Friday, December 31, 2010

Filters and family secrets.

 I wrote this awhile ago.  Just after our first cold snap, if that gives you a time frame.  It doesn't me because I can't remember what I had for lunch day before yesterday.  At the time, I don't know, it didn't fit my mood, match my outfit, whatever.  But I reread it and if feels a little like New Year's thinking so I'm going to throw it up there.  And get it out of the draft file.  I dislike the draft file.  No closure there.  Unfinished bidness.  I like to cross things off  my list man!


Have a great, fabulous, wonderful, New Year's Eve!!!!  However you define that.  Go out, stay in or maybe like my family...zigzag your neighborhood street in below freezing weather for a progressive dinner to be followed by one of my favorite things...a white elephant gift exchange!  I love my neighbors!!!!!


xoxo
~S

Replaced your heater's filter lately?  Me neither.  But we should.  It got good and cold last night and this morning I had the pleasure of flipping the thermostat to heat.  Ahhh.  It felt good.  Real good.  Tomorrow's high? 56. 

But that's not really the filter I'm talking about.  I'm talking about your personal filter.  Do you have one?  Should you?  Could you?  Would you?  Last week I was reading a friend of a friend's blog...and she was lamenting the lack of filter on the current generation.  It's one of her big ick's about facebook.  And blogs.  Although she has a blog.  I think she has a point, though.  Of course, I have never had much of a filter.  If you know me, you know.  I wear my life pretty publicly.  I always had up until I hit around 40.  Something about that age made me think I should evaluate, reconsider, shake things up a bit.  I sent my good friend Lisa a list of things not to be done after 40.  Like wearing t-shirts with writing.

I also began to try to be discreet.  That was my code word.  Discreet = elegant, mysterious, reserved, graceful.  Problem with that?  I'm just not.  My husband, however, is the epitome of discreet.  It's in his nature.  He couldn't wear his heart on his sleeve if he tried.  And I can't not wear mine on my sleeve.

You know what I ended up with, in this effort to age gracefully?  A big, fat, compartmentalized life.  Ugh.  I just can't do it.  And I don't want to.  A few months ago, I got out a box cutter and went to town.  All my life I have been blessed with exceptional friends who love me, come what may.  All discreet and compartmentalized?  Not so much.  Sure a couple have emerged.  People who stuck.  But for the most part?...nah.  Once the other parts of me seeped into the box they were comfortable in...they were out.  That's okay.  I've learned.  Maybe they have too.  I don't know.  We don't talk too much anymore.

But I know who I am, and so do you.  If you're still here...wow!  You rock.  If you can't handle the redhead, don't let the door hit ya'.  No malice.  It's just that I don't have the inclination to worry about it.  And so is the friend of a friend right about the lack of filter being a problem?  A threat to civil society as we know it?  I don't think so.  I think that fb and blogs are pretty much about the person writing them.  It's the nature of the beast.  Whether you spend your time in their world - is about you and your own personal filter.  Take some responsibility.  Only invite into your life that which blesses you.  If it doesn't fit, don't wear it.  Should we have filters?  Sure.  Filter what you decide to spend time and energy on.  Don't be so worried about what someone else is doing.

And family secrets?  I'm not a fan.  I grew up with a few doozies.  Let's just say revisiting and re-evaluating your childhood as an adult armed with formerly withheld information...not so much fun.  But because I do have a bit of a filter, there's no need to air all the dirty laundry.

Just don't wear t-shirts with writing on them past 40.

xoxo
~S

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Holiday Hangover Cure

Did you have one?  I did.  My annual holiday hangover.  No, I am not talking about having been over served 1 too many stiff eggnogs, nor am I talking about that squishy part of you that might be hanging over your jeans today.  I'm talking about that anticlimactic, restless feeling that follows Christmas for me.  Every year.  Without fail.  What to do about it?

Well, first you need to know where you carry your post traumatic holiday stress.  Because you need to purge it.  I carry mine in a series of knots lodged directly under my right shoulder blade.  I found this out when, on our honeymoon cruise, the therapist, as she ran her thumb along them counting them out loud (there were 8), said...Wow, you must be really stressed out.  Huh?  All I'd done is finish my last semester of college, gotten married, and started writing my resume.  In a 2 month time span.  That's all. I just thought I was busy.  But apparently all that joyful change...can knot me up like a pretzel.  Even when I'm having fun.

