Feel Better at My Expense

Unless your Labor Day weekend involves:

Gocery shopping not once, but twice.
Cleaning your stove.
Shopping at Wal Mart with small children.
Cleaning a pantry.
Sorting shitloads of laundry.
Vacuuming until Dyson himself would pass out from exhaustion.
Cleaning boys' bathrooms.

then you can safely assume that my weekend sucked a million and half times worse than yours did.

On a Roll...

Since I've been pissy, might as well continue:

1. If your only argument to a debate about the Ten Commandments in public is showing an outdated website with pictures of various buildings that have all been proven to actually counter your argument, then shut the fuck up.

2. If you have nothing to add to a discussion other than smack-downs for people who are smarter than you, can write in complete sentences or disagree with you, then shut the fuck up.

3. If you are an elected official in a mid-sized Tennessee county and you think it makes sense to build a new elementary school and then not approve a tax increase to fund the additional expenses thereby ensuring that the teachers will get no raise, but the county employees get a 4.07% raise AND longevity pay that we don't get, then shut the fuck up.

4. If you are an official in that same county and you paid a quarter of a million dollars to have an outiside firm of experts spend months analyzing every department and making suggestions on how to run more efficiently and inexpensively and you think you know more than them with your high school diploma and your vast business experience as a line-worker in a factory or a farmer that's gone bankrupts, then shut the fuck up.

5. If you were responsible for the horrible fashion experiement of lilac trimmed with black, shut the fuck up.

6. If you are responsible for creating, designing, voicing, directing or producing Xiolin Showdown shut the fuck up and then spontaneously combust.

7. If you are on the Fashion Police on E! and you think that ever man that wore a tux was "safe" and thus, only had a guy with a dickie or a soul patch left to praise, then shut the fuck up.

8. If you have anything to do with Max Factor mascara only being available at Wal Mart shut the fuck up, too. You are the anti-christ.

I feel better now.

Bitchy Is as Bitchy Does

I've been in a real snit at work lately, so I've not felt like blogging much when I get home. The oppressive nature of shitty administration, fuckwits in local government and a complete and total breakdown of all professional-style communication has just beaten me into submission for the time being.

I swore I was going to be a "happy" person this school year--really, I was, but there has been NOTHING to generate even the slightest inspiration that would lead me to a sunnier outlook, so I've been a bitch. The role as the bitch suits me, I realize, and it is ever-so-much more rewarding to be able to call bullshit when I see it instead of meekly going along with the status quo and hoping that change is going to just fall out of the sky.

The downside is that I'm probably slitting my own throat professionally, but these days, I don't think i even care. I suppose it has to do with being true to onself....I don't actually think that I'm a bitch, per se, but I'm sure that the name has been thrown my way and I'll do nothing to deny it. I'm happy to be considered that if it means that I'm standing up for what I believe in and questioning stupidity when ever possible. There is no "i" in team, but there is in bitch and I'm only just now discovering how powerful that can be.

In Case You Don't Know....

No Child Left Behind, while it sounds admirable, is the dumbest damn thing I've ever encountered as a teacher. I would post more, but we're on a target list, so I'll be busy trying to figure out how to help special ed students get regular diplomas so that the education higher ups will stop counting them as drop outs...of course, those same higher ups wouldn't actually want to come down and try to TEACH a child who can't memorize something how to pass an Algebra I exam. Nah, that would be too easy. It's easier to just say, "Teachers suck" and make the kids feel like crap.

Vocabulary Issues?

ROFLMAO! Jay is playing football again this fall and he moved up to the league where they wear full pads, helmet, etc. Tonight was the night to get the pads. He was soooo thrilled. He talked all day about getting his "gear" and how he hoped it didn't rain it out.

We arrived and waited amongst the masses--so terribly unorganized--only to find out that he's been practicing with the wrong team for a WEEK, but that didn't seem to bother him and we met his actual coaches and they were super-nice and welcomed him to the group like he was one of their own.

Anyway, long ass line after a 90-minute wait and he FINALLY comes out with his "gear" on. As I'm helping him tighten up the laces on his chest, he tells me that he likes the armor the best....yes, only my child would go get shoulder pads and end up referring to them as "armor".

Sam, meanwhile, was equally enthralled with Jay's score. He told Jay that he sure was lucky to have the cool stuff and now he could be some weird cartoon character now that he has a "two-tonned tunic" to wear. He was, of course, referring to the "armor", er, shoulder pads.

Methinks my children are geeks.

Literary Theft

Am under threat of deletion from bookmark list and favorites by various individuals, so am forced to update blog in manner of favorite movie/book and merely blog out thoughts quickly so as to avoid said tragedy.

Life is most bothersome lately with the work and family and home and health things all converging upon my head at once, which should come as no suprise since this is about the 10th or 11th time that I've endured a back-to-school routine, but this one is particularly brutal thanks to the introduction of a foriegn element to my work habitat--water.

