Oh, the exquisite agony...

Rental car, oh beautiful sleek rental car, how it pains me to relinquish you.

You've been mine for just under a week, but I feel as though a bond of iron has been forged between us. Who could forget our first meeting at the rental agency, when you beeped as I fondled your clicker. That moment was sheer magic.

We shared so much - you accepted my need to play my iPod through your speakers, and I made sure you had as much gasoline as you desired. I tested your limits, I know I did. You responded though, and never let me down. You kept me warm and dry through the rains this week, and never complained. Sheltered within your doors, I felt cherished in your bucket seats, yet thrilled by your acceleration. You moved fast, rental car, and found a way into my jaded heart.

How I shall miss you, sweet RAV 4. Be strong, my love.

In which I am mightily irked

So for the first bit of fun today, we have Me being the victim of Attempted Grand Theft Auto. Yes, some idiot wanker tried to steal my car Saturday night. I didn't catch them in flagrante delicto so to speak, but instead viewed the aftermath of their not-so-handiwork on Sunday morning just before my anticipated jaunt to the supermarket.

As an aside, I have to tell you just how much I enjoy my jaunt to the supermarket. You see, the supermarket is my "alone time." It's WCM-sanctioned shopping. It doesn't matter how much I spend in the supermarket, as it's in the pursuit of a good meal, and that is something that the WCM stands firmly behind. He epitomizes the phrase "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach." I always figured that the way to a man's heart was with a broadsword, but again, I digress... Ah, yes, alone time.

You have to know that my supermarket has a Starbucks in it. It has been freshly renovated, brightly lit, and cannily designed to display its wares to their utmost advantage. The produce displays are especially aesthetically pleasing, with much consideration being given to variance of texture and the juxtaposition of colors between the tomatoes and the haricots verts. The chiaroscuro of the eggplants and cauliflower is truly breathtaking. The whole place is a visual orgy, and I fall victim to it every Sunday, flinging away my shopping list and spending with reckless abandon (ok, not really, but work with me here - I'm going for dramatic effect). Yet, I was to be denied my time this Sunday. Yes, cruelly denied. Alas!

My car, my humble conveyance, had been violated sometime between 2:30 Saturday afternoon and 9:30 Sunday morning. Some youthful miscreant had slid a Slim Jim down the door, popped the lock, and attempted to start the car by jamming a screwdriver into the ignition shaft in lieu of a key. My car, obviously traumatized by this rough manhandling, refused to turn over and submit, and was abandoned.

So my Sunday morning was spent dealing with the Insurance Company (who I have nothing but praise for so far) and the County Cops (with whom I am somewhat irked).

The irony of the situation? My neighbors had gone to the beach for the weekend, leaving their (much more expensive) car defenseless in their driveway. It was untouched. The woman across the street from me has a lovely Lexus SUV. It was similarly unmolested. I live right next door to a County Cop. And yet, my poor Chevrolet piece of shit Malibu was invaded, violated, and abandoned by vandalous cretins.

I am irked.

On the bright side, my rental car, which is completely covered by insurance, is fantastic!

Mothers...

So yesterday, I was having a really great time with a class that is usually prone to discipline problems. Since I am an educator, I differentiated my instruction and had three different activities going on at once. It was working, too! Even the noisiest kid, a hulking Senior football player, was intensely involved in learning. Bliss.

You can imagine, then, how irritated I was when an announcement came over the loudspeaker that was only intended for one classroom, but was piped to all of them. We all hushed expectantly, as these announcements are usually important, requiring evacuation or lockdowns. Here it was:

Principal "Attention, room 213, please pay attention to this very important announcement."

Random Mother* "I just wanted to say Happy Birthday to my Baby Boy, Barney*, 'cause it's his birthday and I didn't get to wish him a Happy Birthday before he left the house this morning. Happy Birthday baby! I love you and you are special."

After the shock induced by this nauseatingly saccharine announcement wore off, my hulking Senior best expressed our group disgust with the following:

"Oh. NO. That is just about the most pointless thing I have ever shut my mouth for."

Indeed, hulking Senior. Indeed.


*names changed to protect the moronic.

Knock, knock, guess who?

It's going to be a hell of a week. Let me give you a hint why:

Last night, I had a snack. It was Whoppers Malted Milk Balls and Spicy Doritos, eaten alternately.

I'm cranky and snappish, to the point of driving the WCM out of the room, yet I feel weepy and emotional at the same time.

My brassiere feels ridiculously confining, yet letting the sisters swing free and unfettered is painfully out of the question.

