What Do You Have To Sleep In Around Here To Catch A Few Morning Winks?

Farmer H has been leaving earlier. I blame him, because I DID offer to let him put my new Acadia in the BARn so he could regain his rightful place in the garage. But no. He has junked up the BARn to the point that you cannot drive a singe Acadia through the double doors. And to think, he had an old Ford truck parked in there for 10 years, RESTORING it. Then he moved that truck to one of his freight containers to free up the BARn. For more junk, I suppose.

Anyhoo...Farmer H gets up at the same time, but somehow takes a speed shower so that he can get outside to turn on his Trailblazer and defrost his windshield. Farmer H is not a scraper.

This morning, I was kicked back in the La-Z-Boy for my morning chair nap. Just dozing off. When the bedroom door was flung open and Farmer H charged out. At 5:45! I used to have ten more minutes of snoozing.

Farmer H came BACK into the living room five minutes later, as I was dozing off again. "I'm leaving now. The tin is in the garage. Between the Tahoe and the Acadia. But it's not in your way."

We'll see.

So...he finally left, and I was just dozing off again. Then the kitchen door flew open and Farmer H stumped his way to the bedroom. "I got the wrong keys. And I think my battery might be dead. The light didn't come on when I opened the door."

Like I care to partake in this discourse while I'm trying to gain some extra sleep.

I gave up and called to The Pony to wake him. It's tempting to take my morning chair nap in my basement recliner. But then I'd have to walk down and up 13 stairs.

Maybe I should just go to bed before 1:00 a.m.

No Rhyme. No Reason.

Saturday night as I sat in my basement blue recliner, watching DVRs of Shameless from the marathon on Showtime, I heard an unmistakable noise. It was not The Pony, frolicking in a bath in the big triangle tub on the other end of the upstairs. It was not the phantom ceiling-walker that most often paces at 2:00 a.m. It was the sound of our new metal roof flapping in the gale winds bringing no snow.

"Hey! Our new tin is blowing away. Did you hear that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Turn down your TV. I hear the tin blowing around on the porch."

Farmer H clanked closed his La-Z-Boy and stumped through the kitchen and out on the porch. He was not gone long. I imagine he gave that tin a look like Chevy Chase gave the Grand Canyon in National Lampoon's Vacation. Before you could say, "Sweet Gummi Mary!" he had cracked back in the La-Z-Boy.

I heard it again. That warping metal flapping sound. Like a special effect used to simulate thunder in the movies.

"Hey! That tin is blowin' in the wind!"

"HM. That's just the ice maker dumping ice."

"I don't think so. Because it was clearly on the porch. Ten feet from my head. Not in the kitchen. I'm just telling you because I know the winds are high, and I saw those open boxes of tin blocking the side porch. If it's not going to hurt for our $7000 worth of tin to blow out into the back woods, fine. But I thought you might want to know. Since you can't hear..."

Farmer H clanked closed the La-Z-Boy again. Huffed at me. Snatched his sweatshirt from the newel post by the front door. Stumped back through the kitchen and out the door. He was gone almost 20 minutes. I was watching the clock. Just in case I had to go looking for him. It was not a fit night out for man nor beast. I didn't want Farmer H to lock himself out and freeze to death. Even The Pony, with his non-care of people, would not have wanted that.

Farmer H came back in, hung up his sweatshirt, and cracked back in the La-Z-Boy again. No mention of the new roof.

What kind of Farmer schedules a new roof put on in the middle of January, anyway? And what kind of roofers leave open cardboard packages of tin laying on a porch in full view of the road, and in full gust of the wind?

I think I may be dealing with more than 3 stooges.

I Think We Have Discussed This Issue Before

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is stewing in her own juices tonight, my friends. Stewing in her own juices, having simmered a big pot of beans and Christmas hambone (by way of the freezer, not like it was sitting out on the back of the stove for two weeks), and baked up a dozen corn muffins. All with expectations of snow gently falling, building up to 4 inches overnight, with temperatures dropping into the teens, and not rising above 20 tomorrow.

But NO! Those dadgum TV meteorologists were wrong AGAIN! Uh huh. Wouldn't it be great to have a job like that? You can toss out any forecast you like, with absolutely no repercussions if it's wrong! Which all of the local channels' meteorologists have accomplished. After I'd made plans to relax Sunday night and sleep in Monday morning, rather than rushing to do my duty and start a new unit with my pupils. Perhaps to loll around the Mansion and watch DVDs with The Pony. Take my time with the laundry.

But NO! Not a flake in sight. The winter weather advisory from this morning (which the National Weather Center says is issued when there is the possibility for 5 inches of snow) having disappeared from the weather website. The standard 1-3 inches being downgraded to <0.01. The snow coverage map on a local news station showing Newmentia smack dab in the middle of the 2-4 inches range having evaporated into the internet. Yet I saw these as merely technical glitches, and still anticipated a 3- or 4-day weekend.

But NO! So much for a paltry single snow day coming from this weather system. At this rate, Newmentia is actually going to get the scheduled day off on MLK Day. Rather than having it ripped from our grasp as it has been for at least 16 of the past 17 years because we had programmed it into the school calendar as our first make-up day.

Yeah. At this rate, Newmentia will actually be on schedule for the last day of school to be May 10th.

