Overly Cautious.....

Ooops..... Didn't mean to be absent last night. Damn this one-hour time difference. We went to bed before midnight, but it was after midnight at home, so I said "screw it" and went to bed. I had worked all day, traveled 6 hours, listened to same 6 hours of constant chatter from the wife of Hubby's best friend, kicked arse on the poker table, and I was tired.

Side note: Next time you have the choice of driving your own vehicle for the 6-hour trip, thus making it possible to bring your bicycle, which will take you away from both the casino and the chatterbox for several hours, take it. Even if it means you have to drive most of the way out here and all of the way home. Which it will. Take it anyway.

Hubby's friend and his wife have been married over 40 years, which has almost nothing to do with this story. Unless it's the fact that they have become so alike over the years. Or maybe they were that way to begin with.

They are both .... as we say in our part of the world .... curious.

That's a Southern phrase and is fraught with hidden meaning, just like "Bless her heart...."

"Bless her heart...." means "she's dumb as a stump but sweet and besides my mama taught me to be nice to the downtrodden and the dumb as stumps."

"Curious" means crazy as a damn bedbug and certifiable, but we have to put up with them anyway.

In addition to being "curious," Hubby's friend (we'll call him JT) is also tight as a tick. I'm not sure where that expression came from, but he will strain a gut to save a dollar. Or a quarter. Dimes aren't out of the question.

I have no idea what they are doing in a casino in the first place.

The first time we were here together, I won $250 on a slot machine. Modern-day slot machines print out a bar-coded ticket (but it makes NOISES like coins dropping into the metal tray, just in case that's why you gamble in the first place), which you can then put into ANOTHER slot machine (tricking it into thinking you haven't won elsewhere, I suppose) or into an ATM-like machine that spits out real money.

JT's wife nearly had a stroke when I approached the machine with my ticket.

"You're not going to put that in there!" she shrieked. "You better go make a copy of it first."

Because clearly in a casino there are copy machines everywhere.

When the machine spit out my money in the correct amount, she just gave me a sidelong glance that said, "Well obviously you just got lucky this time." And she didn't mean the $250.

She and I went into a jewelry store today so I could buy a screw-on back for one of my diamond earrings. (I washed them in the laundry, and I found both earrings and the back to one of them. Luck doesn't just involve money.) Because I don't like to carry a purse, particularly in the casino, I was carrying my money folded up in my jeans pocket. I took it out of my pocket so I could get to the earring, and I laid the money on the glass countertop.

Mrs. JT almost THREW herself on top of my money (and it wasn't all of it, just a couple hundred bucks), darting her eyes left and right and guarding it with her life.

"I can't believe you did that," she said. "What if someone runs into this store and grabs this money and runs off?"

I think she's been watching too much television or something. I know I could be accused of not being cautious enough, but I REFUSE to go around afraid of everything. And suspicious of everyone.

JT is a freak about locking doors in hotel rooms too. Even if he is on the 18th floor, he's going to lock and double-lock the BALCONY doors, just on the off chance that some Spiderman-gone-wild character scales the side of the building and comes into their room. We have even made his name into a verb. On the rare occasion that we REMEMBER to lock our own door, we say we are "JTing the door." Only we use his full name.

Hubby and I thought about playing a mean joke on them today. They came to our room on our way to dinner, and I told Hubby we ought to have the door propped wide open when they came. Hubby agreed and said we should scatter our money all over the bed and the floor, throw our credit cards out on the table in plain view, put the laptop and cell phones near the door, and then say, "Okay, we're ready to go." It would have sent the poor man into apoplexy. And then he would have had to go to the hospital and everything, so I guess it's a good thing we didn't do it.

I'm just not the overly cautious type. It takes too much energy.

Speaking of energy, it's time for bed. I currently have more money than I came with. I hope that trend continues tomorrow.

She Is Her Mother's Daughter.....Mostly......

I don't think I've mentioned it here, but Sweet Girl recently enrolled in college again, in addition to her job with the Navy and her chores being Daisy's "mom".

She is taking a course in rhetoric, and I commend her simply for sitting through class every Tuesday night without her eyes glazing over.

She had a mid-term paper due last week, so she emailed it to me for critique/editing. It was all about Aristotle and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz..................................

Seriously, how does anyone really study Aristotle and all those other Totles?

I did what I could to help her with grammar and mechanics and overall structure, but I am completely unfamiliar with the subject matter.

She emailed me during class last night to tell me she made a 90 on her paper, and she currently has a 97 in the course. She rocks!

I had to laugh, though.

Her last message said, "Who would have thought I would have an A in a english class?"

Sweet Girl is at this moment saying, "Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmm!"

But she knows it's funny.

The Time I Almost Got Arrested.....

I know, I know....

You're thinking: "What? There was only ONE?"

There were probably many times in college when I SHOULD have been arrested. Like the time my BFF Jason (whose birthday is today) went into Sanford Stadium at around midnight. They were doing construction on the stadium, so we had easy access. It was a spooky place at night. We thought about going down on the field so we could truly say we had been "Between the Hedges," but we thought better of it. Good thing too -- apparently those hedges and that field have alarms on them.

