Common Sense: Not So Common as the Name Would Imply

On the first day of school many teachers help students come up with a list of classroom rules. Supposedly it encourages ownership or whatever...I mean, if the rules are actually used for something besides a poster sized wall decoration.

If not steered just so, younger children tend toward a list of no's: no hitting, no spitting on our friends, no eating someone else's food, or my personal favorite from this year's crop: no hammering when someone else's hand is there.

I think some kid made up these rules to get back at a teacher:

These were only three of the many, many "no" signs The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken and I saw at a local park a couple weekends ago.

Don't they just make you want to park your offroad vehicle on the grass and unleash your horse while you go fishing from a kayak? Yeah, me too. I'm fine with refraining from feeding the alligators though.

The-Guy and I got this list of no, no, no's from a motel in Florida:Just make sure and have FUN people!

Of note:
This is every meeting I've ever been to wrapped up into one:

Principal makes some absurd, random rule that makes teachers' lives harder.

Two teachers burst into tears.

Every hand goes into the air.

Teachers grill the principal on every nuance of the rule, exploring all possible ways to bend, twist, curve, and tilt the rule (except for that one person whose questions never have anything to do with anything).

Relentless questioning continues past time when the meeting should have been over.

Principal cries out in frustration, "USE YOUR COMMON SENSE PEOPLE!"

Teachers stare at principal in disbelief. If people were willing to use their common sense, why would we need all these random, absurd rules?

Oh Happy Day!

Or happy belated day I guess. I wanted do a whole happy inauguration day post yesterday. I even wanted to find this picture somewhere on the internet to go with it:And I wouldn't even have had to look hard, because I just now stole it right off my friend Jeff's blog. But as is usual for a Tuesday, I never even got time to turn on my computer, much less check email or write a blog post.

But anyway, happy belated inauguration day people! 'Cause who the heck doesn't deserve a little hope?!?!

I also wanted to backtrack on my last post. Reading a book with an ACTUAL senator in it would be so far removed from my mind that it just didn't even occur to me as a possibility.

I was talking more the kind of fiction book where you're minding your own business and suddenly there's a senator in the book. I used to read a lot of murder mystery books, and whenever a senator was involved, I just abandoned reading.

Because you know if there's a senator in the story, pretty soon there's going to be a cocktail party and then somebody's dress will be described in great detail. And who even needs all that in a murder mystery? Just, y'know, a dead person and trying to figure out who did it is good enough for me.

Next the Jesus Music. A Free Man mentioned "bad Christian rock". I'm thinking that by A Free Man's very definition, it's probably, well...bad. I can't really offer much more judgment on that type of music, because I don't know any Christian rock, much less have an ability to tell good from bad.

But I wasn't talking Christian rock. I was talking "Oh Happy Day!" Spirituals, gospel, that kind of thing. And of course, "Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Posts of Life." That's the type of music I was hoping Jeff would serenade me and The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken with. 'Cause who the heck doesn't deserve a little hope?!?

There's No "Me" in "Meme"

Oh wait! There sure is! Hows abouts that...

So I'm not exactly sure why anyone needs to know anything more about me than the fact that I enjoy posting pictures of bar bathrooms, but back in June Ricardo tagged me to to write up six things about myself. And I wrote up the meme, honest to God. But for some reason instead of typing it into the computer, I lost it.

Then yesterday Moxievanilla tagged me with 7 things about myself and I decided to just bite the bullet and rewrite it. So that means of course I'm going to find the old one and it will be way better than this one.

Obviously thing number one is: I lose things. And I want to apologize in advance to The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken for the day when I lose his credit card, or whatever important thing of his I am bound and destined to lose.

Although The-Guy kindly observed that I don't so much lose things as I do find obscure places to put them. Which is why I haven't seen my checkbook in two months. But whatever...

I don't read books that have senators in them.

I do love music that has Jesus in it, more than your average Jewish preschool teacher does I imagine. Funny Jesus music or serious Jesus music, either way.

I don't buy groceries that have ingredients I can't pronounce. Because I'm healthy that way.

I do think that the great thing about Sea Breezes and Cape Cods is that you can destroy your liver and improve your urinary tract all at the same time. And so I'm sort of like halfway healthy and halfway self destructive on that one.

I have a business degree. For real. No, I don't know what I was thinking. No, I don't need it to teach preschool. Although I did need some type of degree to get my teaching certification, and apparently a business degree was good enough. I have a Spanish degree too, just for the record.

I don't ask for directions. I know that's supposed to be a guy thing, but most people can't give directions, even if they are one of the rare few who actually know where something is.

But that's not why I don't ask. I don't ask because I forget to listen anyway. Once someone points, I'm on my merry way in that direction, no matter how long he or she keeps talking.

