Would you adopt this kitty?

Maybe this merits a "caption that photo" contest of some sort. I found this picture while looking at available animals from the Carroll County Animal Shelter on petfinder.org. (I still browse occasionally, looking for my son's lost dog.) This spazzy kitten is waiting for a new home. However, the pic just makes me laugh, when presumably, it should make me want to go adopt the kitty. What do you think?

Awake (sigh)

Check the time. I've been awake about an hour. Woke up with killer heartburn, had to get up for meds and a drink, and couldn't go back to sleep. Thankfully, today is a short day. I'm pretty sure we will get to leave right after lunch.

EOTY Checklist

I spent the entire day working on my EOTY checklist. At the end of the year - EOTY - teachers have a checklist that they must fill out. At my school, it's a four-page list. Imagine that you are playing a scavenger hunt, but there is no prize. There is this master list of THINGS YOU MUST DO, and each item must be initialed by the responsible party. For instance, you must make sure that all of your lunch charges are paid (CHECK), that students from your homeroom have paid all their library fines (CHECK), that your textbooks have been properly inventoried (CHECK) and stored in designated lockers (CHECK). You must turn in your keys (CHECK) and badge (CHECK). You must turn in your lesson plans (CHECK), gradebook (CHECK), report cards (CHECK), charge letters for students who owe money (CHECK), and schedules for next year (CHECK), and you must clean your room (CHECK). Mind you, these items must be checked off by about ten different people, from custodians to principals, and it's not like they are all in one central location, waiting for you to come visit them with your checklist. Again, it's like a scavenger hunt with no prize. (CHECK) I'm done, I'm tired, tomorrow is my last day. (CHECK) Peace, out. (CHECK)

Cruisin'

Did I mention that we're going on a cruise? This cruise shall now forever be known as the "prehysterectomy cruise," since I will be having surgery when we return. One of the teachers at my former school is a travel agent in her spare time, and she coordinated a discounted group trip. It's a 4-day cruise from Miami to Key West to Mexico and back to Miami, June 14 - 18. We will be spending time ashore in Playa Del Carmen, which is apparently a growing touristy spot. We will be close to Cancún, but that's such a busy place that we really don't want to go there. Karen, I promise to take lots of pictures.

93%

I just have to brag share; CRCT scores are in. Only 7 of the students that I teach did not pass the language arts portion of the test, which means 93% of my students either met or exceeded. Last year, in my first year of teaching, only about 70% of my students met or exceeded. I'm so pleased with this improvement; I feel validated like something got through all the craziness and allowed my students to learn from me. This has been a good day.

Weekend Breakfast

While I sip coffee and play here, the man is in the kitchen making breakfast. This might seem like a nontraditional arrangement to some, but I am not really a morning person, and I don't enjoy making breakfast. My mommy confession is that my kids usually eat breakfast at school, and I grab coffee on the way to work. Mike, however, is the breakfast king and actually enjoys making breakfast for all of us on the weekend. And not buttcrack-of-dawn-breakfast either; several-cups-of-coffee-brunchish-time-of-day-breakfast. Woohoo! Today he is making grits, eggs, toast, bacon, and sausage. (Cholesterol overkill, but hey, if it's only once or twice a week, it can't be that bad.) When I DO make breakfast, it's usually an event and it will be something very fancy and delicious, but I tell the family, "Don't get used to this!" Do I feel guilty that I don't generally make breakfast? NOPE. I do most, if not all, of the rest of the cooking, and this arrangement works perfectly for us. :)

Moving Local Story

Jeff Foxworthy Helps Give One Man a Legacy of Laughter

How smart am I? (quiz)

Just for fun, see how smart you are:


*As I copied this HTML code, I realized that there is a grammatical error in the graphic. It says, "Bet you aren't as smart as me." This is incorrect. It should be, "Bet you aren't as smart as I." I know this because I am smart. ROFL

FINALLY

The new doctor is great. She read my entire chart, asked questions, listened to me, didn't dismiss my pain, examined me, and has recommended a hysterectomy. We're waiting for insurance approval, which she thinks will not be a problem, and then we will schedule the surgery ASAP. The plan is to try to save my ovaries so I won't need hormone replacement therapy, and I'm more than ok with having this surgery. My mom is going to come stay a while in case I need the help. As I know more, I will post the details since I'm sure you're all dying to know about the status of my innards. Haha!

New doctor?