Last year, whilst I was strolling along the banks of the Thames, I knew that sheer and utter madness awaited me upon my return to the workplace due to a very unfortunate contrusction fuckery which is now known as "the middle school wing" but should, by all rights, purposes and intent be, in fact the high school wing, but I'm not one to carry a grudge a year or more later. Oh, no, not me. This fuckery, however, did cause major mishaps in my classroom in the manner of a plague of dust and construction destruction that no one bothered to clean up whilst I was taking said strolls, so I spent the better part of a semester, nay, three quarters, cleaning up grit and grime from the various intrusions into my domain in order to hook various bits and pieces to the "middle school wing". Finally, sometime in late January, the wing was at least opened and they stopped using my room as a vehicle for abstract pipe art and weird metal boxy coverings and I was able to at least enjoy the project for what I now consider its true purpose...a $900K bathroom and teacher's lunch roomy place to benefit me. The rest of it? I couldn't give less of a rat's ass if I had a mangy rat that I hated.

Why dredge this up now? Because I'm me, of course, but also because that sets the stage for the unbridled clusterfuckery of THIS school year's start: the failure of the roof. This actually started late last year, and one would think that some sort of repair process would be good seeing as my work environment is loaded with papery things and all manner of bookishness, but that would be assuming that anyone with any power has his, her or its head out of the ass to which it belongs. Really. All summer long, instead of just letting the classrooms sit and mellow sans children, a few choice ones (mine in particular--you don't really care about the others) were allowed to fester in their own Tennessee Rain Forest. Sadly, there was no cafe added--in fact, the cafe was gutted and students and adults alike have been sentenced to sack lunch hell, but that's a rant for another day. Instead, we have a smelly, wet, bucket-filled swamp with nary an animatronic gorilla or elephant in sight.

So, that essentially pissed me off (and I made a few calls to those who don't have heads in asses--all anonymous like, of course, and brought the enlightment that was so desperately needed to the situation). Little did I know that I could be more pissed off, but when it actually, literally rains into your workspace? And soaks your furniture in a puddle of water about .25 inches deep and then leaves a malingering odor that is, as God is my witness, beyond any and all description even by the msot talented wordsmith? Well, that just tops it all and puts one in a most foul mood, although now I am awaiting the collapse of a very bulgy, nasty, sodden piece of tile that just happens to be located directly over my podium because when it falls, I plan to take off for the rest of the day at someone else's expense.

Plagues, I suppose, one could consider these. Two years ago there were mice, then came the grit, and now the water. If bugs are next, I'm officially going into early retirement. No questions asked, no debate.

Must now go prepare to face another day in my own little terrarium--if you're in the area, stop by. I'm easy to find. My classroom is the one with the duct-tape repairing the window which was broken in 1993...I wish I was joking.

Various Things that Piss Me Off

If you list them, they might go away...at the very list, they are flushed from your brain for a while:

1. Ignorant people. I seem to be surrounded by them on message boards where debating is involved lately (research is apparently a dirty word as are logic, tolerance, reason and compromise). I can understand not knowing everything about all things...well, at least I can relate to the concept ;-)... but I cannot and will not every understand why some people are perfectly happy with being willfully ignorant about the most basic things about their fellow man and then not only being stubborn about that, but also being flauntingly, defiantly PROUD of the fact that they don't know shit from shinola about diddly for whatever zealot, xenophobic, homophobic, edcuationophobic, politophobic, vaccineophoibic, fill-in-your-phobic, conspricacy-threorist, bad science reason. Oh, and then, just for shits and giggles, they like to insult those who think by calling them names because that's what those who are intelligent do, I suppose.
2. Humidity. Seriously. Fuck global warming. I'm tired of hearing about that--global humidity is the more serious problem.
3. Political ads. When I'm rich, I am going to spend scads of money running policital parody ads to offer some relief for those like me who are tired of seeing these grinning chimps blather on about how they are going wrap themselves in barbed wire, kill all the turrists, stop abortions, pay all the teachers a gazillion dollars, eliminate taxes and make big bidness pay for it all while they protect "real families" and the flag from the bums who've been running the state or the country so far.
4. Dumbass ammendments. I think that the next ammendment should be to preserve the sanctity of Apple Pie. They've screwed baseball up, we have unwed mothers *gasp*, but I think we can all get behind Apple Pie and quit putting g.d. artificial sweetner in it.
5. Fat chicks in skimpy clothes . I get to rant about this because I can talk about my own kind--you? are not allowed if you wear clothes that don't have double digits in the size, of course, but I can say this with complete and total freedom: Put your fat ass inside your shorts--the top of them AND the bottom of them. Pack your boobs in a bra that fits (and by God, you better have on a bra). Get some sleeves that cover your arms and all parts of them that hang out and all around--that means NO tank tops and NO cap sleeves and have enough length on your shirt that we don't see anything that the top of those shorts might have missed when you are standing still OR when you raise your arms. If your shirt is acting, in any way, as a girdle or method of contrstaining, then you have bought it too small and it has to be tossed. If you lean over and anything larger than a baseball could be dropped down the cleavage opening, then the shirt is too low cut. I don't care how cute your tatoos are--no one wants to see them if they are undulating along rapids of fat on the river of pudge, so either tone it up or cover it up.
6. Summer television. I cannot remember when anything comes on, I hate almost all of it anyway, save The Closer and Project Runway (must set DVR for PR). I think it's a sign that I'm getting old, maybe. Who knows.
7. Purple fur. Another sign that I'm getting old--Wal Mart was chock frigging full of it. Who the hell would decorate with purple fur?
8. Tunics. I think it's time this look was over, but I have a feeling we're going to be in full-tunic this fall. I'm sure that I won't be since a would be most hideous on me.
9. Legos. This one isn't new, but I've stepped on so many more of them lately that I just had to add them .
10. Star Jones. Already posted, but I saw her in a magazine or two while I was waiting for Sam's surgery to be over (it went well--it's on his webpage), and her arrogance/spin/total divaness just pisses me off to no end. Why is she famous and I'm not? How the hell does this happen? Is it the legal degree, the ethnicity or the name? I'd be willing to change my name to something more cheezy if needed and I have a nice advanced degree even if it isn't quite as glitzy....I'm screwed on the race, but I do have a varied and interesting heritage, albeit Anglo-European as all get out, but there are Pilgrims and even a wee bit of royalty...surely that makes me somewhat marketable if Star Jones can be famous.
11. Dirt. My house is full of it and unless a tornado comes along and sweeps it and the junk that is damming it up, I've no choice but to go deal with it because a week from today, my blessed summer vacation ends. Forget what I said about wanting to go back to work. I wasn't properly medicated or something. I'm not.