But no, the time I almost got arrested I didn't INTENTIONALLY break the law. It was just a couple of years ago when I took my mother to the airport.

You would have to know my mother to appreciate this story fully, but I'll try to convey it anyway. Mom does things .... her way. At her time. Whether or not it's the proper time. And God help anyone who gets in her way.

I was only dropping her at the airport (this is the Atlanta airport, you know, the one that is proclaimed the busiest airport in the WORLD?), so I didn't have to worry about parking. What I did have to worry about, apparently, was my mother following the rules.

As soon as the building came into sight, she was already scrambling for the door handle so she could just -- what, leap out? -- and I wouldn't have to park. Never mind the NICE (insert sarcasm here) Atlanta police officer who was standing in the lanes of traffic motioning for cars to keep moving.

But there were three lanes. And I was in the one closest to the curb. I really, really thought he was motioning -- and screaming -- for the OTHER two lanes to keep moving. Besides, if I had kept moving, I would have dragged my mother down the sidewalk, because she was BY GOD getting out of that car with her suitcase. She melted into the crowd, intent upon catching her flight, oblivious of the fact that I was in big trouble.

The NICE police officer rapped violently on my window and motioned for me to let the window down.

"License."

With hands shaking, I handed him the plastic container I keep my license and all my credit cards in.

"TAKE IT OUT!!!" he barked. I told you he was nice.

"DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE PENALTY FOR DISOBEYING A POLICE OFFICER IS?"

I weakly apologized, "I'm sorry, sir, I didn't know you meant for ME to keep moving." What I wanted to say was, "Hey jackass, do YOU KNOW WHAT THE PENALTY IS FOR NOT DOING WHAT MY MOTHER SAYS?"

"The fine for disobeying a police officer is $250!" he screamed.

At which point I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, "Hey jackass, I've GOT $250, okay?"

He took my license and went to the back of the car, scanned my insurance card (which we are NOT required to carry in Georgia anymore, by the way), looked at my license plate, and I think he took a mental picture of Every. Single. Decal. On. The. Back. Of. My. Car. Meanwhile I was about to hyperventilate.

He finally came back to my window and said something else snotty about disobeying a police officer, and I continued trying to explain that I hadn't intentionally disobeyed him, I had just misunderstood. Meanwhile, while he is berating me, THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE DOING WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT TO IN THE DROP-OFF LINE. I saw at least a dozen terrorists go by and snicker while the police officer was busy with me.

After what seemed like several days, he gave my license back (and I was shaking so badly I dropped my little plastic thingie and my credit cards scattered all over the floorboard) and sent me on my way. I was still trembling and gasping for air. I wanted to cry and I wanted my mommy...... No wait, SHE was the one who got me IN this mess! It wouldn't have done for me to get my hands on her at that point.

As soon as I got off the airport property and headed home on the interstate, my cell phone rang. It was my mother.

"My God," she said, "this place is a madhouse."

Woman, you have no idea.

Not What I Wanted to Write.....

I had the best blog post planned for tonight. It was a string of text messages between Hubby and me during the four days I was gone last week. Nothing bad, not even R-rated, just funny.

But I don't know when to keep my mouth shut. When I stopped for the third time to comment on something he had texted to me, he said, "What are you doing?"

Stupid me. I told the truth.

"I'm putting our text messages in my blog."

"That's stupid," he said. "You don't need to be telling everything I write to you."

And I realized he was right. It really was an invasion of his privacy to repeat everything we had exchanged by text message, even if it WAS (mostly) innocent. I'm not sure I understand what the big deal is. If I had been with my sisters, I probably would have read every single message to them, especially the funny ones. I read most of them to Sweet Girl. But he has a right not to have everything he writes to me published on the internet. He may never send me another text message.

Is there a rule about sharing text messages? Has Emily Post addressed this issue?

So I told him I would not put our messages in my blog, and I put my phone away. Darn it, I was almost finished.

I saved them in a draft. I didn't say "Never."

Whine Alert.....Whine Alert.......

Disclaimer:

In this post, I will complain about my part-time online teaching job AGAIN, the job that I don't really need but keep signing up for again and again.

Disclaimer disclaimer:

I'm NOT teaching summer school this year, though, so thank you to those readers who stepped in to remind me just like I asked.

The complaint:

This will come as a shock to some of you, but I am for the most part a rule follower. Even when I don't agree with an edict, I try to follow it. It helps if I get an explanation of WHY we do something a particular way, but nevertheless I try to follow the rules.

We have experienced a great deal of turnover in the last year, which only complicates matters. I think the changes are for the better, but still, change is change.

One thing we have heard ad nauseum is that we cannot be away from our online classes more than 24 hours, excluding weekends. I don't disagree with this policy, although I'm pretty sure some people push the envelope sometimes. Really, if I'm going to be on a bike ride on a Friday and don't log in all day, I feel pretty confident that I can catch up over the weekend and not have my students suffer. If something urgent comes up, I always have my cell phone with me, and I have stopped my bicycle before to resolve a student's problem.