If you can figure this out, I've got a box of Midol with your name on it.

Darn you, Allison!!!

Now I've got a burny mouth from eating what? What, you say?

Wasabi peas.

Thank you, Allison. Thank you very much.

You're in big trouble now.

Size WHAT??!!!

So earlier on this week, I ranted about the Gap and their propensity to stick Stretch in where it doesn't belong. I railed! I fumed! I fulminated!

I caved.

I bought a new pair of jeans from the Gap. And why, do you ask? Why did I break down and buy these blasphemously stretchy jeans?

Because they're a size 4. Vanity, thy name is mine.

I figured, though, that because they were from the Gap, who are infamous for their vanity sizing, that I'd still be a six everywhere else.

Oho! Not so!

Indeed, just today, the size four-ness of my ass was confirmed by a lovely pair of hunter green cotton twill trousers at New York and Company. Of course I bought them, and a lovely green and white striped top to match them. And yes, as a matter of fact, they were horizontal stripes.

Now, folks, given that I started this whole weight loss deal at a size 24 (yes, that's not a typo, a size twenty-four), a size 4 is what I call a Big Fucking Deal (sorry for the profanity, Dad. I really had to go there).

Thank you for sharing in my BFD. Now, if only I could find the perfect hunter green suede pumps to complete my outfit...

And the award of Mother of the Year goes to...

We had another Mother of the Year moment in the car the other day.

You have to understand that, for years, I eschewed every form of Country music, and have only recently come to embrace a few songs from that genre. On my iPod, there are currently 6 country songs, one of which is the adorably saucy "Redneck Woman" by Gretchen Wilson.

Now, I am about as far from the Redneck Woman as you can come without actually being a Republican conservative stuffy boring. I do, however, deeply admire the "in-your-face" attitude of the song, and while I don't "know all the words to every Ol' Bocephus" song, it comes up on my playlist quite frequently. I especially love the part when she asks for a "Hell Yeah" from all her other Redneck Girls.

Apparently, this is the part that Miss Peanut loves too, as she added her own "Hell Yeah" from the backseat yesterday, leaving me in mortified hysterics.

It seems to be a trend in young(ish) motherhood, though. I'm just teaching my child culturally inappropriate phrases, when I could be teaching her all manner of curse words, just like my friend Portuguesa Nova. Granted, she had provocation, and Matilda probably won't absorb it all... probably...

I'll let y'all decide who gets the statuette this year. Hell yeah.

Neat little boxes? Nah...

I have this one student - I think I amuse him. I say, "I think" because his laugh sounds rusty. Kind of sad, isn't it? A 17-year old's laugh is rusty? It's kind of a crusty chuckle - a "heh heh heh" you'd hear out of a septagenarian who's smoked 2 packs a day for the last 60 years. It's really quite charming.

See, this guy? He's of mixed race, tattooed, has already been suspended twice this year, and is usually dour of expression. Smart as all get out, too. He understands my lofty speech, as opposed to some of his other classmates - one of whom actually told me the other day "you talk purty." No, I don't live in the Deep South, thank you evah so much, sugah! Chuckles, though, got a real kick out of my explanation of "circumlocution," especially when I prefaced the explanation with "no, it's not what happens at a bris."

Once I heard that "heh heh heh" roll out from the back of my room, I knew I'd said something good.

Who knew that Chuckles would know what a bris was?

The teacher learned, again, yet another lesson - never assume.

I look forward to hearing that chuckle.

Yet another reason to love my husband

Now, I give my husband a fair bit of shit here. I call him names - the World's Cheapest Man - accuse him of having a potty mouth, and generally mock him for his insensitivity and stodginess. What can I say - he's a salt of the earth kind of guy.

He's been on my last nerve for the last month, just sitting there and gleefully plucking it like a guitar string about every little thing he could possibly find - all because he lives to irritate me. I've been looking forward to this last weekend like crazy, since he was going to be gone for the whole weekend, my mom was taking my daughter, and I would have some precious alone-time. It was blissful, true.

So, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I came back home tonight after Miss Peanut's swimming lessons to find him back home at last. I will admit to a bit of dread, even, that the peaceful harmony of my weekend was over. Well, the man has redeemed himself:

He brought home one dozen glazed Krispy Kreme donuts.

I love him. I love him. I love him.

I have already eaten three, warmed ever so slightly in the microwave, and am currently basking in the afterglow. Don't speak. Just don't say a word.

Mmmmmmmmm.

Sports & Target

So, I've never been all that good at sports...