So that's seven. And then I'm supposed to tag seven people:
JohnC
A Free Man
DJ Kirkby
Curly Girl
Noelia
Derek
Ingrid
Bruce
Alf
Maureen
Roger
Jeff
SJ
Janet
People
Ms.Q
Christine
Lara
Beth ('Cause you haven't blogged since SEPTEMBER for cryin' out loud!)

And that's why I don't use my business degree. I can't actually count.

But, y'know, in addition to losing actual THINGS, I've lost a heck of a lot of memes in these couple years I've been blogging. So I figure everyone can ignore the meme or do the meme or whatever.

Or better yet, don't do it in order to pay me back for having lost/not done one in the past. Fair's fair! And thanks Moxievanilla!

The House of the Rotting Veggies

This is what lunch break is like at my work at the small animal clinic. I don't really work at a small animal clinic though. I just stole that from this blog because it's always best not to talk about work on a blog. And because NO ONE that reads this blog has any idea what I do for a living. And because this blog is totally anonymous.

So I was done with my lunch and about to get back to work when a person who may or may not be a coworker calls me over to the far corner of the break room and says, "What would be the opposite of, you know, that area?" (makes motions using both hands around the top of her jeans). Seeing the total confusion on my face, she repeated, "You know? Virginia!?!?"

I didn't even know a vagina had an opposite. I thought opposites lived in the realm of adjectives, not nouns. The confusion must have shown on my face because the coworker says, staring intently at her cell phone, "Wouldn't your butt be more the opposite of your vagina, not your back?"

I still can't figure out why either one of those would be the opposite of a vagina and offered up the possibility that perhaps it would be the top of one's head. She gave me an exasperated look at my lack of ability to decide between the butt and the back and returned to texting away on her phone.

Other coworkers continued their chit chat about low salt recipes, seemingly oblivious to our conversation. I realized my break time had run out and rushed away without ever finding out why a vagina needs an opposite.

That's the great thing about my work. It's hilarious and mysterious. I'd list the not so great things, but I was totally kidding about this blog being anonymous and then I'd have to be fired. Probably.

At home, The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken's productive hobby is trucking right along. Veggies and leaves and stuff are rotting even now in them thar' compost bins. And we got dirt for the garden.

Here's the dirt going into the truck:And here's the dirt coming out of the truck:What can I say? He has a funny way of getting dirt out of a truck (*shrug shrug*). I'm not kidding - drilling is EXACTLY what he started doing when he said it was time to get the dirt out of the truck. No joke. Of course there's a perfectly reasonable explanation, but describing it would be akin to asking my coworker why a vagina needs an opposite.

Winter Break...Or did we break winter? I can never remember...

For reasons best described as "things that wouldn't be any fun to explain," we decided not to have a New Year's party this year. As it turns out though, we're not quite as good at not having a party as we thought we'd be.

There's a very fine distinction between having a party and inviting over some people to eat and drink and sing and talk and yell "Happy New Year" and stuff. I'm not exactly sure what the distinction is, but for what it's worth, we did the latter.

Here's us on New Year's Eve, not having a party:See the man in a chair on crutches and in a leg brace over to the left? That's my brother.

And here's my brother again handing out glasses from the champagne tower he poured: He poured it NOT because we were having a party, mind you, but because he's the best brother in the universe and it makes his sister happy to see him pour a champagne tower in a silly hat. Have I mentioned he's the greatest brother in the entire world?

Anyhow, he busted up his knee in a sledding accident and now has to try and chase this cute guy around while on crutches:Not to worry though, he's got all kinds of information at his disposal to help him out. Look, here's a helpful tip from the side of my mom & dad's coffee pot:My favorite part is where it says, "Children and hot fluids should be kept apart."

Who even knew coffee pots OFFERED parenting advice I tell 'ya?!?!? I hope he's watching the temperatures of that boy's baths! 'Cuz they say baths can be chock full o' hot fluids.

So that was my brother and sister in law's cute guy, also known as my nephew. Here's another cute guy looking at a scat chart:I used my super expert smudgy tool so that if you happen to run into him at the grocery store you won't recognize him and say, "Hey, aren't you that guy I saw on the internet reading about scat?"

If you're wondering if you read correctly, you did. It's a picture of The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken reading about poop.

Here's one of him writing a haiku, which was one of the activities at the party we didn't have:It's hard to tell which is sexier, learning about poop or composing haiku. No, I mean that. It really is hard to tell.

So that was basically our vacation:
The-Guy read about poop.
My brother busted up his knee.
My daughter puked all night the night before New Year's Eve.
We ate a bunch of great food.
We did quite a bit of snowshoeing.
We did unbelievably goofy things just to make the baby smile.
We played guitar and sang and discussed Plato (no really!) and laughed a lot. Not all at the same time though.

And we finished it all up by not having a party. It was a fine vacation (and thanks Mom and Dad!)!