So now when I wake up and realize my right hand is pretty much numb, I know those knots have taken over and it is time to work them out.  Which is precisely what started happening about 3 or 4 days ago.  You know, right after Christmas.  These days, since as a mother of 3, I perpetually have more to do than hours in the day, it happens a lot.  And so I am the proud owner one of those beige shiatsu massage pillows.  You know, one of those things that look like it's going to smell like Bengay because it belongs to an 80 year old man?  For the past few mornings I have spent hours with that miracle working pillow massaging out my knots and doing productive things like watching the entire season of The Last American Cowboy and Tabatha's Salon Takeover.  Pure relief.

But watching all that hard, efficient, ranch work, made even slacker me feel a little lazy today.  And my knots seemed to be gone so I couldn't really call lounging around all day with my shiatsu pillow productive.  And you know, the New Year is day after tomorrow.  It's time for Change.  Rejuvenation. Resolution.  Don't worry I haven't gone all Type A on you.  If you haven't bailed yet, first, thank you.  Second, keep reading and learn the secret of successful slacker productivity.

People call me many things, but overly organized and structured  are usually not among them.  I'm selectively organized.  Which is really code for being L.A.Z.Y.  As in I detest, with every fiber of my being, to look for things.  It's why I never, ever, put my keys anywhere besides right in their little dish by the front door.  If I have to look for them when it's time to leave, the jig is up.  I'll be the one plopped on the sofa, content, deciding I didn't really need to leave my house that day.  And please never ask me to help you find something.  It will wreck our friendship.  I will start out appearing to be really hunting for your very important lost thing.  And then, 47 seconds in,  I will make some excuse about needing my glasses that are in my car.  And I'll drive home.  Because I probably have a new episode of Tabatha's Salon Takeover waiting on my DVR.  And I need to watch it and work out that stress knot that developed when I agreed to help you find something.  But I digress.  

I decided that among other things (like it being prosperous), I would like 2011 to be more selectively organized.  There were a couple of things nagging at me.  First, I have had to look for my BlackBerry about 25 times in the last week and it is beginning to really bug me.  Second, I really wanted to get rid of the basket by our phone that sits on my breakfast bar taking up more than its fair share of space.  The problem is that it houses important essentials like pens, pencils, scissors, my life sustaining post-it notes and a calculator.  It also accumulated things like bits of paper, shock pens purchased by my boys at the fair in September and random buttons.  The logical solution to this is that all that stuff in the basket could really be housed in what was currently the junk drawer in the kitchen.  And my BlackBerry could live right by the phone.  Even I can remember that.

Well, junk drawer no more!  I bought a little organizer thing at Target (I even measured the drawer before I left - who says I can't learn something from my past mistakes), and emptied the junk drawer of its junk and replaced it with sweet, beautiful, organization.  Can you hear the rejoicing?  Imagine that I found such treasures as an expired coupon from 2006 for fresh meat at Albertsons, 23 cents in nickels, dimes and pennies, all 13 lost mailbox keys that I refused to look for in '03 and paid the post office to replace the lock on our mailbox with a new one, and 10 rulers.  Why we need 10 rulers, I don't know. 

And so I am done.  My New Year's Resolution is complete.   I don't have do anything more.  So the secret to successful slacker productivity?  Be vague.  Be very vague.  I only said I wanted to be more selectively organized.  No specifics, no quantification. And so now, with one drawer, I can lounge around for the entire 2011 year.  Unless the BlackBerry thing doesn't work out.  

Happy Slacker New Year!
~S

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

3 days...or in my case 2

When does your family celebrate Christmas?  We celebrate with my mother's side of the family on Christmas Eve.  At my house.  When I was a kid my mom had Christmas Eve at our house; it was her holiday.  She always made potato soup and Italian sausage sandwiches.  Why?  Kind of an odd combination?  They were my dad's two favorite dishes.  His side of the family came over and sometimes my mom's parents.  Over the years, and after the divorce, Christmas Eve moved to my grandma's house (mom's mom), my aunt and uncle and cousins started joining us (I think they had to, living just on the other side of the pier), but the menu remained largely unchanged.  I think my grandma added split pea soup because my grandpa really liked that. 

