Going...Going...Gone

Surprises

Our new dishwasher was installed a couple of weeks back. It was an unusual experience in that the installer had me helping him and wanted to see if he could repair our 199 degree faucet as well.

It began as a typical installation. I removed the stuff from under the sink, but the previous owners of the house had some type of utility shelf installed under there that hooked around the pipes and wiring. Mr. Serviceman had a time figuring out how to remove it. He brings this very small flashlight with him and says that it is too small, do I have a bigger one. So I quit what I'm doing to go get this guy a flashlight. He gets the shelf out and then he notices the Steaming Hot Water heater under there and comments on it. I say, "Yeah, it's neat but it leaks." This bit of info. gets his attention and he starts messing with it. Pretty soon he says, Maam, you have two choices, I can either look at this or leave it alone." I'm going to have to call a plumber anyway, so I tell him to go ahead. I'm minding my own business again and I hear, "Maam", could you turn on the faucet so I can see where it's leaking." Okay, I can do that; the problem, I end up helping him for about 30 minutes and it's uncomfortable because I have to lean across the sink to reach the faucet because he's under where it is and I couldn't stand far enough back to keep from touching his legs with mine. He says it's not leaking from any of the pipes, it must be in the faucet itself. Then he says, "You have two choices, I can leave it alone or I can take the faucet out and see if there's any pinholes." I tell him to go ahead. I'm minding my own business and he calls, "Maam, could you come and see this?" He has the whole faucet out, pipes and all and says, that there are no pinholes, it must be in the inner workings of the faucet. Then guess what he said? "You have two choices. I can either put it back in or leave it out so you can take it with you to try to find another one." I tell him to leave it out.

He's put an hour into the faucet, but finally gets around to the dishwasher. I go on about my business and he begins to install the dishwasher. Then I hear, "Maam, could you come here. Would you like to clean out where the dishwasher was?" I really don't want to, but he is standing there waiting so I get the broom and sweep. I tell him I'm not mopping, it's really not that messy. I leave and try to go on about my business and then I hear, "Maam, could you come here?" I go in there again and he say's, "Could you hand me that flashlight? I want to see if I'm seeing what I think I am." I'm thinking, "For Pete's sake! Will you just finish the dishwasher!" Mr. HelpMe says, "Yes, it's what I thought it was, a mousehole!" Then he says, "You have two choices, you can let me fill the hole up or you can leave it, but I know women don't like mice." I just let him think that's so because it's not true in my case. For my classroom pet's I had two rats. Anyway, I tell him to go ahead and fix it and he asks if I have steelwool. (Sure I do, I just keep it laying around.) I tell him no, but I do have those dish suds pads. He takes half the box and stuffsed them in the mousehole.

It only took him 30 minutes to install the dishwasher and an hour and a half to do all the other things. He didn't charge me which was nice, but he sure needed a lot of help.

I had my hair colored and cut Wednesday. The hair dresser and I had some misscommunication and how it turned out will surprise some people. Let me explain, I was born a blonde and have pretty much kept my hair blonde. My hair dresser wanted to cut my hair into a type of mohawk. It looked cute so I said ok. We talked about coloring it blonde all over and tipping the top in a lighter blonde. As we looked through the book, someone said something about a picture of a girl with dark hair and red highlights being cool. I said it was. I'm sitting there with the dye on my hair and it's getting darker and darker and I'm thinking, "That's not blonde and boy, it wasn't! When all was said and done, my hair was dark brown and tipped on the very top in a type of red! Talk about surprised! It's okay though and everyone seems to like it. Some of my students said they liked it and some just stared. I don't know how long I'll keep it this way, but it sure is different.

Leaves on the ground.

Fall colors in my backyard.

Much Annoyed About A Lot

I'm annoyed at blogger. I blogged the other day and saved it as a draft. I left the computer a few minutes, came back and blogger was down doing "daily maintanance." Okay, I figured I would post it later; but guess what, it wasn't there! It's floating around in computer space somewhere and will never be found. The last few days, blogger has been so slow that I didn't have the patience to wait on it to open my blog. I'm finally in, but it was a slow, slow process!

Now, on to my students. I've mentioned before that Sophomores in college are no different than elementary students, they're just larger. Three different times I have had to nearly wrench papers out of their hands to get them to do them. I don't think they are serious about their education.

Now on to the next annoyance. Our renters were already 2 months behind on rent and have not paid this month which makes it 3. November's is due before the 10th which will make it 4 months. The problem, they are personal friends and have fallen on very hard times. That makes it a little different than if they were just people who didn't care. What to do?

