Cold Medicine Makes Strange Thoughts

Well, it's official: Kaleb and I are both sick.  I believe it to be my semi-annual sinus infection, and Kaleb's leaking yucky goo out through his ear tubes.  Fun, fun, fun!

Work Friday (yesterday) was a bad adventure of coughing and wheezing, and doing my best to make it through the work day without projectile sneezing or coughing on anyone.   I got home yesterday only to discover that Kaleb was coming down with the same brand of icky.  We both went to bed early and slept like the dead, thanks to the soothing effects of the best OTC cold medicines available.

Today, we have rotated through a looped cycle of sleeping/napping, snacking, and cuddling on the couch drowsily reading Kaleb's books over and over and over again.   Now Kaleb has gone to bed, and I've taken my dose of nighttime cold medicine: the kind with antihistamines and 10% alcohol, guaranteed to make you extremely loopy before it eventually knocks you out for the night.  As I lie here in bed waiting for sleep to come and take me away for another night of peace, my brain is running through any number of odd thoughts...thanks, in large part, to this heavenly cold medicine.

Remember when you were a kid, and you read the Dr. Suess book Green Eggs & Ham?  Well, tonight, I analyze my current state of poor health in a fun rhyme!

Scroll below to read my original adaptation of Green Eggs & Ham.

I call it "How Sick I Am," or, alternatively, "Green Snot. Damn!"

Thieves Should First Become Good Liars.

We have, in one of the classes I work with, a female student who is known to steal little (and, sometimes, not so little) things from teachers and other students around school.  While lots of people know she does this, it's hard to catch her with the stolen items in her possession.

For the purposes of this blog, I will call this girl "Jane," although Jane is obviously not her real name.  In fact, her name sounds nothing like "Jane" at all.

Today, during one of the afternoon classes, I was using a blue mechanical pencil to jot down some notes at my desk near the back of the classroom.  I was also watching the students to make sure they were paying attention to the lesson.  When I noticed some students on the other side of the room daydreaming, I set down my pencil and walked over to get them back on task.  I was still up and away from my desk a few minutes later when the class-change bell rang.

As the students were leaving the room, I walked back to my desk to finish making my notes, so that I wouldn't forget what I was supposed to be making notes about in the first place.  I sat down at the desk, but my pencil had disappeared.

Then I remembered, Jane sits right beside my desk.

I'm Feeling GREAT Today!

Feeling Liberated! Finally done with only having contact from Kaleb's father when he wants to trash my personal life (not that there's anything unsavory going on, btw). So, he's been deleted from my friend list here and told that my life is none of his business. Somehow he thinks it's ok for him to have totally ignored his own son since mid-January of this year, but still be entitled to voice his opinion about my friends and such. Well, I've had enough, and he can no longer read anything I post here. I've sent him a friend request from Kaleb's account, though. He claims he cares about Kaleb (although I don't believe it), and so if he truly does care he can keep up with Kaleb's life there. I sent him a very matter-of-fact note today telling him these things, and IT FELT SOOOO GOOD!

Thanks, Sharra, for the idea about removing him from my list and just adding him to Kaleb's. You're so smart. :-)

Below is a copy of the note I sent him this morning.

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Subject: Kaleb's Schedule

Kaleb will be back on daycare full-time starting Monday (tomorrow). Full time is Monday-Friday, 8-5. We were going to lose our place at the daycare by only sending him part time, as they are nearing capacity and he was holding a spot that could have been filled with a full time child.

It's been over 2 months since I responded to your request for visitation, and I've heard nothing back from you on the subject. I assume this means you're not going to be back around. You haven't seen him in almost 9 months, with the exception of the one day you came along with your mother.....and I doubt you'd have come that day if not for your mother's visit.

I'd left you on my friend list, up until now, so that you could keep up with what was going on in Kaleb's life. However, the only time I've heard from you was when you decided to get nasty about a comment a friend of mine made on one of my status posts that had absolutely nothing to do with Kaleb. You make no comment whatsoever about things dealing with Kaleb. Since those text messages you sent me, I have come to realize that what goes on in my personal life is absolutely none of your business. In a few minutes, I'm going to remove you from my Facebook friend list. I will, then, send you a friend request from Kaleb's Facebook account. If you care to know what goes on with Kaleb, you can accept the friend request from his account. If you aren't interested, you can simply ignore or refuse that friend request. It's your choice.

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I'm so proud of me for following through with it. :-)

Life's Little Cheat Codes

Sometimes I think it would be nice if life had cheat codes, as I'm told many video games do.  Sure, it's fun to experience a challenge and do things the hard way, but sometimes you just need a little help.  I have compiled, in this post, some of life's little secret cheats.  Some of these are my own, and others I have flagrantly plagiarized from other websites.  Enjoy!

Home Cheats

1. De-clutter your wardrobe:

Put your clothes into your closet with all the hangers reversed one time each year. As you pull clothes out and wear and wash them, hang them up and return the hanger to a "normal" position. At the end of the year, give away any clothes still hanging on backwards-facing hangers, since you haven't worn them in an entire year.

2. Get out of the house on time:

Make your playlist exactly as long as you have to get ready. Start out with slow songs, and work your way toward more upbeat and energetic songs as you approach the time to leave. You'll be able to tell how you're doing on time by the currently playing song.

