the real reason…

that I am not a fan of Day Light Savings…

 

The amount of traffic has quadrupled since the time change. I actually had to wait on the highway. Why is this? I leave at the same time, I take the same route, I have the same playlist. And let me just add I was just getting to the really moving part of the song when *SMACK* traffic jam. For no reason other than the time has changed…

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because i am a putz…

or a klutz, i haven’t quite figured it out yet. let me explain. on monday i found out a co-worker of mine was playing in a mud volleyball tournament on saturday. i thought, mud? volleyball? how cool would that be! so i told her i was interested. even after she informed me to bring at least an entire roll of duct tape to tape your shoes on to your feet. i still felt that was something i would be good at, and have fun. all week i had been looking forward to getting insanely dirty and perhaps partaking in a few adult sophisticated beverages at totally inappropriate times.

then it dawned on me, i am getting married in three weeks. an activity that requires the use of both arms and more importantly both legs. and after thirty years, i think i know myself pretty well. i KNOW i would have either, broken a finger, a wrist, or a shoulder. sprained an ankle, torn a ligament or all around just gotten plain beaten up. in which case i would have been really upset with myself. it is a little known fact that i am in fact a klutz. exhibit a: seventh grade playing basketball i was running backwards and tripped over my own two feet and broke my wrist. exhibit b: senior year of high school i was riding my horse, it spooked and while my horse went one way, i went the other resulting in a terrible fall, injured back and major concussion, a concussion that led me to believe that while i was semi-conscience on the couch i thought the dog had exploded. exhibit c: junior year of college, walking off a curb, stepped wrong and tore ligaments in my ankle. these are just some of the many instances where my general presence can cause me harm. i had a frequent visitor card to the local emergency room.

overall, i decided to error on the side of caution. i am only getting married once, and that one day i would like to not have a splint, a sling, or crutches to be in any of the pictures. am i sorry i backed out on my friend? of course! but as i sit here typing this, both my hands are working fine, i can walk, and i am not concerned that dog is exploding in the background…

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driving pet peeves…

i have to admit that i have many pet peeves, most of which bother me during their brief appearance then go away. this afternoon while i was driving home from work, a particular pet peeve occurred and i found myself getting really irritated by the driver in front of me. i hate…absolutely hate…when someone speeds up to pass me, then cuts me off and stops right in front of me at the same. red. light. this afternoon it was a gold honda civic with some cool vanity plate that i cannot reveal in order to keep some anonymity. but i found myself cursing this honda civic driver and really wanting to shout out at him that his speeding up to pass and then cut me off really got him far. as we were sitting at said red light, and my angry eyes were boring into the back of the drivers head, something happened, something that made me realize that “mister i am too cool to drive the speed limit and have to pass people who are actually only five miles over the speed limit only to wait at the same red light” was not as cool as he thinks he is. ladies and gentleman, as i sat with my angry eyes suppressing the urge to at least flip him off, the driver of the gold honda civic with the vanity plate picked. his. nose. and then ATE it. my initial reaction was to ask if he picked a winner, i noticed the anger that was brewing in the pit of my stomach disappear only to be replaced with the desire to laugh hysterically. perhaps this pet peeve has been cured?

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ahh parent teacher conferences…

so just a quick update, we are working and hopefully stopping the exposing behavior. that being said we got to go to conferences today. they do them differently now, the student will evaluate themselves on the past marking period as well as goals that were set up at the beginning of the year. kevin nick his mom and i all sit around a table and talk about his grades, effort and conduct in school, what needs improving and how to go about that. as a kid i would think this would be a nightmare, but nick handles himself very well. minus the fact that his mom brought along his little sister, who is 15?? months old and is a MAJOR distraction to nick, and then his mom and i think finally nicks homeroom teacher, who towards the end was looking a little more than frustrated with the distractions she was causing to nick and to his mom. the whole time his mom sat there and played with nicks sister, not really caring what was going on with nick and his teacher. the little girl was running around the room, throwing bottles out of the recycling bin and really looking for nicks attention. meanwhile, nicks teacher and kevin and i are trying to get nick to focus on what he was saying, absorb what his teacher was telling him and work out strategies for the final marking period. periodically his mom would just walk away, mid sentence, to go get the kid and bring her back. the add thing really is the apple not falling far from the tree! we have had nick full time for the past seven months and there have been some major improvements. his grades have been steady and for the most part his effort and conduct. he has only had two detentions this year compared to i do not even know how many last year, and for the most part he enjoys school. but to have his mom just disregard the conference so much that even nick picked up on it was really annoying. i know i am not perfect in any sense but i really felt bad for nick and can really understand where he is coming from when there is just a lack of something (i cannot really figure out what it is) from his mom. i have to say i am really proud of nick for doing so well in school considering the first day of school was the day after he saw his mom beat by her drunk boyfriend and had to call the cops. not to mention he was removed from that situation that day and has not gone back, except for weekend visits. i know i wouldn’t have handled the situation that well at that age. he just does not give himself enough credit which i guess is where i come in? not sure, but now it is a beautiful afternoon and all i want to do is go someplace quiet with a good book, maybe one that i ordered over two weeks ago will show up in my mail box and completely make my afternoon!! one can hope.