Lazy Days of Summer My Ass

Who ever coined that phrase didn't have children, pets, a yard or a house.

Yeah, I've been lazy to a point, but dammit, it's from sheer exhaustion or an attempt to hide from the 9,407 tasks that I should be doing.

I don't know why I'm always so eager for summer break every year--I'm more frantic than ever, I think.

Must go to swimming and then hurry home to pack last minute things for the boys and go drop two off for a visit to Nana and then back home to prep Sam for a tonsillectomy tomorrow. This weekend will be spent nursing him, trying to get to a t-ball ceremony and continuing the quest to find my closet floors and flat surfaces. Next week, the Goodwill man will know know me on a first name basis since I anticipate a daily, if not twice daily visit to drop stuff.

School starts in less than TWO weeks for me. I'm almost excited about it.

Just a Word of Caution

I'm going to be working on web stuff this weekend--updating ugly things, moving files and hopefully getting everything that is supposed to be active, active. This will, of course, cause things to go boom at some point. But I'll be back, of course. You shan't get rid of me that easily.

UPDATE:

Obviously, I changed stuff. Comments on haloscan are gone--it was just too much of a PITA to deal with them and I like these better, but I'm not going to go back and pull those in manually.

Still working on the colors. Not crazy about this, but it will suffice...and yes, I realize that the header isn't wide enough, too. That's easy enough to fix, right? Riiiighhht. It always seems like it, anway.

I am missing loads of credits and such, but that list isn't working yet and the old template was just fried.

Must go study now. Will tinker later.

Coursework DONE

Now I just have to mail the real estate stuff in and study for the stupid test that will be the death of me. I can' t wait.

Root Canals?

They um, pretty much suck.

Never let it be said that I am without profound insight into life.

Reason #234 I'd Never Wear a Wig

Obviously wearing a wig is hazardous to your mental health. May I present Exhibit A?:

I'm not sure if it is the fact that the scalp doesn't get enough exposure to oxygen and sunlight or if the actual structure of the wig squeezes the capillaries too tightly or maybe, just maybe, there's toxins in the glue, but Star Jones isn't a stupid woman. Arrogant, obnoxious, loud, tacky, overbearing, self-obsessed, yes, but stupid? No. So, there has to be some other reason for her stupidity beyond all reason for thinking that it was a good idea and a smart career move to take a big ol' screw you swipe at Barbara Walters on live television. I mean, you can think that maybe she was getting some bad advice--obviously she's got some terrible synocphantic people working for her or she'd never have tried the whole "pay for my wedding" or "I'm an author" gig or the most offensive of all "Star! on the red carpet" travesty--but I can sort of see where those ideas might have had a positive spin on them to someone who has no qualms about putting her own portrait in her bathroom. There's no excuse, no logical reason to think that anything good was gonna come out of trying to play the martyr and paint Barbara et al as the enemy.

So, it has to be the wigs. Never wear a wig, my children, never wear a wig.

WTF?

My template is totally screwed. I use Firefox (as you should be doing--go clink that little icon in my sidebar or where ever it is if you're not) and it has looked okay there, but suddenly, my image is gone. "Poof!". The rest of the page was there, but the background was white. However, when I clicked over to check out the page in IE, I like to have died. It was like Picasso's blog on crack.

