November Comes In Like A Lamb, Goes Out Like A Lion

Dang! What's up with the 40 mph winds and 74 degrees in mid-November? The weather is really putting a cramp in my Christmas-music radio-station listening every morning on the way to work.

Do you know what it feels like to spend 30 minutes on parking lot duty before school with 40 mph winds? I didn't think so. Let me fill you in.

Don't bother to comb your hair before you leave for work. Because is won't matter. Really. Unless you apply a Jim Bob Duggar dose of hair spray, your coif is going to end up looking like that blond chick on Next Iron Chef. You know. Anne Burrell. The one who looks like a female Guy Fieri.

Thank the Gummi Mary, temps were balmy. Warm, in fact. I needed the wind chill to keep from sweating. But this heat does not bode well for decking the halls. The guy across the road from my classroom was setting up his yard display. For a minute, I thought he'd taken off his shirt, the way the kids were gawking. Or that a dust devil had swirled away the Baby Jesus. But evidently, an old geezer setting up latticework is inherently more fascinating that a lesson on geologic time.

I don't think anybody has entered the First Snow Day pool just yet.

This Teacher's Pet

Is there any sweeter sound than that of a puppy rasslin' a toy on the porch? Okay. So maybe there are sweeter sounds. But this has got to be in the top 100.

Our pup, Juno, was rescued from starvation at the tender age of three weeks (the best we can tell, because she didn't appear to be weaned) after somebody dumped her on my mom's rural road. Now she is thriving. She's looking more chocolate-labby every day. Her silky coat is thickening up for winter. She lives like a queen. Her wooden box of a house on the back porch is surrounded by a white rubber newspaper toy, a hard green rubber barbell, a plastic plucked chicken, and various scraps of bone that she has skimmed from the stash of the big dogs. They had a complete set of deer lungs with heart attached earlier today. So I don't think they're missing any shank shards.

It takes so little to make a puppy happy. Since the first day I saw Juno, I've picked her up and held her on my chest. She's getting a little big for that now. Like the adult son in that kids' book "I Will Love You Forever," when the old lady holds him in her lap in the rocking chair.

Juno can be cavorting to beat the band, but the minute I pick her up, she goes still. Oh, she wants to wriggle. But she holds it in. She shivers. She's like a big dog with a Milk Bone on the end of his snout, awaiting the command to toss it in the air and snarf it down. Juno puts her chin on my shoulder. She grunts like a little pig. She's in ecstasy. Her filled food bowl awaits. And The Pony holds her barbell or chicken at the ready for a game of fetch. But Juno soaks up the love and soft words like puppy crack.

I think she's grateful.

Occupy Sonic

I am boycotting the local Sonic.

The out-of-the-way Sonic I will still patronize. But not the one on my way home. I'm putting my food down. Down on the accelerator, as I speed past and glare out the window of T-Hoe.

I am not averse to tipping. The rumor that I choose the drive-thru to avoid tipping is totally unfounded. The drive-thru is quicker. And easier than parking my wide mirrors between the menus in a speaker slot. I used to tip a drive-thru gal regularly, because she made the best Diet Coke with Lime, just the right amount of ice, extra lime wedges, and she always brought it out so I didn't have to wait on a carload of corn-doggers. But there's a new dude at the window.

New Dude is some kind of freaky throwback. He wears SKATES! Sweet Gummi Mary! How long has it been since Sonic carhops wore SKATES? Granted, his are in-line skates. But still skates. New Dude is overly familiar on the speaker. No matter what you order, he pushes another item. Enough is enough. I can understand if you're just ordering a soda. But when you order a grilled cheese, a Sprite, large tots, a Route 44, and a Junior Deluxe, I think it's a bit greedy to try and tack on other items. Maybe that's the policy. But it rankles me.

Aside from being excessively gung-ho, New Dude seemed fairly harmless. Until yesterday. I was alone, The Pony having wangled a night at the home of his grandma. I stopped for a soda and a junior bacon/cheddar melt. The tally was $4.21. I had three ones and a buttload of quarters. But I opted for the five dollar bill, two dimes, and a penny. Because you can never have too many ones.

I drove to the window. New Dude was practically skating in circles. He didn't seem at all nonplussed that I had rebuffed his offer of a strawberry shake. He said, "That'll be four twenty-one, Miss." He took my money. He shoved my soda, straw, and paper sack out the portal. "Thank you, you come back." And he slammed the window. Then rolled off to the grill area.

That no-good slimy sidewinder! He kept my dollar! I was sputtering like Porky Pig. I think I stopped short of shaking my fist at him. If darkness had not already fallen, and my blood pressure not been rising like the red column of alcohol in a thermometer placed in boiling water, I would have driven back around to a bay and called him out. But who's gonna believe me once I leave the window? I was in no mood to sit there and be pointedly ignored.

