Thursday Quote Du Jour #7: What do you do when you’re stranded?

I took Rupert for a walk this morning.  We’ve been having a heat wave in the Great White North for the last week and a half, and while it was still very humid, at least the temperature was bearable.  It’s been an age since I took Rupert walking, and I think we both have missed it.  However, it does remind me of my own walking quote:

“A walk with the dog is not so much a walk as it is a sniff with some trotting to the next sniff interspersed.”

I think my new quote though will be, “Always check the poop bag dispenser to ensure it has poop bags before you leave the house.”

Rupert decided to pinch his loaf on a neatly manicured lawn just the block over.  Then, to my horror, I realized my dispenser was empty.  So a frantic moment ensued when after patting myself down I discovered no pockets with a stray tissue or spare clothing with which to scoop his prize weight loaf, the refrain of that childhood chant rolling through my brain all the while:

“What do you do when you’re stranded?  You act like a man and you wipe it with your hand, and that’s what you do when you’re stranded.”

Not ready to scoop warm dookey with my bare hands, I desperately scanned the lawn for any large leaves to no avail.  Then, just when I thought all was lost, I spotted, blowing toward me in the wind, a mostly empty popcorn bag.

Ahh, thank you Universe for the occasional liter bug.

Who’d have ever thought I’d say that?

So now for a real quote:

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”

-Mark Twain

I cannot really say much about this quote as I have never attempted real golfing, but I used to quite enjoy mini golfing, many years ago.  On a nice pleasant day, golf on a pretty course doesn’t sound so horrible.  If it didn’t require me to hit a tiny ball across long distances to an equally tiny hole in the ground I can’t see, it might even be fun.  But, still, I think I’ll stick to your traditional walking sans ball, club, and hole in the ground.

So, not being able to say much about golf, I would adjust Mark Twain’s words just a bit:

“An empty poop bag dispenser is a good walk soiled.”

Back to School

Today I returned to classes.

Luckily it appears that none of my classes were canceled this time!  Hurray!

But now I’m going to be buried in Physics, Organic Chem, College Algebra, and Trigonometry.  As it was just the first day nothing much is going on yet, but I anticipate this just being the calm before the storm.

Thursday Quote Du Jour #6: Apropos

This one came to me through WordPress as I posted my last post.  It made me laugh at the timing as well as the accuracy of the quote.

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

–Stephen King

Monday fall semester starts.  My biggest fear?  More than one of my classes get dropped.  Well at least that’s my biggest school related fear.

Cross your fingers for me, if you will, and let’s hope none of my classes are dropped.  On my part, I’m do my best to muster enough hope and belief that this year is going to be better than last.

Liars!!!!

The weather forecast says it’s only 84 degrees with the heat index.

My empirical observations however put it at 90 million degrees Kelvin.   It’s like the center of a Blue Giant Super Star here.   I’m mmmeeeeellllllllltttttiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnng.

I know some of my friends who hail from the deep south will scoff and call me a whiner.  But I moved north to escape this kind of weather.  Obviously I didn’t go far enough north.

Naturally it is too hot to do any of the work I was supposed to do.  So the only thing one can do is to put on next to nothing and lie like a beached whale in the tv room, which happens to be in the basement, and crank the AC.

And how do you think this is going to work exactly?

Two weeks before school starts, Rosa, my boss, says, “I want to revamp the whole discussion portion of class.”  Which means basically all the materials I’d been preparing all summer were no longer any good.

Then, last Friday she emails me to say she’ll be gone Saturday through Tuesday and then in meetings the rest of the week.

Ummm.  School starts a week from Monday.  When is all this new stuff getting done?  I only get paid to work for her 10 hours a week, and I’ve already put in 12 so far….

Good thing Rosa is one of the nicest people I know.

The Spud’s new nickname is henceforth Pigpen

Children are disgusting creatures.  Or at least the spud is.  She has absolutely no need for personal hygiene or cleanliness.  Bath is a heinous 4 letter word, and clean your room apparently means wipe everything off any surface and jam it into the closet, the nightstand cupboards or under the bed.

I would run the vacuum in there occasionally, but hounding her to clean her room well enough to do a major cleaning was just something I didn’t have the energy for more than twice a year, and then it was done while she was visiting her dad and generally involved several trash bags.  Now that she’s gone I’m cleaning out and the walls, oh my stars, what has that child done to the walls?  And the strange greasy coating on the bottoms of the drawers of her toy chest?  What’s with that?  And the brownish grey smudge running along the hem of her white bed skirt is also perplexing in a disturbing way.

The spud preferred to keep the drapes pulled, and the lights low, so with my not so stellar eyesight I didn’t always realize how bad it was in there.  She also prefers to be sweltering hot, so when we’d throw open the windows to freshen the air, she’d come right in and shut them.  So her room had developed an unpleasant funky smell.  Part of that smell was determined to be several apple cores, juice boxes and other snacks discarded into her wastepaper basket which was never emptied.  Getting rid of the ants and the bugs was much easier once I discovered this nasty habit.  It was doubly infuriating because the rule is supposed to be no food in your room, but when I’m not home, who’s to notice?  Only a small swarm of fruit flies and a colony of ants.  Luckily this was discovered before she left and part of her punishment was scraping all the moldy rotten food matter out of the can.

So, I will have to repaint in there, and that’s a project that will have to wait until after I get some other expenses taken care of.  For now I’ve properly cleaned out all the drawers, closets and cupboards.  I’ve changed all the linens and washed all the bedding.  I’ve done as thorough a vacuum as possible without moving out the furniture, and you know what?  It’s starting to look like a pleasant bedroom and not some ghetto slum.

Still I am flabbergasted by how much mess one small person can make, and how long it will take to repair the damage.  *shudder*  I need a shower.

Simon and Garfunkel make a guest appearance at the Jones household

The Sound of Silence.

The spud left with her dad yesterday.  She will be spending the school year at an independent school in the town where his new wife is a pediatrician.  The house is a little emptier in more than one way.  I don’t know how I feel about that yet, but the quiet is soothing on my nerves.