Eyebrows raised

I'm on the couch, soaking up a/c while the wind starts periodically gusting outside. I'm not necessarily concerned, per se, about Isaac. He has no eye. He sped up his travel speed, so he isn't even due to hit on August 29. I'm not comfortable with the timing, to be honest. Moreso due to him canceling something I had planned on Wednesday, but it is creepy. I guess I'm just annoyed. Mark has to work. He's bringing a sleeping bag and should be staying for two days. I'll laterally evacuate with Lily to my parents' house. I'm going to bring the important stuff just in case, of course, but I'm mostly going there to avoid being home alone. We had three days of school plus book day, and now we're closed for three days. How irritating. I really miss the days where so long as it was "Just a cat 3," I would stay home and not even flinch. I'd read or play on the Internet so long as we had electricity. Now, I'm taking important things and the cat to my parents' house for a tropical storm, maybe cat 1, maybe cat 2. I'm gun shy. I had something else on my mind which was preventing me for really thinking too long or too hard about the situation, but now I'm starting to think about it. Storm prep did that to me. I'll have a better 7-year post in a few weeks, but I really don't want to jinx something. So, until then, I'm just raising my eyebrows at everything and considering grabbing a string cheese before the fridge goes out.

Did I fall into Bizarro World this week?

So, I teach in a school for kids with learning differences -- dyslexia, ADHD, and Asperger's are our biggest draws. I tend to forget that some of them are socially inept. They seem really normal until we take them in public, or until days where something really bizarre happens. Don't get me wrong. I love them. But social skills are not their strong points.

This week has been ripe with such days... Make sure you read all the way through. The second story is way better than the first.

Tale the first: Sticky Buns

A few months ago, a former student came to my classroom and said he had a little tiny present for me. Every year, he brings me a Christmas present still. He's a nice boy. A little while later, he shows up at my door with a 2-liter of root beer. I'm not a fan of root beer, so I try clever dodging strategies. He thought it was a day where you could wear jeans to school if you brought in two 2-liter soft drinks. Well, it was, but only for the grammar school. Instead of just donating the bottles anyway, he and his friends drank one bottle, and he decided to bestow the other one on me. I was touched. Slightly weirded out, but touched. I run out of avoidance strategies, and end up stuck with the root beer. I stick it under my desk, where it stays for the next couple of months.

Fast-forward to the other day, when we had to rearrange my classroom to make room for this massive AV closet they brought for the 12" flat screen. I notice that I bumped my big stack of Scholastic Book Order catalogs under my desk, which knocked the root beer over. I straightened the stack, then pushed them further back, and put the root beer right next to it. Why? Because I didn't want kids fooling with it.

Tuesday afternoon, I teach last period down the hall. I return to my room, only to discover that Terry, the teacher using my room at that time, left a note on my desk (name changed to protect the guilty):

Aimée --

Bob "accidentally" knocked over your 2-liter of root beer. I told him he has to bring you a new one tomorrow.

Terry

I walk to the front of my desk, see no spots on the ground, shrug, find the bottle in the trash (which, by the way, looked like it was squeezed by Andre the Giant and has an unscrewed cap. Interesting. Not being a fan of root beer, I have never opened it. I kept it at school so that the next time there was a 2-liter collection, I could bring it to the donations. "Oh, well," I think. "At least I no longer have to worry about the root beer."

Now, I have a very wide desk. To get the bottle and "accidentally" trip on it requires you to "sweep the leg!" under my desk and kick it out.

I sit at my desk and discover that I'm sticking to it. Then I notice that my butt feels damp. I look around, and my purse, the shoes I was originally wearing until I walked to the store and changed into flip flops but forgot to change back into, my candy jar, the arms of my chair, the legs of my chair, the charger for my laptop, and the seat and back of my chair are coated in sticky goodness.

And now I seethe.

I took Germ-X and Kleenex and did my best to remove the stickiness for now. I then filled out a write-up form with a VERY wordy yet detailed explanation, attach a recess detention to it, and wait.

Bernie comes in to talk to Jenn and me, and I pushed back in my chair a little bit to pick up a pen I dropped. I reach under my desk to pull myself closer to the desk again, and what do I discover, Wet, sticky, brown finger tips. I scream, "ROOOOOOOOOOOOOT BEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" in anger, then rant about how Terry must have run away scared, haha. I'm kidding, of course, and I'm not mad at him, but I am mad at Bob and the situation.

