Another week gone by...

Time really seems to fly by. I was home with sick kids at the end of last week, so I've got lots of catch-up to do. I graded a two-foot high stack of papers over the weekend and got the scores entered, so that's a good feeling. I'm having such a hard time keeping up this year.

My sister came for a visit, and it was so fun seeing her. Bummer that she had to go back. It was too short.

The deer hunters are home, luckily without a deer. Josh said to me, "Know how many deers we got?" "How many?" "None!" Sounds like they didn't really even see any, which is a bummer for them, but good news for me.

I haven't done my Survivor commentary in quite a while, so just a brief few words: Crystal: annoying and disappointing. I so wanted to see her kick some butt. Randy: I agree with him quite often, but he bugs me with his stupid I-hate-the-world thing. Ace: still only has the accent sometimes. Prat. Still like Bob. Surprised to find that I like Matty. (He had a trust fund that he totally blew through with partying, so I expected to hate him.) Everyone else ranges from eh to meh to haaaatttte.

Well, this week I've got to take my Suburban in for never-ending repairs. They still haven't fixed it right since the accident, but the guys at the shop dismissed our concerns... until State Farm's quality control inspector came and looked at the car and agreed with us. So back in the shop it goes. Josh is seeing a new allergist this week. I don't know what I expect her to tell me at this point, but hopefully she'll shed some new light on things. Brittney is having a birthday party on Halloween. And I've got to read The Secret Life of Bees this week. I'm advising a book club that some of my students wanted to start, and that's the first book they chose, so I've go to get it read before next week. Should be a busy week, but good busy not crazy busy, so can't complain. Off to bed.

Hope

It's hard not to get depressed when I read the newspaper lately. I've been troubled by a lot of things in the paper, on the news, in the debates... this little video lifts my spirits and reminds me there is hope for the future.

I'm off work today and tomorrow. I have a modest list of things to accomplish, but haven't done all of it yet. Partly because I'm being lazy (yay for laziness!)and partly because I just don't do well with unstructured days and small children. I get so easily distracted by "She licked me!" and "I'm hunnnnggggrrryyyyyyy" and "Eww boogers/poop/blood!" We had a 30 minute meltdown over nothing this morning. At some point I've got to get the laundry done, though. Josh is down to his last pair of underwear. I know I'm not supposed to admit things like that, but you all know me anyway, so what's the point pretending.

So I just heard they are remaking the movie Footloose with Zac Effing Effron playing Kevin Bacon's character. Gag. I wonder if they'll Disney-tize it, because I can't imagine Zach Effron doing this scene:



It's impossible to listen to this song without tapping your feet along. Try it. I dare you.



I just went over next door and visited with The Band. Seems they got a new touring van for hauling their instruments to their gigs. It's a delightful little p.o.s. for which they paid $500. It's a constant used car lot over there, but gotta love a group of young, optimistic guys. OK this totally cracked me up. I wanted to laugh, but years of training as a mom and poker player have served me well and I was able to keep a straight face. I was talking to 2 of the guys, and one of them commented about our neighbor's BYU flag that he hangs on his garage on game days. I said, "Oh, are you guys fans?" and they said that indeed they are. Then one of them says, "Yeah, I always wanted to go there, but by the time I got up to college age I had tattoos and I guess I wasn't churchy enough for them. People look at me and are always suprised that I'm Mormon." He says this in all seriousness, with a cigarette in his hand LOL Then the other guy, tattoos up the arms, cigarette in hand, lip ring, long hair with shaved sides... says totally sincerely, "Yeah, people are always surprised that I'm Mormon too. It's just fashion choice, man, it has nothing to do with religion." I like these guys. They crack me up. They have a show coming up in Salt Lake and they promised me VIP passes. Woohoo!

Let's see what I have to ramble on about today.

Lexi has some monster hair after naptime.




Survivor: Yay! It's back on! Boo! I hate almost everyone this season! Well, maybe hate is too strong... Half of them I don't care about, a fourth of them I am cautiously optimistic about, and a fourth of them I hope will get eaten by an alligator. And live! I'm not a monster, after all. Hated Michelle; glad she's gone. Gillian was nice, but too excited about elephant poop (seriously, girl wanted to eat that crap. Ha! Crap!) and too slow in physical challenges. Paloma was OK, but I don't really feel too bad about her going home. Early favorites are Bob, Crystal (started out weak but girl owned that last challenge) Early hate going to GC and Ace of the Fake Accent. The rest I'm ambivalent about at this point. We'll see what happens tonight.

Presidential Debates: Haven't had a chance to watch the VP or 2nd debate yet. It's all more of the same probably, but I'll eventually watch it anyway. The thing I don't get, honestly, is this whole notion that Sarah Palin is a good candidate because "she's just like you and me!" Well guess what... You and me... we aren't qualified to run this country! I like you and me very much, and you and me can hang out and drink margaritas and talk movies and politics and read classic literature and shop for shoes... but you and me have no business being that close to the presidency, especially with the current state of the world. GAH.

Books: I finally finished reading my Kurt Cobain biography, and man, talk about a downer. I normally try to avoid any type of sad movie or sad book. I have the potential to get way too involved with the characters or people, especially when I'm reading, and then I'm depressed for 3 days. I kinda picked this one up on a whim, and then I couldn't put it down even though I wanted to. I dragged my feet finishing it, but I had to. And then it put me into a major funk. Seriously. I hate that. I just couldn't stop thinking about that poor little Frances losing her dad when she was only 2. And it was weird... as I kept mulling over the whole thing in my mind, I could relate to Cobain in some weird way I never thought I would. Anyway... it was a very fascinating story.

Kids: Sick kids over the weekend. Everyone seems to be better now. I've been in the doctor's office way too much over the last month with various kid things. Courtney got her CNA testing finished up, and she was hoping to do an internship with the medical examiner, but the lady at the school told her they don't do that. So she wanted to do one with a midwife. But they don't do that. She wanted to get a job at a nursing home, but they don't hire 16 yo's. She's wondering why she spent her summer going to school since now she can't do any of the things she wanted to do with it. I feel bad for her. We'll see how it all pans out.

Sean: So I told Sean I was tired of the truck in my garage. So what did he do? He pushed it out into the driveway, all proud of himself that he got it out of the garage for me. It had no doors. No bumpers. No. freaking. hood! Just the big stupid engine all exposed, with all the metal frame removed. I felt like I needed to go around personally and apologize to all the neighbors. Finally I threatened to move out if he didn't put it back into the garage, so he did.

That's about it for here. Not looking forward to snow this weekend.