I received an email this morning concerning a submission that I made a while back. I know it came in this morning, because it wasn't there when I checked my phone at 1:30 a.m. as I plugged in the charger. Since I was just going out the door, after dousing The Pony's head with kitchen-sink water, the better to tighten his too-long mane into regular ringlets rather than the stretched-out curls of sleep...I did not take the time to get my glasses and read it. I told The Pony that I would need him to read it to me on the way to school. He was quite agreeable, even though I had just set him up to be a walking icicle when the wind hit his hydrated noggin between house and garage. It's not called a breezeway for nothing, you know.
Shortly after we left gravel and turned onto blacktop, The Pony retrieved my email on my phone. He read it excitedly for me. We are kindred spirits. As he finished, murmuring the last command of how I should peruse the story once more and make final edits and reply, I instructed him to back out of the email program so I didn't accidentally boob-delete it. Okay, I didn't say boob-delete to him. That would be a bit untoward. I merely said I didn't want to accidentally delete it when I dropped my phone into my shirt pocket for the walk from the parking lot into school.
Almost instantly, The Pony shoved my phone onto the center console of the Tahoe. "That was quick! Did you back out of the email?" It's what I do. I just hit that backwards arrow at the bottom of my phone. Not on the screen. On the metal of the phone casing. That's one thing on that contraption that I know how to work.
"Oh, I saved it in the archives."
"WHAT? What is that? I don't want it saved in the archives! I never use that! I want it in my inbox so I can go right to it when I get home."
"Well, it's in the archives."
"Well, GET IT BACK!"
"I can't. I don't know how to get into the archives on your phone."
"Great. Genius won't help me at school, and I can't get reception anyway. And you'll both be gone tonight to your Academic Team match. What am I supposed to do?"
"I don't know. I didn't do it on purpose. I actually thought it said 'add star,' not 'archives.' I'm so dumb sometimes."
"You are NOT dumb. I'm not mad at you. It was an accident. But there are very few things that are really important to me, and this happens to be one of them. The others being you, your brother, Grandma, and even Dad to a certain extent."
"I'm looking on my Gmail right now. I see where the archives are. But I never put anything in mine."
"Me neither! And I can't access Gmail at school on my computer. It's blocked."
"Uh huh. All email is blocked."
"HEY! Why don't you just open my Gmail right now on your laptop?"
"I never thought of that! Wow! You have 138 spam emails!
"Try to focus."
"There it is, the archives. Move to...IT'S BACK IN THE INBOX! At least on my laptop."
"Um. Yeah. It will be from wherever I open my Gmail. Whew! Between the two of us, we make a regular Einstein."
Pity the poor technological simpletons. We might as well be writing on cave walls with paint made from charcoal, spit, and animal fat. Except for that troubling starting-a-fire-to-make-charcoal skill.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
One Size Fits Most
I have a birthday coming up within the fortnight. Don't think I'm fishing for gifts. Ol' Val has everything a woman could need. And then some. But there's something on the work front that I covet. My employer is going to spring for it, I'm sure. Not in time for my birthday, of course. But in time for next school year. I will drop some hints every month. I will pencil it into my requisition form, then erase it so it can still be seen. No need wasting my allotment of taxpayer dough on an item that I consider a right, not a frill. Other teachers have them. I merely ask to be kept like the Joneses. So...what do you get the teacher who has everything?
SHOES!
Not Manolo Blahniks. No Jimmy Choo shoes. Don't need Christian Louboutin boots. Nor vermillion Crocs. Nope. I'm talkin' about the latest fashion fad in educator footwear...
CHAIR SHOES!
Look at the dainty lines. The cushioned instep. The high gloss. The aesthetic profile. I don't mean to drool like a fetishist, but you must admit there's something tantalizing about a well-turned chair-ankle in a hot quad of workplace clodhoppers.