The next morning, Bernie starts baiting Terry with tales of my wrath over the situation. Meek little Terry, who is an easy blusher, comes in and stammers an apology as I'm heading to my off-period and Bernie teaches in my room. Bernie is loving every second of this. I manage to convey my non-Terry directed anger to Terry, and figure out that Bernie has scared him. Am I that intimidating? Or is Bernie that good at lying?

Tale the second: "I Have a Cat. His Name is Bony."

As if the root beer explosion isn't crazy enough, I get pushed to the limits this morning.

We have a kid with some communication difficulties and some form of autism spectrum. He's very bright, but he can be hard to understand. He adores me....he's the one who so fiercely defended me against the kid who made lewd remarks about me and attempted to grab my rear earlier in the year. Anyway, I was recoding some grades on my computer when "Mickey" starts rambling to me. I'm trying to concentrate on not screwing up grades, and I'm half listening. All I hear is, "I have a cat. His name is Bony. Want to see why his name is Bony?"

Expecting to have him shove a wrinkly photo of a skinny kitty cat in my face, I say, "Sure." He knows I love cats. He asks me about my pictures of my cats on my desk (What? I don't have kids. I have cats.). I figure he's got a picture of his.

Mickey says, "Look. It's on the desk." I look up to find him pointing at a desk with a Ziploc freezer bag on it. "Where?" I say. No photos are on the desk. "In the bag," he says.

I look closer and am horrified to discover that Bony the cat IS, in fact, rather aptly named. Bony the cat is a decomposing bag of fur and bones. I decide now would be a good time to freak out on the kid.

"WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT!?!?!?!??!?!"
"For science class."
"DOES YOUR TEACHER KNOW YOU HAVE THAT?!?!??!?!??!?!"
"Yeah. I asked her."

There's only one "her" who teaches 8th grade science: my friend, Kristin. Kristin, who only eats organic food and cruelty-free meat. Kristin, who planned a mock protest in front of my room when I wore my Cruella De Vil costume at Halloween. Kristin, who does not believe in dissecting animals and took a "C" in high school biology because she refused to dissect. Kristin, who takes in foster animals. Kristin, who is an environmentalist. Kristin, the closest thing I've found to a real-live member of PETA. This story doesn't add up.

"I seriously doubt that Ms. O would want you to bring that to her class. ARE YOU SURE that she said yes and ARE YOU SURE that you asked her about it?????????"
"Yes. We're studying about mammals and bones and teeth and I told her I have this and she said I could bring him."

At this point, Jenn steps in and suggests he put it away, as I'm bordering on hysterics and absolute disgust. Kristin was in her off-period in the teachers' lounge. I march in there, and apparently have one awesome expression on my face, because Bernie is in there and greets me with, "Hello. Are you okay?" and a concerned expression. I point at Kristin and say, "I have an important head's up for you. Did you by any chance give Mickey permission to bring a DECOMPOSING CAT IN A ZIPLOC BAG TO SCHOOL TODAY!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?"
Now it's her turn to look ill. "NO! Why would you think I would do that?"
"Well, maybe because DECOMP ZIPLOC CAT IS SITTING ON A DESK IN MY CLASSROOM!!!!!!!"

Poor Terry was sleeping on the couch in there, and he woke up. He's as red as the couch, Bernie is practically crying, and they are laughing up a storm. Brendan is there at some point during my freak-out episode, and all three are rolling. Physically rolling, in Terry's case. Kristin and I are near nausea, both yelling and dumb-founded.

Apparently, during class, while they were, yes, learning about mammals and their teeth and bones, and said he had a skull at home, could he bring it. Kristin asked what kind. He said a cat skull. She said she guessed he could.

What he failed to mention was that said cat skull was still attached to the cat's other bones....and its fur...and resided in a Ziploc freezer bag.

Bernie kindly ran interference for us and convinced Mickey to put Bony in his locker for the rest of the day.

I went to Guidance and said, "I need a Guidance Counselor for myself, STAT!" Candice looked up and laughed and asked what was wrong. I told her my tale, and she said, "Oh yeah, he's bringing it for science class." Apparently, he brought it in Guidance and showed it to her while she was meeting with a parent and a student and couldn't really deal with it at the time. She said he has had it for a few years and found it outside. EW EW EW EW EW EW EW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Add these parents to my "List of people I want to punch." They're number 14, correct?

I am PISSED

Every day, generally, I check into a great "news" website, www.fark.com. They link news articles to sarcastic headlines. It's a great way to kill some time. Well, today, they had this headline, which linked to a story on www.nola.com: "New Orleans continues to make the case against rebuilding it" (this was also tagged "Obvious" by the people at Fark. http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/02/man_fatally_shot_in_lower_gard.html is the article, if you're interested.