So, if you're looking at this in IE (and really, why are you? Get Firefox already), then I'm sorry. I'm not as inept as that makes me look. If you're looking at this in Firefox, you may or may not see images. Who the hell knows. I'll be addressing that shortly. I didn't really like the whole look of the thing anyway, but I was working on the Rambling one. Guess I'll get this one fixed and then go to that one again.

Oh, and some people can't comment. Buggy emailed me that she couldn't and I don't know if anyone else is having trouble. If you are, please email me...kim at kimmah.net (two Ms, not three like the gmail thingy). The comments are through Halo Scan, so I'm not sure why some are blocked and some aren't, but I'll see if I can figure it out.

Blogger hates me. It's clear. I can't see my own images that I host on my own frigging server, but other people can. I don't know what is really missing and what's just not showing up here and what just is in the infamous Blogger lag, so I'm done for now. I'll try to sort it out tomorrow or something.

Good thing I don't have a job, eh?

A Sure Sign of Aging

So you ever want to get drunk for no good reason?

Just feel the temptation to drink yourself into oblivion? Once upon a time, I could drink with no regard for the after effects. I'd drink a fair amount, be blitzty and maybe have a headache the next day or feel a little funky. That was it. Every once in a great while, I had the misfortune to throw up--usually when I made the mistake to drink tequila in some form or fashion or when I just REALLY overdid it with something like beer and had some weird food, but I could probably count those times on both hands (like anyone really cares about that). Sidenote, Cary wasn't around when I had my really unfortunate run-in with tequila at the AGR house my freshman year, where I learned the hard way that one shouldn't mix gin, vodka, rum, beer, schnapps, and the evil tequila. From that day forward, the mere smell of tequila is enough to make me queasy and every other time I've tried to drink it, I've ended up sick....I remember being at The Lap once and learning that the hard way and Cary was there for that, I believe. A sink was involved, dear heavens, and some Tri Delt's shoes, perhaps...ah, good times and oh, so classy. Oh...and speaking of puking...eeek, Cary, do you remember the puking out our apartment window by the Kappa Sig? Ack! The memories. I should stop now because, well, I'm suddenly remembering things that are probably best left quashed.

And back from that digression....the point of the post was something totally different. It was...oh, yeah, it was at some point, I became old. I realized this when I became totally unable to process alcohol. Drinking sucks now because it makes me feel like total shit. That is, I feel like shit on the rare occasion I can actually drink more than one drink. Usually I don't even feel like drinking that much because I've sort of lost the taste for it. Not that I was really ever one to set out to be drunk on a regular or even semi-regular basis, but still, I did drink more than one beer at a sitting back in "the day", which was, oh, three years ago. Now it's like trying to force feed Ensure down Granny at the home for me to finish a stupid wine cooler (and yes, I actually drink the damn things. How gauche, I know). Every once in awhile, I get a whim and mix up something girly and fun like a nice daquari or something and I can manage more than one of those. If I'm with a really social group, I usually end up drinking more, too, just because I'm prone to eating or drinking in that type of setting and it's easier. However, the next day, I pay the price. I'm fairly sure that being run over by a truck and then having 1/4 of my bodily fluids drained and replaced with anti-freeze would be less painful than the way I feel. I'm essentially bedbound for at least 18 hours or so (and here is where W. would be so charming and point out that this is different than other days how?).

Of course, the burning question that most responsible adults have at this point is, why the hell do you care, Kim? You have three children and a job and a house and all those grown-uppy things. You're not supposed to be drinking and doing stupid things.

Yeah, well, good point, but that's the logical way of looking at things. It's not so much that I really WANT to sit around and get shitfaced. It's the fact that I can't do it if I want to...that just pisses me off to no end. I'm obnoxious like that. It makes me feel old and at this stage in my personal development, I'm not really particularly fond of things that make me accept my maturity. I'm rather fond of oblivion in as many forms as I can get away with it when it comes to things such as age/mortality and this is just one of those in-your-face signs that won't go away. Sort of like wrinkles, but there's not any plastic surgery for it, so I can't fool myself. And that sucks.

Sunday is Wash Day

I'm off to tackle a monstrous amount of laundry in a public washing facility. I do this from time to time out of sheer frustration and in order to wash the really big things all at once--spreads, blankets, coats, etc. I just found Jay's winter coat that had been left in my classroom since, what February? in a box of junk that I'd dropped at the end of school. Needless to say, it needs a wash. So, off I go--dressed in the appropriate costume of slouchy clothes and a ballcap, practically no makeup (mascara, though, natch), bottle of water, real estate book and calculater (grrrrr), and four giant receptacles filled with an assortment of things in need of laundering, some detergent, a few hangers and the fabric softener...oh, and fuckload of cash for the change machine. It's always something of a social experiment and even if I don't get much studying done, my van will smell nice and I will have plenty of blog fodder when I return.