I can't find a vendor for these eyecatchers anywhere. Not even my BFF Google can give me an image. I know they are not custom made. It's not like that hippie barefoot dude, Cody, on Dual Survival, sawed into a bloated cow carcass and peeled away dear, departed leather for a sole, through which he wove yucca fibers for straps. And I'm pretty sure they were not made by Mythbusters out of duct tape for their very own version of survival show sandals. Somewhere, a factory is chugging away, churning out these beauties in a steady gleaming stream.
It's all I can do to restrain the green-eyed monster when I happen across a sight such as this:
Oh, the coltish insouciance! Flaunting their footwear with unbridled abandon. Knowing not the effect such a sight has upon one so enamored of their assets.
I swear, as this blog is my witness, that one day, I shall never be chair-shoeless again!
SHOES!
Not Manolo Blahniks. No Jimmy Choo shoes. Don't need Christian Louboutin boots. Nor vermillion Crocs. Nope. I'm talkin' about the latest fashion fad in educator footwear...
CHAIR SHOES!
Look at the dainty lines. The cushioned instep. The high gloss. The aesthetic profile. I don't mean to drool like a fetishist, but you must admit there's something tantalizing about a well-turned chair-ankle in a hot quad of workplace clodhoppers.
I can't find a vendor for these eyecatchers anywhere. Not even my BFF Google can give me an image. I know they are not custom made. It's not like that hippie barefoot dude, Cody, on Dual Survival, sawed into a bloated cow carcass and peeled away dear, departed leather for a sole, through which he wove yucca fibers for straps. And I'm pretty sure they were not made by Mythbusters out of duct tape for their very own version of survival show sandals. Somewhere, a factory is chugging away, churning out these beauties in a steady gleaming stream.
It's all I can do to restrain the green-eyed monster when I happen across a sight such as this:
Oh, the coltish insouciance! Flaunting their footwear with unbridled abandon. Knowing not the effect such a sight has upon one so enamored of their assets.
I swear, as this blog is my witness, that one day, I shall never be chair-shoeless again!
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Rotten to the Core
I have been getting by on four or five hours of sleep during the week. Unless I nod off in the recliner while watching the news, that is. It's not by design. Not a part of my master plan to try and take over the world. There are simply too many things I want to do. Things that are hampered by my full-time job. Not that I'm complaining. I've adapted. By sleeping four hours per night. From 1:00 to 5:00 a.m., whether I need that shut-eye or not.
That lifestyle is catching up with me. I have been finding myself a tad forgetful. Like last week when I could not, for the life of me, recall the name of that thing a teacher puts on the board to keep the students occupied and educated the first few minutes of class, while she's taking roll and signing absentee slips and doling out make-up work. I was grasping at straws like a week-day bathroom-break-restricted 44-oz.-Diet-Coke addict on a Friday evening. It was kind of important. I needed that word to fill out my pre-evaluation form before the administrator's scheduled visit. To forge ahead with the rest, I penciled in words that sounded similar to me. Barnstormer? Brainstarter? Boardwarmer? I stopped short of asking the students themselves. We may be partners in education, but we're not EQUAL partners. A couple of hours later, it came to me: BELLRINGER!
This afternoon, at the end of a strenuous day pulling science project ideas out of students like a coon hunter pulling porcupine quills out of an inquisitive hound, I plopped down at my school desk to wait for The Pony to finish with academic team practice. "Whew!" I thought. "I really need a few minutes to decompose."
Maybe that's why so many people think I'm a stinker.
That lifestyle is catching up with me. I have been finding myself a tad forgetful. Like last week when I could not, for the life of me, recall the name of that thing a teacher puts on the board to keep the students occupied and educated the first few minutes of class, while she's taking roll and signing absentee slips and doling out make-up work. I was grasping at straws like a week-day bathroom-break-restricted 44-oz.-Diet-Coke addict on a Friday evening. It was kind of important. I needed that word to fill out my pre-evaluation form before the administrator's scheduled visit. To forge ahead with the rest, I penciled in words that sounded similar to me. Barnstormer? Brainstarter? Boardwarmer? I stopped short of asking the students themselves. We may be partners in education, but we're not EQUAL partners. A couple of hours later, it came to me: BELLRINGER!
