Melancholy, Journalism Day & A Few of My Favorite Things

I’d like to say my brief blogging hiatus was the result of some fun-filled extravaganza involving sandy beaches, shopping and sunshine. (Don’t ya just love alliterations?)

Instead, it was more like a melancholy malaise brought about by a wide collection of things…my father’s illness and death, the impending doom we call yearbook, and let’s not forget that smorgasbord of angst dished out by this thing we call life.

You see, I was waiting to see if all this melancholy would disapparate and my FunnyBack would return. Then, I realized if I waited for that to happen, why that could possibly take, like, forever. Some things you just have to work at to make happen. (And we all know how I feel about things.) So as I was saying, some things you just have to work at to make happen–kind of like those 150 or so yearbook page proofs (which btw got mailed Friday).

So-o-o-o let’s all do the dance of joy for that–and hope none of those pages contain anything that should have been in the “Things That Will Get You Fired Folder.” Yes siree, Missy, there’s no telling what is lurking out there. I did catch the Sports Studs headline. (Jeez Louise, what were they thinking?)

In addition to slogging through all those page proofs last week, we also attended the Dallas Morning News High School Journalism Day. I must say my kids looked fab-u-lous… so fab-u-lous, in fact, that I told them it didn’t matter if we didn’t win anything, at least we were the best looking bunch. I also got to embarrass all of them by bringing the chicken, sitting him at our table and making our photo editor take pictures of him. Hails bails, it doesn’t get much better than that.

All in all, it was a great day filled with some of my most favorite things. Here’s my list of…

A few of Richie’s favorite things…

#5…An unending supply of free Starbucks coffee
#4…A free tasty little continental breakfast and a free tasty three-course lunch
#3…Time to actually eat said tasty free breakfast and lunch
#2…No bells. None. Zero. Zippo. Crack fire, I get goose bumps just thinking about it.

And, drum roll pah-leese… Richie’s No. 1 favorite thing…My kiddos winning some awards.

Yep… as politically incorrect as that sounds, I love it when the kids win. Remember, this isn’t the YMCA. Winning matters. Competition matters. Success matters. And yeah, I know I told them that they looked so fab-u-lous winning didn’t matter, but Jeez Louise, we’re not in cosmetology.

Next weekend is the big state journalism convention in Austin. I get to spend three days with 13 teenagers. (Can’t you just feel the excitement oozing?)

Let’s hope we come back with some more awards (the newspaper is up for a state Star. Woo-hoo!)

If not, I’m teaching a session on blogging. Maybe I can finally hand out some of those cards I never got to give out in New York City. And, of course, the chicken is coming along.

Who needs sand and sunshine when I’ve got kids, Austin and the chicken?

OK, OK OK, so maybe I did book a trip to Barbados with my BFF Jennifer. After all, the chicken can only take you so far.

NYC, Missing Out & The Rubber Chicken

As promised, here is the much ballyhooed accounting of our little excursion to the Big Apple. You know it’s bad when, in all honesty, I have to report that the Rubber Chicken had a better time than I did. I spent at least 24 hours puking my guts out. Now before you get all excited and think it had something to do with St. Patrick’s Day, think again. Jeez Louise, remember the nine children? Remember I’m 52 years old? Remember we were there for a high school journalism convention for crying out loud.

No, apparently it either had something to do with some virus I picked up or that Linguine Vongole I ate. Either way I didn’t feel better until after I puked all night long, crawled into a cab and then threw up again in front of the nice little doctor’s office by Central Park, got a shot, drank some Gatorade and slept another 12 hours.

In the meantime, everyone else got to go to the Wall Street Journal, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Central Park. Oh, and let’s not forget the three course dinner at the 21 Club and the orchestra section seats for the Mary Poppins Broadway show. Or let’s not forget the shopping or running willy-nilly through Times Square.

No siree, missy. I got to do none of that. Nope. Instead, I got to do things like see the Naked Cowboy on Times Square. Yeah, now that was some kind of fun.

