. The second day of school and I got called in.


Now I will confess that being a zombie sitter for so long I am very quick to judge. Very quick and unforgiving. I've seen way too many teachers having an out-of-town wedding the day of the Halloween party. And dentist appointments? How is it that they always land on Field Day? Not that I blame them. These zombie wear you out. If you can figure out a way to skip the Valentine's Party with the nightmare of the one little girl who gets something mean written in her Transformer valentine, why wouldn't you?


But missing the second day of school? Really?


Truly, I don't know where this teacher was and no one offered me an explanation. I'm sure it was for a very important and legitimate reason because why would any teacher want to throw little zombies into that much confusion right off the bat. But come on! It's the second day of school! Did you forget it was coming? Did you think school was only going to last one day this year? (See there. More quick judgement. I warned you I was harsh.)


I doesn't help that I'm not particularly fond of this teacher. Doesn't help at all.


The only part of the day that I really enjoyed was kicking around in my favorite school and visiting with everyone. There are lots of new faces there since the demographic of the school has shifted to being kindergarten heavy with four classrooms of the tiny ones. The whole place feels different and...shorter.


Since two of the elementary schools in the city were closed last year, my fav school also picked up some new teachers in the shuffle. Some are unfortunate additions to the school. When I saw the staff roster, I could only sigh and think, "Oh. That's a shame".


Yes, more judging. But I feel qualified in this one. I've been in every elementary classroom in this city. I've seen all the lesson plans, classroom layouts, special projects, poster placement, schedule juggling, classroom management techniques and homework philosophies. I know a sub-par teacher when I see one. You want to know the scoop on a teacher, ask a sub. They know all!


Today is the third day of school and no call. This is not a surprise. My phone doesn't usually start ringing until around the second week of school. That's when the waiting rooms of every gynecologist in the city is standing room only with elementary school teachers.

Duct Tape Fanciness

Hey look! I made this bag yesterday. I am mighty proud of it to the point that whenever I would pass it today I would go, "Oooh! Look at that!"


It's completely made out of duct tape, even the handle, except for the two Velcro tabs that keep it closed. The weave is not stuck down either. It's non-sticky strips held down only on the ends giving it texture. Here's a lousy picture of it. The back is exactly the same pattern as the front.

This bag is my new restaurant bag. Very often I can't finish all of my meal and the waitress says, "Do you need a box?" and I say, "No, I've brought my own." This is how anti-Styrofoam I've become. I would love to start a trend where everyone does this, but I'm not holding my breath.


The boxes themselves are microwave and dishwasher safe. I carry around two just in case and I've made the bag to fit them both.
This bag took three hours to make and quite a bit of duct tape. I can't wait to take it out for its maiden restaurant voyage.

Singing River- One Last Time

The camping trip this past weekend has taken a toll on me. Between sleeping on those camp bunk and the non-stop hiking, I feel like I have strained and tweaked every muscle from my neck to my arches.


And that includes my heart.


Good bye Singing River. We'll miss you.

More picture on my Flickr later today...

First Day of School...sort of

Every year, on the first day of school, amid all the hustle and bustle, I make sure to get a picture of the kids standing in just about the same spot in the driveway, usually with the dog.

It didn't work out this year.

Day 1 -- Just plain forgot about the picture. Hey, it was the first day of High School. I wasn't myself.

Day 2-- Remembered, but couldn't find the camera for anything.

Day 3-- The Boy says, "This is the same shirt I wore on the first day of 8th grade. You can't do it today!"

Day 4-- The Girl says, "Why don't you just wait until tomorrow when we both look really good."

So here it is, the fifth day of school. We finally got the First Day of School picture .

It's picture day at school too, which is why they look so sharp.
Getting the camera ready, I accidentally took a picture of the top of my head and got the flash right in the eye, which is how I got these big smiles. Nothing like a little slapstick first thing in the morning.