This afternoon, at the end of a strenuous day pulling science project ideas out of students like a coon hunter pulling porcupine quills out of an inquisitive hound, I plopped down at my school desk to wait for The Pony to finish with academic team practice. "Whew!" I thought. "I really need a few minutes to decompose."
Maybe that's why so many people think I'm a stinker.
Monday, January 28, 2013
For Whom the Marquee Glows
My valuable time has been usurped this evening, filling out financial aid forms with Genius. Good thing that boy is smart, because I have a feeling he ain't gettin' nothin' 'cept what his noggin earns him in an academic scholarship.
Two-and-a-half hours I shall never recoup. Hours that I could have spent writing an interesting post. Or better yet, spent readying tales from the wood for submission to the Not Your Mother's Book series. I've got a bunch of them inside me, yearning to escape. The gas station chicken keeps shoving them back down.
Some of my more outgoing tales have already packed their bags, and departed to seek their fortunes in the world of entertainment. Others are waiting in the wings at the local dinner theater, biding their time until their cue. Some have just signed up for a thespian class at The Learning Annex. And a few sit in the audience, too timid to draw attention to themselves.
I wish them well, my little proteges. All big-eyed, breathless, and naive, sharing a cold-water flat with fifty-nine or so roommates, hoping not to be the one evicted for eating somebody's leftover Hunan Chicken in the communal icebox. That ragtag bunch of newbies, putting on a show, pleased as punch to be performing, still shocked to discover an audience on the other side of Aunt Penelope's old drapes.
How long before they're old and jaded? Sneaking out the stage door into the alley for a cigarette. Heating up the prop room in the throes of a clandestine affair with another ingenue or manchild. Refusing to sign autographs. Demanding a table without waiting at the dinner rush, bellowing, "Don't you know who I am?"
Then all too soon, they shall languish, spirit broken, having never hit Broadway, hacks in a rundown hotel where old has-beens go to reminisce about the salad days. When everyone was spit-shined and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, glowing with the vitality of youth.
Youth. So frivolously wasted on the young.
Two-and-a-half hours I shall never recoup. Hours that I could have spent writing an interesting post. Or better yet, spent readying tales from the wood for submission to the Not Your Mother's Book series. I've got a bunch of them inside me, yearning to escape. The gas station chicken keeps shoving them back down.
Some of my more outgoing tales have already packed their bags, and departed to seek their fortunes in the world of entertainment. Others are waiting in the wings at the local dinner theater, biding their time until their cue. Some have just signed up for a thespian class at The Learning Annex. And a few sit in the audience, too timid to draw attention to themselves.
I wish them well, my little proteges. All big-eyed, breathless, and naive, sharing a cold-water flat with fifty-nine or so roommates, hoping not to be the one evicted for eating somebody's leftover Hunan Chicken in the communal icebox. That ragtag bunch of newbies, putting on a show, pleased as punch to be performing, still shocked to discover an audience on the other side of Aunt Penelope's old drapes.
How long before they're old and jaded? Sneaking out the stage door into the alley for a cigarette. Heating up the prop room in the throes of a clandestine affair with another ingenue or manchild. Refusing to sign autographs. Demanding a table without waiting at the dinner rush, bellowing, "Don't you know who I am?"
Then all too soon, they shall languish, spirit broken, having never hit Broadway, hacks in a rundown hotel where old has-beens go to reminisce about the salad days. When everyone was spit-shined and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, glowing with the vitality of youth.
Youth. So frivolously wasted on the young.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Val Thevictorian and the Ripple of Gloom
I have spent the day taking one step forward and twelve steps back.
Lest you think I am learning new dance moves, I must declare that I have NOT been tripping the light fantastic. No waltz, no polka, no electric slide, no macarena, no tango. Not even a chicken dance. I'm no hoofer. What I HAVE been doing is my tax return.
