I Think I Understand How Those Cartoon People Walking Across Rocks in the Water Feel When the Rocks Walk Away Because They're Really Turtles

Last night I was draining The Pony’s rotini when I noticed something near my left elbow as I leaned on the kitchen sink. It just caught my eye, you know, how something not normally there will get your attention.

The sink is almond-colored, because when building the house, Hick somehow didn’t think I was serious when I said I wanted a stainless steel sink just like the one we put in my $17,000 house when we renovated the kitchen. The counter is burgundy. And on it, right beside the sink, mere centimeters from my left elbow, was a black olive.

Okay, it wasn’t a whole black olive, all oval and hollow and waiting to be put on the end of a child’s finger, or cut up to apply to a pizza. It was more of a sliver of black olive. “Hmm…” I thought. “When did I last eat black olives? I didn’t notice that one got away.” Let the record show that I usually buy my black olives already sliced, in a tiny can from Save A Lot, to put on super nachos. I had made super nachos on Saturday. So that was a long time for an olive sliver to sit on the counter beside the sink. Even in a household of Thevictorians. Besides, my black olives are sliced crossways, not longways. And this one was clearly long and oval, with pointy ends, not round with a hole in the middle.

As I was contemplating this rogue black olive sliver, and watching the boiling water drain from the yellow plastic colander, I sensed movement from the corner of my eye.

THAT OLIVE WAS WALKING ACROSS THE COUNTER!

Yeah. How is that possible? Let me tell you how that’s possible. It was a bug! A BUG. A black bug walking across my burgundy kitchen counter. I grabbed a Puffs With Lotion and snatched up that critter forthwith. And…it didn’t even have the decency to crunchy! I’m not sure what type of bug that was. I had barely recovered from it being an olive. It was not your typical roach. It was narrower. And not crunch. Maybe it was some kind of fancy flying roach or beetle. But now it was a dead squashed bug of indeterminate origin.

Let the record show that Thevictorian household does not have a history of insect infestation. Sure, we have wasps on the porch every summer, and ants that come in under the kitchen door once a year, and an occasional millipede in the basement, and an odd field mouse here and there. But we do not have roaches. Or olive-slice-looking bugs. Where it came from I don’t know. It’s not even like it had an encrusted-silverware smorgasbord on which to feast. The only items on the counter were a sharp knife which had been used to slice an onion the night before, and a fork that had speared a dill pickle out of a new jar.

I don’t know where our visitor came from.

But I’m pretty sure Hick had something to do with it.

The Pony Is No Heidi

This morning The Pony had to be at school by 6:45. That's A.M., you know. So we had to leave 40 minutes early. It's not like we had to get up any earlier. But our schedule was disrupted.

I am normally the first one up. I take my thyroid medicine, because I only have a sliver of a thyroid left, you know, and I have to get my body systems in working order. That med says I should take it an hour before a meal. So I pack the lunches, take a shower, wake The Pony, and try to catch a quick chair nap before time to grab a packet of two mini sausage biscuits and take my other two meds. That's the routine.

This morning I had to find the tax receipts from the past two years so Hick could transfer the license on my mom's Trailblazer, since we bought out the half belonging to my sister the ex-mayor's wife. Then I had to write out a check for estimated taxes, because what with Genius being an RA this year, and still having his scholarships, the school is kind of paying him to attend, and the deadline for paying estimated taxes first quarter is April 15. Which is only one day away.

Then I had to scrounge up some spending money for The Pony, who was going with our school team to compete at the W.Y.S.E state finals which so happened to be held on the campus of Genius's college. (Unfortunately, they did not win any medals, but still, they qualified to compete at the state level). The Pony said the bus was leaving at 7:00, and that they might stop for breakfast and eat it on the bus if they had a drive who allowed it. For that reason, he declined my offer to drive him through Hardee's so he for sure had a stick-to-his-scrawny-ribs protein breakfast in case the plans fell through.

I had to grab my second-tier meds and take them on the drive, what with time being of the essence. So I heated my two mini sausage biscuits in the microwave with two drawer pulls for the handle, and wrapped them in a paper towel, and off we went. We had reached the county road when it was time to take those meds and eat my breakfast.

"You know, Pony, my sausage biscuits are now hard as rocks. It would have been nice to have a soft Hardee's biscuit."

"I never said YOU couldn't go through there. I just said I didn't want to."

"That's okay. I'll make do." I bit into one.

>CRACK<

"What WAS that?"

"Just my sausage biscuit."

"You don't have to eat those."

"Oh, but I do. That, or take my meds on an empty stomach with only water sloshing around. That's not good." I took another bite.

