A Good Time Had By All

Can I just tell you that I have the best friends ever? Because I do.

The picnic was a big hit. Not everyone enjoyed my culinary experimentation, but all in all, there was something for everyone, even if they didn't like all of it. We decided that we should make the picnic an annual thing, except next time I'm not bringing all the food. About 1/4 of the way from my car to the field, Alison and I had to call the boys to help us carry the coolers, because we just. couldn't. go. any. further. So much for going to a women's college and being empowered and independent. Sometimes you just need some boys to carry your heavy stuff.

After a few hours of perfect weather and yummy food and frisbee and hacky sack and talking and laughing, we all scattered for a few hours to relax a little and pick up food and beverages for the barbecue at Al's house. This also proved to be a huge success. Turns out, it doesn't matter where we go-- all we need is each other, and fun will be had.

After finishing the very yummy vodka margarita that Alison made, I approached her with an empty cup and a pouty lip. She graciously made me another drink (the margaritas were all gone)... which was a combination of lime juice, club soda, and 100 PROOF SOUTHERN COMFORT!!!

I don't think I have had 100-proof liquor since my undergrad days, and it turns out there is a reason for that-- being that I much prefer my own pillow to the hard, cold, toilet seat.

Proud Moment of the Evening:

As I complained about the bright light shining from the exposed bulb on the floor lamp (Alison is not this ghetto- the lamp belongs to her roommate), I was instructed to get up and turn on the other lamp across the room.* I wobbled over to the lamp, turned the switch, and nothing happened. Click click. Click click. Clickclickclick. Nothing. So, as I am always ready for a good mystery, and looked around on the floor, to see if maybe it just wasn't plugged in. Even when drunk, I still have my wits about me, see? A-chem.

So on the floor, I see the unplugged end of an internet wire. And it comes to me.

"Hey Guys!! I know why the light isn't working!!!" Sherlock proudly holds up the wire. "The lamp plugs in to the D!! S!! L!!"

(Beat)

(Uproarious laughter)

(Reenactments ensue to show those who missed the whole thing what a fabulous detective I am.)

Long Overdue

Congrats to Meg and Chris, who got engaged a few months ago, but just finally made it into my photo files in a together-shot. Meg is lucky to be marrying such a great guy, and Chris is lucky to be marrying such a great roomie. I love you guys!!

Excitement All Around!

Okay, so I know it's Friday night at almost midnight and I am blogging and that could be mistaken as being sad. However, I am NOT sad because the reason I am home is because tomorrow I am having a birthday picnic in New Brunswick (where I went to college) and I was busy preparing a quite sophisticated picnic feast fit to celebrate living life for a quarter of a century!Since you all can't be there, I will tell you what we will be eating, so that you may live vicariously through me and the awesome friends who are joining in my celebration.

Le Menu

Appetizers
Deluxe Cheese Tray
Havarti with dill, gouda, and cheddar for the unadventurous
Summer sausage
Red grapes
Roasted red pepper hummus
Assorted fancy entertaining crackers*

Main Course
All dishes served cold.
Fried chicken served with honey mustard and garlic herb mayonnaise for dipping
Greek orzo salad with spinach, crumbled feta, red onion, and pine nuts in a balsamic and olive oil dressing
Green bean and bacon salad with shallots and toasted walnuts in a lemon Dijon dressing

Dessert
Chilled fruit salad
An Abel Original**

Beverages
Vodka lemonade
Whatever else people bring to drink

As delicious as this all sounds to me, I hope that others find it as summery and picnicky and delightful. And if not? Saturday is also the New Jersey Folk Festival, which is held on the same grounds where we will be dining, and so people can go buy their own meat on a stick and overpriced smoothies.

* Says Wegman's...
** Abel is my friend who tests dirt by day and bakes cakes by night. He has graciously offered to make something fantastic for the celebration.

*****

In other news, and I'm sure the news you are more interested in, I have 1) received confirmation on the renewal of my contract for next year (!!), and 2) called WifeLandlord to confirm that I would indeed like to take the apartment!! (!!!!!!!!!!!)

Janie asked for some pictures, which I do have, but I'd much prefer sharing pictures when there is my own stuff in it and not someone else's, ya know? That way you all can see what fabulous taste I have, even when I’m broke.

If all goes well with my credit check and references (which, why wouldn't it?) I should be making the move on July 1, possibly August 1 if they are not yet ready to move into their new house. I preferred August, but told her I will take July if it means I get the place. So we'll see. I am very very excited and am crazy busy imagining all the ways that I will make it adorable and comfortable and inviting and cozy and wonderful and mine!