Genius says it was my own fault for tacking on the twenty-one cents. That New Dude assumed I was giving him that dollar. No other worker has ever done that. And when I give a tip, I say, "Here's five twenty-one. Keep the change." I think that little scammer knew exactly what he was doing. I wonder how much he rakes in during one shift by employing these tactics.

I will be pointedly avoiding this franchise for a while. I am not his cash cow, the aphid to his ant, a sugar-momma to put him through roller derby school.

I am OH SO GLAD that I did not hand him a twenty.

Bubby Beat-Down

The #1 son has a problem with school lunch on Fridays. It is always pizza or nacho chips. He used to eat it. But I suppose now that he's had it fifteen weeks in a row, he has grown tired of of the faux Italian/Mexican duo.

For the last two Fridays, he has raided my classroom in search of sustenance. To which I can only advise: too bad, so sad. He should have packed a lunch, as The Pony and I do. Since my lunch time rolls around at the crack of 10:53 a.m., my meal is long gone when #1 accosts my mini-fridge at 11:54. From there, he assaults the file cabinet. That's where The Pony stashes his after-school snacks for when he hops off the bus from Basementia.

Don't forget that I'm in the middle of a lesson when #1 barges in. The freshmen gaze in slack-jawed awe at the legend who scored a 34 on his ACT last month, and who shaved his chinny-chin-chin goatee to be Harry Potter at the NHS Halloween dance, and has already grown it back.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"I came to get food."

"There is no food."

"I know where he keeps it."

"He'll be upset."

"Yeah, yeah. Hmm...M & Ms or mini Chips Ahoy? I'm taking the Chips Ahoy."

"The Pony will cry. He told Grandma just this morning that she didn't need to bring him any more snacks--he had a full bag of Chips Ahoy."

"I'm opening them. I'm going to eat a few, and then pass them around to my lunch table."

(OOOOOH!)

"Somebody didn't raise that boy right."

#1 reappeared at the end of the lunch shift and my class to put the remainders back in the file cabinet.

"I only ate half the bag."

"That's good. Then your brother will only beat you within HALF an inch of your life."

The Pony Is Lame

No. I'm not making a statement about The Pony's personality. That would just be cruel. He is actually lame. In the stone-bruised-hoof sense of the word.

Last night he complained of foot pain. That is not like The Pony. He's a hardy little fella. Two broken elbows, barely a peep. So when The Pony talks pain, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom listens. He said that the middle of his foot hurt. And his baby toe. Seems he hopped off the stage yesterday in PE after rescuing a volleyball.

I'm hoping he just strained some ligaments between his metatarsals. This morning, he said it didn't hurt quite as much. I told him we'd give it a couple of days to see if there was improvement. Now that there's a new convenient care clinic in town, I can trot him down there in a hot Hillmomba minute to get his hoof checked out.

They treat ponies, don't they?

A Harbinger Of Winter

Winter is coming!

I know, not because The Devil insists on hawking Christmas wares already, but because the Newmentia cafeteria served chili for the first time this year. Chili! The kids love it. The teachers love it. But this year, not so much. Because we are peanut-butter-less, you see. Sure, it's a grand thing to keep a kid or two from kicking the bucket. But we really, really liked the peanut butter and syrup sandwiches that accompanied the chili.

A lunching companion bravely took a tray. The rest of us are still smarting from the lunch increase of over a dollar. But the daring, intrepid colleague bellied right up to the tray-sliding bar and asked for some sour cream for her chili. To hear her tell it, "They acted like I had asked for a packet of GOLD! They brought out ONE packet, slid it across the counter, and said, 'The kids don't get that!' Do I look like I would give it to the kids? The kids bring ME stuff." Sure enough, three packs of chips were dropped on our table in the time it took her to tell her tale.

I can't wait for her to review her itemized lunch charges, and see how much that packet of sour cream cost her.

Coming Soon, In A Sideshow On The Midway Of A Carnival Near You

The thing about taking your kids to school where you teach is that your fellow faculty can fill you in on their shenanigans.

This afternoon, TheParkingSpotUsurper informed me of the antics of young Mr. The Pony J. Hillbilly. Seems her class was having a discussion of inherited characteristics versus those credited to the environment. Mr. TPJH entertained his classmates with his vast array of talents, including, but not limited to:

*the ability to roll his eyelids

*the disconcerting clicking sound that ensues when he snaps one of his previously broken elbows into hyperextension and back, quickly

*the loosey-goosey status of his kneecap when he moves it to and fro just for fun

*the uncanny ability to lick his own elbow

That boy is a regular dog-and-pony show. Minus the dog.