>CRACK<

"That's terrible. A biscuit should not sound like that."

"You're tellin' ME!"

>CRACK<

"That might or might not have been a tooth."

"I can't believe you're eating those."

"I still have a whole one left to go. You're welcome to a bite if you'd like."

"No. I'll just sit back here, silently judging you."

"I think you need to review the definition of SILENTLY."

Let the record show that The Pony did NOT get to stop for breakfast, because four members of his team were fifteen minutes late. The Pony said that was okay, because one of the others had a box of Krispy Kreme donuts.

The trip takes about 80 minutes. I imagine they all hit a sugar crash at around the time they started the competition.

******************************************************
Let's see who can figure out that title!

And That's the Way It Was, Back In Val's Semi-Early Days of Educatin'

I don't usually spout off here about my profession. Not in so many details, anyway. But today I will treat you to a vignette concerning pupil demeanor in the public school system. Blog buddy Joe H. wonders how today's teachers manage to control their charges. I don't have the answer for that. If I did, I would bottle it and sell it on the counter of my proposed handbasket factory. Teaching is not the profession it used to be. It used to go a little something like this:

I was not a neophyte. I had ten years of teaching under my belt. Nobody was going to put one over on Mrs. Thevictorian. The class was a collection of shoulder-chips who didn't care much what grade they received, as long as it was passing. In the words of one: "If you get higher than 59.5, you're working too hard." They made it their goal to push the envelope. That's their job, you know. Adolescents must rebel against authority, against parents, against teachers, in order to prepare themselves for life as an adult.

Mrs. Thevictorian ran a tight ship. The fires of mutiny were quickly snuffed. Sometimes with humor, sometimes with threats promises of consequences, sometimes with talks after class, sometimes with letters home, and finally with discipline referrals. Let the record show that Mrs. Thevictorian only wrote up one or two students per year. Most of her charges were fast learners, even if they didn't want to show it in the academic department.

In her upstairs classroom, on the westward side of the building, late in the afternoon, in the heat of Indian Summer, (yes, this was in the days when most schools were not air-conditioned), The Incident occurred. Let the record show that Mrs. Thevictorian had full backing from her administration, which tolerated no tomfoolery in the learning environment. Such were the distractions kept to a minimum that the school allowed no visible tattoos, no facial piercings, no Mohawks. You didn't even think about wearing a hat in the building.

So on this sweltering day, at the beginning of the class period, just as Mrs. Thevictorian was getting into the meat of the lesson, Antsy turned around in his desk, which was at the head of the row, right in front of Mrs. Thevictorian's desk, her seating chart being alphabetical, none of this sit where you want every day kind of laxity in her classroom design...and snatched the pencil from the hands of the pupil behind him. Antsy then, in one swift motion, chucked that pencil out the open window, onto the ground two stories below, right beside the sidewalk leading to the main entrance beside the principal's office.

Mrs. Thevictorian continued with her lesson, walked to her desk, extracted a discipline referral, jotted down the time, and set it aside until she was finished with her instruction. As the pupils ducked their heads and began their guided practice, Mrs. Thevictorian filled out the specifics, handed Antsy his discipline referral, and directed him to the office.

Sometimes, you just have to make a point. A point that will resonate with the rest, so that such shenanigans cease, and learning takes the forefront. Not only did Antsy cross that line with his theft and his littering, but he made a mockery of the learning environment. To allow such an affront would have been a disservice to the other 27 pupils in that classroom.

Near the end of the period, Antsy returned. He was subdued. One of his cronies asked, "How many days did you get?" Meaning days of in-school suspension.

"None," said Antsy. "I got three swats."

A collective gasp rippled through the classroom. Not a gasp of shock at the thought of one of their members having his bottom swatted with a wooden paddle. A gasp of awe. SWATS? In-school suspension was the norm.

"How'd you do THAT?" asked an inquiring mind.

"You have to ASK for them!" said Antsy.

"Ohhh..." It was as if the location of the Holy Grail had been revealed.

Because, you see, the pupils much preferred to take their consequences and get on with life, a little bit the wiser, than pussyfoot around and while away three days in a room with other offenders, contemplating the error of their ways.

That's how it was, back in the day. Now I don't think even asking for it could get you swats.

Sometimes It's An Exercise Wheel, Sometimes It's a Metal Hammock

C'mon. You knew it wouldn't be long. Hick is in hot water again. Not so much hot water as greater-than-lukewarm water.