Brain Stew

My district is cutting staff because they don't have enough money and it took me 2 years to find a teaching job-- that's one year of subbing and one year of paraprofessionaling-- and if I don't get hired back, I really really don't want to start looking for a job again. Today my kids' case manager from the Child Study Team told me that I write really really good PLAAFPs* and IEP* goals and that she was really impressed with them especially considering I'm a first year teacher and it's the first time I had to write them and I didn't even go to her to get help even once. I wish she could tell all that to my supervisor because like I said I dont want to lose my job and also I'm looking at an apartment tomorrow because hi, remember how I'm 25 and still sleep in a twin bed in my parents' house? Yeah. And so I'm trying to actually move out and this apartment is in the town I want to move to, plus it sounds cute from the description and the landlords are a young couple who just got married and the place has a dishwasher and an Instant-Hot tap, something that WifeLandlord and I had a little squeal about together as we both love the Instant-Hot because just when you thought you couldnt make oatmeal any quicker than adding some water and sticking it in the microwave for 2 minutes, you get to skip the whole microwave step and just pour in water right from the sink that is boiling!! And also I'd have my own parking spot and wouldn't need to parallel park, which those who know me will realize that this in itself is reason enough for me to pay twice the asking price. And so the thing is that in order to afford this apartment, I need to have a job next year, and I might not know if I have a job until May 15, and what if I go see the place tomorrow and love it and then someone else snatches the place up between now and when I find out??

AAAAHHHHHHH!!!**

* Teachery terms-- their actual document names are unimportant...
** This really requires an Anika-style "lkjdfljsaedfljaljf," but last time I used the randomly-slam-on-all-the-keys method she yelled at me because it is supposed to be a term of excitement and I used it as a term of there-are-no-actual-words-for-how-blah-this-week-was. Blogger's license?

"I carried a watermelon."

Can someone please, please have a baby so I can buy this onsie* for your child? Look to the right. If you see your blog's name there, I expect you to start giving it a go. Start carrying that watermelon, girl! I don't care if you ain't got no man.

P.S. Is it weird that it bothers me that t-shirts don't ever have punctuation? I love, LOVE this onsie... but I would love, LOVE, LOVE it if it included quotations and a period.

* The pink, Dirty Dancing one... duh. But just in case you weren't sure.

Palm Trees and Colons

You know how some people like to spend their Spring Break by going to Cancun or Miami Beach or somewhere else really really fun and exciting? And you know how some other people like to just take it easy and relax and do nothing? Yeah. Well I spent my spring break at a Florida retirement community spying* on the health/packing progress of my about-t0-move-to-Jersey grandmother. WOOOOO!!! Girls Gone Wild here! I! come!!! [Takes off fanny pack and white visor, swinging them sexily.]

The trip started off okay. I was excited to get out of Jersey and take in some Florida sun. Except, just a quick lesson of common courtesy? When riding in coach, don't recline your seat. I know that the 1/4 of an inch that your seat goes back makes for a slightly more comfortable ride, but this is what happens to the person behind you:



And that's just not cool. The person behind you has the shortest legs ever, and look! Sheesh. You make it not only impossible for her to stretch out her little legs whatsoever, but impossible for her to open her laptop. Valuable time that could be spent working on report cards is lost!

And also? What's with the flight attendants pouring 1/3 of a can of soda into a tiny cup with too much ice in it and expecting that to quench your thirst after inhaling that HUGE bag of pretzels they give you??? Oh right. There are only like 3 pretzels in there. Nevermind. 1/3 of a can is enough, thankyouverymuch.

Anyway, I won't give you all the humdrum details of the trip. What I will do is give you a rough idea of what it's like to be old, just so you can plan for what happens in the next 50 or so years.

• The stereotype that old-people drivers suck is true. However, they do attempt to make it better by choosing the person with the slightly better eyesight/less frequent colonoscopies to do the driving.
• They all talk about their colonoscopies. And everyone else's colonoscopies. Common conversations between residents of a retirement community may sound something like this: "Hi Alice, how are you?" "Oh, hi Bernice! I'm doing well. I have an appointment for a colonoscopy tomorrow though." "Oh, Ethel just had a colonoscopy yesterday! And Saul has one next week..."
• Gossip is spread from house to house by the cleaning ladies. Cleaning ladies will inform you of the resident colonoscopy schedule, if you're not on the automatic phone chain. And also, cleaning ladies will tell you when your neighbors are angry with you for not stopping by to introduce your granddaughter.
  