After Thursday's fiasco with Dr. Smalldick, I've made an appointment with a new doctor, who comes highly recommended. I feel hopeful; afterall, this doctor is female, she scheduled me quickly, and in addition to the personal recommendations I received, my insurance company endorsed her. Because insurance companies pretty much hold all the cards, this endorsement may mean that she can proceed with a treatment course without jumping through an entire circus of hoops. If she turns off her cell phone, listens to me, and involves me in making decisions about my medical care, I think I will kiss her. Well, ok, maybe I won't kiss her, but it will definitely be refreshing to find a doctor who cares.

Pay It Forward

Do these Liberty Mutual commercials make anyone else weepy? Or is it just me?

Half Acre
The Part Where You Let Go

Mama's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all of you out there. I know many of you woke up to breakfast in bed, flowers, and sticky homemade cards, all delivered by adorable munchkins who piled into bed with you and helped you eat your breakfast. Others of you dressed in lovely new frocks, complete with orchid corsages, and went to church with your loving family, after which you will be taken to brunch in a nice restaurant. I'm not jealous; I have already lived both of those Mother's days, and a lot of other nice variations on the familiar theme.

This year, however, Mama's Day is different. My husband kissed me awake very early this morning as he was leaving for work. He has to fill in on a service call because his co-worker can't be there; ironically, that poor guy's mother died yesterday. As he was telling me goodbye, he said, "I'm sorry Mother's Day is all screwed up." I told him not to apologize; I understand and it can't be helped. We said our favorite saying from the Sopranos, "whaddyagonnado," and then he was gone. I slept until 9:30, got up and made my own coffee, and have been lazily playing on the internet for about 90 minutes. The house is a wreck, there is a sink full of dishes, and my son has been playing Tony Hawk's American Wasteland and blasting Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Fallout Boy, and Frank Black ad nauseum. My daughter isn't here because she spent the night at her friend Amy's. I'm looking at my cat and thinking I need to take him to the vet tomorrow, because he's got a nasty wound on his head from one of his midnight battles. I need to put mulch around my flower bed today. This is reality, folks. And reality is what you sign up for when you make a family. If your expectations are Hallmark moments every day, then you WILL be disappointed, as I was on our anniversary when all didn't go as planned, for instance.

There was this cheesy song that my mom liked in the early 70s, which expresses the realities of relationships surprisingly well for a cheesy, 70s song:

I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.
Along with the sunshine, there's gotta be a little rain sometimes.

How often can you fit melancholy and jolly into a rhyme scheme?

So smile for a while and let's be jolly;
Love shouldn't be so melancholy.
Come along and share the good times while we can.

So here's to Mother's Day; Moms aren't perfect, and today doesn't have to be perfect, either.

Letter to a gynecologist

Thought I'd share the letter I faxed to the gynecologist today after an outrageous visit. It pretty much explains itself:

To: Saleem N. Malik
CC: Sonya Thompson

Re: Office Visit 5/10/07 2:10 PM

Dear Dr. Malik:

I left your office today in tears. You didn’t take the time to get to know me or to find out much of anything about my symptoms. Although I told you I went to the ER the day before due to the severity of my pain, you did not ask me about my level of pain today. You seemed preoccupied with your cell phone, which could certainly have been set on vibrate or silent. After all, your office has signs posted asking your patients to be courteous and turn their cell phones off; mine was turned off for our visit today. When you weren’t looking at your phone, you were dismissing the amount of pain that I am in, along with the knowledge I possess regarding my own anatomy. You stated that my pain could not possibly be from the “tiny ovarian cyst,” nor could vaginal bleeding be attributed to an ovarian cyst, although research and life experience have told me otherwise. You told me, “I don’t know what you expect me to say.” What I expected you to do and say was that we needed to find and treat the source of my pain, obviously. You suggested that this excruciating pain might be due to irregular bowel movements, which was the last straw for me, at which point I walked out of the exam room. When I objected to your cell phone usage, you actually protested, “It’s not like I answered it!”

If you had bothered to read through my substantial chart, you may have realized that I am a 40-year-old-woman with a history of irregular, painful periods since onset of menstruation at the age of 11. I have dealt with primary infertility, pre-term labor, ovarian cysts, uterine fibroids, cervical cysts, abnormal pap smears, and dysfunctional bleeding. To treat my pain and bleeding, doctors have tried varying types of birth control pills, Lupron injections, pain medications, including narcotics, and most recently, a uterine ablation using the NovaSure procedure. It has been necessary for me to be my own advocate and research my conditions for myself. I understand far more about endometriosis and the female anatomy than the average layperson, and perhaps even more than some doctors. If you could have ignored your loudly ringing cell phone for a few moments, you might have realized that I am a well-educated, intelligent woman who understands her own body, and can unequivocally discern the difference between ovarian pain and the need to have a bowel movement.

