ETRNTY?

I saw the most peculiar license plate driving home today- ETRNTY?

First of all, I didn't even know that you could get question marks on license plates.  But knowing you could, why would you put one at the end of eternity?  I thought about this for a little while, wondering what it meant.  I mean, you wouldn't get a vanity plate like that for no reason.  I finally realized that it must have been questioning how long it would take this car to get anywhere it was going, because the guy driving it was doing so a full 10 miles under the speed limit.  He also looked about 80 years old, so I'm thinking he must've left to go grocery shopping about... 27 years ago.

Rubbernecking

*Warning: This post contains graphic references to bodily fluids*

A few weeks ago, my good friend used the word "rubbernecking" when we were stuck in traffic.  I learned something new that day, because until then I had never known that there was actually a word that described when people shamelessly slow down to look at an accident.  I found out today, though, that the ultimate example of rubbernecking does not occur on the busiest four-lane interstates in the country.  No, no, no.  It happens in the hallways and classrooms of elementary schools.

I say so because I had a kid vomit everywhere in the hallway on his way to the bathroom, just in time for every second grade class in the school to come in from recess.  As I was frantically calling the office for a nurse, or a janitor, or a trash can for MYSELF, all I could hear was the commotion outside.

"Oh, God!  Ms. Rogers, grosssss!"
"It smells so bad!"
"I can see the hot dog chunks!"

Excuse the disgusting details, but the hallway congestion that followed made I-95 traffic look like the sleepy street I grew up on in Upstate New York.  It was at that moment that most of the second grade teachers gave the futile advice of "Just don't look at it."  That just makes the rubbernecking worse.

Oh yeah, did I mention that two kids also peed their pants while this was going on?

Ugh.  What a day.

The Doldrums of March

Milo and Tock from The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth is one of my favorite childhood books, SUCH a favorite that even talking about it makes me want to drive to a bookstore and buy it so that I can re-read it (for about the millionth time).  Lately, the only way I've been able to describe the month of March has been as "the Doldrums," a colorless place in the book where thinking and laughing are not allowed.  Here's a little piece of the book to let you know what it's like (spoken by the Lethargians, who live in the Doldrums):


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"Well, if you can't laugh or think, what can you do?" asked Milo.


"Anything as long as it's nothing, and everything as long as it isn't anything," explained another. "There's lots to do; we have a very busy schedule- at 8 o'clock we get up, and then we spend from 8 to 9 daydreaming.  From 9 to 9:30 we take our early midmorning nap.  From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay.  From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap.  From ll:00 to 12:00 we bide our time and then eat lunch.  From l:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter.  From 2:00 to 2:30 we take our early afternoon nap.  From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today.  From 3:30 to 4:00 we take our early late afternoon nap.  From 4:00 to 5:00 we loaf and lounge until dinner.  From 6:00 to 7:00 we dillydally.  From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed at 9:00 we waste time.  As you can see, that leaves almost no time for brooding, lagging, plodding, or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done."


"You mean you'd never get anything done," corrected Milo.


"We don't want to get anything done," snapped another angrily; "we want to get nothing done, and we can do that without your help."


"You see," continued another in a more conciliatory tone, "It's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?"


"I might as well," thought Milo; "that's where I seem to be going anyway."


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It's not that I've been doing nothing all month, and it's not like I haven't been thinking or laughing at all this month, but I'm definitely ready for Spring Break (and spring weather).  I can only hope that a giant dog with an alarm clock as a body comes to rescue me, or I get a note addressed to "Sara, who now knows the way."


I would make this post longer, but I really think I need to go buy this book again.

Little Bit of Wisdom

My behavior tech. told me today after I mentioned how frustrating management was for me right now something quite wise. It's something my yoga instructor has said before too.

Before being hard on yourself for where you are, remember where you started. Give yourself credit for your hard work and growth. It's easy to become discouraged when you don't feel like you're at the top, but you'll lose motivation if you don't acknowledge how far you've come.

Just some wisdom shared via Blackberry on my commute home :). (See mom- I do blog on my phone!)

Chinch-ipus Rex... Sort Of

I've been slacking on blogging lately, mostly because I haven't had much to say besides "Is it June yet?"  But after talking to my parents yesterday I thought I had to report the tragedy that occurred in our very own little small town.