Perhaps you recall that I bought two hams when I knew Genius was coming home and planning to take some leftovers back with him. Today I baked the lesser ham. I tossed in some carrots and potatoes and onions, because how much simpler can a meal be, really, than shoving the whole thing in the oven? Actually, the ham went in first, then I removed some juice and poured it over my veggies in a smaller roasting pan. All we needed was Sister Schubert covered with foil and baked for 15 minutes, and we were in business. The ham-for-supper business.

Hick was busy flipping between two of his shows, a car make-over and an Alaskan cabin build. I told him he could slice the ham any time. That's his job, you know, as king of the castle. I checked on Sister Schubert, then shoved her back in the oven because she was still a little pale. I took out the veggies. Set out our trays left from last weekend, because what can be simpler when you have no dishwasher than only needing to clean up two roaster pans and silverware?

Still no Hick. I sliced off the end of the ham, which had been roasting face down. You'd think Hick would have heard the large butcher knife whack into the metal of the roaster pan bottom. But no. It wasn't even at a crucial part in the plot of either of his shows. It was dead-on 5:30. End of the episodes. I called to him again. And again.

"Hey! Are you going to slice this ham?"

"I can if you want me to."

As if he hasn't sliced all previous hams in this household. He came in. I set Sister Schubert on top of the stove. She was browning nicely. I turned to look over my shoulder at Hick at the cutting block. One slice for the dinner. A chunk for Hick. One slice for the dinner. A chunk for Hick.

"Are you eating the ham again?"

"I only had one bite. Just now. That's what you saw."

"You always eat more carving than you do at the meal."

"I only had one bite."

I called The Pony up from his semi-illuminated boycave to fix his platter. Carrots and potatoes but no onions. A plop of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. A few chunks of ham. And the sight of him up to his elbows in Sister Schubert, tearing at her piece by piece, from the outer layer to the innards. I think he took five rolls. But Sister Schubert is petite.

Again, I turned to supervise Hick, who was still carving. And I caught him with the butt of the ham in the flat plastic rectangular container in which I wanted to store the leftovers. CUTTING THE HAM WITH A BUTCHER KNIFE IN MY PLASTIC CONTAINER.

I swear. The three blind mice could not have been more horrified if Hick had been cutting off their tails with a carving knife. Of all the Hick things to do! He had taken the ham butt out of the metal roasting pan, where it was safe to cut, and put it in the plastic container, where he was no doubt going to stab right through the bottom to the wood of the butcher block. His excuse was that it was too crowded in the roaster pan, what with the already-sliced ham in the way. The already-sliced ham which should have been set in the plastic container as he sliced it.

"Just leave it! I'm making beans later in the week. Leave that piece whole."

I really don't know what goes on in that man's noggin. I picture one lonely hamster on a wheel, not running, but laying on his back, his tiny hamster hands folded behind his head.

How Ya Gonna Dupe 'Em, Down In the Field House, After They've Seen the Light?

You might think a science fair is all fun and Reverse Jenga. But it's not.

Most of the work is done before the big day, in preparing your entrants on how to prepare a project. How to sort out variables, and establish controls, perhaps a constant, and how to explain the procedure to the judges. The big day itself is a lot of waiting for the final result. The entrants sit down on the floor of the junior college field house to await their turn. IF they are smart, and grab a chair as soon as they've checked in. Chairs are at a premium, you know. This fair is a big deal. Standing room only, because there are more entrants than chairs. One would think that the junior college owned those chairs. But they do not. They rent them for the event.

The sponsors are banned from the floor when judging starts. We sit around shooting the bull until we are called behind the bleachers. Uh huh. The glamorous life of a science teacher is revealed. One side of that field house has the bleachers folded up, so there's a room in behind, with windows to the outside, and cracks in the metal bleachers to peep out onto the fair. Usually, there's a deafening din that permeates every corner of the facility. But this year, the participants were eerily quiet and well-mannered.

As soon as it was announced that there would be a sponsors's meeting behind the bleachers when the judges had cleared out from their breakfast, my colleagues headed over there to wait. I like to stay put, saving seats, so that others can see where we have staked out our territory. There are only so many bags and forms and water bottles you can leave sitting without fear of molestation. Though the kids are on the floor, and the sponsors are in the meeting...parents often show up and put down roots on their own bleacher real estate. Let the record show that our contingent prefers the front row, so as not to be interspersed with kids once the awards ceremony starts.

I kept my eye on the ringleader of this show, and when she headed over to the room behind the bleachers, I followed. We had a wheeled cart loaded with chairs like the participants, except that ours were white, and theirs were brown. The first one I tried had a wobble. I scoped this out before sitting down. "I think I'll try another one. This one doesn't seem sturdy."

