Better Grab A Hanky

My classes have worked hard all year to get to this point. The fun stuff. Today was the Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's Classroom premiere of Dante's Peak. It's about a volcano, you know. The opening credits begin with tephra flying all over the place.

This is not a new movie. It has been kickin' around for awhile. They used to run it on the USA channel a couple of times per week. It's so old it's new to these kids. Except the ones who have seen it and say it's a really good movie.

Because some of you might be simply achin' to see this made-for-TV flick, I will not divulge any plot points. But I must relate an incident from my 1st Hour class that gave me a silent, secret chuckle.

There is a scene where Pierce Brosnan goes to the home of movie town mayor Linda Hamilton for eggplant parmesan. While Mayor Linda is imbibing some wine in the background, doing kitcheny type things before or after dinner, Geologist Pierce entertains her two moppets at the kitchen table. First is some kind of weak guess-which-hand-holds-the-domino game where the winner gets to topple a lame row of about 30 dominos. Then Geologist Pierce dips into his bag of heavy-duty party tricks with the invisible needle gag. It goes a little something like this:

Geologist Pierce takes a plain white hanky out of his pocket and says that it is empty of boogers and whatnot, but what have we here but a tiny needle. He mock-plucks a strand of hair from the girl moppet's mane, puts on his glasses, threads the invisible needle with the invisible hair, hands the invisible needle to the boy moppet to hold while he fake-blows his nose on the white hanky, then takes back the invisible needle and faux sews the end of the hanky. He pokes the nonexistent needle through the corner of the hanky, grasps it on the other side, pulls it through, and VOILA! The corner of the hanky bends down with the invisible pulled needle. The girl moppet exclaims, "Wow, it really works. It's MAGIC!"

And a kid in my class said to the screen, "It's not magic, you idiot! Didn't you see? He had a little needle!"

To steal a line from Stephen King in The Body, about Vern burying a jar of pennies under the porch when he was 8, and trying to find them for four years, after his mom threw away his treasure map:

You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

If It's Not One Thing It's My Goiter

My gynecologist called me at 8:45 last night. You'd think he had more of a life. You'd think I would have a phone that could work inside a house. Since AT&T was screening my calls for me, all I got was a chime. I took the phone upstairs to hear the voice mail. Seems that I have a thyroid nodule that requires a fine needle biopsy.

You can find that on YouTube, you know. I'm not linking any freaky medical procedures. My buddy Mabel would flip out. The only thing worse than a needle piercing her own neck is a needle piercing my neck. I'm sure of it. Mabel is quite loyal. While she wouldn't volunteer to take my place, I know she would volunteer to take me to the place of the fine needle biopsy. Because that's how she rolls, my Mabel. Since I don't want Mabel to faint and crack open her skull like my boy on a basketball court, I am pleased to inform Mabel that Medical Courier H says he will miss work to take me to my puncture appointment. I know it's a sacrifice for Perfect Attendance H to miss work, but will step up for me.

First, I have to make an appointment. My gyno recommends a local ENT dude who is supposedly a whiz kid. He opened his practice in 2008, and was in the 99th percentile of all ENTs who took some high fallutin' doctory test. That includes docs from Harvard School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins. I guess book learnin' ain't nothin' to sneeze at. Though I am sure there is some sort of kick-back deal for gynos referring to ENTs. Just because that's how my conspiracy-theory mind works. But I guess this young doc dude has had time to do a few of these fine needle biopsies over that past 18 months of practice. So I'm thinking I will give him call.

And what's a gynecologist doing diagnosing goiters, anyway? He must be the Wrong Way Corrigan of the gynecological world. Because he's the one who found my goiter several years ago. I hope this whiz kid ENT doesn't mistakenly remove an ingrown toenail.

Now I have to check my Christmas vacation calendar to fit this in among the boys' dentist appointments and my lab and regular doctor's appointment (you'd think that lazy bum underachiever could get off his duff and find a goiter before it bit him on the butt) and #1's follow-up orthodontist appointment and basketball practices.

The holiday season is such a busy time.

Three Dudes And A Chick

Overheard in the hall outside the teacher workroom, the bantering of freshmen after school.