Topic of the Day...Step-son & his dad...

My step-son is literally driving me crazy! I know I've ranted before about this, but there are times when I feel I just can't take it anymore! The problem...his disrespect, laziness, irresponsibility, self-interest, self-absorption, arrogance, uncaring attitude, ungratefulness, and his DAD!

I have known this kid since he was two and been personally involved in his life since he was four. It's not like I don't have a lot of years and experience behind me on what's going on and the evolution of how it all happened. He has been allowed by his dad to do and act exactly as he pleases with no type of discipline or consequences whatsoever.

There is no way I can list all the things he has done, but here's an attempt!

• Began hitting me and calling me a bitch and whore when he was 11
• Ran off and hid in a tree for two hours when he was going to get in trouble for stealing.
• Stealing & shop-lifting
• Kicked off the school bus for choking a kid
• Kicked off the school bus for throwing things at the bus driver and unlatching the bus driver's seatbelt
• Kicked off the school bus seven different times for various things
• Skipped school and brought back by the police
• Threatened and physically hit his little sister who is 6 years younger and told her he would kill her in the night if she told on him
• Started smoking somewhere around 9,10 or 11
• Told me his dad was having an affair (he wasn't)
• Barricaded his bedroom door with his furniture
• Takes drugs
• Got in trouble by the MP's for doing things on post
• Got into pornography
• Snuck out of the house at night
• Three different dad's complained about him to his dad and one dad drug him up to the house. He was bullying all of their kids.

All of those things happened from 11-13. From 13-present he...

• Began swinging at me again and I refused to watch him
• Called me a bleached, blonde bitch right in front of his dad who got mad at me and his own daughter. He took up for his son who was bullying his own daughter.
• Became so out of control that his dad finally sent him to live with his real mom. He hit her also and his step-dad put him in a choke-hold and sent him back.
• Got arrested by the police for pointing a bb gun that looked real
• Got arrested for egging the DA's house
• Curfew violation
• Speeding tickets
• Skipped school his 9,10, and 11th grade year numerous times
• Put in the hospital for a drug overdose
• 5 pages of things he did at school that he was put in detention for
• Picked up at K-Mart for shop-lifting
• Wrecked his car once
• Wrecked his car twice
• Put in after-school detention numerous times for skipping school
• Continued drug use on and off
• We've spent $1500 for lawyers, $300 on K-Mart shop-lifting, over $1,000 a year in car insurance, over $1,000 in hospital bills for the overdose
• Broke the door on the patio
• Broke his bedroom door
• Lied to the police about a robbery and wouldn't give the police the name of the drug dealer he called. (I took him to the police station and sat with him through all of it.)
• Many, many more things to numerous to list

Now, the kicker. He has suffered no consequences for any of these things nor received any punishment. His dad makes excuses for everything he does. He graduated from high school last May and for the last two years did nothing around the house and refused to keep his room clean and his dad still gave him allowance, approximately $100 a month for all the crap he was pulling.

Just recently, when I told him to clean his room or I would be putting all the crap out in the garage, his reply was, "Don't touch my stuff. What do you want. I have a job now." What do I want? I want you to stop urinating on the stool and floor. I want you to keep your room reasonably clean. I want you to keep the bathrooms free of all your long hair. I want you to stop flipping toothpaste all over the bathroom walls and sinks. I want you to clean up the kitchen when you mess it up and mop up the spills on the floor and cabinets. I want you to wash your own dishes and keep the trash out of your room. I want you to take over your insurance. I want you to get your car repaired so I don't have to keep taking you to and from work. I want respect since you live in my home. I want you to stop living as if you have no obligation in this house-hold. I want you to stop coming in through your bedroom window after I've told you over and over again not to. But most of all, I want you to stop asking me to help you when you show total disrespect and dishonor for me. The way it stands now, you're on the verge of receiving no help from me at all. And, as I told your dad, I'm the one who has spent time taking care of you through all these years, trying to teach you ethics, honor, and respect for someone besides yourself and I am the one who will be pushing you out the door if you don't begin to turn yourself around. You're over 18 now...enough is enough!

No Specific Subject, But Lots of Rambling

Indian has 4 distinct seasons. Fall is one of my favorites maybe, because I was born in November. All of my kids were born either in the fall or winter months although the youngest only made winter by 3 days. The trees are beautiful now and when the wind blows the leaves swirl down in a multitude of colors.