We all wondered what my parents would do after all the children fled Painted Post.  Luckily, they inherited the chinchillas my brother bought in his inherent maturity (what college sophomore WOULDN'T want a couple of chinches to hump each other in a cage?).  To no one's surprised, Fiona and Tails (named after the Sonic the Hedgehog game) mated and had their first litter of three shortly after my brother transferred to a school in NYC.  My dad promptly built them a mansion in my sister's old closet, an effort to keep her from moving back in.  Soon after, my younger cousins became obsessed with the idea of having them as pets and my parents brought Henri and Cha-cha down to Charlotte for Christmas, leaving the last baby, Chi-chi, at home.  Clearly, they're replacing us with rodents.

Anyway, a week ago, Chi-chi began showing some, uh, affection for Fiona.  My dad heard a ruckus and went downstairs to see, in his words, Tails "chasing the shit out of Chi-chi."  Thinking some cool down time would do the trick, he separated them.  After bringing him back to the cage, they seemed to be alright.

Wrong.  Fast forward a few hours and they found Chi-chi huddled in the corner, practically bitten to death by his Dad.  And in our house!  What a tragedy... like Oedipus.  Eek.

A Happy Birthday Blog

Can you put a price on my blog?  If you could, I would hope that it would be about $25 an entry, which would mean that THIS blog would suffice as a birthday gift to my old fart of a mother who turned 55 today.  Finally eligible for senior citizen status and AARP membership (can't take credit for that joke- thanks to Nana), she has reached a point in her life where each birthday serves as a reminder of all of the years she has spent on this Earth.  So, in honor of this landmark event, I have prepared a list of the accomplishments and impacts that my mother has had over the years.

1. She has served as a role model for five younger brothers, teaching them all the proper social etiquette and molding them into the upstanding citizens that they are today- men who still know how to get drunk and light pallets of wood on fire.
2. She has endured 25 years of pee, poop, vomit, and Hepititus B at Kent Phillips Elementary.  She has been bitten, kicked, scratched, and cussed out (cussed out?  I've been in the South too long).  She has donned the KP beaver costume on far too many occasions, pretending that she is taking a bullet for the other staff members when she actually enjoys it way more than she really should (seriously- sometimes she lounges around the house in it, sporting Chicklets on her teeth as she reads the blogs).  She has mentored young, new teachers.  She has watched (in envy) the retirement of old, experienced teachers.  She has seen A LOT.
3. She has reigned over the Palace of Platt Street, an opulent residence where the windows blow out of the frames on occasion, where a majestic and intelligent dog licks trespassers as they approach our front door, where strange possum-rodent-rats sometimes explode out of the drainpipes after intense rainstorms.
4. She married and domesticated the wild bachelor of a man known to my siblings and I as the one and only Pa-ski, altering him from a long-haired, Old-Milwaukee-drinking rebel to a shaven-head, Coors-Light-drinking rebel.  This is a man who has slain a beehive under our deck at 2 am, a man who has glued teeny tiny shingles onto a dollhouse at 2 am, a man who has driven into a high school party, high beams blazing, looking for his daughter making out in the driveway at 2 am.  He has participated in a Great Cookie Exchange, joined a mail-away gourmet coffee club, gone on multiple male-only gaycations (to Vegas, Williamsburg, and NYC).  He hangs dry-wall.  He makes a brambleberry wine dessert ice cream sundae.  You are one lucky lady, Ma.
5. Finally, and most importantly, she has bred and raised three children, whose vast accomplishments include the following:
• Winning a national championship (and conference championship)
• Dating a national champion
• Modeling for a bed and breakfast
• Being incredibly attractive
• Breeding chinchillas
• Writing a soon-to-be award winning blog that captured the hearts of Americans everywhere
• Pushing a car over a cell phone
• Sketching extremely good cars on notebook paper
• Running out of gas in about every place imaginable
• Knowing what language is spoken in Rome (eventually)
• And many, many more

 Who says you haven't lived a fulfilled life?!  Just look at this annotated list of all the wonderful things you have done and there is no way you can even think the words "old and washed-up".  Think of all the things you can accomplish in your next 55 years... maybe you can have more children that can match or even exceed (impossible to do, it seems) the things your current children have done.  Or maybe you can devote another 25 years to molding the youth of America.  And even if neither of those paths pan out, you still have Pa.  Maybe by the time you're 110 he'll finally redo the pink bathroom.

