sitting on babies with a fireplace poker at my side By Catherine on 3/31/2007 11:27:00 PM
There really is nothing scarier than hearing weird noises while you're home alone with three kids who aren't yours in a big drafty house with very little furniture. Add to the equation that you have more affection for these kids than a good portion of your family, the noises keep happening, and you don't know the code to the house alarm.This is why I have the fireplace poker handy. If I really have to hurt someone, I will. Or I'll grab the baby and the smaller child and barricade myself in the biggest one's room with the phone AND the poker. I really wish the Dr. Duo would get home. I keep checking the girls like they're going to be gone when I go up there. I'm not usually a spaz when I babysit-- hell I yank teeth and clean poop and still smile and sing the sunshine song.
Intruders, however, are another story. If I pretend he's the giant parasite from Silent Hill, I'll be fine.
I think maybe the hero in that game had a fireplace poker at one point, too.
I'm starting to think I need to be tranquilized for this paranoia...
Labels: babysitting, unfunny
I'm mad at Friday this week. By Catherine on 3/30/2007 08:57:00 AM
Fucking a. Today has already pissed me off more than my daily allotment and it's not even lunchtime yet. Let's start with about 3:30 this morning.The cat wanted attention. A lot. Enough to poke me in the face with his claws purr loudly in my ear, and lay down on my face. Thanks, Radar, I officially didn't sleep well at all.
Then, the coffee wasn't ready before I had to go. It's okay, right? Fridays, you deserve to buy a cup from Dunks. Except Dunks wasn't accepting debit today, and who never carries cash? ME. That's who.
Then, my favorite student (read: dripping with sarcasm) called me a bitch because I told him he could use the computer in my room and email the teacher he was asking ME to email for him. Sorry, dude, I graduated from high school already, and if I needed to make an excuse for not doing something I made the excuse myself. Normally being called a bitch would be funny, but I am uncaffeinated. This makes it far worse.
Then, since I am the walking around and running errands bitch in my room, I was doing my daily run to the mailboxes and the SPED office. At the office, I had to wait for not 5, not 10, but 25 minutes for someone to take the paperwork in my hands, look at it, and tell me it was all set. This is also annoying when you have a caffeine headache.
But I'm going out for sangria with J after work, and then she's coming by to look at the apartment for rent next door to my house. (It's a duplex, we'd share a wall.) That will be fun. And hopefully by then I'll have had some coffee-- when I get my breath from running all over the school I'm going to go investigate the lower school office area and see if there's any coffee left from this morning. I'm also babysitting for my favorite little conman tonight, which will be fun.
And his mom pays like she'll never go out again, which is double fun. I'm such a terrible person.
Mistakes, and corrections, and *gasp* using my degree!! By Catherine on 3/28/2007 07:53:00 AM
Okay, update! J was nice enough to inform me that my students were wrong-- someone didn't pull the fire alarm, the nurse burnt her bagel.And the whole damn school had to evacuate.
That's somewhat funnier than someone pulling an alarm. And it makes the look on Mr. H's face worth it. So I take back previous comments about a mystery soph failing MCAS as poetic justice. That wasn't very nice of me, but really, it was cold out there! :)
So, this morning, on another note, I actually got to use the degree I spend 4 years and more money than I'll have in my lifetime on. (This is an exaggeration, of course, however since my debt could buy a house in some areas of the world, I feel legit in my hyperbole.) I got to do Spanish! The difference this time is that the kid I was helping actually studied and worked hard, and didn't need his mommy to strong-arm the teachers into giving him a million chances to pass. This pleases me. And Spanish came back fairly quickly, considering that I much much prefer to read/speak French.
Maybe more later, I don't have much interesting to write about today. A is almost done with my design. And go rent Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuarón.
The Real Damn Deal By Catherine on 3/27/2007 10:07:00 AM
I deleted the last post because the poem wasn't finalized. And also, because I dunno if I want anyone beside the Nibs, A and A reading my poems.It's not that I don't like you, it's just...
Okay, yeah, I probably don't like you. And if I do, you can ask to see my poems. If I like you enough, I'll show you. Deal?