The first Christmas after my mom passed away I had my oldest 5 weeks prematurely, on December 19th.  She got to spend her first week in the NICU and so, Christmas Eve moved to the hospital.  My amazing family drove all the way from the coast to Loma Linda University Hospital, stopping by our house to stock the freezer with the usual holiday fare and more gifts for the baby than I could have dreamed up, and then came and spent a couple of hours with us.  Since she was still in an incubator, nobody could even hold her yet.  But she was overcoming her pneumonia and getting stronger each day, and we got to bring her home the day after Christmas.  It's one of my favorite Christmases for so many reasons.  What could have been a terribly sad holiday missing my mom was filled with a new baby and a loving, generous family.

A couple years later we lost my grandma, and Christmas Eve came to my house.  The menu has continued to evolve, and now seems to be steadfastly potato soup, ham, and whatever else I dream up.  Much to my husband's consternation I have an absolute inability to have a party and not serve something I've never tasted before.  I like to experiment with new recipes on a crowd.  You've been warned.  My 92 year old grandpa still comes out, my aunt and uncle and now my two cousins and their kids.  As the kids have gotten older, the running in circles and the volume has gone down.  Which I think my grandpa, especially, appreciates.

I love that this has been my tradition for as long as I can remember.  I know there was a time when I was really little that this isn't what was happening, but that's okay.  I don't remember back that far. 

So the little caveat, and there always is one, right? Is that my sister in law, almost always ends up hosting Christmas Day.  When that day rolls around, our house resembles a disaster area, and we are pooped.  Doesn't seem so bad, right?  The thing is the past couple of years she's also been having Thanksgiving at her house.  And I don't really think it's fair for her.  So I have already committed to hosting Christmas Day next year.  We did it once before, and it was...really hard.  But the kids were littler and I wasn't as good at doing things ahead of time.  I figure with an entire year to plan ahead, 2011 should go off without a hitch.  Right?  Never mind that last year I forgot to start the soup on time...

Merry Christmas!
xxoo
~Sherri

Friday, December 17, 2010

The Sun and I. It's Complicated.

It's a dark, gray, damp, rainy day.  Number 2.  And I hear it will be this way through Christmas.  What?!  Say it isn't so, Joe.  I need my sunshine.  I can take a couple of days, 3 even, of  nothing but clouds and rain.  But tell me it's going to last for another week and a half???  I'd rather poke my eye out with a stick.  Book me on the next flight out to Sunshineville.  But it does explain my total and utter lack of motivation this morning.  And it reminds me once again why, despite the fact that I dream of moving north where it's lush and green, that I probably won't.  I need the sun.  Jonesin' for it.  I'm addicted man.  Help a sister out, toss her a few rays.  What?  Oh sorry, got caught up in the reverie going on inside my Vit. D deficient brain.

Top 10 Reasons I can never live in the Pacific Northwest

10.  It's a little damp.

9.  That unrelenting cloud cover.

8.  I'm a Slacker Girl at heart and all those gray days just encourage that little personality flaw.  In a VERY big way.

7.  Because baking is only third to movie watching and fire sitting on the list of what I really want to be doing on a cold, damp day...it would be even harder to maintain my girlish figure.  And let's be honest, I'm not doing such a bang up job down here in the sunshine.  Wasn't that my resolution for this year?!

6.  Because after 3 days of rain, I NEED the sun.  Need it.  Like Seasonal Affective Disorder setting in, need the sun.

5.  I'm afraid of vampires.  And werewolves.  Thank you Stephenie Meyer.  Not really, but it sounds like more fun than being afraid of Vitamin D deficiency.

4.  Ticks.  Picking them off my dog, gag, or, gag, possibly me, gag.  Can't do it.

3.  I like to watch the surfers most when they're not in wetsuits.

2.  Because there is a drop of saltwater that runs through my veins and it demands that I sit on a sandy, sunny beach.  More often than you or my dermatologist want to know.