Why We Englishy-Types Don't Do Mathy Things

I've never claimed to be anything that I'm not, well, other than allowing folks to think I'm a redhead and not really correcting people who assume that I'm essentially perfect, but on the really core things, I'm pretty good at admitting my own shortcomings. As such, I'm submitting the following statement:

I'm a fucking moron when it comes to math.

Seriously. And I'm not even giving to hyperbole as is my natural tendency. I swear on Pythagoras, Newton and even the beloved Aristotle that I'm just about two steps over incompetent when it comes to anthing that involves "computations" or "figuring" or "forumlas". For some of you, this is probably incomprehensible because I have some very smart friends--some of whom even make their living doing all sorts of bizarre things with numbers that I can't even fathom (hello, Cary and Tonya)--but for me, math might as well be presented in Russian pig Latin because I'm totally and completely bumfuzzled by pretty much all of it.

There are those who would be embarrassed to admit this. Me? Not so much. You see, I've come to embrace my complete lack of mathmatical comprehension. Really, there's no sense in fighting it--one might as well try to make a lefty thread a needle with their right-hand as make me figure algebra. It's against my nature, you see. I'm a word person, not a number person--or I should say an abstract and concept person, not a concrete and application person, since I do very much enjoy a nice Suduko-- and it's time that those who are of my ilk stand tall and be proud.

We Englishy types have a tremendous skill set that should be embraced; we create something from nothing. We dissect the written word and add to the breadth and depth of the human experience...or at least give folks something to read in the bathroom or on the subway and I think there's a universal appreciation of either one of those contributions. The fact that we can't figure out percentages without a calculator, a forumla and a quizzical look is really irrevelavant in the grand scheme of life because, honestly, when is one NOT going to be able to find some sort of calculator-things on the Internet or a little cheat sheet for your wallet to help you with that? Ratios? I mean, really? Ditto on that one. Area, volume, blah, blah, blah...in this day and age, one can buy any mannner of little gizmos to measure and calculate the stuff for you. All one has to do is point and click and make the laser stand straight and then hit enter. Trained chimps are capable of that...but can they craft a poem? Are they able to make someone cry from laughing or yell at their computer monitor simply by writing a paragraph? I think not. They can fling poo, swing around on ropes, play with toys and solve puzzles and puzzles=math when you get right down to it, so, well, you see the correlation, don't you? I mean, I took statistics for my doctorate program (and actually made a B) and I'm sure that I could make that work given the time and the effort and the right little computer program with which to run some sort of T-test or whatnot.

Englishy people are entirely too creative and nuturing to be worried with the constraints of something like a formula. Mathy folks like to do things in a certain order and if you screw up and multiply before you've added your dear Aunt Sally or whatever, then nothing you do after that will be correct. Or, if you've been asked to create some sort of statistical analysis, half a page of work can be for naught simply because you accidently forgot that 2x2 was 4 and not, say, 2 and then you'd have to erase an entire page of work and start all over again with a ridiculous table of numbers and you'd be worrying about running out of time on your exam, so you'd start to stress...well, uh, you get the picture. Math is very structured and confining--one could almost compare it to a jail of the mind, I think.

English? It's free and flowing. We let you put subjects and verbs just about anywhere you please. Want a sentence with one word? Fine. How about a sentence that has two hundred words? Go right ahead. If you can't think of just the right word, then by all means, just make one up. We're not elitist. You don't have to be some dead Greek in order to have control with the Englishy...even if we do pay an inordinate amount of attention to commas and Shakespeare, we're really very flexy on just about anything when you get right down to it. Some where along the way, we realized that we could have rules just like the Mathy folks, but we could also adapt those rules so that more people could play and, to be perfectly honest, so that we wouldn't all have to do the detail thing that some of us aren't really so great at. Voila! If you're an Englishy type, you may create your own style. Doesn't that sound divine? How very dashing and all, and there's just no way in the world that a Mathy person could ever get away with creating a new style for doing calculus. How dreary is that? The one time that anyone really tried to be adventurous in math was when the idea of New Math came along and, while I'm not even sure to this day what that was, it was pretty much roundly criticized by whom? Mathy types, of course. They're very proprietary, methinks.

My real estate class has served to highlight what I already knew--I'm not so much of a detail person. One has to be to be a Mathy person. I'm forever forgetting a decimal here or a zero there and, unlike a rough draft, it actually, uh, matters in figuring out interest rates or market values. There isn't a Math Check, which is just a damn shame, because it would really make things easier.

I'd like to be able to have a calculator that allowed me to choose a task, say, "Capitalization Rate" (I know, you don't really give a damn about a Cap Rate, either, but play along, just don't ask me to explain it because, frankly, I can't) and then be presented with a screen. Sort of like Word does when I choose New Document. Then when I enter totally stupid figures that don't have a chance in hell of computing correctly, I'd like a nice squiggly green or red line and some text to alert me. For example, if I'm supposed to figure out the value of a property with a cap rate of 25% and a net yearly income of $15,000 per month, there's a myriad of problems that can arise.