Rugged Sunday Funday

Awhile ago, one of my TFA friends came up with the idea of *gasp* doing something fun on Sundays instead of just stressing out about returning to school.  So, led by the persistence of my roommate and me (we wouldn't take no for an answer!), five of us went out to the US Whitewater Center for the afternoon to show off how massively athletic and outdoorsy we are.

It was so much fun.  Even though the rapids were closed, we still got to climb up a huge pole and zipline down (much scarier than you would think it would be).  And I got to show off my spider monkey skills on the rock climbing wall.  Afterward we all got incredibly messy black bean burgers at "the local pub" (haha) and delicious milkshakes.  Yum yum yum.  Overall, a very good day.  If only every day could be a Sunday Funday.

I Need to Buy Hairspray

What one of my girls told me this week: "Miss Fiorillo, you do know that you can go to a barber shop to get your hair braided, right?"

Me: "Why would I need to get my hair braided?"

"So it doesn't stick up like that.  You really only need it right here (as she touches the side of my temple, smoothing down my hair)."

Me: "Oh, okay, maybe I should do that."

"Yeah, then it wouldn't be so frizzy.  You could get cornrows like mine."

Return from a Long Hiatus

After about 17 threatening texts, e-mails, and phone calls about returning to blog about various events in my life (all of them coming from my mother), I am returning to the blogging world.  Going out of town the past couple of weekends has really thrown me off but- don't worry- I'm back.

One of those trips was a long, Pandora-filled drive from Charlotte up to Baltimore to see my little brother play in his first D1 lacrosse game.  That on its own is probably pretty nerve-wracking, but when the team you're defending your goal against is Johns Hopkins, I think it raises the stakes (just a little).  From what other, more-knowledgeable lax fans told me, he played well, especially considering this was probably the first time he's had to play against grown men.  Seriously, those players look about 35 years old.  They even had more leg hair than most normal males.  You watch players like them on TV but until you see them shoot on Jonny who might weigh 160 pounds soaking wet after Thanksgiving dinner, you don't realize how big they are.

We stayed with family friends in Fairfax County, the matriarchs of the families first-year college roommates at Cortland State in New York, making us "the Cortland Crew".  As they began popping out children (one each year) and continuing to get together, we formed this really special bond centered around weird behavior, bad vacation decisions, and massive quantities of beer (obviously, the kids did not become a part of the latter part until much later in life).  We used to see each other twice a year, once during the summer and once at New Years.  Since the children have grown up, it's been a little harder for everyone to be in the same place all at once.  It's still cool to have people in your life that you've known since birth.  At the same time, when outsiders come in on that bond... it can be scary.  Especially when you have a sort of "baptism by fire" that occurs whenever newcomers crash our little parties.  One of the honorary members of the Crew, Bill, came on New Years and met us all in about 20 minutes.  He fit right in, falling asleep on a deck chair outside at the end of December.  He's fit in ever since.

Ryan, my sister's fiance, had his first experience with us this past weekend, and I don't think he was quite ready to jump into the "passing-out-in-a-strange-place" initiation as Bill had been.  This was the first time I had met him too, and passing inspection from multiple groups might have been a little stressful for him.  The girls went out Saturday to go dress shopping (FYI, we  found the dress... or I should say I found the dress) and when we got back around 4 pm, Ryan was sitting in the front room reading.

"Where are the dads?" Kristin asked.

"Drinking in the hot tub" he replied.  The rest of us herded into the kitchen to stuff ourselves on appetizers and margaritas, but Kristin stayed behind.

"Why aren't you out there with them?"

"Kristin," he said.  "They've been drinking since noon.  I can't keep up with them.  I'm a pussy!"

So, maybe he has a little prepping to do before he can really join our family.  Even at my prime in college, I have never been able to keep up with the dads.  He especially needs to prepare before he meets my mom's brothers, who have been known to ask boyfriends intrusive questions about their male body parts, noting the requirements necessary to be a part of our family.