Half Empty
By javacat | May 29, 2008
One of the first fights that I ever had with Buddha in our early marriage was about the toilet paper roll. After living with the man for awhile I noticed that he would never replace an empty roll on the spool. He would simply grab a new roll and leave the empty roll there. For some reason I found this so psychologically disturbing that I literally wanted to boil those empty cardboard rolls, season them with cyanide and force feed them to him in gruel. First, I tried the passive aggressive approach with him. I stacked all of the empty rolls next to the bathroom sink until they were literally seven deep and he STILL didn’t throw them away. He just left them there! Maybe he thought of them as a modern art project, I don’t know. I remember throwing those empty rolls at him and just being so hot and enraged that I singed the hair off of his left brow. He might have improved for a few weeks, maybe even months after that argument, but eventually he just regressed into grabbing a new roll before the old roll was “all the way” empty. I have since learned to only freak out about the big things and not to stress so much about “almost empty” toilet paper rolls…and then I returned from Spain after a week.
It appears that my family spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom while I was gone and do you know how I know? There were FIVE “almost empty” rolls of toilet paper sitting around the bathroom. The kids have inherited their father’s aversion to replacing the damned toilet paper roll on the spool. I don’t get it…I really don’t get it.
Topics: Familia Blogado, Daily Dose | 7 Comments »
My Boy Genius
By javacat | May 28, 2008
My little trouble maker almost made it through the entire year without getting into too much trouble. Almost. I got a call from his teacher yesterday and the boy genius had written “I’m a butthead” above a girl’s photo in what he thought was her yearbook. Turns out it was his teacher’s yearbook. Thank God! I would have felt TERRIBLE if that little girl had gone home with “I’m a butthead” written across her forehead as her 4th grade memento.
I feel like we do a good job educating the urchins on damage resulting from bullying, name calling…you know all the good stuff. The girls get it but the boy not so much. He’s lucky that I leave my postits at work or I might have made him worn “Butthead” across his own forehead for the next three weeks. Maybe acts of kindness instead? Oye….is it bad to wonder if he spelled “butthead” right?
Topics: Daily Dose | 3 Comments »
Still alive
By javacat | May 27, 2008
New school staffed at about 50% and the others at 100%. I kick ass, really. Did I mention I may not be doing this next year? I mean really, what will I do with all of the left over anxiety? Maybe I could plant it and grow my own crack. I won’t miss any of it, except the Spain part. I’m no HR gal, this is all just a fluke…a bad bad fluke.
Topics: Daily Dose | 4 Comments »
Madrid 2008
By javacat | April 20, 2008
Interviewing on steroids 2008 was a success. I hired quite a few teachers and interviewed at least 60. This year was a lot less distressing than the last. I have more confidence in my discerning abilities and could pretty much make a decision after five minutes with a candidate. I hired a math teacher who looked like Willem DaFoe who is startling in appearance but funny. I interviewed a fat French teacher with purple hair who wore a plaid skirt and sat with her chubby legs spread apart like a baseball player in a dugout. I interviewed PE teachers who looked like they belonged on the cover of GQ and others with such a soothing cadence to their voices that I would literally beg my partner to go to the hotel bar to get me an espresso to keep from falling asleep.
The hours were long and tedious and didn’t leave much time for tourism…meaning that I had to become nocturnal, prowling the city until one am in the morning looking for good tapas and vino tinto. I am going to miss the hamon Serrano and the croquets topped with anchovies and octopus. I could eat off of a Spanish menu for the rest of my life and never miss food in America. I’ve got wanderlust again and I wouldn’t think twice about selling our home for a three year stint in Spain. I’ve taken to trying to convince Buddha that a house is just a thing and that I would prefer experiences, but alas I’m married to a man who loves his place.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures this time, because I was out mostly at night and it rained most nights. I did get pictures of our dinner at Casa Botin, the oldest restaurant in the world. We dined on their world renowned suckling pig and the biggest and most delicious artichokes you have ever seen. We downed several bottles of wine and made our way back to the hotel just before the metro ended service for the night. Among my other touristy ventures was a visit to the Thiessen Museum, El Prado for a Goya exhibit and Retiro Park. I’m happy to be home but also missing Spain at the same time. Here are a few pictures:
Me and my posse outside of Casa Botin
Inside Casa Botin
The pig de resistance
Oh yes, those are teeth
That would be pig snout in my mouth….yum
The Ham Museum…oh yes, ham off the hoof, the only way to eat ham in Spain.
Topics: Daily Dose | 3 Comments »
High Waisted Slacks
By javacat | April 11, 2008
I’m digging the cute new high waisted slacks at Express. I want some even, but I just know that when I try them on they will come up to my bra line and double as the second line of defense against gravity. It’s really all I have to work with at 5 feet tall. I honestly can’t decide between high fashion or the grandpa with big boobs look.
Topics: Daily Dose | 3 Comments »
Push and Squirt
By javacat | April 10, 2008
Sometimes I just don’t learn. I went shopping today for travel sized soaps, toothpaste and other hygienic stuff at the Wal-mart for lunch today. I spied a new line of “natural” body wash and lotion products with a big grapefruit on the label just calling out my name. Grapefruit is one of the few fragrances in cosmetics that I can endure without getting a headache and feeling like I’m going to pass out. I started by sniffing the body wash and it wasn’t bad! Then I saw the push and squirt bottles of lotion? on a shelf above my head. I stuck my hand up there and pushed a big goop of what turned out to be hand soap into my hand. It was sickeningly sweet smelling, sticky and there it sat in the palm of my hand for what seemed like the longest moment of realization ever before it began to ooze through my fingers like aqueous snot. I slyly looked around like a criminal for somewhere to discreetly wipe my hand. You know how there are never any employees to help you at Wal-mart when you need them? Well today they were everywhere and in every aisle. I looked down at my black slacks and for just half a second considered doing the unthinkable…but I have a meeting this afternoon and a big goopy handprint on my pants would look too Lewinsky so I suffered. I made my way to the checkout lane carrying my hand in front of me like a penitent monk. This isn’t the first time I have done this. My lesson today is to never do the push and squeeze without reading the fine print…until the next time I forget.
