Billy and Elton........

This may be a new low. Or high? I'm blogging from the Billy Joel/Elton John concert. Waiting for it to be Elton's bedtime so Billy can come back out. Please don't send me hate mail. Elton is okay, but I came to see Billy. It'll be HIS bedtime soon too.

I haven't missed a Billy Joel concert in Atlanta since 1978. I went to one in 1984 when I was 7 months pregnant. The usher did not take kindly to my standing in my seat. Neither did my ex. Or Katydid.

I hope to post video tomorrow, if they don't confiscate my camera.

Wicked the Book......

I am usually a pretty fast reader, and I read all different kinds of stuff.

But I have been plodding through Wicked since sometime in November or December. And it's killing me.

It's so different from the musical, but that's not the part that I'm having trouble with. I can accept a book being different from its screenplay or Broadway production.

I'm about a hundred pages from the end -- still -- and I have JUST reached the part where a house falls on a little girl.

And Elphaba is about to take off in her quest for those damned shoes.

I know how it ends. Well, I take that back. I know how the MUSICAL ended, and I liked it a lot. I wish I had known THAT ending back when I was three or four and the Wicked Witch of the West scared the bejeezus out of me. Between her and the flying monkeys, no wonder I had nightmares.

It's not just the differences in plot. Gregory Maguire, the author, has an extensive vocabulary, but he also uses a lot of made-up words because, after all, we are in Oz, not in Kansas anymore. So when I come across a word I don't know, I have to stop and ask myself, "Wait, is this a real word that I just don't know, or is it one of those made-up ones?"

I need to hurry up and finish this thing so I can get on to the other 9 books that have stacked up while I've been working on this toothache-of-a-book. I'm too far in to give up on it, but it's not one of those compelling things that I can't put down.

It's beginning to feel like homework.

Childhood Injuries.....

When I read the post of my friend MamaNeena's recent experience with an injury to her child, it reminded me of some of the unusual injuries Sweet Girl managed to inflict on herself as a child. You haven't truly experienced motherhood until a school official calls you (on your birthday, no less) and tells you to please come get your daughter because she has a star stuck in her ear.

Or the time I had to try to explain to relatives why Sweet Girl was scratched and scraped and banged up......in her armpit.

Or the time Sweet Girl was standing on the toilet and slipped, and somehow on her way to the ground, she managed to pinch her who-who between the seat and the rim of the toilet. I have just clinched my legs tightly together just remembering it.

But the one that took the cake was when the nearly tore off her uvula.

I'll wait here while you go look up uvula. Don't be bashful, guys.......you have one too.
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In a previous wifetime, we had just finished dinner when we heard a blood-curdling scream come from the back of the house. Sweet Girl came running with that open-mouthed, airless, silent scream when a parent thinks the child may never stop to draw a breath again.

She couldn't tell us what was wrong. I thought she had shocked herself in an electrical outlet, then I remembered that our hair is naturally that way.

Finally one of us said, "What did you hurt?"

She said, "I hurt the thing that Tweety Bird thumps on the Pussycat."

I thought she was delirious with pain.

"WHAT?"

I looked at the ex. "What in the hell is she talking about?"

Somehow his viewing of cartoons must have matched hers. "She's talking about that thing that hangs down in the back of your throat."

You know how our mothers tell us never to run with something in our mouths because we might fall and jam it down our throats, only it has never actually happened in the history of mankind?

Except to my child.

Seems she had this really cool Barbie baton that came with some retarded costume, and she had discovered that if you TOOK OFF THE RUBBER TIP and blew on the baton, it made a really cool noise. Note that this baton that she nearly swallowed was WITHOUT THE RUBBER TIP. That could have protected her uvula when she fell with the baton in her nmouth while making this really cool noise.

There's not really a lot you can do for a torn uvula.

I took her to the doctor, and they gave her antibiotics and something for psychosis (not really, I made that part up) and said that we would have to make her drink to avoid becoming dehydrated.

She told the doctor she was NOT going to drink anything, so he picked up the phone and pretended to call the hospital and have them go ahead and reserve a room for her. (She was a gullible little 5-year-old.) She finally drank a tiny sip of water, glaring at the doctor with hatred in her eyes.

She was probably the only kindergartener who knew what a uvula was.

The World According to Teenagers......

It never ceases to amaze me that some students are surprised -- astounded even -- that they are expected to WORK in an online course. I don't know what they are told by the people who sign them up for such courses, but apparently some of them do not get the proper message.

One student this semester in particular was incredulous (and dismayed) that she would be required to -- wait for it -- write essays. In a literature course.

Last night I had these exchanges with this student.

KB: How can I bring my grade up, like fast? I really need to pass.
Me: You might try working on the assignments that are due this week and stop working on things that aren't due until March 27th.
KB: I'm trying to get ahead.

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[When I mentioned the novel project coming up]

KB: Novel? I have to read a book?
Me: Yes, it's for the novel project.
KB: Can it be anything?
Me: It has to be from the list I sent you.
KB: I don't have a list.
Me: I emailed it to you. The novel work is due March 20th.
KB: March 20th?????? That's 10 days!
Me: That's why I sent you the novel list in January.

