Sunday, September 29, 2013

Weight Loss Plan or Murder Plot?


Opie and I are trying to lose weight.

By which I, of course, mean that Opie IS losing weight because of  dedication that is MIND BOGGLING in its intensity. Meanwhile, I am TRYING to lose weight in a fashion kindly described as “haphazard.”

This is almost as bad as the time when my mom and I tried to lose weight together and she would do things like eat 3 M&Ms. “That’s all you need,” she insisted. “Then you get the taste of chocolate and feel satisfied.”

Which is a little bit COMPLETELY INSANE.

I mean, sure I eat 3 M&Ms…when there’s only 3 M&Ms left.

That’s when I eat 3 M&Ms…and the whole time I complain to myself about the idiot who left 3 M&Ms in the bag.  And then I put M&Ms on the grocery list…but really tiny on the bottom because, after all, Opie and I are trying to lose weight.

To be fair, Opie doesn’t have 3 M&Ms will power.  It’s his dedication to exercise that’s frightening.

“We need to work out,” he said a few weeks ago.  “Do you want to ride bikes?”

“It’s 105 degrees outside,” I counter. “If we ride bikes in this kind of heat, I might actually BURST INTO FLAME.”

“Just walk then?” He asks.  “We could do the 3 mile loop through the park.”

At which point I came to the sad realization that it’s entirely possible that this isn’t a weight loss plan at all but an insidious plot to kill me.

Tonight, since it’s cooler out, we decided to start the C25K program…which, in a nutshell, is supposed to get us running 5K in 8 weeks.­­ We started with the warm up.

That was fine.

Then we started the real program.  Run for 1 minute, walk for 90 seconds, then run for another minute…then back and forth until you’re at the point when your heart is about to burst from your chest. “This is great,” Opie said enthusiastically.

“Great,” I agreed…hugging a tree not because I’m a hippie environmentalist (though I am) but because it was the only way I could manage to stand up.

In any case, I suspect that this weight loss journey is going to be fraught with drama…stay tuned.

 
I Don't Like Mondays Blog Hop

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Maybe I'm Just Anal...

I hate it when my cat interrupts me in the bathroom.

Which probably makes me sound incredibly anal so maybe I should explain...here's what I really hate:

When I get home late at night, after teaching a 3 hour Composition class, and try to enter the house as quietly as possible so I don't wake up Opie.  Tiptoeing up the stairs, sliding into the bathroom, and leaving the door ever so slightly unlatched, again so the sound doesn't wake Opie.

Which is when this crazy animal:

 
 
decides to throw himself, full force, against the door, slamming it into the wall. And then, while I'm in the process of flinging myself off my "perch" in abject terror, the cat--STILL AIRBORNE--hits the bathmat like a springboard and flips himself into my lap.  And then, because I am now gripping the counter and wall in a desperate attempt not to fall on the floor, the ridiculous animal decides to claw his way up to my shoulder and stand there with his back claws dug in and his front paws on my head, purring triumphantly.
 
That's what I hate.
 
And I have to be honest, I don't think that makes me anal AT ALL.


Thursday, September 12, 2013

Happy Fall Y'all


This week’s Theme Thursday topic is Fall.  And to me, Fall means one thing: back to school.

Since moving to Oklahoma, I’ve worked a lot (too many!) different jobs. But the one thing that has always been consistent is teaching; even when I was working other jobs, I stayed involved in teaching. This year I’m teaching at two different colleges and I love it.

And when you’re a teacher, fall is always awesome.  Everything’s new—new classes, new plans, new students— it’s exciting.

The things that would send me right over the edge in the middle of the year can make me laugh in the fall.

Like a student I like to call Purple Hair No Pen.

Please understand that I have no problem with the fact that this girl’s hair is Easter Egg purple.  My own hair has definite purple overtones after the unfortunate My-Hairdresser-Doesn’t-Know-What-Color-Red-Is incident. But, a week and a half after she first dyed it, her neck, shoulders, and hands are also still bright purple.

Which makes me question her basic intelligence and, honestly, her overall cleanliness.  I mean, unless she was actually trying to turn herself into a muppet, she clearly used no protective gear AT ALL while dying her hair. And wouldn’t regular showering tone it down a little after a week and a half?

Still, my problem with her is not her hair color.  It’s the fact that she keeps coming to a writing class without anything to write with.

Our first conversation about it went a little like this:

 

Girl "Can I use your pen? I don’t have one.”

 Me: "This is a WRITING class."

 Girl "Well, I wasn't here last time--I didn't know we'd need one."

 Me (to no one in particular): “This conversation is going terribly.”

 Girl "Soooo, can I have a pen?"

 Me: "I only brought the one I'm using.  You need to come prepared."

 

This, by the way, was a lie.  But this is a COLLEGE class, I don't hand out supplies willy-nilly.

 

It was supposed to be a lesson for her…but I can’t ascertain if it actually taught her anything because the next two class periods she still didn’t have anything to write with.  And then she took our last quiz with a brown calligraphy scrapbooking marker.

I guess I should be glad she actually had a writing utensil but she kind of ruined her little victory by handing me the quiz and asking “Wait—do I need to put my name on it?”

How this girl got IN college is a mystery for the ages.

If this were the middle of the year, I would need all my self-restraint not to punch this girl in the face.  But it’s Fall, so I laugh.

I thought all teachers felt the same way but that theory was tested yesterday when I found out that I, apparently, have mutant strength.

Here’s what happened: After my first class, as I was tidying up so the DEPARTMENT CHAIR could teach in that room, I reached over to raise the projector screen and I ripped it right off the wall.

And by ripped off the wall, I don't mean the screen ripped.  I mean that the brackets holding the screen in the wall came off, a huge chunk of plaster came down, and the whole thing essentially fell on the ground.

There is now no screen in the room and there is an ENORMOUS hole in the wall.

I, of course, started cracking up. “Wow,” I said. “I’m like a SUPER HERO. Who knew?”

“Wow,” the department chair said.  “I needed that screen for my class.”

Which pretty much put the kibosh on taking a picture of it for my blog because she wasn’t laughing AT ALL.

And I can’t even report how her class went because I was like “Oh, that’s unfortunate…so sorry.”  Then ran for it.

Not because I was still laughing (though I was) but because I had another class and it’s fall and I’m a dedicated teacher who refuses to let my students down by being even the slightest bit late.

I’m not going to lie, the fear that she might suggest we switch classrooms for the hour so she could have a room with a projector screen might have played in a tiny bit.

In the middle of the year, I’d be freaking out, thinking “Hope this doesn’t affect my class load next semester…but not now…so Happy Fall, y’all!

 

For other Theme Thursday posts, click the link below
 


 

For other Theme Thursday posts, click the link below