Ten Things Tuesday – A Random Sampler

After a whirlwind weekend full of blog fodder (I promised fireworks and BOY were there explosions)  and while am still processing the events and consequences (my sisters came to BLOWS), I offer a random sampler.

1. My dogs are both shedding and if it weren’t for my scurrying around with a dustbuster, we’d have hair mastadons roaming the hardwood.

2. My daughter Monkeyface (not her real name) (no, really) has a 6th math teacher entirely willing to support the fact that my daughter already has the credit for the this math year (earned on line at Johns Hopkins Center for Gifted and Talented Youth). This seasoned teacher will happily augment Monkey’s goal of completing 7th grade math – with appropriately challenging material to keep Monkey involved in the classroom – by December and will serve as a math mentor should the need arise.  Doesn’t get better than that.

3. A friend of mine is soon to be operated on for a tumor on her pituitary gland, a condition  in which excessive growth hormones are secreted, causing joint pain, bone growths, skin tags, sleep disturbances, headaches, culminating in my friend having grown half an inch taller  and 2 shoe sizes in the past year.  My friend may need to have a fat graft taken from a thigh for the surgery and jokes that since they have to get at the tumor through her nose, she’s actually getting a threefer: a nose job, liposuction and brain surgery.  May the Universe grant me the wherwithal to remain this kind of cheery in the face of this sort of ordeal!

4. In two weeks, I am going to get into the car and drive (for my 6th time in the last 4 months) to Montreal.  Why? Well, I’m needed; LasVegasLady and I grew up together and now that she and I live on opposite sides of the country, we rarely see one another, the last time being her wedding 4 years ago.  Now, sadly, she is getting a divorce and will be in our hometown for a few days to see her family and to have lunch with me. Yup, I’m driving roughly 5 hours to have lunch and I can’t wait to see my friend and be there for her, make her laugh and stuff her full of Thai Food and chocolate.

5. Although I will be in Montreal for under 24 hours, I’ll be bringing my mother back with me for a visit.  having my mom around means giving her some project to tackle – cleaning out closets, rearranging books, organizing SOMETHING- so I am narrowing down the options. I have WAY more books than I have space on shelves for (they follow me home, I SWEAR!), I think we’ll begin there.

6. As of the second of October, I am officially without work. Months ago, it looked good that I would be teaching in a long-term sub position at the local highschool in which I had interned. I had an interview and although parts of the interview went well, my central nervous system went to orange alert and for one particular answer, I looked on in horror as my mouth spoke independantly of my brain. When I heard I hadn’t got the job, my first reaction was RELIEF, oh so telling; after teaching community college, dealing with three sections of Freshman was not something I looked forward to  and although I wish I had performed better in the interview and has the opportunity to turn THEM down, this was not the right job for me.

7. This morning, I walked around localU with Chili, where she will teach two sections of College English – starting tomorrow!  I saw her office (who cares if it’s small – it’s an OFFICE at a UNIVERSITY), helped her move a big metal shelf full of droolworthy books and then the dear and lovely friend that she is, Mrs. Chili brought me to the English Office, where shelves of books lay forlorn and abandoned, waiting for kind souls to give them homes.  I am one of those souls and greedily did I stack books until I had an entire armful: I have now got three books on the middle ages and its romance literature (drool), American literature and writings, books about gender issues and writing, and more tomes about writing.  Some are over 70 years old while others are newer, but they’re MINE.  Walking back to the car, I was stupid with the geeky giddiness of an armful of great books and I am STILL grinning.  Now, where to PUT the books?  As I refuse to allow the accumulation of creeping piles on my study floor, it may be time to get ruthless with my shelves beyond my initial intentions.

8. Speaking of books, check out the hella fabulous bracelet my mom gifted to me:

In case you can’t make out the books listed, they are:

• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
• Howl by Allen Ginsberg
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• I Read Banned Books

9. IF I had a teleport device and a genie to provide tickets (would I even need both? Hmm, work with me here), I would procure tickets and safe passage to England so that I may see Hamlet in Statford.  Not only is this one of my favorite plays, David Tennant stars in the title role, with Patrick Steward as Claudius.  To avoid having fangrrl pasted on my forehead, I love both of these actors in their own rights and can honestly attest to knowing and respecting their work beyond Dr. Who and Star Trek. Genie? Ohh, Genie!!

David Tennant and Patrick Stewart in Hamlet

where would YOU go?

10. Finally, we returned from our weekend (which I will write ALL about tomorrow) to zuchinii baseball bats.  I am about to attempt my first zucchini bread – anyone have a fave recipe?