It's Friday, I'm in Love By Catherine on 3/23/2007 12:09:00 PM
Today is Friday. I love Fridays. It feels like the free-est day of the week. Even though there's work, and occasionally other plans, my favorite Friday activity is just hanging out. It feels like the beginning to a new chapter- almost like the new week starts with Friday afternoon. At least, that's how I feel Friday mornings, since the end of the work day means the beginning of the week-end. I feel like that should be opposite. The weekend as the beginning- because wouldn't you rather start the week with a small break? Be fresh-faced and enthusiastic on Monday?I know, I know. That's not actually how it works at all. Friday is the weekend, and by Sunday night, panic attacks begin because not enough got accomplished and now there's 5 days of work again. But Friday afternoon, regardless of how you view it, is a cathartic time in and of itself.
Today I plan on not turning on the TV, even once, until after dinner. I will listen to Let It Be and I will read and I will clean up the house, and I will cook dinner for my hardworking boy. A friend said recently that sometimes she feels a "Clarissa Dalloway-like" compulsion about household chores. I can agree to a point, but for me, it's more of a Sylvia-esque determination to get it all done than to achieve it all with perfection. Once I've made a choice to clean the house or get errands done, no one, (unless they want to face my eternal wrath) will get in my way.
And so, for me, Fridays are cathartic. Once the house feels fresh and the pressure is gone, I can sit down and write, and not worry about anything else. I often do worry quite a bit, but Fridays aren't usually one of those times. I have four hours of me-time, four glorious hours-- to do whatever I want. It's the best part of the week. I plan on devoting much of this evening to a poem I'm angry with and my site re-design, which SolvoMedia has taken on.
(I say that like I'm paying for it, and like the co-owner isn't my co-habitor.)
:) TGIF
Having a stroke from the MCAS By Catherine on 3/22/2007 08:44:00 AM
You know, sometimes I wonder if standardized testing is worth the hassle it creates. For example, some little toast-for-brains decided this morning that it would be wicked freaking funny to pull the fire alarm during the exam.Let's discuss what an idiot this kid is. Not only is he likely to be expelled, but it's not as warm as you'd expect outside either. Oh wait, right, it's March, in Massachusetts. It's not fucking warm at all. Although it's supposed to warm up today, there's still a foot of snow on the ground, and the mountains created by the plows are still pretty significant. What a little asshole.
Also, I'm pretty sure that at least some of the scores are invalid now. Maybe not ALL of the testing from the previous two days will be thrown out, but knowing the amount of bureaucracy inherent in the public schools and the Department of Ed tells me that some of the sophomores will have to retake at least today's portion of the English exam.
Mr. H looked like he was having a stroke. Were I not freezing my nips off, it would have been funny.
Long story short, I really hope this kid gets caught. Or, if he's a sophomore...
I hope he fails the MCAS.
The Ominous First Post By Catherine on 3/22/2007 01:31:00 AM
I've thought about this whole blogging thing quite carefully. For years now, friends, acquaintances, and strangers alike have been willing to stop everything to gush about it-- at dinner, at work, in line at the grocery store... I just didn't get it. I mean, I had a LiveJournal once upon a time-- that's the same thing, right? Then I started seeing CNN and FOX and MSNBC start quoting these blog things, and I really thought I was losing it. Doris Kearns Goodwin shows the world her e-diary? Tucker Carlson is literate?I was baffled. And not that interested in the Internet. Law and Order is way cooler.
The end came when the 85-year old in front of me at Hannaford's looked at me with sincere (if watery) grandmotherly eyes and said,
"You don't blog? I keep one for my grandkids, and one for my cats!"
That's when I woke up.
I kid. What actually happened was much less cliché, and I'm not totally pulling it out of my ass. My blogging breakthrough occurred this evening, when the cat did something cute. And really goddamned smart, if you ask me-- and since you're reading my blog, that's pretty much the same thing as asking.
For the first time, I felt like I had something to write about, and my repressed jealousy of all the blissful bloggers on the 'net disappeared. I was going to create a blog...
Anyway. Do you want to know what the cat did? She got into the trash.
But not in the naughty way-- tonight, Dixie was sitting on my big black steamer trunk, which is right beside said wastebasket. Dixie leaned in, carefully leveraging her weight and fishing around with one paw.
"Hey!" I barked; usually that works if she's on the table or something.
She kept going. I stopped protesting, because she wasn't knocking the thing over. She's kind of stupid sometimes, so I decided to let her swat the plastic bag lining. She just continued pawing around, and I ignored her, until she jumped off the trunk and started mad-dashing around the living room, something small skittering around under her paws.
It was her milk ring. You know, the part you pull off to open a half-gallon of the stuff. I gave it to her weeks before, and she'd played with it nonstop, but I threw it out, not having seen her play with it lately. But the little fart fished it out.
Wouldn't you say that's pretty smart, too?