What had me upset was, yeah, we're in trouble. Yeah, things aren't good. But it's not the whole city, and it's not everyone, and it's generally crimes committed against people the murderers know and sometimes innocent bystanders. You know, same thing in cities all over the world. Charles Grant, a New Orleans Saint, was an innocent bystander victim the other day. Outside a nightclub. He was stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle. IN GEORGIA.

You can't cover up these grisly stories. That would do everyone an injustice. But for crying out loud. Don't kick us while we're down. I love Fark. I love their headlines. Generally, when there's a story about New Orleans, the headlines are funny. It's not like I got so offended I'll never go back to the site. I'll go back tomorrow to see what else is new. In fact, that headline is NOT what has me so pissed off right now. I got over that quickly.

Why am I pissed? Because of what just happened that has me blogging at 1 a.m. Luckily, since it's Mardi Gras week, I'm off of school all week and don't have to get up early tomorrow. However, Mark, who has a cold, is still up because of this, and he DOES have work in the morning. Good thing he's not at WWL any more...otherwise he'd have to be to work in 4 hours.

I was sitting here at my computer, watching an instruction video for the Cat Genie...you've GOT to see this thing...it's a self-flushing, self-cleaning litter box. My idea of heaven, really... www.catgenie.com if you're interested.

Anyway, I heard four close together popping sounds. We live next to the Interstate, so we're used to weird noises. We just wound up Mardi Gras. We're used to weird noises. People were still shooting fireworks around here as of Endymion and the Super Bowl. For a split second, as I always do when cars backfire and when fireworks go off out of season, I thought, "GASP! GUNSHOTS!" Then I told myself I was overreacting and should continue watching this amazing video. Within a couple of minutes, a loud crashing sound happened. I called to Mark, who was in his office, and we both got up to investigate. We live at the end of a street. There are street signs posted warning of the dead end. Yet since we've lived here in May, we've been at home in time to hear what now amounts to THREE cars slamming through the signs and getting stuck in our yard. Usually, the people can't back up because the signs are stuck under their cars, and they have to pull up into our front yard and go through our driveway. But on two occasions, we've had both cars in the driveway, and they've had trouble getting out.

The loud crash was the sound of a car running through the signs again. And since we were both parked in the driveway, Mark went to see if the driver, who was frantically revving his engine, needed help, i.e., Mark moving his car. The closer Mark got, the faster he revved his engine. It was an old hoopty of a car. He peeled out, leaving a burning smell in the air, and managed to not hit Mark's car in the process. We tried to catch the plate numbers but missed. Our nice next-door neighbor, Brett, was outside on his cell phone calling it in. He also missed the plate. It was dark outside.

We went to talk to Brett, who, it seems, we only see when something weird happens in the neighborhood...like the 5 times trucks pulled down our power and/or cable lines, or when the meth kids across the street got busted and subsequently evicted. But our neighborhood is nice. Our section hasn't been overtaken by mini-mansions yet, and it has a lot of old people. There are rentals closer to the train tracks, but it's nice and quiet. Neighbors talk to each other and wave. In fact, we met another one tonight, who came out to see what the ruckus was.

Anyway, we could tell Brett was on 911. We heard him say, "There were four shots fired, poppoppoppop, and then a few minutes later, a car came screaming down the street, ran into the street signs in my neighbors' yard, got stuck, peeled out, and drove south down our street, then turned right."

Shots fired.

SHOTS FIRED!

It wasn't until we eventually came back inside that the enormity of the situation hit me. We live in a decent area. Mark was going to see if the guy needed help. His car didn't look like it belonged here...a gold four-door late '80s Chevy Malibu (according to Brett)...and the driver was kind of thuggy-looking. Now, we have a mostly white neighborhood, but there are several black families who live further down our street. He didn't look like any of them. Or like he would even be going to visit them. He definitely didn't belong here. Yet, being nice people in a nice neighborhood, he went to see if he could help. Thankfully, he didn't have anyone else in his car. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure we would have been shot at. If he fired four shots, chances are he would have two rounds left, right? Mark. Me. Or Brett, who has two young kids, a wife in the hospital, and his mother staying with him.

Time to feel awful, because the racial divides in this city are ridiculous -- Jefferson Parish cops pulled up within 4 minutes of Brett hanging up with them. At LEAST 5 squad cars passed us. Three blocked our street for the majority of the time. In fact, Mark went to make sure we'd locked up a little while ago, and he said he thinks the cops are patrolling the neighborhood because he saw one pass.