We saw a man wearing panty hose yesterday. He was at Ken's Garage, the place we took Keelan's car for a diagnostic test to see what is wrong with it. He also had really long, sharp fingernails. Not the most attractive man I've ever seen. Back to Keelan's car. It was making a sound that Keelan called a thump. Mechanic mom told her that the engine was misfiring and what did the little ole test say, yup the same thing. It also needs a tuneup. Good thing step-dad works at a college that has technical programs because that's where it's going to be fixed. Ken's Garage wanted over $300 to do the job and good ole Ivy Tech will do it for about $100. Maybe Ricky will be the one to fix it! Keelan would die. He might sabotage it for her for all he supposes she's done to him.

Today we bought a dish washer and 2 TV's. We really needed the TV's because all we had were 13 in. and you could hardly see them! Even the kids complained. So now we have a 27 in. in our bedroom and a 20 in. in the family room and a 19 in. in the pool room. I can see! It's so nice.

I'm slowly getting the house updated. I'm going to do the hall next. The trouble is that the whole house is either wall-papered or paneled. If you paint over wallpaper you have to use oil based paint. Latex will cause the paper to come off because of the water. If I paint over it with oil based paint, then I'll have to use turpentine to clean the brushes and YUCK, a lot of trouble. Option 3 is to take the wall paper off which is what I'll probably end up doing because in the long run, it is easier. I say that, but you have to wet the whole thing down and keep it wet and then wash the walls down and etc.... I keep putting it off because there is no easy solution.

My 250 class goes out Monday to teach their first lesson to a real class. They are excited, but I had to tell them Wednesday that it appreared that some of them didn't care about their grades so if they didn't, neither would I. Many of them have excessive absences and blah, blah , blah. I got it across to some of them, but who knows if all of them will take it seriously. We'll see. One student talked with me for a whole hour after class Friday. I like all of them and hope that they will all get it together.

So, hubby is hogging the new TV and I sit in here typing on my blog and grading papers. We have to incorporate technology into our teaching so the future teachers will be able to intergrate it into the classroom. I think it is a good idea, but few know how to do it. I am thinking of ways to incorporate it into my activities for the class. I use technology daily and have no problem with it nor would I putting it into a classroom, but it amazes me how much the younger generation doesn't know anything about tech. My students don't know what a blog is and some of them don't know how to use the computer. It blows me away.

I have a ritual. Each year about this time I begin to watch all my favorite holiday movies starting with Meet Me In St. Louis becaue there is a great Halloween scene in it. As the season progresses, so do I. Each year I watch Scrooge (the one made around 1970), Meet Me In St. Louis, White Christmas, and The Christmas Story. I enjoy watching them and am looking forward to it.

I guess I'll end it here and take the TV back from hubby. Wish me luck because he is watching OSU.

Ok, I tried to spell check, but it won't accommodate me so take what you get.

Finally!

Son has a job. He's working at Bob Evans as a bus boy. It's ironic, but he's making more than my daughter is at Kirklands. He had to cut his hair too. He didn't want to, but finally did for want of pocket money. After a summer of no car and no money, it got to him. Now he's talking about moving in with 2 other guys. Hmm, we'll see if he really does.

AND, NOW LOOK AT YA, 27 HAHA! HAVE A GOOD ONE BRAN. LOVE MOM

WEDDING DAY; MR. & MRS.

WHEW, YOU MADE IT! YOU'RE A GRADUATE NOW!

DRESSED TO KILL FOR THE SR. PROM

17 WITH FUTURE HUBBY!

SWEET SIXTEEN!

FIRST DATE AND WITH A SENIOR TOO!

8TH GRADE GRADUATION AND GROWING UP!

BASKETBALL PLAYER 14

CHRISTMAS PLAY 10YRS OLD

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

FIRST BIRTHDAY

HAPPY 27TH BRANDY!

This and That

I'm a little homesick. I don't think I've been home since last December! We'll go home for Christmas again, but I wish I could go more. Taking on these 2 classes at the university has stopped me from going whenever I want, not that I did anyway because I didn't want to leave my youngest daughter for a long period of time. She's at the age where she needs her mom around.

The leaves are beginning to change color, but I don't think they are as pretty as they were last year which for some reason, makes me think of home and the beautiful sunsets we have there. I don't think I've seen but one sunset the whole time I"ve been in Indiana and because of all the trees and houses, I hardly ever see the moon.

When three of my kids were small, Brandy, Rantz, and Keelan, we lived on 40 acres. Around Halloween each year, we'd have a big bondfire and invite friends and family out for a wennie roast. We'd ride horses, fish, visit and have some good fun in the crisp air. Animals were always under-foot with numerous kittens, cats, dogs, and goats running about. We had a rope hung in one of the big pecan trees down on the creek and everyone would swing across the creek hoping they weouldn't fall into the water below! My brother would tell the kids stories about the "Glowing Witch" which would scare the begeebies out them! It was a good time of life, but just one of many.