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[At the end of the session, when I "dismissed" them]

Me: Well, that's all I have for tonight.
KB: Well now I have nothing to do.
Me: What do you mean you have nothing to do?
KB: We're finished, so I don't have anything to do. MySpace time!
Me: You could work on that Life of Pi essay that's due Friday.
KB: Yeah, I guess I could do that.

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Email exchanges today:

KB: Is all of the Life of Pi stuff due this Friday?
Me: Yes, all of it except the post-test, which is next Monday.

So she submitted an assignment for Life of Pi Part 1, which she had already submitted previously and FOR WHICH SHE HAD A GRADE OF 100.

I didn't think I needed to point out that she didn't need to submit assignments that had already been graded. I stand corrected.

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Conversation with the World's Last Perfect Man....

[Scene: Taking meatloaf out of oven. That I so wisely put on to cook and set a stop time on, because I unexpectedly had to take Hubby's hand-held-computer-order-machine-work-thingie to him 20 miles away while I was TRYING to watch last night's recording of Dancing with the Stars. Shhhhhhhh.........please don't tell me. MAYBE I'll get to watch the rest of it tomorrow. I was semi-frantic because in addition to having to prepare dinner AND watch DWTS, I also needed to prepare a lesson for tonight's online session. And I NEVER prepare those in advance, just in case the wild world of Contemporary Literature changes so drastically that any topic I might prepare on.......say Sunday night......should suddenly be rendered useless. Whatever. I didn't need to lose that hour of my life that I spent taking his computer to him. But I did ride the Harley down there, so it wasn't a total loss.]


Me: Son of a b***h!!!

WLPM*: Oh no, is it burned?

Me: No, I just spilled hot grease all down my front.

WLPM: Oh.

I offer here, merely for instructional purposes and not in any way to complain, several alternate endings to the above conversation.

WLPM: Oh my goodness, are you all right?

WLPM: Here, let me help you clean up the rest of the hot grease that you spilled on the floor.

WLPM: Come here, Gus, get out of Mama's way so she can clean up the grease.

WLPM: I'll set the table for you.

WLPM: What would you like to drink? [I'd be happy to hear this one, regardless of the fact that I DRINK THE SAME DAMN GLASS OF WATER EVERY NIGHT, IN THE SAME DAMN GLASS.]

WLPM: I'll wash the dishes so you can prepare your lesson.



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*WLPM - World's Last Perfect Man [just in case you didn't figure that out already]

Weight Loss by Hypnosis......

I saw an advertisement in the newspaper this past weekend for a weight loss session using hypnosis.

I've always been fascinated by hypnosis, and I have been hypnotized myself. When I was taking psychology in high school, our teacher brought in a guest speaker who said he could hypnotize anyone who was over 18 or had parental permission. I immediately produced a note written by my mother just on the OFF CHANCE that some random hypnotist wandered into our school and wanted to practice on any of us.

This guy didn't believe in the nightclub type hypnotism, unfortunately, because I think that would have been hilarious.

He first had me sit in a chair with my arms resting on the arms of the chair, and he had me relax. I was thinking it was all a bunch of bunk, because I could hear everything he was saying, and I could even hear Rex Martin snickering in the background. Or maybe it was Ronnie Wilkes. Who knows.

Then he said one of my arms would feel lighter than the other, and my finger popped up into the air of its own accord. I had absolutely no part in the decision-making; my finger just hopped up there by itself. I'm not making this up. Then my arm started floating up, and he said when I touched my head I would go under even deeper or something silly like that.

That's all I remember until the bell rang. I don't remember doing anything outstanding or foolish (no more so than usual, anyway) for the next few days. He called me on the phone in the school office a couple of days later, and I've always wondered if he used that phone call to "break" the spell.

I went to one of the weight-loss sessions many years ago, but from the beginning I didn't feel that I was hypnotized. I attributed it to being in a room with so many other people. How can you feel hypnotized if the person isn't speaking directly to you? When the folks came out of the session I was sitting on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette and waiting for Katydid to come pick me up. I think they were highly disappointed; the smoking cessation hypnotism session had occurred just before the weight loss one.

For $50, I'd be willing to give it another try. As long as the weight loss doesn't just occur because I start clucking like a chicken every time I'm in a restaurant and then run out of there too embarrassed to eat.

Why Can't......

• Mondays go as fast as the weekends do?
• NASCAR just show the last lap of a race?
• Commentators for the audio feed of gymnastics meets give us something more substantial than "Wow!" or "Amazing!" or "Oooooo!"?
• I think to buy stuff on Saturday that I can't buy on Sunday here in the Bible belt?
• I make myself fold the last load of laundry?
• My tile floors stay pretty more than 15 minutes after I mop them?
• People who are sworn enemies of my family members (and crazy to boot) NOT invite me to be their friends on Facebook?
  
• I sleep through a whole night?
• My cat understand that the bag of food he chewed a hole in is the SAME STUFF that's in his bowl?
• My dog figure out where the squirrels go?
• My neighbor crank his motorcycle and let it run for 15 minutes sometime BEFORE 9:00 PM?
• Spring Break just hurry up and GET HERE?