• Old people like to parade their visiting grandchildren all-around-the-town.
• They brag about their grandchildren, but secretly don't think they are good enough. Well maybe not all old people do this. But my grandmother does.
• Grandmother to friends: "This is Jessica! She's getting her Master's this summer! She teaches disabled children! And my grandson Daniel is in the Air Force serving his country!"
• Grandmother to me: "You and your brother are both underachievers."

High points of the trip:

• 6-7 hours spent laying by the pool, in the sun, with my iPod.
• Seeing my grandma... 'cause you know... despite the issues, she's still my grandmother, for god's sake. I'm not a total bitch.
• Looking out the window as we started to descend over Philadelphia (hence, my awesome haiku).

* except without the cool shoe-phone

*****

For my in-flight reading enjoyment, I decided on David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day, since it's a collection of light, humorous essays which I figured I could pick up and put down and not feel like I missed something and not have to think too much about. My favorite essay was called "Big Boy," and was about walking into a bathroom at someone's house during a dinner party to find a huge, floating, unflushable turd in the toilet, and then having someone knock on the door while you are in there trying to figure out what to do. Totally reminded me of my New Orleans bathroom incident.

Haiku*

Flying home at night--
Philly is like a sparkling
New Year's party dress.

Go ahead. Count the syllables on your fingers. They're all there.

* Does my poetry seem lacking? Check out Al's new poetry blog for something more satiating!

Don't try to blog after exercise.

Remember when I asked for your suggestions for my Workout Mix? Yeah, well there's kind of a problem.

For the last few nights, I've been walking. Yes, I mean the type of speedy walking that makes a girl look like she has a perpetual wedgie. And you know what? It's dark out, so that's not even really the problem. I don't actually have a wedgie.

The problem is, that with all the phat beats everyone recommended, along with my own dope selections, I have the overwhelming urge to African dance* down the sidewalk. In and of itself, African dance is certainly not a problem. But when I try to do it while walking down a bumpy sidewalk where the squares don't meet because they are being pushed up by aged tree roots? Let's just say there is trippage and I should stick to the Wedgie Walk. And I don't think I'm alone.

Which brings me to a not entirely related, but somewhat... adjacent (?) topic.

Why is it that people feel the urge to African dance when they hear good music, but no one ever feels the urge to do the Hora* when they are feeling an endorphen rush? I know I certainly don't.

And by the by- Check out this funny ad I found while Google Image-ing "Jewish dance." Don't ask me how the two are related. There's gotta be some a steroetype joke in there somewhere...

* Due to a spring full of tanning in a bed (couldn't match my white prom dress!) and a summer full of tanning by the pool, a newly acquired friend of mine thought I was biracial for the entire first semester of college. We have been joking about my biracialness ever since.
** This clip was runner up for the Hora spot.

You will NEVER believe it!!!

Man, so a whole week has gone by, and SO MUCH has happened, I have just been so busy I've had no time to sit down and share it with you all. I think a bulleted list is needed so that you may read all of the excitingness in a non-overwhelming and orderly way:

• Um.
• Yeah.
• Oh and then! Hm.
  

Well. That was fun.

Here's hoping the rest of the week isn't so lakjsdflsjfgnlsfj.

Today...

... was MUCH better than yesterday.

Yesterday one of my kids forgot to take his meds and didn't bother to tell us until we were already on the bus to Pizzaria Uno, where we were taking a field trip because when you teach a self contained special ed class you can take them wherever you want and say you are trying to teach them Social Skills*. Kids with AD/HD don't really give a shit about social skills when they are not on their medication. And kids with Asperger's? They don't much care for the break in routine, no matter how much they like the pizza because the sauce is red and their favorite color is red and they will only be red when playing Trouble. Also, kids with emotional issues don't stop screaming for other kids to "SHUUUUUTTTT UUUUUUUPPPPP BIG MOUTH BEFORE I PUNCH YOU IN THE FAAACE!!!!" just because they are in a restaurant.

But we made it through the field trip, bus ride with overstimulation due to noise from other classes and all, back to the classroom, and that is where all. hell. broke. loose.

I'm not going to go into all the details because, you know, Teacher Blog-- no. And unless you are a teacher of BD students, you might not realize** how helpless you'd feel when you are the only one in a classroom of 5 kids, when you've got one student in the bathroom down the hall standing on the seats and screaming while another student is breaking crayons and throwing Uno cards all over the room and another is in the Time Out room with your aide, and so you can't leave the classroom because the kids can't be in there alone and so you have to prop your door open and get the teacher across the hall to watch your class while you go down the hallway to reprimand the one who is being bad in the bathroom and because he's got Asperger's he gets all anxious about being in trouble and decides to just sit down in the middle of the hallway and not budge, screaming, "I'M NOT HAPPY!" and making exaggerated scowling faces that would amuse you out of sheer rediculousness had you not 3 children back in the classroom being watched from across the hallway and one in Time Out trying to punch your aide.