I have reported this brief, but most unsatisfactory, office visit to United Health Care, and have suggested that they reject any claims filed for today’s visit due to the woeful inadequacies of the care that I received today. Representatives from UHC have assured me that they will be contacting you to discuss this matter with you. Regardless of the outcome of that inquiry, I will be seeking gynecological care elsewhere; I would never want to be forced to see you as the default, random doctor when my preferred provider can’t see me.

Please review the attached information with regard to our differing opinions today, and in the future, please consider this passage of the modern Hippocratic oath:

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.”

What's cookin'?

This is 4-month old Lincoln, aka "Chunky Monkey," as promised in an earlier post. This picture came about because my friend Patreece told me she had a pot big enough to put a child in. :::snicker::: Smartass that I am, I plopped her baby in the pot on the stove, while she laughed and took pictures. This one is actually a recreation taken on a camera phone, but the original is better. If Patreece will send it to me, I'll post it. :)

Five Letter Word

Mike did it. He uttered the five letter word that I hate the most: m-o-n-e-y, as in "How much money is this going to cost?" That word gives me a high level of pisstivity, particularly if it is used in reference to something I want to do for a special day. Why does everything always have to come down to money? I wish that word didn't always make me so damn angry but it does. As an electronics technician and a teacher, we are never going to be rich; however, sometimes you gotta ignore the price tag and enjoy your day. And incidentally, he was asking about the fiesta in Atlanta, which was FREE, as I already told him twice. We didn't leave early this morning as planned because he had to go out on a service call, so now he's home and dragging his feet about going, asking how much it's going to cost. I could just smack him. :(

**UPDATE**
Karen reminded me I never said how it all turned out. We didn't go to the festival, but we did go out for a late dinner after we spent the day stomping around each other growling. He apologized for obsessing about money, and I apologized for being a bitch. We were totally over it by the time we got back home.

Cinco de Mayo

The second week of May is packed for me and my family, starting with Cinco de Mayo and ending with Mother's Day. We celebrate Cinco de Mayo mostly because of my interest in all things Latino. Next, May 7 is our anniversary -- 19 years and counting. This week is also Mike's birthday (May 11), my good friend Jimmy's birthday (also May 11, and also 1964; how's that for cool?), another good friend Katie's birthday (May 13), and Mother's Day (also May 13 this year). Whew!

So what are the plans? Today I am whipping up a fiesta of homemade guacamole y enchiladas con pollo, along with margaritas. Tomorrow, we will spend the afternoon at Fiesta Atlanta at Centennial Olympic Park, enjoying the free music, art, food, and people-watching. Let's hope the rain stays away! After that, we are going to drop off the kids at a friend's house and go out for the evening alone. We wanted to go see Grindhouse -- I know; we're weird! -- but it only plays at midnight and it's over 3 hours long. Can't do that on a school night. If we can't watch a gory double feature, then I guess we might find some cool jazz and cheek-to-cheek dancing. Haha!

As for the rest of the week, I will be baking cakes, sending flowers to my Mom, surprising friends, trying to decide what to give Mike for his birthday, and wondering what my family might do for Mother's Day. My shopping list is pretty long, so I suppose I need to stop for now and hit the stores.

Oh and did I mention, only 15 more days of school?

:::does happy dance:::

Superlatives

Recently, my fellow teachers and I met to decide what superlative awards we are going to give this year (i.e. Best All Around, Most Athletic, Most Likely to Succeed). We've had such a tough year with this particular group of students that I started thinking about some the "superlatives" I'd like to name.

SARCASM ALERT...Keep in mind that I love teaching, but this has just been a really bad year. From my team alone, 8 students have gone to alternative school, 2 have gone to the youth detention center, 1 got pregnant, and dozens have been on ISS or OSS numerous times. I've been cussed at by parents and students, I've been accused of racism, I've been disrespected and talked back to, and I've even been hit twice. I've been yelled at and lied to, too many times to count. I had to go to court about a student who, among other things, told the school secretary to please leave me the following message: "Please tell her that I said she's a fucking bitch and I hate her." I've even been farted on; yes it's true.

After all that disclaimer, here are some awards for which some of my students could be nominated, in no particular order:

Most Likely to Be Pregnant at the 8th Grade Prom
Most Likely to Be the Baby Daddy
Future Registered Sex Offender
Most Ghettofabulous
Most Likely to Be Seen on COPS, Springer, and/or America's Most Wanted
Future Meth Addict
Most Likely to Turn 16 and Drive to School While Still in Middle School
Future Exotic Dancer
Saggiest Pants
King of Farts
Most Notorious Gangbanger