Oh, how simple the Federal 1040! It is mere child's play compared to the Missouri maze of false starts and dead ends and divisions and recombinations designed to flummox the math-and-direction-challenged everyman. Neither factor of which is usually a weakness in Val Thevictorian. Just when you think you're going to town on that sucker, you hit line number two, and have to embark on a journey that makes the adventures of Indiana Jones look like the afternoon playdate of a toddler in a backyard sandbox. It is akin to sending a new intern from the rooftop helipad to the basement morgue, and farthest reaches of every floor in between, all under the guise of procuring a left-handed thermometer.
Remember the days of the paper booklets mailed to each taxpayer near the beginning of January? I don't know about you other-staters, but Missouri had a thin book of forms, with accompanying directions, several little worksheet boxes...and the whole kit 'n' caboodle was only about eight pages from front to back! Now I need to get online, find the type-in forms, and when I go to look for directions, there are a multitude of unnecessary fillables in my way. EIGHTEEN PAGES! I don't want to print all that! I tried just a couple of prime pages, but you have to click the PRINT selection within the form, or you get gobbledegook. AND, you can click to get the instructions for each line, but good luck getting back to where you started from.
For the last two years, I've used TurboTax for my official filing needs. I have it ready this year, at my left elbow. But I'm trying to get these figures in an accessible reference form for the FAFSA. Genius happens to NEED this by February 1st. Yeah. Good luck, Genius. I just got my last document Friday. And rumor has it that forms should not be officially filed until after January 30th. Everything is pretty much in order right now, except I can't figure out why this MO form is giving me a couple-hundred-dollar break in adjustments, but not Hick. Darn those income percentages! They're so archaic. The Feds don't care that Hick makes twice my money. Why should the state revenuers? It's back to the old recalculation board for me.
Alas, I have tarried too long at the Diet Coke watering hole. I sense something creeping up behind me, and it's not granny panties.
Lest you think I am learning new dance moves, I must declare that I have NOT been tripping the light fantastic. No waltz, no polka, no electric slide, no macarena, no tango. Not even a chicken dance. I'm no hoofer. What I HAVE been doing is my tax return.
Oh, how simple the Federal 1040! It is mere child's play compared to the Missouri maze of false starts and dead ends and divisions and recombinations designed to flummox the math-and-direction-challenged everyman. Neither factor of which is usually a weakness in Val Thevictorian. Just when you think you're going to town on that sucker, you hit line number two, and have to embark on a journey that makes the adventures of Indiana Jones look like the afternoon playdate of a toddler in a backyard sandbox. It is akin to sending a new intern from the rooftop helipad to the basement morgue, and farthest reaches of every floor in between, all under the guise of procuring a left-handed thermometer.
Remember the days of the paper booklets mailed to each taxpayer near the beginning of January? I don't know about you other-staters, but Missouri had a thin book of forms, with accompanying directions, several little worksheet boxes...and the whole kit 'n' caboodle was only about eight pages from front to back! Now I need to get online, find the type-in forms, and when I go to look for directions, there are a multitude of unnecessary fillables in my way. EIGHTEEN PAGES! I don't want to print all that! I tried just a couple of prime pages, but you have to click the PRINT selection within the form, or you get gobbledegook. AND, you can click to get the instructions for each line, but good luck getting back to where you started from.
For the last two years, I've used TurboTax for my official filing needs. I have it ready this year, at my left elbow. But I'm trying to get these figures in an accessible reference form for the FAFSA. Genius happens to NEED this by February 1st. Yeah. Good luck, Genius. I just got my last document Friday. And rumor has it that forms should not be officially filed until after January 30th. Everything is pretty much in order right now, except I can't figure out why this MO form is giving me a couple-hundred-dollar break in adjustments, but not Hick. Darn those income percentages! They're so archaic. The Feds don't care that Hick makes twice my money. Why should the state revenuers? It's back to the old recalculation board for me.