Hey, Big Shoulders is pregnant.
No I'm not.
Concussor said so.
I'm surprised he didn't just tell her she had big pecs.
Hey, that was an honest mistake. I thought that's what biceps were called.
Don't you know that you can't comment on Big Shoulders' appearance?
Except to say that she has big shoulders.
I was just repeating what Concussor said.
I didn't say she was pregnant.
You said she was showing.
She said she was strong, and I said "It shows."
See what I have to put up with?

Welcome to my world, Big Shoulders. It's one big ol' Mad Hatter's tea party.

Round One

My third child, Little H, is driving me crazy today. First cat out of the bag, he engineered a tantrum to rival a five-year-old over the difference between a tax receipt and a tax return. There I was, elbow deep in the second of my seven loads of laundry, when Little H stormed into the laundry room (where, I might add, against my home-building wishes and against my direct command, he installed a laundry sink between my washer and my dryer, necessitating a four-foot toss of the heavy soaked apparel into the maw of the Dryenator), waving last year's tax receipt.

This is not what I asked for!
You wanted the tax receipt and the tax return.
This is NOT a tax return.
I know that. It's the tax receipt.
You said you laid out the tax return last night.
No, I said 'the tax receipt'. It's all I found so far.
You said the tax return got water on it from the sink.
No, I said the tax receipt got wet.
I don't need this. I need the taxes.
I thought you needed the tax return.
This is not it!
I know that.
I need the tax return with your SS# on it.
I know right where it is.
This is not the tax return.
I KNOW! Would you quit saying that?
You don't know what you're talking about.
That is a tax RECEIPT!
I KNOW THAT! You are the one who called it a tax return.
No I didn't. Why would I do that? I know what it is.
The tax return is what I need.
I know. I just didn't get it yet.
This is not the tax return.
I KNOW!!! Will you quit?
I should know better than to try to talk to you.
You never could say what you mean.
You're the one who can't understand.
I'm not the only one.
Who? Who else?
Everybody at work that you yell at, and the kids, and my mom.
I can't take it anymore!

With that, Little H stomped back into the kitchen, threw his home-laid chicken eggs back in the carton, took his ham out of the skillet, rinsed the skillet like it had never been used, and took off for parts unknown, flapping his arms, badmouthing me.

Earlier in the week, he had asked for last year's tax receipt, and a copy of the tax return. Two items, you see. He needed the receipt for auto licensing, and the return for some retirement mumbo-jumbo. He said he didn't need them right away. It was kind of a busy week. Friday, I laid the tax receipt on the kitchen counter by Little H's phone, figuring that's where he would notice it. I did not yet have a copy of the tax return. After the laundry room kerflulffle, I went to the kitchen table and picked up the tax booklet (which housed the tax return) to make a copy. Little H had rematerialized and was plopped in the La-Z-Boy. He mocked me as I walked down the basement stairs. "I don't need it NOW."

Hillbilly Mansion. We fight more before 8:00 a.m. than most people do all year.

Height Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom spreads joy throughout Hillmomba on a regular basis. Sometimes, it is a calculated effort. Sometimes, it is inadvertent. Case in point:

Last Monday, I was standing in the hall between classes as required by the faculty handbook, but ignored by the hoity-toities. Starter came traipsing down the hall, all cherub-faced and Boy Scoutish, his tongue no doubt wound tight as the rubber-band propeller on a Balsa Sky Streak glider in preparation to disrupt my class.

Yet something was different about Starter. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I hadn't seen the lad for four days, what with Thanksgiving break, and he looked different, by cracky! It wasn't the hair length or the facial features or the manner of dress or glasses or braces or hair color. Then it hit me. The little imp looked taller!

Hey! You look taller today. Did you get new shoes?
What? Are you kidding me?
No. You look taller.
You just made my day!
It wasn't intentional.
Seriously. Finally!
No different shoes?
No. This is great! I'm so happy!
Well, you DO look taller.
Maybe I'm five four and a HALF now, instead of five four!

I didn't know he would flip out. He really did look taller. Of course, he talked about it at lunch, and saw me making copies on my plan time and stopped outside the teacher workroom door to thank me again, and told all his teammates again at basketball practice until they razzed him unmercifully.

But he really DID look taller.

Putting #1 Back Together Again

Last night the #1 son came downstairs during the end of Survivor to torment me. Nothing like watching 99% of a show and then being distracted.