This policy even worked to my benefit this semester, as I served as a substitute teacher while one of my co-workers had knee replacement surgery. It wasn't very stressful, and I didn't really have to do a whole lot of work. I'm sure it gave my co-worker a sense of relief that she didn't have to worry about grading papers while under the influence of painkillers. Although her students might have appreciated it. Comma splices aren't nearly so egregious to an English teacher when she's on morphine.

I promise I'm getting to the part that DOES bother me.

One day I was "impersonating" one of my online students to see if he had done any work in his other course, because he hadn't turned in anything at all for me. I promise this isn't snooping; we are actually required to impersonate our students every two weeks to make sure they aren't using the online tools for socializing or, in some cases, semi-stalking one another.

The first thing that comes up on any of our course homepages is a news announcement. When I opened this student's science class, the first thing I saw was an announcement saying something along the lines of "I am on spring break this week. I will not be grading assignments, and I will not be answering emails."

What the hell? On what level does he consider this proper? The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I even reached the spiteful point, when I went back into the student's course with the intention of taking a screen shot of that announcement and passing it along to someone in administration.

It was gone. Smart man that he is, he had deleted the news announcement after his week off.

But that isn't even what irks me most of all.

This week we get a congratulatory news announcement welcoming that very teacher to one of the few, coveted, precious, ADMINISTRATIVE, full-time online positions.

I'm going to have a hard time following any instructions from him. I'm just sayin'.......

Individual Event Finalzzzzzzzzzzzzz.........

I darn near dozed off during the NCAA gymnastics individual event finals tonight. It could possibly be due to the fact that we only had one dog in the fight this year instead of an entire team, but still. I thought the vault competition would neverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr drag to an end.

There were some highlights, one especially wicked one and one especially touching one. For the wicked, a hot-shot sophomore from a team in the state directly to our west whom I would love to hate but she's just so darn good, mounts the beam with a very simple step up from the spring board to the beam. Only this time either she stepped wrong or the beam moved, because it just wasn't there when she stepped. I really can't describe how it looked, but as Katydid described it, "I missed her mount, but when I looked she was just sort of dangling off the beam." Awkward! She came in last on balance beam, and I would feel sorry for her except for the fact that she kicked our collected arses at the SEC competition.

The touching moment came from a vaulter from some western school who also only had one dog in the fight. For her second vault (yes, the competition wasn't already interminably long enough, but they require each vaulter to do two DIFFERENT vaults in the individual event finals, judged by six judges, dropping the high and low scores and averaging the remaining four, and the FOOLS that hosted this event didn't even have the decency to have electronic scoring), this girl ran down the runway, leaped onto the springboard, and planted herself squarely in the middle of the vaulting table. I swear I think she had those little birds tweeting around her head. But she gamely saluted the judges and ran back to the corral, probably wishing she were somewhere else. At the very end of the competition, however, they allowed her to come back and do her second vault again, I'm guessing because her misstep was due to an equipment malfunction. That's the only time I know if that you get do-overs in gymnastics.

Our girl tied for second on balance beam, so that's our only consolation prize from nationals this year. I can now consider the season officially over, and perhaps I can find something else to obsess think about. Home tomorrow and back to school Monday for the home stretch, the last 4 weeks of school. Twenty days. I can do this.......

My First Job.....

Sweet Girl and I just back from the local DQ, a five-minute trip that turned into half an hour. Apparently we weren't the only ones who thought a Friday-night ice cream treat would be nice.

It reminded me of my first job, which was at our local DQ. You would have to know how small my hometown was. We didn't even actually live in a TOWN; we sort of lived in the county. Our county had one high school, one fast-food restaurant, zero other restaurants, and zero traffic lights. It was a major controversy when the first traffic light went up; people in the county enjoyed the "quaint" fact that we had no big-city problems. Or conveniences.

The DQ was at the four-way stop just below the high school's football field. It was a hopping place on football Friday nights, since there was no where else to go. My friend "Heidi," the one I wrote about last week, worked there. There weren't a lot of places for teens to work in our county.

One Friday night, after a home football game, one of the other teen employees quit and walked out. Heidi called and asked if I wanted a job. I hadn't been looking for a job; I was only 15. Mom worked and couldn't haul me back and forth to work, so I hadn't applied for a job anywhere.

I took the job, making $1.50 an hour, which I believe was the minimum wage at that time. I got training on-the-spot during the Friday night rush. We had to wear white, so Mom and I drummed up some white double-knit pants (or were they polyester?) and a white blouse that I'm sure was hers. After that weekend, we went and bought some nurses' uniform pieces that I could wear to work.

I was so proud of having a job. I don't remember how many hours per week I worked; it couldn't have been many. I was smug when I learned how to do that little curlicue on top of the ice cream cones. (It isn't that difficult, as it turned out.) It was a tough job, particularly after football games. My manager, who was thrilled with my performance the night I was hired, wasn't always so easy to please. And I'm sure I was a typical teenager, often more concerned with my social life (such as it were) than doing the best job I could.

I also don't remember how long I worked there. I think it was about 8 months. I started during football season, and I got fired the following summer. I didn't get fired for something I did, but for something my mother did. But that's a story for another day.

It's probably a good thing I don't work at the DQ anymore. I would be as big as a house, I'm sure.