Time moves on though, doesn't it? And, there's only two ways to move with it; looking back in sadness to what was or looking forward to what's coming with antipation of great things to come and keeping the good memories tucked warmly away in our hearts.

Just Stuff

I have an Italian friend from New York, Brooklyn New York to be exact. I think everyone should have the opportunity to meet or know someone from Brooklyn or the Bronx. It's a different world. She's lived in Poteau Oklahoma which is on the Arkansas border for the last 18 years and her Brooklyn accent still has control of her voice. All words that end in "a" somehow become "er." For instance, her name is Diana, but she calls herself Dianer.

So, how would a girl who was born and bred in Brooklyn end up in a nowhere town in Oklahoma. A man, how else? She married a guy, her third, that she'd met years ago in New York City. He was origionally from Michigan. Diana worked in New York and this guy's brother was dating her sister. Anyway, 15 years and two husbands later, she meets him again and they decide to marry. Diana has a house on Long Island and she sells it thinking she is going to live in Dallas TX. However, her new husbands business falls through and a man he knows from Poteau tells him he should move there and start a business. Thus begins a life Diana wasn't ready for.

This man died recently and Diana is now stuck. Luckily, her two grown children live in Ft. Smith Arkansas, about 35 minutes from Poteau, but all of them are stuck now in that location. It seems if you ever move from New York City, Long Island, etc. it is very expensive to go back and few people have the money to return home. The house she and her first husband bought for $40,000 in the late 60's sold for over $100,000 when she sold it in the 80's.

She's 58 now and the reason she came to Poteau no longer exists. She can't afford to go home where all the rest of her brother's and sister's live so there she sits. I wonder how many of us would make the decisions we do if we could see down the road a ways?

Musings

Innocence has been gone for a long time. I can remember when a kid flipped me off in third grade and I had to go ask Mom what it meant. She said I'd find out soon enough and that was enough for me. My 5 year old knew what the finger meant and told me.

Remember when you sassed or disrespected your parents you got your mouth slapped and no one called the police on your parent. Or the switch? Anyone ever have to go cut their own switch, peel the bark off and bring it back? You better pick a good one too or you went back for another. The green smell the wood threw out as the bark was peeled slowly, layer by layer trying to make it go slow because when that last piece of bark was gone it would meet your butt? Remember dancing the "switch dance?"

What is one thing your grandma did for you that you still remember? I used to love my Grandma Cozy's popcorn. She'd get out an old iron skillet, put oil in it, dump in the popcorn, and put on the lid. I stood right there in the kitchen waiting for that first pop, and then the next and pretty soon the lid would start to come off with all the popcorn and the air was filled with the smell! Grandma would get an old brown paper bag, roll down the top, and dump all that popcorn in the sack. The sides and bottom of the sack would be greasy and salty and boy, was that good to wipe off the sides of the bottom and sides of the sack and eat all that greasy salt.

I got my first taste of wine from my grandma. It looked like strawberry pop. She got a fancy little glass (a shot glass I now know) poured some in and gave my brother and me a little snort. She had one too. She was just about to give us another when my mother walked in and yelled, "Mother what are you doing? Giving them wine? You'll make them drunk!" Boy, what a big deal. I never got another taste until I was old enough to taste it on my own years later.

We had an old Pontiac somewhere around 1960. It was a shiny brown and cream. We traded it in on a Chevrolet Belair and went back to the car lot that night to see it. I got down in the floorboard and cried because it looked so lonely. I used to ride the fins and pretend it was my horse. I lost a playmate that night.

I remember the Fall the best, how the sky changes from pale blue to deep blue and the clouds stand out whiter than ever and the stars are so clear and crisp at night you can almost reach out and pull one down. And I remember the scent of many autumn's and the way a cigarette would smell in the crisp air; the breakup of my marriage; finding new love. Sometimes a certain smell or song flings me back in time and I remember. I remember listing to my transistor radio late at night. Sometimes it would be a song, sometimes a ball game. The announcers voice always lulled me to sleep. Or, lying there dreaming of the guy I liked wishing he'd notice me and when it finally happened feeling like nothing would be this good ever again. Why is it if we love something so, we leave it? Have you ever noticed it's a tendency with people to talk about how much they love something and pack up and leave?

You can't stop the march of time or go back; time circumstance, and people stop you. The memories matter to each of us individually and together add up to an era.