"Be careful, Val. They are NOT sturdy. You'll feel like you're going over backwards."

I sat down gingerly on my second choice. Then I tried not to move. These folding chairs were plastic. They did not have four legs like a regular metal folding chair, but rather two U-shaped legs, one in front, one in back. Nor did they have a nice roomy seat like a metal folding chair. They had a seat like a postage stamp. I felt like an elephant balancing my his buttocks on the end of a baseball bat. And they were low. Val is not good at being seated or rising from kindergarten-chair-height furniture. It seemed that everything in that building is vertically challenged. The chairs, the bleachers, the toilets. Not Val's cup of tea. In her very own classroom, she has her semi-comfortable rolly chair jacked to its top height. Substitutes, beware.

We waited for the meeting to start. The ringleader took off to de-escalate a crisis, but just before zooming out the door, she announced, "The fair next year will be on the equivalent Friday of this year's fair. Oh, and the vendor made a mistake with coffee cups the college ordered to commemorate its anniversary, so you can have a free cup." We remained. Signed our name for a free T-shirt. Took extra programs that were going to be trashed. My colleagues had brought work to do (silly things) and were having connection problems with our network. Two ladies from different schools joined our table. One of them pulled out my abandoned chair and asked, "Is anybody sitting here?"

"No. But I didn't take that chair because it wobbles."

"Be careful when you sit down. You'll feel like you're falling over backwards."

She sat down. "WHEW! I thought I was going over backwards!"

Indeed. We talked shop. Waited. Decided where to order lunch. Waited. Looked down the room at the other tables full of sponsors. Waited. Talked about people we knew in common. Waited. Talked about our testing schedules. Waited. It was torture.

"I feel like I'm being held hostage. I don't think we're having a meeting. She's not coming back."

"Val. We always have a meeting. She asks for our input for next year."

"I don't think she's coming back. I hate to get up, because then I'll have to sit down again. But I can't take this. I'd rather be out there watching the kids on the floor." I got up and looked through the bleacher cracks. "She's not even out there. I think she left the building. I'm going to the bathroom. If I miss anything, let me know." On my trip to the other corner of the field house to use the three-stall claustrophobic bathroom that, along with its identical twin on the other end, served the entire group of judges, sponsors, participants, and spectators...I saw neither hide nor hair of the ringleader.

When I returned to the above-ground dungeon where we were being kept, I asked if I had missed anything.

"No." Said in quadruplicate by my table members.

I sat down slowly, carefully, and painfully, and balanced on my precarious perch. Another fifteen minutes of waiting ensued. "I don't think we're having a meeting. I'm making a break for it. I'm going back to our seats. Those kids are going to be released for lunch in a few minutes, and I'm not giving up my spot on the front row."

Off I went. But I stopped by the table with water, cookies, chips, granola bars, and napkins. I picked up my free cup and tried to get two cookies. All the good ones were gone. The chocolate chips and peanut butter. All that were left were oatmeal raisin. Still. I tried to pick up one for me and one for The Pony. There were short plastic tongs which didn't work. Threatened to break the cookie in half, because it was stuck to the cookie under it. I gave up and grabbed it with my fingers. OH NO! A man walked in the door and saw me! Using my fingers! On cookies that would not come apart. THREE COOKIES came loose. I wrapped a napkin around them and left. I don't know which is the bigger crime, looking uncouth for grabbing cookies with my fingers, or looking like a hog for taking three. What's a Val to do? I guarantee that nobody wanted a cookie after Val's hands had been on it.

So...having escaped from captivity, I sat down in my saved seat and ate a cookie, just as the kids were released for lunch. It was like watching the running of the bulls. My colleagues left to bring back lunch, and ate in the room behind there bleachers, where they remained until the awards.

We never did have that sponsor's meeting.

Reverse Jenga

Forget about that game where you build a tower and remove wooden blocks one by one and try to stack them back on top. How tame. How snooze-worthy.

Here's a REAL game. No limit on the number of players. You start with an empty trash can. Then each player puts a piece of trash inside. The game ends when the last piece of trash makes the other pieces fall. Here's a game in progress:

Yep. The last item added was that Styrofoam cup that looks like an orb if you don't have your bifocals on. It was placed there by a teenage boy who made sure that it did not roll over the rail and thus end the game. One lady put a cellophane wrapper from a fortune cookie on top, but it was rejected. It did not topple the tower, so she picked it up off the floor and stuck it on again. Success!

