Sunday, August 31, 2008

I just realized that my apple tree is covered in nearly ripe golden delicious apples and that my plums are ripe, too. Mike smoked me chiles last night, too.

Color me stunned and psyched. I'm a canning machine, babies.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Jumping Jehosaphat on a pogostick! The teacher I subbed for is teaching 5th graders. For those of you just tuning in, fifth and sixth graders are about my least favorite age group to sub for. I swear it's just the introduction of those hormones to those little bodies that they just haven't adjusted to you and they're about the most hideous excuses for human beings on the planet at that age.

And yeah, all that stuff I was concerned about regarding Friday afternoon, first week of school, and the day before a 3 day weekend? It all came true! A nightmare come to life, I tell ya. However, I had the last laugh. I told their teacher everything. Muhahahaha! And I know he'll make them pay.

I'm considering offering to volunteer there occasionally, too. I love this teacher. I want to be this teacher. He's got classroom management down and he's very organized. I want to be in a position to work with his kids and to learn from this guy. He's really awesome and it would line me up for subbing for him, too.

I forget how much I love teaching until I do it. Then I start thinking about how fast I may be able to get my practicum done. Then, of course, I come home and take a pile of glucosamine and 2 vicodan and sleep for 12 hours straight.

There were no wheely carts at Costco when I went to buy stuff for Russell's birthday, so I spent an hour walking (added to teaching all afternoon), so I was feeling pretty cocky.

I was thinking today though, that I may just say screw it and start walking a block or two daily. Our blocks are country blocks, so I'm not talking a short block, but it's a relatively short walk and I could walk on sand, so it'd be less stressful on my joint. I'm thinking about 10-15 minutes top. As fat as I am, it'll give me plenty of exercise and I can augment that with swimming a few times a week. It'd also keep me in pain enough to remember to take my stupid glucosamine and my metformin with it. And it'd push me to take my byetta, too. My problem with some of these meds is that they tear up my stomach, especially byetta.

I have to winnow this big fat butt down to a smaller big butt, though. I don't plan on ever wearing much in the way of clothing under a size 20 any time soon, but to even have a size 18/20 within reach would really rock.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

I have my first day of subbing tomorrow with this school year. I'll be working for a teacher for whom I've subbed before and he's crazy organized, so it'll be a breeze. The kids can be challenging at this school, but 4th graders aren't typically hideous ever and this guy often is the principal for the day, so it's possible he'll be around tomorrow to scare them into behaving. On the Friday afternoon before a 3-day weekend on the first week of school, I can dream, right? :D

I'm still fussing over what to wear, which is my way of obsessing over the what-ifs. I'm trying to remember where I put my substitute teacher emergency kit stuff. I have some things, but my cube has been wedged under a pile of crap in the livingroom, so restocking it would take some serious work. I'm going to get Genny out the door and then do that stuff tomorrow morning. If I do it while she's here, she'll be freaking out about all the cool stuff in my cube and I'll never see it again, as Sticky Fingers loves to "borrow" my teacher stuff.

I was delighted this morning to remember that I had my awesome widdle hand cleaner jar on my key ring. I was cleaning Genny's face off with a wet paper towel and went to shake hands with her gifted and talented teachers and realized I needed to clean my hands somehow, so I whipped some out and voila! I explained I'm a substitute teacher and they all laughed and said, yeah, hand cleaner was the first thing they'd bought for the classroom. Then we all laughed and I remembered that little snot nosed kindergarten boy who was sick as hell and always wanted to hug me about half a year ago. I'm not ever gonna turn away a hugging child, but man, I washed my hands right after.

Well, I took my lunesta, so I can sleep. I took my shower while there's water. I didn't get to water my garden, but it'll be there tomorrow to water. I tried to siphon the unchlorinated pool water to it, but it wasn't working particularly. Mike and I hypothesized various ways to facilitate making the system work and we mulched the bejeebers out of the beds, so the water will stay. Essentially, I think we have this one good watering for the rest of the season, with all that mulch, as next week it starts cooling down out of the 90s, thank God.

Any water left over is going to the plum and apple trees, both of which are loaded with fruit.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

So on a whim, because I'm not thrilled with most of the presidential candidates, I decided I'd run.

Red Neck Ruby for President!!

Sunday, August 24, 2008

I've had the bladder infection that won't die. It is a very resistant strain, so I'm on my second round of antibiotics.

After the first round of antibiotics, I started using old herbal remedies, so when I went in to get retested, it'd pretty much killed the bacteria sufficiently so it didn't show up on their stick test and only showed up a little on a culture 3 days later. Because it didn't show up on their stick test, I discontinued the herbs thinking I was now the proud owner of a yeast infection.