So you can see how the Chicken enjoyed his little visit more than I did. Not only did he get to do all those fun-filled things. Hails bails, he even got to have his picture made with the pilot on our return flight home. Not that I’m complaining, but all I ever get on my airplane rides is a smile or two and an occasional packet of pseudo Chex mix. Yeah, that’s how I roll.

I didn’t even get to attend the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s awards ceremony to watch the kids collect their first ever national award—a Silver Crown. Nor did I get to teach my session on blogging where I intended to not only impart what little wisdom I possess, but I also intended to do a little bit of shameless blog self-promotion. I even made my own cute little business cards. Yep about 100 of them.

And yep, I still have 100 of them.

Probably the biggest disappointment, though, was that I didn’t get to spend much time with my little DIs (darling inspirations), so I don’t have much fun-filled fodder to report. I mean there were the regular things like getting on the wrong subway, someone falling down while trying to slide into the elevator, someone else accidentally opening the door to the airplane bathroom while someone was in there. You know, the regular stuff that occurs when traveling with teens. Still, I do have a few things to report.

Richie’s Top 5 Noteworthy Incidents
From Our NYC Trip

Incident #1…At the Museum of Modern Art…
Staffer… “Where’s the Mona Lisa”
Me… “In Paris”
Staffer… “Oh…I thought van Gogh did it.
Me… “Let’s institute the 10 second rule.”
Staffer… “Huh?”
Me… “Don’t say anything else without counting to 10 first, OK?”

Incident #2…Also about the Museum of Modern Art…
My newspaper editor…“Did you see the lint on the floor? How is that art? I could get my dog to chew something up and hack it back up on my carpet and call that art.”

Incident #3… Walking around the streets of New York…
One of the sports editors every time he came across a ventilation grate would stomp and yell, “Wake up Ninja Turtles!”

Incident #4… Waiting to board the plane…
Me…Why aren’t you boarding?
Staffer…“Oh, are they boarding?”
Me… “Yes. That’s why everyone is getting on. Jeez.”
Staffer…“I guess we’re on the short plane.”
I guess if Obama can make politically incorrect statements about special education so can the DIs.”

Incident #5… After my daughter chaperoned the DIs…
My daughter (who is the final stages of completing her student teaching in elementary education–she just loves teaching those little ones–and who thankfully stepped in to watch my big kiddos while I hovered near death in my fancy schmancy Times Square hotel room) returned from an outing with the children and said, “Mom, I don’t know how you do it. I could never teach high school.”

Hmmm, interesting. I’m not quite sure how I do it either.

Carnival of Education & Other Odds & Ends

The Carnival of Education has been up and running over at the Right Wing Nation. My post “Teens, Trips & the Rubber Chicken” was included, but you don’t have to go there to read it here.

But you know the drill. If you want to know what’s buzzing around the EduSphere, you really need to go there and see what everyone else is saying.

Fans of this blog know that next week is spring break, and I’ll be in NYC with nine DIs (Darling Inspirations) for the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s national journalism convention where we will claim our first ever national award. (Can we get a big WOO-HOO?!).

So chance are, I won’t be posting for a week or so. If that makes you have some sort of withdrawals, you can hop over to Blog Critics and read another post I have over there by going here. I would love to see your comments there.

But before I go, I’d like to leave you with a little something that occurred on Friday as we tried to get everything ready for our NYC trip. The kids couldn’t decide whether they wanted to try and do the standing-out-in-front-of-the-Today-Show thing yet, so I told someone to call and get all the information. One of the sports editors called and got the location, but not the time. He didn’t want to call back.

Me…“Why not? We’ll never see these people.”

No response…so Mikey the extraordinaire volunteered to call again. It went like this…

Mikey…“Hi. What time do I have to get there to stand outside in the morning and act like an idiot?…OK. Thanks.”

Me…“I can’t believe you said that…”

Mike…“Why? You're the one who said we’d never see those people.”

Yeah, this trip is going to be some kind of fun.