Queen of Rambles

Finally! A day has arrived where I don’t feel it necessary to imagine my head exploding. I haven’t had to have a single violent fantasy involving electricity and a child’s bulging eyeballs. I haven’t had to raise my voice at all in fact. Amazing! No one’s shot me either, or even looked like they wanted to. The biggest problem of the day thus far has been explaining what a druid is, when really I only know the term because I read a lot of fantasy.

I’m teaching science for the next several days and it’s shaping up to be a great assignment. The teacher left excellent plans that involve very little effort on my part (a movie about a pack of wolves [known as the druid pack because they live in the shadow of Druid’s Peak]}, a test, and a web scavenger hunt.

My main problem is the schedule. I was supposed to be here at 7:30, which is way too early. I made a major miscalculation and about had a heart attack when I realized it was 7:25 and I was still running around the house like a mad woman. I didn’t even have time to fill up my water bottles. I just took off running and cursed every red light. I was ten minutes late and dying of embarrassment, but it turned out I was the first sub to sign in for the day. School doesn’t start until 8:15 and you technically don’t have to be here until 8:00. Someone needs to update something!

I have prep with my lunch, so I have a big two hour chunk of time. I decided I better hunt down clean water, but had no luck at all. The teachers say the water from the faucets is fine, but it’s really quite awful. I found the cafeteria and a wonderful vending machine asking me nicely if I was “THIRSTY?” I shouted “Yes, yes! Water me!” mentally and headed on over. After searching four different machines for simple water instead of chemical infused sugar-water, I finally found a match. And it was turned off. All the machines were turned off. I was desperate but it mattered not. I was destined to die of thirst in a rain storm. Figures.

Then I remembered that I am a grown adult with two legs, a set of car keys and two hours to kill. I walked out the front door of the school with two crisp dollar bills in hand and noticed that the gas station across the street was actually closer than my car. Have I mentioned that this school is big? And it’s a rain storm? And I’m from Oregon where carrying an umbrella is a sign of weakness? So off I went, desperate for a drink. I succeeded after a nerve wracking moment of a rejected dollar bill ($1.15 for water! Outrageous!) and returned to the school, wet and triumphant.

Only another hour to kill, another round of watching sensitive scientists anthropomorphize* wolves, and then home to cook dinner.

Tonight we are going on a ghost walk of Old Town so I’m hoping that will be loads of fun and the rainstorm will slack off a little. I guess I better go kill my hour by finishing my book outline, which was my original intent. I didn’t mean to get all artistic about a mad dash across the street.

Later. . .

So much for a non-head exploding day. The afternoon students were a little on the hyper side, but nothing I couldn’t handle. In fact, I was quite amused by them, even though I should have been cranky instead. One lovely boy decided to play the oldest trick in the book and move the clock ahead. The teacher had carefully timed all the work today so I noticed immediately that things were not progressing at the right pace and took a quick look at my watch. I decided to leave it until the end of class to see just who the trouble maker was. Sure enough, the clock said it was time to go and one of the boys was desperate to leave. I told the class they needed to wait for the bell and he tried to argue with me, so I got to have a little fun revealing I knew the truth. He looked defeated. Later I heard a group talking with him, one girl reading him the riot act and telling him I wasn’t stupid. He paid me a huge compliment, though I know that was not his intention. His words: “Why’d we have to get her?! Why couldn’t we have one of those foreign subs who doesn’t understand anything?” My job was done well today.

Then I came home and my head exploded.

I walked in the door and was treated to the lovely smell of natural gas. I think one of the pilot lights went off when I boiled over the gravy last night. Ugh. I am airing ht place out and have called maintenance but they have not yet arrived. For all they know, the building could be about to blow and they are not here. Grrrrrr. . .

Then I decided it was time for a proper fight, so I got out the number to Marlo’s “customer service center” (really bad name for it) and was determined that I was going to get my dinette set one way or the other. Yes, we bought it in August. Yes, we were promised a September delivery date. Yes, we are still eating off the coffee table. It’s driving me insane.

That’s when my head exploded. I started out nice, but the lady on the other end of the line was so rude that I ended up having a screaming match with her. Very out of character, but it felt oh-so-good. She started giving me lip the second I said hello and I am just pissed now. Apparently our dinette set will not be ready for delivery until at least November 23 and we can’t cancel the order over the phone. Oh purple chairs how much I did love you. Too bad. We are cancelling the order and taking our business elsewhere. There is no purple chair in the world worth that kind of treatment. Also, it would be nice to have a dining room table for Thanksgiving, especially considering we’ve been waiting since the summer! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! This is upsetting on many levels, not the least one being that I LOVED that dinette set and it perfectly matched our living room set. I’m so sad.

My goodness this is quite the ramble. Sorry to bore you so much today. This is what happens when an unmotivated writer doesn’t have Internet access or a book to read.

*is that not the coolest word? I stole it from Beverly.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 29th, 2004 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.