1. I'm a born and bred southern California beach girl.  It's who I am.  I can't help it.  Like being a redhead.  It just sort of defines me.  And I like it that way.

dreamin' of the sun,
~S

Thursday, December 16, 2010

It's a Pajama Day...

...it's raining nice and steady.  Thick cloud cover.  Fire building weather.

My brain is in a list mode this morning...lots of little thoughts.  Not in its usual paragraph form.

1. I'd really like to stay in my jammies all day today.

2.  We really need groceries - like for dinner.

3.  And toilet paper and cat food.  That makes 2 to 3 stores.  In the rain.  Can I go in my black flannels with all the bright polka dots???  I think my daughter knows too many people in this town for that anymore.  She'd be mortified.  Maybe it's time to move?

4.  Does anyone know why the enter button on my keyboard doesn't doesn't just move the cursor down on Blogger?!

5.  At the beginning of this year I really hoped and wished, actually I demanded, an easygoing 12 months to make up for the insanity of 2009.

6.  The thing about demanding things from the universe is that it likes to chuckle back at you and say 'Oh yeah, good luck with that.  Try this on for size.'  All freaking year long.  It's okay.  We ain't dead yet as someone said to me once.

7.  But the universe made up for it in a BIG, gracious way.  For years...I'm talking a decade probably...my best friends, the ones who could tell me something was a bad idea and I would actually pause to consider what they were saying...have moved away.  Physically, busily, just life taking over our lives.  But in the last 6 months they are returning in droves.  Some have moved back within driving distance, some have simply gotten back in touch, and some I have good old facebook to thank for.  So despite the trials and tribulations of 2010 (and they have been numerous and intense), I am going to always think of it as a Really Good Year.  I need my friends man!

8.  It's only Thursday.  Up until 3 minutes ago, I really thought it was Friday.

9.  I found out Henry is a whisky.  Not a man.  Which is a good thing because my friend is married.

10.  I feel like Christmas is too easy this year.  What are we forgetting?

11.  I think I'll make this lasagna for dinner...which will totally require shopping...in clothes... but it will be worth it and the house will smell so very good when the man graces our doorstep after fighting the good fight all day.  I like that he likes my cooking.  It's a good thing about him.

This Lasagna started out as my friend Kelli's recipe.  Hi Kelli!  The one she put in the church's cookbook.  But since I didn't read the directions right the first time, or remember the exact ingredients as I shopped the first time, I made it this way instead.  If you're a purist and don't think that cottage cheese has any place in a real lasagna, then you should stop reading now.  Because there is cottage cheese and we like it that way. Ricotta just sort of grosses me out from the moment I open the package.  Sorry purists.

1 lb. Sweet Italian Sausage
1 clove garlic, chopped or use 2 cloves if you use a garlic press
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
1 Tablespoon basil - the dried stuff, but remember to crush it up in your hands to release all the flavor.  Emeril demands it.  Or you could use fresh, more of it, but I don't have any fresh basil right now.
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large can tomatoes or 2 cans diced Italian tomatoes) - I use whatever is in my pantry at the time.
2 - 6 oz. cans tomato paste
1-10 oz. box lasagna noodles
24 oz. carton large curd cottage cheese - get the low fat and save a few calories.
2 beaten eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese  (huh, did you know your spell checker will capitalize Parmesan?  Who knew.)
4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided

Assemble this in the morning and you will thank yourself later in the day.  I'll be making mine just before I bake it, which just doesn't feel like the same sort of time saver.  It's okay.

Preheat your oven to 350 F if you'll be baking it right after assembling it like I will be tonight.

Start the water to boil for your lasagna noodles.  I always forget to do this and then have to wait around watching the pot that never boils. Save yourself the heartache and start your water NOW.

Break the sausage out of its casing and brown it, draining off any fat.  Add all the ingredients from the garlic to the tomato paste and simmer for 20 minutes.  Boil your noodles according to the directions on the box they came in.

In a bowl, mix all the ingredients from the cottage cheese to the Parmesan cheese plus 1/2 (that's 2 cups for those of you who flunked fractions in 5th grade) the mozzarella.  Your noodles should be done and drained by now and all that wonderful sauce will make you wish you could eat right now because it smells so good!