You divided the percentage rate by the income a property generates. Note that the number you have could not possibly, in any currency, be converted to a value of any kind. The forumula is Rate/Income=Value.

See, how helpful that would be? Instead, I get this:

.0000192

And no helpful hint, no suggestions, nothing. For those of us who are more literal and, I'll admit it, spastic when using a calculator, there is now a conundrum of sorts.

1. Did I enter the numbers wrong?
2. Should this convert to something and if so, what?
3. Was I supposed to divide or multiply?
4. Damn, how do you move the decimal again? Did I put a decimal in the percent?
5. What was the question again?

So, we have to start all over. Obviously, even I can't make .00092 turn into a number that is even remotely representative of value, so if you flip the two, you can get this:

60000

Which at least could be a value, but it's wrong.

In order to figure Cap Rate, you should use the Net Yearly Income, not the Net Monthly Income, which anyone with a basic understanding of simple accounting or who had read the book would know.

Ha! Screw you, pretend real estate calculator and math and logical thinking and Mr. Pythagoras and Texas Instruments and even that stupid little pi. Phfffft. The fact that I'm not one with my algebraic self is of no consequence to me. My inability to string together long sets of numbers and come up with numbers that don't make my calculator go EEEE is irritating, yes, but look at all the words I can string along. So what if the most important Mathy thing that I really care about is Word Count or my PIN number? That's why God made bankers and CPAs and all those other Mathy people--to serve at the will of the Englishy, who will in turn, entertain the masses and shape culture and history for years to come with our finely crafted words and painstakingly edited bits of literary goodness.

Disclaimer: Of course, when I get my real estate license, I will pretend to be pseudo Mathy and turn all actual mathmatical stuff over to W. or some fine assistant if one of the numerous gadgets that I'll be purchasing should fail me. I do like that other numbery-thing--money--after all.

May I Just Suggest

That when all else fails, go get a chocolate-dipped cone from McDonalds and read a nice novel or do a Sudoko and your day is suddenly better?

I'd add in a bottle or two of wine, but I have to be up early in the morning.

Old, Old, Old

Sam is in swimming class with the daughter of one of my former students. This isn't one of the "way-back-when" students, either. She's a fairly recent one, or so I thought, until I started trying to subtract back when she would have been in school and I realized that I didn't have a clue.

They're starting to run together...names, years, faces, classes. Ack! I can't remember. When did that happen? I can't keep who graduated with who straight or when it was. I am totally forgetting entire chunks of people. Egads.

I'm going to be a very, very dingy old lady with lots of pencils and glasses on the top of my head. I can see it now. I must do more Suduko. It's the only answer.

Blogger Survived, I Guess

Slowly but surely, I'm struggling to figure out CSS and make changes--I should save screen shots to memoralize some of the more amusing diasaters such as the ooopsey where the text disappeared (you can't set fonts at 1750%, ftr). I hate the giant space between the headers in the sidebar and the links, but I can't close it to save my life, so bah. I'll worry about it later. Must get back to real estate. I'm at the hard stuff now and I've run out of reasons to procrastinate.

I Broke Blogger

Comments don't work on any blogs that I visit. I think I broke the whole thing when I switched my blog over to Haloscan, which, btw, is oh so much more attractive than Blogger's version.

I also broke a couple of other things today--I totally screwed up a DNS for the kids' homepage because that's what happens when you don't have a damn clue what a DNS actually is or what the hell it is supposed to do or which way it and the host are supposed to be talking and...ugh. I think I can feel my brain slowly leaking out, which is unfortunate because I'm only up to Chapter 10 or so in the ever-exciting real estate book. I'm going to cap off my evening tonight with Taxations. I can feel the envy encompassing me from around the world.

Totally off topic, but does my font look too big?

Ugh

I am so incredibly techinically inept that it frightens me sometimes. How in the world can people keep up with all of the...stuff? I mean, it was hard enough for to learn basics about turning on a damn computer and then I was so proud of myself when I could delete files and move folders without screwing up Windows 3.1. I taught myself how to use the internet (thank you, Al Gore ;-)), how to browse, how to post, how to search, I was googling before it was a verb. I had a yahoo mail account back when no one knew what that was. I was a blogger back when blog wasn't even a verb or a common noun, but DAMNNATION, the techy stuff and all of the add-ons, track-this, click-that, scroll-about, extentions, skins, themes, yada, directories, files, FTP, php, .htm....ugh. I am already thinkning that I need to send all three of my kids to some sort of computer school and screw the social studies and spelling and stuff. They'll NEVER be caught up at this rate. Oy.

Note the addition of a blog roll to the sidebar. You should be impressed that I was able to install that on the very.first.try. I'd link to an old post on my first blog that show how incredibly difficult it was for me install something as simple as tool lines once but I seem to have deleted those posts at some point along the way. Big fucking surprise. I'll try to figure that out some day.