Leaving for Madrid on Saturday.
Topics: Daily Dose | 4 Comments »
My 12 year old Shemo
By javacat | April 9, 2008
Reason for therapy #5444
Shemo: “You just don’t understand what it’s like to be 12, life is very hard.”
Me: “Yes I do, I was 12 too and life was hard.”
Buddha: “Yip, we’ve been there done that.”
Shemo: “No, it’s much harder to be 12 now.”
Me: “Trust me I understand. You have all these new hormones you have to learn to live with in your body, you’re growing boobs…yes I know it’s an adjustment.”
Shemo: “MOM! ”
Buddha: “What? She’s growing boobs? I forbid it!”
Me: “Well, the next time she doesn’t hand in her homework, we’ll take them away.”
Buddha: “Yip, hand them over!”
Shemo: “Who are you people?”
Topics: Familia Blogado, Daily Dose | 7 Comments »
Under the Banner of Polygamy
By javacat | April 7, 2008
The recent polygamist raids in Texas have had me thinking about Jon Krakauer’s book, “Under the Banner of Heaven” ….A LOT. I have a lot of literary favorites, but then there are those books that occupy the corners of your mind and simply refuse to leave…ever. “Under the Banner of Heaven” is a written documentary but it remains the single most frightening piece of literature that I have ever read. Religion can drive people to do some very crazy shit and this book is a testament to that notion.
I believe quite profoundly that it is human nature to create stories for those things that we don’t understand, thus came about religion. I don’t believe in creationist theories or messiah’s walking on water and raising the dead (I just officially nixed any possibility for ever running for public office), but I do believe in human kind’s ability to strive for good. I don’t believe that morality and religion are analogous or inexorably linked. I believe that heaven as a reward for being a decent human being is a bribe. I do believe in karma. I believe that you get back what you give to the universe. It’s often why I try to put a smile on my face when looking adversity in the face. You reap what you sew.
I was taught to mindlessly follow and never questions Catholicism like everyone else in my family, but I never could. I have taken the exact opposite approach with my own children. Question everything, especially in matters of religion…be fearful of those who would ask you to rely on faith rather than your own intellect, research and gut feeling of right and wrong. Treat others fairly and respectfully and in return you will receive respect and fair treatment. Thumb your nose at those who would relegate you to positions of lesser authority because you are a female.
Females first and foremost are always the victims of religion. It’s pretty fucking difficult (though not impossible) to escape a life of abuse when you have an 8th grade education and 3 kids before you are 18. I don’t give a shit if adult men and women are consenting to a life of polygamy, but when 50 year old men are raping 12 and 15 year old girls under the premise of “marriage”, I just want to slowly castrate them and watch the bastards bleed themselves into a slow and painful death.
Topics: Daily Dose | 6 Comments »
Things Unsaid
By javacat | April 2, 2008
I drove down the street I grew up on today as I dropped the girl off at her dance classes. It was the house where my grandfather had his last conscious memory and that thought triggered in me a memory of my grandfather walking down the street to the Ogden City Mall to visit me at the store where I worked almost all through high school. It was a scene I had not played out in my head for at least a decade. It was buried deep in the trunk with dust and time nearly hiding it completely.
Grandpa would sit on a bench in front of my store with his cane and his fishing hat while I worked. With every lull I would go and sit beside him and we’d talk until the next customer came. That memory was made at a time when I had surpluses of time and expended them like tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough. I wished away those first eighteen years of my life eagerly anticipating the next exciting milestone in my life. It wouldn’t occur to me that those moments with my grandfather were precious, scarcer than a flawless diamond, until he passed one month after my eighteenth birthday. It couldn’t occur to me. I was young and my grandparents were immortal.
The devastation of losing my grandfather, my only father, at that age is indescribable. The pain burned deep and hard. It wasn’t because my grandfather hadn’t lived a long and admirable life it was because of all those things that I lacked the sagacity say which will go forever unsaid. It still stings. Time is precious. I smile when the girl behaves like a selfish bratty 12 year old, pushing me away trying to discover who she is outside of me. I’m young and I hope that we have decades to move past this and say all the things that shouldn’t go unsaid.
I’m feeling pretty raw with the news of that gorgeous 7 year old baby having been tragically wrenched from her parents arms and brutally murdered. Becoming a parent has this way of emotionally linking you to every child on the planet and feeling tragedy in your bones and needing to grieve with any parent who would have to live through the loss of a child. I don’t think that I would have the emotional wherewithal to cope with losing any of my children. I could see my mental shell cracking like humpty dumpty who couldn’t be put back together again because with death there is always this feeling of guilt whether you deserve it or not. Guilt is some heavy ass shit to carry, but you have to go through that part of it to reconcile with the rest.
I don’t know how much time I have with my children, no one does. I hope that I am saying all of the things that should never go unsaid.
Topics: Familia Blogado, Daily Dose | 2 Comments »
Commuting
By javacat | April 2, 2008
W: What’s that noise?
Me: I think it’s my back brakes. Maybe a rock or something?
W: Dude, that doesn’t sound like a rock…
Me: Hmm….should we just turn up the radio?
W: Sure, but I’m driving myself to work tomorrow.
Topics: Daily Dose | No Comments »