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what is it…

with fuzzy mold? now i have to admit that i am not the most diligent when it comes to cleaning the bathroom, i am not a slob either, it gets cleaned every week or so but come on! fuzzy! and what is the with the red color, that drips down the side of the tube and forms pools in the cracks. that cannot be healthy! i swear the bathroom never, ever gets dry. we do not have the luxury of one of those fans, i think the place was built way before that technology, and it has been way to cold to have the window open, but now its warming up and the humidity is building up faster and nothing. ever. dries. not to mention the amount of condensation on the toilet, can someone explain that to me as well, there was a puddle and i am not exggerating surrounding the toilet, allowing the red mold (?) to swim freely with the dust/hair bunnies. yes hair bunnies. now i love my dog, but the amount of hair that he produces is insane, every time i vaccum, which is more than once a week sometimes, i pull enough hair out of the easy clean vaccum to create one if not two more hobbes, complete with four legs and long snout. i know he plans his scratching as well, every morning we come in from our walk and he gets his half of a milk bone, licks his front leg (because no one ever showed him how to lift his leg when he was a puppy) then does a body slam onto the floor and scratches, turning his body in a full 360 degree circle on the floor. once a morning is not bad, the hair tufts are manageable, i can usually pick those up. but when i vaccum, he waits, patiently on the futon, until i am done, then proceeds to out do himself with the scratching effectivly rolling and scratching so much that the vaccum marks in the carpeting have even dissappered. he sure is hairy, but oh so cute, so one look from those big brown eyes and all is forgiven and forgotten. and one more question, what is up with the million and one stompers who live above me? and when did a crying baby come into the picture? no joke every night at around 9:30 the stomping begins, and not just someone who walks hard on their heels or something, its like a fricking marching band lives upstairs and they only practice after 9pm. that practice has to last at least until one am and will include, in no paticular order, lifting and dropping heavy weights, like dumb bells (that sound they are falling through the floor) watching an entire war type invasion movie with surround sound turned up past 50 and a chorus of crying baby (who is also training for the 50 yard dash) all when the rest of the world, at least mine is trying to fall asleep. i am generally a patient person, but much more of that noise and the next time i see that scary lady who has a hollowed out face from too much crack with her barky dog, i am going to say something. and it wont be a nice hello. i hope to take my tylenol pm this evening and not hear any more stomping, because i think it is starting to make me a little crazy.

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the eves…

when i moved out in august, i told my parents that i would be back to clean out the eves in my room. when we first moved out to ct, i had my own house that the movers packed up and and put in the eves at the new house. for some reason i do not really remember moving to ct, or how anything really got anywhere in the house, so i was convinced that there were many many many boxes hidden behind the door that was purposly hidden behind a dresser. with some apprehension i moved the dresser, grabbed a flashlight and went into the eves and to my surpise… four boxes… that was it! where did everything else go? i have no idea, i guess i did more cleaning than i thought i had. i do still have to go through the basement, but my sister will be home this weekend, so we can tackle that together.  overall a very productive weekend and it being st. patricks day,  my favorite saint day of all, i was fondly remembering the st. patricks days of long ago that included the annual kegs and eggs party and the endless amounts of green beer that mags and i would consume, ahh to be young…

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oh the frustration…

i have no idea how my parents did it. i certainly was not a perfect child, no one is, but how on earth did they get me to actually care about school and my future is beyond me. my good buddy nick is at it again, let us itemize the problems:

1. Monday-was supposed to bring his social studies folder to school to continue working on his project (due tomorrow) he was supposed to stay after school and work on his website (i use supposed to very loosely) instead, he leaves the folder at home but remembers to pack his new wes welker jersey (which he had worn the previous day and was told not to bring to school) and pack his starbury shoes, which he is only supposed to wear for fun not while he is in gym. his father told him that if he was done with his website to call him and he would pick him up, but no, he didnt call, we still do not know what he did after school for an hour. one word, BUSTED.

2. Tuesday-homework hell and the worst attitude ever.

3. Wednesday-again  was supposed to work on his website, he was not supposed to go to floor hockey or the special bingo thing (as a side note, we knew he went to floor hockey before we picked him up) 3:40pm go to school to pick up one VERY sweaty sixth grader, who obviously did not work on his project (he claims its done) but did what he was not supposed to do again and then tried to lie about it. now i know that i have never worked up a sweat working on a website, maybe they have some new extreme website building now or something.

needless to say the shit hit the fan. lots of yelling lots of crying lots of grounding. kevin and i both feel like idiots because nick is trying to play us for fools. when those seas settled we had a talk, got to the point that nick doesn’t care, we had to try and get him to understand that not caring is not the way to go and we tried our best to point out the correlation between his not caring is directly related to his mother not caring about him. he is carrying around so much anger i am surprised he hasn’t spontaneously combusted (i saw a show about that once) he hates that his mom has chosen, over and over again, the abusive boyfriend rather than her own son. and at that point i do not know what to do, i cant change what his mom does, i cant make the boyfriend disappear, all i can do is listen to a very angry eleven year old and hope that he turns out alright. i cannot tolerate lying and at this point he has absolutely no leg to stand on, i am almost to the point of checking everything over and over, and following him everywhere and that is no way to live. after all that talking and reassuring and not grounding him for years, just a week, we were finally able to have a good family hug and nick was able to tell his mom that he is still mad at her. unfortunately his mom has an amazing ability to lie just as well and belittle all of his feelings, in her world she is doing the best thing for everyone involved by not kicking the boyfriend out, hummm. nick is a great kid and has so much potential and yet is so good at frustrating the hell out of me, dear lord grant me patience. this weekend should be better, he is going to his moms, and the cycle will start all over again, although this time i hope that he can deal with his feelings in a more productive way.

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