This is one of the wastebaskets at the local junior college field house, where The Pony and I and many a student participated in a science fair today. Funny how there was another trash can just like this one a couple of staircases down, but a totally empty one just along the rail from that burrito-looking advertisement.

I suppose the competitors wanted a challenge, not a slam-dunk.

A Taste of Young Tender Val

Yesterday the land of Backroads was drenched with a downpour that lasted all the live-long day. A downpour so steady and forceful that the students were kept inside the main building, and not allowed to traipse across the parking lot to their technology building. A downpour of epic proportions. A downpour that necessitated an announcement to the pupils that those driving should avoid a certain road, because it was underwater. A downpour that rerouted the placid creek that runs behind Val's homestead and beside the gravel road so that water was flowing down the gravel road. Where CARS belong!

But let’s not talk about the weather. Let’s talk about what a good father Hick is to his boys. Always wanting them to have the best of everything. To have things he did not have as a youngster. Like when Genius was 4, and Hick bought him a two-man go-kart from Walmart. Or when he was 10, and Hick gave him the $300 Toyota Tercel with a manual transmission, and let him drive his brother around the acreage.

Around that same time, Hick declared that a boy needs a clubhouse. That might have been because Genius asked for a clubhouse. I’m sure that was it. He had been to a birthday party, and his buddies whipped up an instant clubhouse. Let's revisit those early years, when Val was a sweet young thing with a foolish notion to become a writer. Way back on April 19, 2005, on her very first super secret blog, where Val stuck to just the facts, Ma'am…the tale went a little something like this:

******************************************************

Redneck Kids' Clubhouse

My son went to a birthday party a couple weeks ago, and the
kids started putting sticks and leaves on top of some big rocks
to make a clubhouse. When he came home, he asked his dad
to bring him some big rocks up from the creek to make a club-
house. Of course that would be too much work, so his dad
told him he knew just the place. I didn't think any more about
it, and both boys and their dad went out to play.

They came back in about an hour later, all excited. "Dad
found us this great place for our clubhouse! Come look!"
So I went outside, about 50 yards from our front porch,
and saw the "clubhouse." It was one of our sinkholes.

Oh, we have two sinkholes, a large one and a small one.
This was the small one, but still a sinkhole. Now I'm not
sure if you know what a sinkhole is, but in this area it is
where the underground water has eroded away the rock
and left an opening between the surface of the earth and
the underground water table. In other words, it is like a
cave with the top eroded away. Sometimes there is water
in the bottom, sometimes not. In our big sinkhole, you can
drop a rock and eventually hear it splash. It is about 50
yards past the small sinkhole.

I, of course, had a few words to say about this new clubhouse.
Number one being that it isn't safe to play in a sinkhole. My
husband said I was overreacting: "It has a dirt floor." Yeah,
for now. How do we know it is finished collapsing? Maybe
that is just the roof that fell in and got stuck, and it's going to
collapse again.

The kids were happy as could be. They have a cool clubhouse.
They had covered the top with sticks. So it kind of looks like
some primitive trap that unsuspecting animals fall into and land on
pointy sticks. I do not like this idea of using a sinkhole for a
clubhouse.

"What am I going to do when one of them falls through to the
water and gets washed along in that underground river? I can't
save him, and by the time I call for help he'll be miles away."

My husband still thinks I'm overreacting. My mother says to
dress them in life jackets and tie a rope on them before they
go out to play. Now that's a good idea.

***********************************************************

Yep. That was Early Val. I hope nobody suffers a bout of dehydration after reading such a dry take on a father's misguided love. But if they did, we can fix that! Momentarily.

Here are some photos of the original clubhouse, from 2005.

That's the entrance. Every little boy's fantasy of a secret hideout, perhaps a place to find or store a chest of pirate treasure.

If you're gonna have a clubhouse, you've gotta camouflage the top. Something natural-looking, like a pile of random tree limbs with cut marks that might have fallen there. Hey. It could happen.

What a cool hangout! IF YOU DON'T MIND DYING!!! Hick's choice of clubhouse design leaves a bit to be desired.

So anyhoo...when I talked to Hick last night on the phone, when he was briefly trapped in our enclave by a raging wet-weather creek that was flooding a little concrete bridge on the gravel road...he shared a bit of news with me.

"I have never seen this much rain in such a short time. I don't know what was living in that sinkhole behind the barbershop, but it ain't livin' there no more. That thing is full of water."

EXACTLY! It might have taken 10 years, minus 10 days...but Val's point has been proven.

A SINKHOLE AIN'T NO PLACE TO PUT A KIDS' CLUBHOUSE.
You'd think that would go without saying, now wouldn't you?