If this wasn't a predominantly white neighborhood, we'd still be waiting for the cops, and they probably wouldn't be patrolling still. Why is this fair that we should get this attention? It's not. It's disgusting. That's yet another reason why I'm pissed and blogging at...well now it's 1:30 a.m.

So here's what we're thinking. Something happened a few streets west of here...no more than about 3 or 4, I would assume. Other reports about shots being fired were from the street and possibly block that my uncle Dennis lives on with his fiancée, Kim. Guy got in his car to make a getaway, in the darkness couldn't see the road signs because they're already a little slanted from the last idiot who ran into them, and slammed into them and the no-longer-connected-to-any-wires telephone pole that's right there. He broke the pole off, pulled it out of the ground, and thankfully slammed it into the tree. It's precariously balanced in the crook of some tree branches right now. There's a gaping hole where it was, and broken wood next to it. He definitely lost pieces of his car, because, despite the darkness, we found them in the grass. The cops have a piece of what may be the thing that holds his headlights. It's metal. I found plastic parts covered in oil. He leaked a trail of oil down the street. I told the old cop to just follow the trail, and they'll at least find the car. It was making far too much noise as he sped away, and smelled like burning, too. He's going to have a lot of front bumper damage, maybe rear bumper damage, and definitely undercarriage damage. He'll more than likely break down, and they'll at least get his car.

But holy crap. We could have been killed, all because we thought he was an innocent idiot who needed help getting out of our yard.

Goddammit.

Anyway, Obama was at Tulane University today. I'm not attaching myself to any candidates just yet. It's too early. And as a registered independent, I can't vote in the primaries, so I'm waiting until I see who gets narrowed down. The man has great speech writers and researchers in his employ. He made a great deal about this area and helping it recover and education, especially here...and now assholes like our yard idiot are just giving people more reason to say, "Fuck New Orleans. They don't deserve to recover."

Editing this to add that Entergy is outside right now taking care of our pole. Again, white neighborhood, fast response.

Deepest gratitude...

Dear Current News Items,

Thank you so much for taking me back to a simpler time. A happier time. A time when news wasn't serious and was a hobby, not an obsession, of the media. Speaking as a former member of the Fourth Estate, I can say that your presence almost makes me wish I hadn't given up on my first love. You recent news items have returned us to the Clinton-era of wacky hijinks and morons, as opposed to the current "He's gonna get us blowed up!!!" news of the Bush "administration" (Administration, Fraternity Rush Party, Corral, what have ye...).

Runaway Bride, thank you for giving us a dimension of lunacy not seen since the days of the Oral Office. Not since Slick Willie shoved a Cuban where (hopefully!) the sun don't shine has this country had a pathetisad man obsessed with a woman to laugh at. She ran out on her $100,000+ wedding, faked a kidnapping, changed her hair, and ran off to Vegas (Note: WITHOUT YOU) to escape your impending nuptials. Yet, you still "Want her back, because we all make mistakes."

Thank you, Michael Jackson, for your penchant for all things tiny. From wee Macaulay Culkin to your eroding nose, you're a gnome's worst nightmare. Without you, what would Access Hollywood DO???

Thank you, Tiger Woods, for marrying a supermodel/incubus who sucks your playing mastery so that someone else can have the limelight. But thanks again for restoring humanity's faith in you (except in the South, where they don't take kindly to your lifestyle choice and heritage, present company excluded), because with baseball's steroids and the Blanco/Benson Brawl, the kids don't have much to look up to these days.

Which reminds me, thank you, Gov. Blanco and Saints owner Tom Benson. Your petty squabbles on keeping a worthless franchise (my opinion) in town by creating mini-tax hikes in order to raise the money to refurbish the Dome which "aren't enough" really take the heat off of our failing public schools and the fact that our teachers were not all paid a few pay periods ago. Not since Zsa Zsa slapped that cop have we had such a trivial battle in the news. And while we're at it....why not use that hypothetical budget to fix the streets in my neighborhood, since you don't care enough about the students and teachers. My front end will appreciate that when I don't have to turn my steering wheel to the 3:00 position to drive in a 12:00 direction.

So, thanks for keeping the news off that dumbass who thinks 51% of the voting population is a mandate. It's nice to forget that those weapons don't exist, that young kids and family members are dying, and that we still haven't caught the guy responsible for September 11, 2001. 2001, Shrub!!

Sincerely,

A Blue Heart from the only Blue city in a Red State.
("Not BLUE Blue. TOILET BOWL BLUE.")