Spray a 9x13 baking dish with oil.  Spoon a bit of sauce onto the bottom and begin layering noodles, cheese mixture, sauce.  I usually use 8 to 10 noodles and only make 2 layers.  You want to end with sauce.  Top with the remaining 2 cups of mozzarella.  Cover loosely with foil and bake about 45 minutes.  Disrobe the dish of its foil and bake 15 more minutes until the cheese is all melty

Kelli says this freezes really well (before baking) so go ahead and make a double batch.  I've never been that industrious.  But I think I'd use a disposable foil pan for the freezing.  Be your own Stouffer's frozen lasagna.

12.  I want one of those triangle cowboy bells to use to call my family for dinner.  They always so NO when I tell them that.  Pshhh.

Happy not actually Friday!
~S

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Desperately Seeking Simplicity

Remember that movie?  Desperately Seeking Susan?  With Rosanna Arquette, Madonna and Aidan Quinn?  Oh how it made me want to live in a squalid little apartment over a shop in downtown Long Beach.  I was working and going to CSULB at the time, still trying to break the chains of suburbia.

Guess what?  I'm back.  Well, I guess technically you'd call our town suburban sprawl, since the local big wigs have yet to lure any major industry (read employers) here.  So I guess I'll wait out my children's teen years watching the grass grow up around me.

I spent my early 20's sifting through my childhood and my young adulthood path of self-destruction to see what fit.  What I was going to carry into adulthood.  What I liked and what I didn't.  What seemed like the straightest path to a simple, peaceful, life.  Goodbye old baggage.  Hello shiny, bright, new world.  I fell in love with someone I had loved as a friend for many years.  We finished school.  We got married.  We both finally had careers instead of jobs and classes.  There was a sweet spot there.  A profound lack of complications.  We knew who we were, who our friends were, and our time was ours to luxuriate in.  We were pretty damn blissed out.  And maybe a little bored.


My problem, I think, is that I confused simplicity with lack of activity.  For a long time, my wise husband just said I needed a certain amount of chaos in my life to feel comfortable in my own skin.  But I disagree.  I do not like chaos.  I revel in harmony and laughter.  In understanding and tears.  In being sure of the people around me.  I have little tolerance for people who aren't really getting it.  But I love my good friends and desperately wish we all lived within a 2 mile radius of  each other.  I prefer pets that like to lounge around and get fat as butter.  I love having a house full of people, but hate when a party ends in a fist fight.  (I'm too old for that.  Memo to the teenagers.)

Today I live in a house full of 5 people, 2 dogs, 2 cats and a handful of fish.  Our family has a dynamic of its own.  Sometimes we are funny and supportive.  Sometimes we are grumpy and unkind and have to make our apologies.  And there is a lot of activity.  Numerous complications.  It is not a simple, peaceful life.  But neither is it boring. 

xoxo
~S

Monday, December 6, 2010

A Silky Voice and a Distinctly BIG Knife

When it's been one of THOSE days, nothing pleases me more than to be alone with my biggest, baddest knife, Chris Isaak's a certain someone's silky voice on the CD player, and something that is begging to be chopped into bits.  There's just something about all that chopping and stirring that soothes my soul.  The glass of wine doesn't hurt either.  But because I'm soooo very good at accidentally cutting myself (stitches and numb area on my left index finger anyone?), the wine usually accompanies the stirring that occurs after the chopping.

Today, however, wasn't one of THOSE days.  But I did go for the Big Knife when I made these exceedingly fab potatoes au gratin.  These are particularly good for serving up along side a rotisserie chicken you may or may not have picked up at Sam's Club on the way home from your daughter's San Diego located cardiology appointment.  Okay, some of you may argue than driving 150 miles round trip for a very cool monitor thing for your child's heart issue might constitute one of THOSE days...I don't.  I'm still being dazzled by the technology we brought home that means she doesn't have to spend a month in the hospital hooked up to an EKG machine.  ANYHOW, these potatoes are also really handy if your above-mentioned daughter happens to be a teenager and potentially seeing some male types after the meal.  There is a load of garlic involved.  Don't worry, I've got my methods.