Alas, I have tarried too long at the Diet Coke watering hole. I sense something creeping up behind me, and it's not granny panties.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Let's Make One Thing Clear
Just in case some of you are planning to complete a science project for my upcoming mandatory assignment, allow me to steer you in the proper direction before you go careening down a one-way street with no outlet. The following topics of investigation are not appropriate. Don't bother to research them and ask for approval. Denied!
* shooting guns of any kind at any target
* building any type of incendiary device
* lighting different flammable fluids on fire to see which burn the hottest
* feeding mice a diet of only Cheetos to see what effect it has on their health
* giving mice any type of supplement such as an energy drink to see what effect it has on their health
* making your own cough medicine to compare it with store-bought cough medicine in the effectiveness of relieving a cough in your little sister
* testing your pets for a reaction to stimuli
Yes, I have learned from experience. Unless I specify, the assignment can spiral out of control. The cough medicine lass could not understand why it was not ethical to mix various elixirs and herbs and offer them to her sibling.
The pet-stimuli investigation was actually listed on a website that we use to get project ideas. If I remember correctly, it involved touching various domesticated animals with a feather, or blowing a burst of air through a straw. I recall nothing about jabbing them with a Bic pen. Which was also not listed in the procedure that I approved before the actual experiment. Imagine my shock during the presentation when the young scientist reported that: "I poked my cat with the ink pen, and she scratched me and ran off. I poked my dog with the ink pen, and he bit me." Ahem. I most certainly did not approve that procedure. Luckily, the cap was left on the Bic.
I think, perhaps, the young experimenter learned a lesson about stimulus/response. I know that I did.
* shooting guns of any kind at any target
* building any type of incendiary device
* lighting different flammable fluids on fire to see which burn the hottest
* feeding mice a diet of only Cheetos to see what effect it has on their health
* giving mice any type of supplement such as an energy drink to see what effect it has on their health
* making your own cough medicine to compare it with store-bought cough medicine in the effectiveness of relieving a cough in your little sister
* testing your pets for a reaction to stimuli
Yes, I have learned from experience. Unless I specify, the assignment can spiral out of control. The cough medicine lass could not understand why it was not ethical to mix various elixirs and herbs and offer them to her sibling.
The pet-stimuli investigation was actually listed on a website that we use to get project ideas. If I remember correctly, it involved touching various domesticated animals with a feather, or blowing a burst of air through a straw. I recall nothing about jabbing them with a Bic pen. Which was also not listed in the procedure that I approved before the actual experiment. Imagine my shock during the presentation when the young scientist reported that: "I poked my cat with the ink pen, and she scratched me and ran off. I poked my dog with the ink pen, and he bit me." Ahem. I most certainly did not approve that procedure. Luckily, the cap was left on the Bic.
I think, perhaps, the young experimenter learned a lesson about stimulus/response. I know that I did.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Look Away! It's Hideous!
Here's what happens when you send a man into the convenience store to buy gas station chicken. If you have a weak constitution, perhaps you should read no further. In addition, pregnant ladies, those with heart ailments, and gas-station-chicken connoisseurs should step aside. This tale is not for you.
I've grown comfortable with my refueling/poultry establishment. I recognize the workers. They know me. Sure, they stop short of calling, "NORM!" when I walk through the door. But they greet me. We exchange pleasantries about Larry the Cable Guy Chips. So it was with no trepidation that I entered last night to pick up a fowl feast. As luck would have it, the luck that has dogged Val Thevictorian all her live-long life, an elderly gentleman entered upon my heels and made a beeline for the chicken counter. Of course, it was an elderly gentleman kind of beeline. Perhaps you are acquainted with Tim Conway as The Old Man. I sincerely thought I could take him.
The dispenser of my 44 oz. Diet Coke had just completed the last gurgle when I saw Mr. Clueless beat me by two seconds. I'm quite speedy at filling up. But there he was, not at the counter proper, but peering through the glass case. The cashier asked if he needed something from the kitchen. "I guess so." She pushed the doorbell button under the counter that signals the chicken clerk attending the fryer that his help is required. He came out in his fetching little plastic hairnet.