Three Year Old Kittens

Three years ago today that sneaky stray cat once again stole into our basement this time to have her kittens. And because it was yucky outside and because the basement was similarly yucky and because those tiny little kittens were so darn cute, today we are stuck with these two.

There's a certain amount of patience and timing you need to photograph cats.

I have neither.

Happy Third Birthday, Jack and Meg! You make everyday an adventure!

Freshman Camp

Yesterday, on a day that could melt you right where you stood, the kids had Freshman Camp. Before I go on, I just have to mention this. I know that organizations use the word "camp" in their events to try to lighten the situation up. You think, "Oh, it's just camp! Camp is fun!" In reality, most of the time, these so called camps are just big drags bordering on complete nightmares. There is nothing "camping" about it. Unless you are actually spending the night somewhere and there is a snack cooked over a fire at some point, I think the word camp should be left out of the naming process. But that's just me.



Anyway. Freshman Camp involves all the incoming kids and their parents jamming in the auditorium. It was standing room only by the time everyone got in. "Welcome to high school, blah, blah, blah." Then they sent the kids away leaving the administrators alone with the parents, most it seems who had shown up gunning for a fight. A bunch more blah, blah, blah and then they opened the floor up for questions.



Hands shot up all over the place. As the first woman stood, I thought we would never hear her. But everyone did because she was yelling. Everyone who asked a question was yelling! These people were upset! Mostly they were upset about the traffic, the drop-off situation and parking. And those ARE all upsetting things, but honestly there isn't anything to be done about it. The whole school is surrounded by a construction site. It's literally hell on Earth over there. The views out every window are construction vehicles and partially built walls. It's not fun. It's not funny. But that is what we all signed up for so truly we all just need to suck it up!



Other than that people were yelling about dress codes, emergency procedures, weapons searches, lack of air conditioning, (Where this woman's kid went to elementary school, I would like to know. Nobody has air in the city!) and the lunch room only serving junk food. It was an impressive meeting. One of the most interesting ones that I've ever been to. There were happy moments though. Like when it was announced that cell phones were confiscated on sight. Everyone applauded. That announcement was topped with that the kids' grades would be updated daily on the website along with homework assignments. Big, big applause for that!



After that we got to go find our kids and wander around the building locating their rooms, teachers and lockers. Only one of The Girl's teachers was in the building and ZERO of The Boy's. That didn't make this mommy very happy to say the least. The Girl's schedule takes her on a nonstop-up-and-down-corner-to-corner-roller-coaster-daily-tour of the building. It's not pretty. The Boy's has more of a flow to it.



But the biggest shock of the day came with their schedules. They are on completely different schedules with completely different sets of teachers. Now I know it's a big place, but I didn't think that this was even possible being that they are on the same team. Not one teacher in common?!?!


Again, not a happy mommy here. Not happy at all. If you put me in the auditorium right now, I'd probably start yelling.

Views from the Zoo

I didn't take the camera to the zoo yesterday. After 500 plus pictures from NYC the cameras deserve a break. Besides what exciting things ever happen at a zoo? Unfortunately for us, several picture worthy events occurred. So in place of those moments where our camera was absent, the web has provided shots that are close enough to illustrate the stories.

One of the first memorable things we saw was a beaver, like this guy.

But the beaver we saw we asleep. I couldn't find picture of a beaver sleeping the position of the one we saw but I did find this dog whose name, strangely enough, happens to be Beaver sleeping in the exact same way.

So what we saw was a guy like this...

sleeping on his back with his paws in the air like this.

You get the picture. Oh, except the beaver at the zoo also had it's tongue hanging out. Quite a sight!

Our zoo has a whole section just about Australia. There is one little house where the koala bears stay. They look like this 23 1/2 hours a day.

Sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. The ones at our zoo are even less fun than this one since they sleep with their faces hidden. They are just grey fuzzy lumps hanging in the branches. They never move. You can't even see them breathe. I've often wondered in they were just stuffed animals that the zoo positioned just to mess with everyone. But yesterday while we stood like suckers watching the grey fuzzy lumps hang, one of them did this.

The little fellow not only woke up, he looked around, yawned three times and then MOVED to another branch. After that he just stared at a spot on the ground. He did that for so long that we finally left. I'm not sure if they can fall asleep with their eyes open, but that's surely what he looked like he did.

Elated by the little koala, instead of headed out of the zoo like we were planning, we traveled deeper into Australia. There's kangaroos, wallabies and wallaroos hopping all over the place in there. While we were recounting to each other the sad story of the kangaroo being killed the train, a little wallaby hopped onto the path in front of us. We were pretty excited that she was so close but then she stood on her back legs.

She had a joey in her pouch! It was the type of moment that if you weren't in a public place and didn't make to make an ass of yourself, you would start screaming. It was that cute. Within moments there was a huge crowd pushing in toward her, taking pictures and getting too close. It didn't take long for her to hop off to safety.

It's just a bit too sunny at the zoo. Not enough shade. And yesterday was very sunny and just a tad bit too warm. Just as we were all about to faint away from it all The Man bought one of these with four spoons.
Now this wasn't a picture worthy moment. Far from it. Actually if someone was taping us and sent it into America's Funniest Home Videos they very well could win big money on the show of four Andersons diving into one cup as fast as they could shoveling in Icee. But that Icee saved the day.

New York -- Day Five-- jamming a few last things in

Our flight to leave the city was at 2:30. We heard someone had tried to take a gun through security at the airport so things were delayed. We also heard there was a car on fire on some highway between us and the airport. With all that in mind, we decided to leave at noon. That gave us the whole morning to fill with a few more things.

We started by headed out to get The Boy a "That's What She Said" t-shirt from the NBC store. Yes, I caved. Then headed up Fifth Avenue toward Central Park to check out all the fancy-schmancy stores. But since it was only 9:30 in the morning, nothing was open yet.

At the park, we took a horse drawn carriage ride. We are all severely burned by our almost getting lost and drowned in Central Park before but the carriage ride seemed safe enough.

Our City Passes were expired but I was still able to get my Central Park Zoo pressed penny since the machine was outside the gates. I ended up with lots of pennies, but I'll save that for another post.

On the way back downtown we stopped by Capezio's, just because it was there. The Girl was crazy excited. We made the rational decision that we didn't have enough time to find "the perfect" toe shoes but since she needed new practice shoes anyway, why not buy them in New York. It was almost time to go. But what's this? Blocks and blocks of Broadway was blocked off for a street sale. We did a quick run through and I bought myself "I love NY" pajama pants.

We packed up our things and checked out at noon. After an extremely quick and smooth cab ride we made it to the airport with tons of time to spare. Our plane home was a tiny little thing and we made it home 25 minutes ahead of schedule. Here's The Boy reading "Of Mice and Men" which they both have to have read and annotated before school starts.

Marco was thrilled to see us. The cats seemed pleased at our return. One of the fish died. The house still smells faintly of skunk.

Home sweet home.

Day Four-- slowing it down

We being our last full day in the big city, we decided to take it a bit easier on ourselves. First stop of the day was the Museum of Modern Art.

An unexpected pleasure was that the big sixth floor special exhibition was all about James Ensor. This was such a special show that they didn't allow photography inside which is a bummer because that man made some freaky stuff.

An James Ensor has a special place in my heart because of this song, of course.

We jumped on the subway again and headed off the the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Pictures in the cathedral just don't come out so you'll just have to use your imagination. It's a big giant building. Awe inspiring big.

One block away was this recognizable diner. The kids were thrilled.

We ended the day by seeing Chicago which blew us all away. And instead of all being dead on our feet tired right now, we are all doing pretty well. We've seen so much on this trip and now it's time to head home.