This recipe is from PW, BTW. 

Grab 4 largish, to 7 smallish, russet potatoes.  Scrub your spuds good and clean.  NO peeling required.
2 Tablespoons butter, softened this is for greasing your casserole dish
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup whole milk
2 Tablespoons flour
4 cloves garlic, finely minced  If you decide to use a garlic press, I'd double the number of garlic cloves.  Mmmm mmm mmm.
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground pepper, to taste Please go to Sam's Club or Costco and buy the big peppermill that is already filled with whole peppercorns that is by all the spices.  It's a throwaway, and one of the best inventions ever.
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated  We usually have medium in the house, so that's what I use.  And yes, it does taste better if you grate your own.  The pre-grated stuff is coated in ...I can't remember...but you can also powder your baby's but with it and it comes in a bright yellow box. Corn starch!  That's it!  Corn starch!  Just grate your own and consider it an upper body workout.  You saw the cream above right?! 

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.
Smear the softened butter all over the inside of your casserole dish.
Slice the potatoes about 1/4" thick, and then quarter your slices.  Kiss your knife.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the cream, milk, flour, garlic, salt and pepper.  Use a lot of pepper and spice things up.
Place 1/3 of the potatoes in the bottom of your casserole and pour 1/3 of the cream mixture over the potates.  Repeat 2 more times, ending with the cream mixture.
Cover with foil or the glass lid your casserole came with and bake for 30 minutes.
Remove the lid/foil and bake for 20 minutes longer.  The potatoes should be browned and bubbling.  Add the grated cheese to the top and bake for 3-5 minutes longer, until the cheese is all melted and bubbly.
Allow the potatoes to stand for a few minutes before serving.

Ward off all teenage boys and vampires. 

Happy chopping!

~S

Friday, December 3, 2010

B is for Baja

For years and years my plan B has been Baja.  Actually, if I'm going to be honest, for a couple of years it was a dreamy plan A.  Instead of going to college/getting a respectable career/getting hitched/popping out kids I was going to fly south.  Run a little Cantina on the beach.  Until I died of melanoma from all that sun on my redheaded, freckled skin.  I was 17, so fluent I dreamt in Spanish,  and the world was surely mine to catch by the tail.  The airport at Los Cabos was still a shack and Cabo San Lucas was still a little village with dirt roads, fishing boats and surfers.  Love at first sight. 

But it didn't get off the ground.  So plan B it became.

I'm a plan B kind of person.  Not as in settling for plan B, but as a generally more fun, more exciting, more adventurous alternative to whatever plan A I'm currently running.  Keeps me sane.  Makes me smile instead of breaking out the duct tape when a kid behaves badly.  I can feel the balmy breezes across my cheeks, the sand flecked tiles under my feet, hear the whir of the blender, the pop of a bottle cap, the constant underlying beat of the mariachi music, smell the carnitas.  Ahhhh.  What's a girl to do if she can't dream here and there?

So I really wish they'd settle down in good ol' Mexico.  Quit killing each other off.  Because right now...there's not a chance I'd cross the border. It's probably why Bill's been so relaxed this past year.  He used to like telling people that there was a good chance one day he'd come to a note that said something like...the kids are at your sisters, I'm in Baja;  come join me at Sherri's Cantina...  But I'm pretty sure with the ugly wars going on down there, knowing what a 'fraidy cat I am, and that Canada is WAY too cold for me, that he knows Sherri's Cantina is right here at our breakfast bar, or weather allowing, out on the back patio overlooking our own swimming pool private stretch of shoreline.  Perhaps it's really a good blend  of plan A and plan B. 


Does that make it an AB pattern?  Anybody have a kindergartner they can ask???  Anybody else have a plan B?

Love and salsa,
~Sherri

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Definitely a Rant. Apologies Made Now!

