Hermosa Beach

The view from our window at the Beach House in Hermosa. Off to the left you can see Hermosa Beach Pier, and down in front, harder to see are the beach volleyball nets. It's a great place for people watching. The Strand, a bicycling/skating/skateboarding and walking path that runs right underneath the balcony, allowed for lots of eavesdropping on sections of conversations. It's also a great place to drink beer and watch the sunset.

English Learner on Mars

I found this site the other day hitting Next Blog button. Odd, but interesting, and short.

english learner on mars

CONGRATULATIONS!

Congratulations to one of the coolest bloggers that I know. I almost don't know what to say.

Here's to you, Darling Diva, and your kind and loving man.

School is Kicking My Ass

I'm sorry. I didn't intend to become the latest blog world casualty, and I still don't. School is kicking my ass but good. I'll do better, I promise, but it'll have to wait until Tuesday of next week 'cuz I'm going to LA to hang with a friend.

I'm going to do my best to sketch while I'm there, and post some photos. We'll be staying in this great hotel where we stayed last year in Hermosa Beach, and dining at least once at this wonderful little restaurant called Christine. Best lamb chops I've ever had.

Sibling Rivalry

Calvin and Hobbes chew on each other. They beat the crap out of each other almost hourly, and then nap with full body contact.

Bailey

Bailey sat in the back, playing with the cabinet instead of listening. The teacher moved her to the front. Bailey sat, isolated. In a few minutes, the teacher let her move to the back. After school, Bailey's mom told the teacher, "Bailey had the best time in art class today."


My day, in fifty words.
Read some other fifty word stories at fifty word fiction.

School's In

School. I used to get butterflies for the first day. Those lasted from the time I was in kindergarten all the way up to a couple of years ago.

I got them really bad the first time I stepped into the high school where I got my first job. As I walked, I heard some kids whispering about me. "Who's that? That's a teacher? No way!"
I've always looked young for my age, and at 5' 2", most of those kids towered over me.

This year my biggest anxiety was not finishing the materials that I planned to give to the other teachers at my presentation. It went well though, and I hope they learned something useful. Though I did forget how slow you have to go to teach computer skills. I haven't done anything similar with a large group of people in a long.

The interesting thing? The teachers worked at a speed comparable to the third graders. Not because they don't understand, but because many of them didn't exit their e-mail when I started, and also because their skill levels ranged all over the place.

I'm glad I did it, and I'd really like to do it again. Next time I'll ask for more time, and go slower.

I didn't get butterflies the first day. What I did get was a really great feeling when I saw written in the dirt on my window outside, "We love you Ms. Crowe!" Whoever did it wrote it backwards so that I could read it from the inside.

New Fiction

I've been busy with preparing for school, and my presentation to the teachers, but I posted a bunch of new stories at fifty word fiction, so please go take a look.

My apologies to anyone who submitted recently and waited for their story. If it's not posted yet, please be just a little more patient and it will be posted before the end of the week.

Fleas

My cats have fleas. For the second time in a week.

You see, when I got them they seemed clean. But, several days later, I noticed little black specks all over my bed. It's called flea dirt sometimes, but really it's excrement. If you wet it, it turns red.

A friend and I shampooed them in the bathtub. They scratched and hissed and one of them bit my thumb. But then they were clean, and I powdered the carpet and vacuumed. I assumed the fleas died.

Tuesday I saw some more flea dirt, but I was too tired to do anything about it. Wednesday I went to the grocery store to get some treatment. Can't use it on cats under 12 weeks, which these definitely are.

So I called the vet. She agreed to just give me the medicine without an appointment, so I went and picked up these pills called Capstar, I think, and some Advantage. And it only cost $60.

I almost lost my hand giving the pill to the first kitten. As I was on the phone to my pest-control guy, trying to arrange the bombing of my house, I pried open his jaws about seven times, and he just spit it out after using his claws to peel my hands off his head.

At one point I though he'd swallowed it. He foamed at the mouth a bit, from the pill, and then stayed still for a second, but when I let go he spit out a slightly smaller pill. Little bastard. I remembered some wet catfood I had from a month ago, and put the pills in that and he ate it.

The fourteen year old took two tries, but it's easier to hold her head back to use gravity to help get the pill in. Then I used the food for the second kitten.

So, on Monday, I get to take the cats to my sister's house, lock them in her bathroom, and stay out of my house for four hours while the poison works. Then, I get to vacuum my house, corner to corner every day for eleven days.

Don't you just love pets?

Back to School

School starts soon here in the DFW area. Some schools petition the state for a waiver from the legislated start date. The tourism lobby helped to pass that law, BTW.

Here's a question for you. Why do we keep the same school calendar necessitated by a farming lifestyle? Used to, families needed the kids home during the summer to help with the crops and the harvest. How many families do you know whose kids help to bring in the crops?

I've finally finished my work that kept me from blogging these last two weeks. You have my apologies. PowerPoint presentations take a lot of time to make if you're making step-by-steps to work software, and doing a screenshot of each step. I'm really tired, because I did that for seven different programs.

I'll present to my staff, and then I'll be so relieved that I'll have to do a dance of joy. With or without music. Enjoy the mental image of a short, plump blonde woman wearing board shorts and a Gladstone's t-shirt doing a dance of joy. It'll only happen once or twice this year, mostly because the PE coaches have already managed to piss me off.

It's too bad, because now I'll be disinclined to cooperate with them on anything this year. They should have given me what I wanted, but now they'll just have to pay for it over and over again.

What an angry group of mannish women that'll be.