The day they call me to tell me the culture was positive, I was again positive I had a bladder infection and was in agony. I started my second round of antibiotics and supplemented that with d-mannose and cranberry to keep the pain down. Sleep's been danged near impossible and all I am is tired from not breathing and hurting.

I'm looking forward to kids going back to school. it'll be quiet.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

So here's your math question of the day.

If each washing machine takes $1.50 and each dryer runs 10 minutes per quarter and most loads require 40 minutes to dry. And my goofy son ran two washing machines empty, and I spent $70 at the laundromat yesterday, how many loads of laundry did I do?

Yes, you're correct. One butt-TON.

And yes, I'll be folding laundry til I'm dead.

And there's lots of scattered stuff going on...


  • Mike and I are freaking out. Our well is trying to die again. I took a shower with the kids at the club a day. I think we'll spend the day at a community pool tomorrow because the temperatures are supposed to be triple digits tomorrow and it's air conditioned in the club. I might even pack a lunch and stay at the club for the afternoon and drag a couple of Russell's friends.


  • I may be able to go to school on my retirement money from UC Davis.

  • If I can finish my master's I can pick up all kinds of work through the state and it would be in keeping with my desire to help folks and I could get out of teaching and being on my feet all the time.

  • If I do the master's in sociology, I'd probably need to retake the GRE.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

There's something about meteors slowly streaking across the sky, skimming the edges of the moon and gently slipping across the apse of the heavens that makes a person realize how small they are in the universe.

I feel both humble and loved by God in the presence of such grandeur.

The teenagers were sort of excited initially and then quickly lost interest and consciousness. I shooed them inside to sleep, for which they seemed grateful.

Now, I'm off to discover the pleasure of my pillow and stellar dreams.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Genny's clonidine made a big difference in her sleep, but she's slowly creeping back to the midnight to noon schedule, so I've got to run her hard today, so she sleeps a little earlier and we can start dialing back that schedule to something normal for her.

She managed to get her room clean and had a friend over, which for her was a miracle. Her friend invited her for next weekend and our only request is that Genny has to keep her room clean to go.

We're likely to have a house full of teenaged boys this evening for the Perseids, but hopefully, we'll all survive it. My concern is that Genny gets very excited when the boys are here and she may not sleep well. I'm taking her to the club with her brother today to dip in the pool to wear her out some. I hope it works. I'm also thinking that I might just bike this evening. I've been wanting to, but it just seems like there's no time or it's too hot or something is always wrong. It's getting to be like fall weather though, so maybe it'll happen tonight. I figure she can tool around outside on her bike, while I sit on mine in the garage watching.

Beyond all this, I'm sad because the well is failing again. I'm scared we'll be out of water before the rain comes. Russell was washing dishes, but his idea of doing so usually involves pouring vast amounts of water down the sink, rather than a sink of hot soapy water and a sink of rinse water.

We shut off the pump. I'm going to take the kids out of the house today to run laundry at the laundromat and take a run to the club to swim and shower. Maybe that'll help.

Wish me luck.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Holy shit.

It's 315 am and Genny won't sleep. I took the freaking cat out of her room and then locked her door. Her door has a lock on the outside from when she was a baby and we were scared she'd get hurt sneaking around. We could childproof her room, but not the whole house while the family lay unconscious.

I tried having her in the bed with me and Mike, but I have a really bad bladder infection and this child kicks like a soccer star and I'm only one antibiotic pill into this, so I'm in agony and exhausted. Mike has to work, so dealing with the house insomniac is my job, sick or not. We gave her melatonin for sleeping and she decided to sneak out to the kitchen after she'd been put to bed and get a freaking mountain dew. Daddy found the half can on her bed post, so we gave her a quarter of my xanax to try to relax her and she's still up and about. I finally spanked her and locked her in. I can hear her thrashing about in her room now, too.

I'm scared about when school starts because I can't fucking deal with this crap when school starts. I am going to be working and we both need to be functional for school. I'm getting her clonidine tomorrow. I hope to God it works. I can't begin to fathom dealing with her if it doesn't. I can't begin to fathom her being so sleepless when school starts. I know she likes her 12 hours of sleep a night, but she's not going to even vaguely approach that if this stuff keeps up.

I'm upset because she's keeping the whole house up and because she's not getting any rest, which means she may go on a house wrecking spree tomorrow and I'm not physically capable of keeping up with Hurricane Genny at the moment and I cannot begin to contend with the constant bitching and bickering that comes from Russell regarding her. All I can have him do is keep her busy, which interferes with his computer time, which sends him into a king-size pissy fit, which normally I'd wreck his life over, but I'm so sick and exhausted, I'm not up to it.

I'm beat as a bongo drum at an all night voodoo dance. Oh, and add to this that my period has begun and the laundry list of why I feel like shit and am toast gets longer.

I hate my children in August, the bickering month of school-age children everywhere.