You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up…

Ha!  Back from surfing the entire internet at super high speed – yippee-skippee!  OK – Maybe not the ENTIRE internet…. Life interrupted my journey at times.

What’s been going on?  Well let’s see…

Under the heading of "You CAN Fool ALL of the People ALL of the Time":

We had our first cafe of the school year today.  As is my habit, I picked a recipe for Chicken Milano that I had never prepared before (but it called for sun dried tomatoes and FRESH basil – things which my students have NEVER seen….) and a recipe for Pumpkin Bread Pudding which I have also never prepared before, but I have been ‘jonesin’ for in a big way.  My students did a Bang-Up job of preparing and delivering the meals.  (This no longer surprises me – they always come through!).  What does continue to surprise me is that I keep picking recipes out of the air and they are always yummy!  You guys remember that I don’t cook, right?  heh.  And yet I have this reputation at school for being an awesome cook.  Ahhhhhh… the Universe works in strange and wonderful ways.

Under the heading "News of the Truly Weird":

Conference night at school.  Really – those few words say it all, but I must write this down.  It really is too rich.

A cute little waifish girl who reminds me SO much of an elf…. comes in with her mother and auntie.  Mom is rather "normal" looking…and very pregnant.  A rather feminine woman (even with the assorted visible tattoos), so I was a little surprised when Mom tells me she is a meat-cutter at a local grocery store.  That’s not a job for light-weights!  Then there was auntie – who would scare a seasoned sailor in a dark alley at night.  She was more masculine that they most masculine of dock workers.  She was, although pleasant to talk to, quite frightening to look at.  Guess what her job is?  She manages the bakery at the same grocery store.  Yep.  That’s right.  Auntie "Butch" decorates frilly cakes.

While still trying to recover from that conference, in comes my next family group.  A little boy who is also waifish and blonde.  Very smart – and very limited in attention span.  Mom, again, looked "normal".  But Dad – Dad looked like Dog the Bounty Hunter.  Really.  Exactly like him.  Dirty blonde mullet, rippling arm muscles, tattoos…. I kept waiting for him to ask me where his current targeted bail-jumper was. 

After those two visits…the rest of the evening filled with non-English speaking parents dressed like red-light district hookers was rather boring.

Under the heading of "Young Stud Rides Again"

My baby boy landed his first teaching job.  He teaches high school math.  AND he is the coach of both the girls and boys soccer teams.  Really – THAT’s the job he wanted.  Soccer coach.  First game out – they managed to only lose by 5 points to a team that beat them so badly last year that the score board was actually turned off mid game.  Young Stud had a bit of trouble wrapping his mind around that as actually being an improvement….but felt better the next night when the team won the first game they’d won in 3 years.  Sadly, since then there have been no more wins.  When I last spoke to Young Stud a couple of days ago he said to me "They embarrased me and they embarassed my game."  Ahem.  Well.  So.  And how does one supportively and lovingly reply to that?  Well, I asked if he thought he might be being a wee bit harsh…. Of course the answer was NO.  I’m going up to visit next week for 3 days to see my baby boy as a real "official" coach.  And to protect the members of his team from castration or worse if at all possible.  Get this!  They make the coaches drive the bus there.  Now YS is not bus driving yet since he hasn’t gotten the proper license yet….but won’t that be a sight?  A red in the face, vein standing out, purple lipped bus driver screaming and driving at 110 mph?  Oh my.

And finally – Under the heading of "WATCH OUT – SOAP BOX AHEAD!"

1.  There was a tragedy in a neighboring county.  A traffic stop gone bad – resulting in 1 dead deputy, 1 dead police dog and 1 injured deputy.  The fugitive ambused they officers – no real chance at defense.  They found the fugitive the next day – still armed and refusing to surrender his weapon.  A 10 person SWAT team unloaded with every bit of ammo they had.  They body had 68 bullet holes in it.  Let me restate the facts here.  Cop killer.  Ambushed police officers.  Located by SWAT team.  STILL armed and uncooperative.  The family has hired a lawyer to sue the county for this unprovoked attack on their baby boy.  They don’t understand why he was shot so many times.  It was not fair for their child to die in such a manner.  Really?  What would have been fair exactly?  Oh, by the way, they found the fugitive’s journal in which he said he was going to something like this so that he could go out in a blaze of glory.  Well then.  Mission accomplished, wouldn’t you say?  (If I sound callous about this – please remember that my father was a police officer, I was married to a deputy sherriff and many of my friends have been police.  No one has a right to take a life – but there if there is such a thing as "instant karma" – well, it was dealt out.)

Soap box 2

More school shootings…and now a group of pro-gun people has declared that the reason there are so many school shootings is that schools are the equivalent of a baited field.  There are no guns allowed on school grounds (except for police officers) and thus, it’s a huge field of possible targets just ripe for the picking for any nut-case who wants to shoot people up.  THEREFOR we should allow properly trained and licensed individuals on school grounds to carry weapons.  WHATARETHEYTHINKING? 
Let’s see – teachers with guns on their hips or in their gun drawers?  How about keeping the weapons in a secure locked box in a janitor’s closet?  The logistics of having armed guards at school……mind boggling.  How safe would YOU feel if all your teachers had guns?  Good Grief!  ARGH!

And to finish on a lighter note…under the heading of "Who’s That Girl"

I have had enough of my hair At first I just wanted to see h

ow long it would get.  Well, it got about waist length and I looked like somebody’s hippie grandmother.  I asked my friend who cut her hair and she took me by her hairdresser to introduce me.  Turns out, he was one of my father’s students!  He loved my dad… and really wanted to cut my hair.  So….3 weeks later I have less than half my hair, look 10 years younger, and have received a boat load of complements.  Hairdresser guy even ran into my dad shortly thereafter and had a nice chat.  Small world.

Which brings me back to internet surfing….lol.

And now I shall have to go and try to catch up on all your diaries…..I have missed you all!!!!