And So It Goes ...


The funny thing is that the folks who came to get him, via Freecycle, were the same family we got our rabbit from last year! They didn't ask about the rabbit and I didn't volunteer any information; I figured it wouldn't be cricket to tell them it died six months into our ownership. The kids, however, were laughing (in sort of an anguished way) about the coincidence, and saying things like geez, I hope they take better care of our pet than we did of theirs!

They were upset this time, but nowhere near as devastated as they were when we found Rex a new home. I guess it seemed less shocking this time, and this dog was less a part of our lives (we've had him two years, but we didn't see him grow up with us like we did Rex) and a little more prickly, not the infinitely malleable lapdog Rex was. Still, it's just jarring and weird being in a dogless house for the first time in so long.

Now I just have to set up the cat's trip to California. We have a pretty slender window to arrange that (it needs to be after my parents get back from the UK and before my cousins' kids come out), and I'm going to have to cough up a lot of money for a health certificate, since the military vets (who give them for free, versus about $100 at a civilian vet) are all booked up. I'd made appointments for their health certificates for two weeks from now, but now the dogs' appointment is moot, and the cat's is too late, unless I want to impinge on the cousins' visit. I'd think a civilian vet would have more appointment flexibility; I'm inclined to use the Ewa Beach vet who was so good with Rex when he was hit by the car.

I'm also waiting to hear back from any one of the three maid services in the phone book who sounded vaguely familiar to me (versus being some yutz with an index card up on the mini-mart bulletin board), with whom I left messages this evening. Especially now that I (knock on wood, assuming the big dog doesn't go nuts and tear up their house and eat their cat and have to be returned to us) don't have to pay to ship dogs, I feel like I have the dough to get the house professionally cleaned before our pre-move-out inspection. If the really nitty-gritty gross stuff is done by the 8th, when we have our initial check, then we can't (she says optimistically) crap it up much by the 14th when we have to check out for good, right?

What I'm talking about hiring out is stuff like the Aegean stables bathrooms, washing the walls throughout the house, getting all the crap off the baseboards and really blasting the floors; cleaning the cabinets (I am just farging not going down on my hands and knees and swabbing the back of the freaking cookie-sheet cabinet, no ma'am); cleaning out the oven and the fridge, and dealing with the horrendous funk on the laundry room floor caused by two years of an impromperly hooked-up lint hose, a leaking freezer and a cat with a litterbox. Use your imaginations.

I can do the yard stuff myself, and spackle all the holes in the walls. I was surprised how holey the walls ended up, considering I was using those spiffy art hangers for all my pictures, the ones which leave just a pinpoint hole; it was the shelving that kicked my butt instead, especially in the kitchen, where we had to re-hang the damn thing twice to get it straight. There are holes there you could practically poke your pinkie into.

Speaking of which, there's a genuine mouse hole here in the living room! It's sort of endearing, actually; I hope its denizens make me a dress or something. I've seen a mouse wrestle a piece of dog kibble across the floor and into the hole, which was America's Funniest Animals material for sure. I'm often out here in the living room most of the night grading farging papers, so I think it's used to me, or has at least figured out I'm no threat.

School is pissing me off. We watched Super Size Me today, which I thought fit in perfectly with what we're discussing in class (nutrition, weight control and why not to eat crap), and I had kids bitching because I wasn't letting them watch something un-health-related. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, chickadees?! This is farging school, not babysitting, and we used the equivalent of a week's worth of instructional time (if this were a regular course) to kick back and watch a movie ... as I said to a few of them in second period, don't make me regret this, mmkay?

I guess what bugs me the most is their attitude of entitlement, of needing to be constantly entertained and diverted and amused by absolutely every aspect of the course. While, yes, I can be fairly diverting on the topics of food and lardassery and the weenis, there are certain things which are just inherently dry and are yet requirements. Deal with it.

Oh, and I made some really beautiful brown rice porridge today which they disparaged. They did eat some of it (although I found a lot in the rubbish can) but it seemed to be an affront to them that there was no sugar in it.

Ugh. I know, they're doing me a favor by using up the food in my cabinets (even if it ends up in the can eventually) but still, I was pissed off.

Troubled Boy seems to have dropped out. He hasn't been in all week, and he already had several absences on the books. I'm disappointed; despite his, uh, Troubles, he was one of my more mature and less grating students.

The problem with the majority of them is that they're incoming freshmen. Their only context for school is junior high, which is (in my experience on both sides of the aisle) pretty cakewalky, not very demanding academically, and doesn't move very quickly. Here, we're tearing through these chapters ... bam bam bam ... drug-free! glycogen! weenis! ... and they're all bitching and complaining and acting as if I, personally, am doing them a grave disservice by expecting them to actually do the work in this elective course.

(it's not an elective exactly, since it's a required course, but most of them are taking it now so they can take another elective in the fall; taking it now makes it an elective, methinks)

Anyways, my tests are getting harder and harder and meaner and meaner, and I'm getting more and more fed up with kids just globally not paying attention -- not in the sense of talking and chitchatting during class, although there's some of that, too -- but in the sense of me standing there giving a lecture for twenty minutes and the next day, only three kids out of 29 get any questions right on that topic ... argh ...

By the way, my blood pressure at my checkup yesterday was 150/90. Heh. The doctor (who I really like; I'll be hard pressed to find another doctor as cool as he is in San Diego) remarked that whatever you're doing lately, it's really killing you! My normal BP is more like 110/64. He didn't make a federal case of it, thank goodness; when I told him just a sampling of what I've been dealing with lately, he nodded sagely and suggested we check it again in a few months, when life has settled down a little.