The thing about having a blog is you need to write it.  And besides time, you need your computer to actually write it on.  And when you have 3 kids...who have bidness to take care of in cyber world...and one desk computer for everyone, well, time is precious.  Especially this time of year when everyone seems to be checking out cool last minute additions to their Christmas lists.  News flash - the shopping is DONE!  Ha ha ha ha.  Don't you just hate when people tell you that just as December is cresting?  Once and only once have Bill and I been 99% done by the end of Thanksgiving weekend.  But I'm pretty sure that last 1% dragged itself out for the next 4 weeks, culminating in my purchasing some last minute gift cards Christmas Eve morning when I was supposed to be cooking the potato soup for the family that was arriving very, very soon.  Just keeping it real here.  We are not done.  But we have begun, and have a pretty good idea of the who what when and where.  Wish me luck....what's that saying about the best layed, laid, lade plans going haywire, inviting chaos, I don't know, but there's a saying.  Right?!  I need a little moral support here.  I'm not bragging, but I did just put my cards in the mail.

So, the other thing on my mind is the situation with my daughter's high school.  She's missed weeks upon weeks because of this ongoing, still undiagnosed, health issue.  So finishing the semester is tricky, but quite possible. I'm being generous when I say I have been under-impressed with the administration, the counselors and a teacher.  One in particular, demonstrated such unprofessional behavior in our parent/teacher conference last week, that I couldn't help but be shocked he had a job.  I have fired people, immediately, for treating a client the way he talked to us.  And every time we have a meeting set up, somebody from the school can not attend because they are tending to a personal matter...taking an ex-husband to surgery, a doctor's appointment scheduled during school hours, a grandmother becoming ill necessitating crossing the entire country to help the mom, delivering Thanksgiving baskets during school hours.  If you teach aren't you expected to be there anymore?  Aren't you expected to schedule your appointments first thing in the morning or at the very end of the day so as not to disrupt your workplace?  I think people have gotten a little confused as to what really constitutes a situation that is worthy of time out of the office.  Maybe I'm just getting old.  Maybe I've absorbed Bill's hardcore work ethic, but c'mon people, show up, do what you say you're going to, and I don't know, get out of teaching if you hate it.  I don't care if there's no market for somebody with a geometry degree.  Not my problem. Get a different one.  Work at Home Depot, but DON'T suck the life out of my child's inspiration to take calculus her senior year by telling her...hope I don't catch anything from you and my best advice to you is to just take a D and the credits and retake the class at the junior community college over the summer if the grade is that important to you...  What?!  Did you just really tell my kid to strive for the lowest possible denominator???  Really?  That's the best you've got?  Funny how his tune changed when his Vice Principal called him about it the next day.  So yeah, I've got to try and get her out of this guy's class as soon as she has some sort of a grade for this semester.  And then it is ON.  If he thinks I'm done with him yet...he might want to start thinking like a redhead and be a little proactive with his career.

I'm not teacher bashing.  I promise.  Before I get hate mail from some of my favorite family members and friends who are/were teachers, I will say that a committed, fantastic teacher can still pull a lot out in a traditional classroom setting.  And knowing these people as I do I'd venture that they are certainly the type of teacher who has former students looking them up years in the future because they were one of the most outstanding teachers they had in all the years they were in school.  Unfortunately, they are few and far between.  If you know me, you likely know I'm not the hugest public school system fan and we homeschool the boys and homeschooled Isabel for 6 years.  And I've got at least one foot in the camp that thinks the public school system doesn't need revising, changing, overhauling and most certainly didn't need No Child Left Behind.  Let's not even bring up the relentless (and proving to be fruitless) testing the kids now endure.  No, I lean towards thinking the whole thing is irrevocably broken.  Starting wholly fresh is what is really needed.  I don't have any solid ideas about how that could actually happen, so mostly I keep my mouth shut.  But I'm pretty sure if you took the best teachers and looked at what they are really doing to inspire kids, and held some high standards...well, something pretty amazing could happen.  If you're not part of the solution, you're just a whiny part of the problem in my book.  So my rant ends here.  If you stayed with me this long...I can only thank you for letting me get this off my chest.  The world is probably a safer place.  And I wouldn't look good in an orange prison jumpsuit.

Definitely I thank you, because I am so not looking forward to my 7am meeting with Isabel's geometry teacher and her counselor tomorrow morning.  You might want to pray for my composure and dignity.

xoxo
~Sherri