If you'd like me to put your link on the sidebar, shout to me, por favor. My old link list was woefully out of date, so I just pulled the current ones off of it and that's what was there. I read more, and I'll be adding them, but I usually get to them via other blogs, so I'll have to click through to get there. I'm assuming if mine is on yours, I can link back, etc., etc. Blah, blah, blah......can you tell I'm trying to avoid doing my homework?

I should really go do my next chaper in my real estate course work. I'm taking the pre-licensing classes via correspondence this summer--actually this week. It sounded like a good idea. Just ist home, read the book, do the tests. Bingo. Fuuuuuuuuccccck meeeeeeee. Remember where I pointed out my technical ineptness? Well, that part of ones brain apparently provides the ooomph for the thought processes that one needs to read what I can only describe as legally, detailly crap that involves math. I suppose it's not necessary for me to explain that I'm not really a mathy girl, eh? Or not so much a detailly girl, either, really. I'm discovering more and more each day that there was a good reason that I was a liberal arts major (twice, thankyouverymuch) and that I'm absolutely in the correct profession, save for the stupid part about keeping records and grades and shit like that. I've had to study for exactly three classes in my entire academic career, which is probably why I've had such an extensive one. Going to school really hasn't been a big deal for me, so I've piled up a nice little stack of the diplomas (diplomi...that's a fun-looking word, isn't it?)...five at last count, if you count high school. And, in the course of that work, I've really had to "work" at three classes that I can remember--and I figure if I don't remember them, it wasn't too much "work", right?--French II in undergrad because if I didn't make at least C, my parents were going to make me move back home (I'd made a D the previous semester and they were, shall we say, underwhelmed?), Geology 202 in undergrad--there's a really shameful story that's too long to go into at this point for this one, but I'll tell it because it's comical...now, and Statistics 60something or another for my Ed.S degree. I like to have died during that one. It was the first time that I ever had to actually, seriously work on something and struggle. But I ended up with a 92, so it was all good in the end.

This real estate class, though. Holy Hell. I'm not sure what the devil I was thinking. I was cruising through Chapter 1, actually having to read in Chapter 2 and then ask my hubby, the realtor for help (who the hell really cares what 1/4 of the NW plat of the SW1/4 corner of Township 3, Range 4 is worth, I ask you? WHO?? and wouldn't they have a frigging calculator in hand?), and flat out working by Chapter 3. Last night, for Chapter 4, I did a full-on outline and notes. And I still had to go back to find some of the answers on the review. Now, Chapter 5 looms before me. I must go face the demon. How Ownership is Held....I feel my life force draining even as I think about it. At least, as I scan the vocabulary list, there's only one word that I've not heard of--severalty----that's a plus, right? In Chapter 4, there were at least 8 (quick, who knows what accretion is without cheating? How about a habendum clause?)

Must go learn. There's money just waiting to be made and it isn't here on this website, much to my chagrin.

An Open Letter to Britney

Dear Britney Spears-

I know that you don't know who the hell I am and that's okay, hon. Most people don't, but that's why I thought you needed to hear from me. See, the people that you do know are either too nice, too busy or just too scared to tell you what you need to hear. Me? I'm not one for keeping my mouth shut. So here goes.

You're not a little girl anymore, Brit. You're a mommy now. Mommies don't go around looking as if they are wearing their bath towels as a dress or as if they are in danger of having their oobies bursting out of their tank tops. Now, I know. You live out there where there is a little bit of a skewing on what is in good taste for maternity wear, but let me just assure you--terry cloth? Never a good choice. Denim cut offs on national television when you are over 16 and pregnant? I know you have a mother. Please. And tank tops--just stop that. Now. Embrace the fact that you can now wear the cute maternity tops that cover your body and appreciate the fact that you are getting older. With age comes wisdom and, I hope a full length mirror or two because you need to start checking out the whole package before you leave the homestead. Carring a baby makes the clothes, um, shift, shall we say? And that isn't a good thing when your skirt was only belt-long to begin with.

And, I might add, with age also comes good skin and hair care. Who ever is bleaching your hair is not doing you justice, so you might want to ask him to lighten up on the peroxide and consider a little more honey-tones. Oh, and that cute short cut you had was just adorable. If you're not going to feel like, you know, brushing/washing/styling your hair when you go out, then don't keep it so long. It's going to be even more difficult to deal with when Baby 2 comes along. IIf your hair was a shorter and maybe a little darker..okay, a lot darker...you won't need to keep punishing your skin with the tanning because trust me, you're going to be paying for that one before you know it. Oh, and, dare I say...the eyeliner? Well, I do love me some eyeliner about as much as anyone, but less can actually be more. At least when dealing with black kohl rings. Check out taupe or brown or plum. They're fun, too!

Those things, though, are really not what I wanted to talk to you about, so I hope you're not too made to stay with me. What we really need to focus on is the train wreck that you've become and what the hell you can do about it because honey, I hate to say it, but when I see you, your facial expressions and gestures have the appearance of some weird morph of of Courtney Love and Andrea Yates with a little twist of Michael Jackson thrown in about right now and that's just not good no matter how you factor it.