Those beans would have tasted SO much better with a layer of snow in the front yard.

The Pony Is Leaving An Indelible Mark On His Classmates

The Pony had another tale for me this week.

“My friend Gamer told our class this story today. I don’t know if it really happened to him, or if it’s a joke. But it doesn’t matter. This lady and her little boy were in line at Panera’s to get some food for breakfast. The lady gave her order, and then turned to her kid. He was about 5 or 6 years old. ‘What do YOU want to eat?’ she asked him. And the kid said, ‘I would like to feast on the flesh of the unborn.’ The mother was really embarrassed. She turned to the worker and said, ‘EGGS! He wants eggs!’ So then my friend Gamer says, ‘The minute I heard that, I knew it was something The Pony would do.’”

Yeah. I think Gamer called that one. We are NOT going to Panera's

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way From The Bathroom

Wednesday morning, just before first bell, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom made her usual trip to the lavatory. More specifically, the toilet in the faculty women’s restroom. Always good to start the day drained of any distractions.

As per usual, Mrs. HM left just enough time to get there, do her business, and walk back to her doorway to greet her students entering at first bell. No need to make that pilgrimage earlier and break up her solitude. No need to make it later and have her room unattended with students present. Proper timing is of the essences.

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom turned on the hot water faucet to wash her hands. Always hygienic is our HM. She soaped and rinsed. Was getting ready to snatch a paper towel from the dispenser. Teachers are allowed them, you know. Not so the students. They might jam them in the sink drains and cause a flood. So they only get blowers that sound like jet engines.

As Mrs. Hillbilly Mom peered into the mirror over the sink, she saw something amiss with her green plaid shirt. A spot. Was it a stain already, so early in the day? Preposterous! Just a tiny dark spot. A teardrop shape. Smaller than a pencil eraser. She leaned in. Looked closer. Looked down at her very own chest. What the—

It was a burr. The kind you pick up running through the countryside with your ears flapping. The kind carried on a dog’s fur. A dog such as Mrs. HM’s sweet, sweet Juno. A dog who greets her sweet, sweet Mrs. HM on the side porch by the garage before she drives off in T-Hoe every morning.

Mrs. HM reached down to remove the offending burr. It was stuck like Velcro to her shirt. Velcro was patterned after burrs, you know. That is, perhaps, ironic. After much scraping with her fingernails, Mrs. HM pried the burr loose. And left a wet spot right over her left boobicle. Right before she was due to walk down the hall and stand at her door and greet students.

Let the record show that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is NOT lactating. And that her pupils knew better than to inquire.

A Slice Of Pony Life

The Pony has an anatomy class taught by Arch Nemesis. They are working on the circulatory system.

"Hey, Mom. Today in anatomy, were were discussing the flow of blood through the heart. At the end of the lecture, Mrs. Nemesis put the heart model on my desk. It's 3-D, like a model you can take apart and see inside. She said, 'Anyone who wants to, you can come look at this and trace the blood flow step by step.' Then she looked at me. 'You should probably look at it, since obviously you don't have one.'"

"Well, I guess that's kind of accurate."

"How long are we going to be here until you're ready to go?"

"Not long. I don't have any papers to grade tonight. And I'm FREEZING. I don't want to sit in front of this window any more. There's a cold draft."

"It's probably the chill seeping from where my heart should be."

The Pony is sometimes quite in tune with his peccadilloes.

An Instrumental Lullaby Would Be Just Fine

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom should not cry herself to sleep at midnight-thirty because there are not enough hours in the day for her to accomplish her tasks!

She is no slouch, after all. Arising at the stroke of 4:50 a.m. to pack lunches, shower, try to chair-nap, lay out clothes, balance the checkbook, and write out checks for bills or the #1 son’s needs, then drive to work for the first day back after Christmas break, and serve duty before and after her full workday, plus attend a meeting in which she was kept after with six cronies with orders to create a new strategy to prepare pupils for the compulsory ACT given to every high school junior in the state on April 19^th, and drive 45 minutes back home with a stop to pick up prescriptions, and spend one hour cooking supper and cleaning up the dishes, while answering the phone for Farmer H, and sending The Pony to track him down to arrange the trench dug that he had left a message about, but stopping to look up the number because Farmer H and The Pony do not know how to find a number on the phone, choosing EDIT rather than SELECT, then find time to eat and attend to her blog needs, while discovering that The Pony, in trying to put his newly-gotten drivers’ license in his wallet, discovered that he had lost his billfold, cueing the Mansion-entering Farmer H to criticize Mrs. Hillbilly Mom for voicing her disbelief at The Pony’s life skills, before reclining to try to watch part of her DVR Shameless marathon, of which she did not make it through one complete episode before nodding off, then ascending to the main floor to toss in a load of laundry at 11:45, only to see a fresh set of dirty dishes created by Farmer H, which necessitated washing her SECOND sink full of dishes within her 19-hour day, and then looking high and low in the dark and light for The Pony’s lunch bag to get ready for the next day, and discerning that he had lost THIS lunch bag too, along with the one he left at school in his locker over the Christmas holiday.

So stress-relieving, those midnight-thirty tears, while Farmer H and The Pony (and the #1 son somewhere) sleep the sleep of the clueless.

If only Mrs. Hillbilly Mom had heard the sound of the world’s smallest violin to play her to sleep…