"May I help you?"
"I guess so."
"Do you want some chicken?"
"That's what she sent me in for."
"Do you know what you want?"
"I don't know. I guess I'll take two of those in the front, and two of those in the back, and two of those in the front, and two of those in the back." At no time did he point. Just peered into the case.
"Okay...so you want two breasts? And two wings? And two thighs?"
"I guess so."
The chicken clerk put on his plastic gloves, folded up a box, and grabbed his tongs. He deftly snagged the pieces and put them in the box.
"I think that's only six."
"Yes, sir."
"I want two of those." Again, no pointing.
"Oh, you want an eight-piece box?"
"Do you have one of those?"
"Yes. It's two breasts, two thighs, two wings, and two legs."
"Gimme two of those there."
"Two legs?"
"I guess so."
Let the record show that this business is known for their eight-piece chicken boxes. It's on the sign out front. It's clearly listed on the menu on the wall behind the counter. That poor chicken clerk must have thought he was being pranked. He remained cheerful and polite. He scribbled out the ticket and wrote in the eight-piece box. Granted, it was his error to start with, not keeping proper track of how may 'two of those' Mr. Clueless asked for. On a normal day, I would have stepped past the debacle with my soda. But I was entranced by this befuddled septuagenarian. I couldn't walk away.
Ladies, don't let your husbands grow old and buy chicken.
Mr. Clueless is lucky he was not in line to buy soup in New York City.
I've grown comfortable with my refueling/poultry establishment. I recognize the workers. They know me. Sure, they stop short of calling, "NORM!" when I walk through the door. But they greet me. We exchange pleasantries about Larry the Cable Guy Chips. So it was with no trepidation that I entered last night to pick up a fowl feast. As luck would have it, the luck that has dogged Val Thevictorian all her live-long life, an elderly gentleman entered upon my heels and made a beeline for the chicken counter. Of course, it was an elderly gentleman kind of beeline. Perhaps you are acquainted with Tim Conway as The Old Man. I sincerely thought I could take him.
The dispenser of my 44 oz. Diet Coke had just completed the last gurgle when I saw Mr. Clueless beat me by two seconds. I'm quite speedy at filling up. But there he was, not at the counter proper, but peering through the glass case. The cashier asked if he needed something from the kitchen. "I guess so." She pushed the doorbell button under the counter that signals the chicken clerk attending the fryer that his help is required. He came out in his fetching little plastic hairnet.
"May I help you?"
"I guess so."
"Do you want some chicken?"
"That's what she sent me in for."
"Do you know what you want?"
"I don't know. I guess I'll take two of those in the front, and two of those in the back, and two of those in the front, and two of those in the back." At no time did he point. Just peered into the case.
"Okay...so you want two breasts? And two wings? And two thighs?"
"I guess so."
The chicken clerk put on his plastic gloves, folded up a box, and grabbed his tongs. He deftly snagged the pieces and put them in the box.
"I think that's only six."
"Yes, sir."
"I want two of those." Again, no pointing.
"Oh, you want an eight-piece box?"
"Do you have one of those?"
"Yes. It's two breasts, two thighs, two wings, and two legs."
"Gimme two of those there."
"Two legs?"
"I guess so."
Let the record show that this business is known for their eight-piece chicken boxes. It's on the sign out front. It's clearly listed on the menu on the wall behind the counter. That poor chicken clerk must have thought he was being pranked. He remained cheerful and polite. He scribbled out the ticket and wrote in the eight-piece box. Granted, it was his error to start with, not keeping proper track of how may 'two of those' Mr. Clueless asked for. On a normal day, I would have stepped past the debacle with my soda. But I was entranced by this befuddled septuagenarian. I couldn't walk away.
Ladies, don't let your husbands grow old and buy chicken.
Mr. Clueless is lucky he was not in line to buy soup in New York City.
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