Feel my head.
Why? Do you have a fever?
No. Right here.
I don't want to feel that lump in your stitch area again.
Look. What do you see?
It looks like a scab.
No.
Yeah. Here, I'll get it.
See? It won't come off. It's not a scab.
Then what is it?
It's a piece of thread.
No. They took out your stitches.
The black ones. This is a white thread.

The boy was right. I could even see it from where he sat down on the couch. About 5 feet way, with bad lighting. It was at the top of the cut above his eye, where he bashed his face on the concrete-block wall during basketball practice. A little white thread was sticking out, about a half-inch long. Surely that was not normal. He split his head open three weeks ago. The stitches have been out for two weeks. Or so we thought.

"Since the swelling went down, it's been more noticeable. I thought it was a scab. But it wouldn't come off. It's that thread he used to sew me up."

That's what you get when you let the doctor's office bully you into taking an appointment with a nurse practitioner, because only the nurse practitioners remove stitches in this office. So I did what any normal mommy would have done, and called the ER that put in #1's stitches.

I brought my son there for stitches three weeks ago. The next week we had them taken out at his doctor's office by a nurse practitioner. She got all the black stitches, but now there's a white thread sticking out the top of his scar. What should we do about that? Cut it off? Leave it alone? Take him back to the doctor?
Oh. Let me ask the doctor.
Ma'am? Didn't the doctor do a double-layer repair? I think he did. He says that the white stitches will dissolve. Can you pull on it? Yank it out. Or just cut it off. The inside will dissolve.
Oh, I can't yank it out. But I'll tell him to try that. Thank you so much.

Hey, I'm off the phone. The doctor said to yank it out. Come here.
NO. You're not yanking it.
Or he said to cut it off. It won't hurt anything.
I'll do it.
Just yank it.
I'm going to look in the mirror.
Hey! It came out when I yanked really hard. Look at it.
Yeah. It's a white thread.
But it has red on it. Well, it used to be red. It's kind of brown now.
Whatever.
Hey, Pony! Wanna see my stitch?

Not really. The Pony doesn't get excited about much. But I'm certainly glad this latest crisis is over. Can't have my boy running around with a loose thread flopping over his eyebrow.

Subzilla Wreaks Havoc

Today I learned that my substitute yesterday turned up the thermostat to 80. I didn't know it was that flagrant a violation of the Don't Mess With The Thermostat rule. When I entered the room to pick up The Pony after my radioactive-iodine-drinking binge, the heat hit me like a slap to the face. It was 75 at that time. My 5th hour said they almost died of heat stroke. Of course, if they had shut their mouths, the hot air might have dissipated more quickly.

Upon logging onto my school laptop, I found that the sub had been on it under the moniker hslab. That is just NOT an option in my room. I should have known when I saw that the lid was closed. I can only hope that she undocked it and fiddled about trying to connect to wireless, which is NOT an option in my room and several others. I'm not sure what we pay Tech Dude for. Perhaps for sending out snide little messages about not logging off even though the laptop won't log off. Which is beside the point anyway, because I turned the freakin' power off when I left Tuesday afternoon. Then there was the issue last year about all computers shutting down automatically every night to save electricity. Apparently we are gobbling kilowatts willy-nilly this year, as the instructions are to leave on your computers so they can run the updates overnight. But getting back to Subzilla...she had no business on my laptop. She did not use it for taking attendance. That is the only reason it would possibly be necessary, and paper forms are provided for attendance for subs, which she used.

Subzilla did not give out the make-up work that I left on my desk in plain sight, labeled Make-Up Work, sorted by class period. She did not manage the classroom in an acceptable manner, as evidenced by writing in the dust on the bottom of my future assignment cart, where today's tests were stored, and anecdotal evidence from students selling out other students, and complaints from office workers. There was also the matter of the poster that fell off the wall. Did Subzilla stick it back up? NO. She laid it on my desk. No wonder it fell off, what with the blazing dry heat of 10,000 suns pumping out near the ceiling. I told Mr. Principal in the hall after academic team practice that I was NOT happy with Subzilla's services, and I would prefer not to have Subzilla in my classroom ever again. We'll see how effective that is.

Letting students switch seats and slither around on the floor and verbally assault people who enter the classroom is just not acceptable for Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's classroom.