By the way? That was only 5 minutes of my day yesterday, and the rest of it was quite similar.

Today was much better. One was absent, and everyone was actually pretty even-tempered, and I was told that I should be on "World's Funniest Teachers***" because of my exemplary and very slammin' beats, a.k.a. Ignore Him, in rap form, complete with that scratchy record noise made by scraping the bottom of my shoe on the leg of my desk chair and doing the Scratchy Record Hand Motion.

Good thing they are 8 and not 18. Fo' sho'****.


* We took a tour of the kitchen, made individual cheese pizzas... and then ate them. This was not an easy task while on the Diet, but I managed to make it through with only a diet soda. Go me!
** Well yeah... you might realize anyway.
*** No, this show does not exist, even in America.
**** Is it uncool to add apostrophes to slang words? I can't not do it. And for some reason double negatives don't bother me as much as unrepresented missing letters.

“Exercise is the yuppie version of bulimia.”*

I'm going to Florida in two weeks to visit Grams, and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to fit in my bathing suits. That coupled with the fact that I hardly fit in any of my pants, and my shirts need camis under them because my boobs got bigger and I can't button the tops and they are all too short but only because I want them long enough to cover my lower gut, has sort of forced me into a Diet. Healthy eating. Exercising more. Whatever you want to call it but it doesnt include eating Skittles all day, every day. Erm. Not that I do that.

My main reason for sharing?

I need songs to add to my iPod Workout Mix.

Any suggestions are welcome, and I'll test all of them. Just please. No Eye of the Tiger or Rocky music. It is too hard to roll your eyes while exercising.

* ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

OOOOnly in my dreeeeaaaammmmsss*...

I had a dream last night that all of the San Francisco and Canadian bloggers were planning to meet up, and I found out and got all jealous, and so I invited y'all to Philly. And you decided to come, on K & Ish's coersion. Which is especially weird because they don't even read my blog. Whinger, you brought Partner, and when you got here, I had to ask her how to say "Whinger" because it kept coming out "Winger" eventhough I know how to say it. Anika and Janie, you brought Jacob with you and he was mad because he was booooorrreeed**. The "entertaining" show I planned to take you to ended up really sucking and I was embarassed at how uncool you all probably thought I/Philly was.

I am quite disturbed that blogging-related things are in my dreams now. Writing/reading blogs is nerdy enough, but thinking of it while I sleep? New low, people. New low. And I am imagining comments from all of you saying, "Wow. Just... wow."

P.S. I don't know what a lot of you look like in real life, but you were all quite attractive in my dream.


* Try to get that Debbie Gibson song out of your head!
** Not sure if Jacob whines a lot, but he did in my dream. I think he was taking the role of one of my students, who are the only 8 year olds I am around often.

Hi Mom!

So I've noticed on more than one occasion that within a week after blogging about something, my mom suspiciously asks me a question or makes a comment related to an entry.

Yesterday's Example:
As I stabbed macaroni & cheese out of the pot, my mom said, "Do you have a special way of doing that? Like put one macaroni on each tine or something?"

Who else even eats their macaroni like that so she'd have reason to question? Not so slick, Mom...

I can't think of any more at the moment, but I know there have been several similar times when I have questioned my blogger/daughter anonymity.

And also? Once I was on her computer downstairs, and I started to type something in the address field, and my blog address came up as a suggestion.

Fishy, eh?

All I'm sayin, Mom, is that if you're reading my blog, you might as well start commenting.

Except for don't comment on the entries where I talk about kissing boys in bars. Pretend you don't read those and that I've never kissed a boy before. I most certainly have not.

And don't pay attention to the curses. Because no, you did not raise your daughter to talk that way.

People Find Me, the Third

...when they search for:

• Friends Episode couch stuck stairwell (omg, favorite episode ever!! Pi-VOT! Pi-VOT!!)
  
• newty men (anyone?)
  
• antisocial coworker (don't recall ever speaking of one... but okay.)
  
• lou frizz (do not know this man)
  
• "page lickers" (gross!)
  
• inpostauthor:jessica (that's me!)
  
• I cannot write this one as it is entirely too gross, but let's just say it refers to under-aged, well-lubricated young women engaging in relations with elderly prostitutes (How did this search return my blog as a link??? Is it the dildo post? What???)
  
• bubble frizz game (Ooohhh... can I play?)
  
• cartoon pictures of fire-belly newts (Aww... poor Newty Newterson...)