I hope you've got a good therapist, but if you don't--go get one. Today. Not one of those freaky Tom Cruise or Kabballah-like new religion ones. I mean an honest-to-God Dr. Therapist. Call UCLA or Stanford and get the best one they have on staff, dammit. I'm sure your medical will cover it. Prayer is lovely, but you need more than prayer right now--post-partum depression isn't fun for anyone, but out in public and while pregnant again? Hell, every mother in the world is screaming at you to go.

Then, once you've made that appointment, B, you need to find some friends who are real people. That's going to be the tough part because I have a sneaking suspicision that everyone you are friends with is either famous, rich, related to you or works for you. They won't count. They're all "poisoned" in one way or another for you right now--you need to be "normal" and see what "normal" people talk about and do for a bit (you won't think it's so much fun to clean toilets, I assure you). You need someone to tell you that you look like hell, you need sleep, you need to straighten the hell up and get your act in gear. You also need someone to tell you that you're not the worst person in the world and have some objectivity when they say that. You need someone to take those frigging socks off your husband when he's wearing sandals, too, btw, but I guess that's probably pushing it. You need someone to sit around and have the babies play in the backyard and then worry about making dinner. You need to have someone to talk about puke and poop with..the baby kind, of course.

Naturally, it's easy for me to say this from where I sit because no one took a picture of me when I tripped in New York in April (I wasn't even carrying a baby or a glass, but I damn near wiped out right in the middle of the street--thank God there wasn't a picture). I had plenty of people to talk to when I was pregnant all three times, but you know what? I still had a rip-roaring case of PPD after the third kid and I nearly went to the looney bin. In fact, I think I even asked my husband to take me there at one point. To say I was a wreck would be putting it mildly--but it's one of those things you don't realize until you're in the crosshairs and then it's too late. So, get out of the line of fire while you can. Go immerse yourself in normalcy--if you can't find "real" people, go make up a name and be MommytobeinCali06 on some parenting board. You can talk about housecleaning, diapers, and baby clothes all day long. I just wouldn't mention the whole carseat thing if I were you--carseat mommies can get REALLY ugly on those boards. Oh, and whatever you do, don't bring up spanking or vaccinations--there's never a good outcome there. Unless, of course, you like to see the fur fly. If you do, then you can have a lot of fun. If you REALLY want to mix it up, casually mention that you sometimes use duct tape to hold the kiddo's paci in at night--you wouldn't believe how limited some people's sense of humor is, but I digress.

Straighten up, chick. You're a mess and the whole world can see it. I'm not saying that to be mean, I'm saying it because it's true. Get your head out of your boobs, put on some shoes and get some help. Then worry about dealing with all the other shit--it's not important in the end if you're in a psych ward somewhere licking batteries and finger painting with pudding. Go. Now.

Your friend that you've never met before--

Kimmah

P.S.--If ever see you with a big wad of chaw in your mouth again in an interview, I reserve the right to come slap it out of your more-expensive-than-my-car-teeth myself. Sweet Jesus, girl, can't you hear that racket?

Sheeeeeessssssss'sssss Baccccckkkkkkk

Yeah, well, sort of.

There's a story, of course, but it's so incredibly

A. Boring
B. Lame
C. Unflattering
D. Pathetic
E. Typical

that if you know me you could probably just insert sundry stories of woe and misfortune here and fill it in for me; however, I'm sure that I'll get around to updating anyone who is in need of a serious pick-me-up (my life has a way of doing that for folks after all), but not tonight since it has taken me UNTOLD HOURS to figure out how to master the simple task of publishing this motherfucking blog via FTP on my stupid server-for-cheap-ass-stupid-people (and providing significant fodder for letters B-E on the list from above).

I've got about umpteen and seven blogs now, but they are spread across the blogosphere at the moment in different stages of collapse, disappearance or abandonment. I'm moving domais, changing hosts, etc. Not pretty. At all. I'm also trying to separate the different aspects of my blogging because I found that I was just NOT blogging on the old blog anymore because I had a weird hang up about mixing trashy topics with kids topics and back. I decided to use THAT domain/blog for kids' topics (when it is revived *cough* Imadumbass *cough*) so that I can have something that I wouldn't be embarrassed if they read or for my mom to see and such. Then I've started obsessively reading about autism and such, so I've started a blog about my Sammah. And there's other stuff. So that'll be separate. And this one will be for just the Kimmyish stuff. Links will be available, of course. Duh.

This is powered by the sucktacular Blogger, but I'm depending on Performancing via Mozilla to keep me from being screwed in that department. If everything goes as planned, I should be able to actually fix the things that I fuck up and be able to log in on a regular basis--we'll see. The best laid plans and all...there is a saying that goes like that, I think, isn't there?

I miss so many people. I feel as if I've been in a big ol' hole for about a year (waves to Buggy randomly). I need summery beverages, good stories, laughy things and a maid. I suppose I'll have to make do with three out of four, eh?