3. Open a banana the right way:

Instead of tearing open a banana at the stem (which can be difficult), just flip the banana open and open it by pinching the dark/flattened end (pinch with the thumb and first finger of each hand, then pull your hands apart). There's a reason monkeys do it this way.

4. Always remember to take important things with you by placing them with your shoes or car keys the night before.

5. Chill any warm beer or soda in minutes. Put the cans in a pot, cover with ice, add 1½ cups of salt, then fill with water. The can will chill to ice cold, on average, in about 3 minutes.

6. Save the punch:

Keep your fruit punch at a party from getting watered down by melting ice by freezing juice in ice trays before putting the punch into the bowl. Use these frozen juice cubes to keep the punch cool in place of regualr ice.

7. Rejuvenate the glass caraffe of your coffee pot or glass tea pitcher without harsh (and expensive) cleaners or chemicals. Over time, deposits build up in these items with regular use. To clean them like new, put 3 Tbsp. of salt and ¼ cup lemon juice (or half a lemon, cut into wedges) into the caraffe. Add 10-12 ice cubes, and swirl. The lemon juice breaks up the deposits, while the ice and salt scrub them away. Once the bottom looks clean again, rince thoroughly and they're ready to use!

Halloween: Are You Being Tricked?

As the weather turns cooler, the aisles at grocery stores are filled with orange-and-black packages of candy and toys, and  seasonal costume shops are doing a booming business.  Parents usher their little darlings up and down row after row of costumes, some cute and some grotesque, searching for the "perfect" look.  Every grocery store, every other street corner, and half the churches in town have all set up their "Pumpkin Patches" to bring in revenue by selling pumpkins to be carved into Jack-O-Lanterns.  Everyone prepares in their own way, even though many haven't got a clue what they're preparing for.

While some of us are preparing for one of the most spiritual holidays of our year, others are testing out various candy-carrying options to see which has the greatest capacity or weight limit.  Personally, I don't expect everyone to view this holiday the same way.  Certainly every holiday is celebrated by different people in different ways.  But, I think that Halloween is one of the least-understood holidays commonly celebrated in America today.

Perhaps the one thing that annoys me the most is people who do not live their lives according to their professed beliefs.....and this is no different at Halloween.  It seems to me that the same people who post scriptures and "God" statuses on Facebook almost daily and who, in less than two months, will be ranting and raving against the "commercialism of Christmas" are the same ones who are preparing to escort their kids to a local store to begin picking out Halloween costumes for Trick-or-treating and candy to hand out to the neighborhood kids who will come to the door one evening at the end of the month.  Please be aware: Christmas isn't the only holiday being commercialized.

A friend of mine shared on Facebook today this link, which mirrors many of her own views as to why she and her family do not celebrate Halloween.  While she and I are basically on opposite ends of the religious spectrum, I fully respect that she lives her life according to her professed faith, and I think that all professed Christians ought to read the article.

So, I thought that I would use this post to share a little bit about the origins of Halloween and how and where it began.

Cotton As High As My Little Boy's Eye!

This past weekend, the annual Peanut Festival was held at the Gabbert Farm in Jay, FL.  Kaleb and I were invited to go to Jay to have lunch and attend the Festival with some relatives from my mom's mother's family...relatives I hadn't seen since middle school 13-14 years ago.  None of them had ever met Kaleb, and there would be children around there that had been born into the family since my last visit to Jay.

I traded cars with Dad for the day, since his van is roomier and runs better than my little Nissan.  Kaleb got to ride up in the front seat (still in his car seat) for the long trip.  He slept most of the way there, which meant he arrived well-rested and happy.  We ate lunch at my great-grandmother's house; she's Kaleb's great-great-grandmother...that's pretty great!  Kaleb sat in a booster seat at the table and ate lunch.  He's so adorable around people he doesn't know; he acted like a miniature man eating his lunch, wiping his own hands and face on a napkin, and politely asking to get down when he was finished.  Kaleb was fascinated by all the new faces, especially his young cousins who were running around being silly and playing.  The little girl-cousin who was Kaleb's size last time I visited has grown into a lovely 15-year-old young woman.

Political Lambo

So, on my way home from grocery shopping today, I got stopped at a red light beside, and slightly behind, a sleek black Lamborghini.  The person driving it sat at the light, revving the engine repeatedly, obviously trying to attract attention.  It worked.  As I glanced to the side, a lone bumper sticker on the back bumper of the car caught my eye.....and gave me reason to assume the person behind the wheel was a jerk.  I grabbed my cell phone to try and snap a photo, but the light turned green and the Lambo sped away, weaving from lane to lane to get around any vehicle not going at least 10mph over the speed limit.  Although I didn't get the pic, the sighting stuck with me enough to inspire this blog post.

Before I get to the issue of the message on the bumper sticker, let me start with this: What kind of moron puts a cheap vinyl bumper sticker onto the [painted] bumper of a Lamborghini?!?!  Are you kidding me?  I mean, I like bumper stickers, but A: I don't put them onto the painted surfaces of my car, and B: I'm not driving around in a Lamborghini!  Those cars cost a quarter of a million dollars or more!  That's $250,000+!!  My car is worth about......$1500.

Anyhow, I suppose it's not an unreasonable assumption to think that someone who can afford a Lamborghini can probably also afford to replace faded bumper stickers as needed or have a bumper repainted if a sticker removal damages the paint.