(that's called an understatement, folks)

I played in a charity softball game this morning. I was up to bat 3 times, and managed to get a hit all three times, but only got on base once. I was tagged out at third. If I had ever learned to slide, I'd have been safe, but I don't slide.

One small hiccup - one of my colleagues keeps dropping innuendoes about me and the work husband. Now, this just bugs me, as the work husband and I are flirtatious, but strictly platonic. We're both married to other people - in my case, for 17.5 years. Schools are very dangerous places for rumors like that to start flying around, what with the fertile young minds picking up on things, so let me be ever so clear here: there is nothing going on between me and the work husband, and nothing ever likely to happen. We both had to tell this colleague to STFU about it already. I hope she can.

Anyhow, even though I'm not a natural athlete...

Sorry, had to stop laughing... Christ, that was funny...

Right. So, not ever having enjoyed physical exertion of any sort (well, one sort, but we never did that in gym class!), I was rather surprised at how much I enjoyed the whole running around and swinging a bat thing. I can't catch for shit, but since they only allowed me one inning in the field (Bless 'em!), it wasn't really an issue. My favorite position - benchwarmer - was just fine with me.

I went and pampered the heck out of myself afterward - manicure & pedicure, shopping... Good stuff. You've gotta love Target - where else can you buy a new dress (cute!), a fireplace grate & screen, a tablecloth, and a tomato and goat cheese pizza all under the same roof? That pizza was totally yummy!

So, home again and time for projects: I cleaned all the ash out of the fireplace, scrubbed it down, put the new grate in, piled the FIOS receiver & DVD/VCR, and wireless router in on top of it, and slammed the new screen in front of it. It looks fan-freaking-tastic. I've straightened all kinds of stuff up, mopped, dusted, and generally been uncharacteristically clean. I've gotten a momentary handle on my dirt problem. Not to worry, though, it'll be back tomorrow.

I'm watching Elizabethtown, ogling Orlando Bloom (oh godohgodohgod, is he delicious!), and counting the minutes until Graham Norton is on, 'cause Dawn French is his guest tonight, and I love her.

babbling now. night night!

Rantings

Does anyone but me find Sarah Silverman to be a complete twatwaffle? I can't stand watching so much as the commercials for her TV show, much less the show itself.

The Gap - hello? WHY have you redesigned the only pair of jeans that I've ever loved and put that f%^&ing stretch into them? I HATE stretch jeans. I hate them with the burning passion of 1000 white-hot suns. Why, you ask, do I hate stretch jeans? Because. For years, I had to wear clothing with lycra so that my ginormous arse would fit into them. Now, when I don't need the lycra to fit into a size 6, they stick it into my clothes anyway. Stretch, to me, feels like cheating. And, Gap? I have another peeve with you - you put the stretch into every style but the Curvy style. Um, @$$holes? Curvy girls need the stretch more than those of us with no arse to speak of, mkay? Cut the stretch out of my jeans and pour it into the curvy jeans. Beyotches.

This thing I do every day? Teaching? It is hard. Not in the sense of being unpleasant, because it's rarely that (I had a wonderful class today during second period - remind me to tell you about it sometime), but that the planning is excruciating. I have new preps - I haven't taught French 2 & 3 in years, so my materials are kind of outdated. Plus, the last time I taught these preps, it was at the University level, where I was teaching it in half the time to semi-responsible pseudo-adults. Obviously, I need to create some more depth in those plans. And then, there are some frustrations with teaching that I cannot express here, as there are sometimes students who read here. And that is another rant for another forum.

Let me tell you another thing - I have a problem. I think it's related to all the damn weight I've lost (which is now about 145 pounds, nearly half my starting body weight). It's thankfully not anything like alcoholism or drug addiction, or shopping to excess - although the WCM would disagree with that assertion - but it's a problem. Or, rather, they are a problem: men. How do you handle them (no double entendre intended)? When they flirt with you? When they're married, too? How does one handle that? It's been a very long time since I've been properly flirted with, so I don't know how well I'm picking up signals. And then, I sometimes don't know what to do with the signals once they've been received - because some of them are broadcast LOUD and CLEAR, if you know what I mean. Some of them I can just ignore, and though I am rarely a total bitch, some of them I can just shut down.

And then, how am I supposed to handle it when I don't particularly want to shut them down? For I have discovered (lo! she hath discovered!) that I am entirely human, complete with inappropriate urges and desires. Dammit. I guess I have to dig up my moral compass and hope it works better than Jack Sparrow's.

Although, if Jack Sparrow came 'a-callin', I'd be off like a shot. Just sayin'