Snow Days, House Hunters International & Monday

After almost a week off, we finally will return to school Monday. You would think those four snow days would have provided a golden opportunity to get caught up on all the things I was behind on.

Think again, my friend.

There's only so much yearbook stuff one can do from home. And as far as all that grading? Well, can you say "projects"? Projects as in poster board size. Projects as in too big/bulky/burdensome to bring home to grade.

There's something to be said for being a math teacher with their little scantron sheets, thin stacks of papers and test generators, but then I would have had to have learned math and math things. (And we all know how I feel about  things.)

And those things would be really, really bad things. Things that involved formulas and numbers and equations, and probably things that involve imaginary numbers. (I have trouble enough with imaginary friends. I don't need the stress of imaginary numbers.)

So once I finished with all the yearbook page proofs I had and planned all the assignments I could plan and pretended the other stuff could wait another day, Howard the Shelter Cat and I opted to spend our leisure time watching House Hunters International specifically the beach vacation ones.

I had to laugh when someone claimed to be a school teacher with a half million to a million dollar budget to buy their little slice of paradise.

Yeah right. I don't need to be a math teacher to know none of that adds up.

School teacher?

Maybe a school teacher with a trust fund.

Or a school teacher with a winning lottery ticket.

Or a school teacher with a sugar daddy.

My BFF Jennifer (a science teacher) always says we made poor choices in life--choices that didn't involve financial freedom.  Choices that instead involved long hours, lots of grading and no perks (unless, of course, you count the occasional chocolate candy bar thrown into our mailboxes). 

Yep, it's all about choices. So tomorrow I'll get up, hop in my trusty blue mini-van, swing through Starbucks for an espresso jump-start and go to school.

Who wants to buy a beach house in Nicaragua any way? Am I the only one who remembers Contras, Sandinistas and rebels? And what about all those drug wars going on in Mexico?

Frankly, I don't think I need that kind of excitement. I have a feeling I'll have more than I can handle come Monday.

Snowballs, Snow Storms & Snow Awards

[The scene outside my front door on Thursday, February 18.]

On Thursday, I called my BFF who lives in a necklace (Annapolis), to tell her that we got out of school early, and I almost didn’t make it home because some ninnyhammer was blocking the road.

She wasn’t very sympathetic. 

It probably had to do with the 55 to 80 inches of the white fluffy stuff that’s fallen over that way.  She’s been out of school for a week now and just a tad bit grumpy.

By Friday morning, the 1 to 3 inches of snow predicted for the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex mushroomed into an official 12.5 inches. Of course, all the weather forecasters had excuses as to why they missed the “Snowstorm of the Century.”

Those same weather forecaster  talking heads were blah-blah-blahing that there wasn’t going to be much accumulation on the roadways. They were chatting about that at the same millisecond that I, along with my three other hall monitoring buddies, were watching the kiddos out in the parking lot lobbing snowballs while some poor maintenance worker unsuccessfully attempted to shovel away snow with a shovel that more aptly belonged in the Ag barn.

You would think those weather forecasters talking heads ninnyhammers at least would have popped outside every once in awhile to take a gander at the sky. 

So for that, they deserve the Ninnyhammer-I-Can’t-Forecast-My-Way-Out-Of-A-Paper-Bag-Snow-of-the-Century Award.

Now, back to our little snowball fight… Ours never escalated into an all out melee like over at Skyline High School in Dallas. You can read about it here and watch the free-for-all caught on video by WFAA reporter Brett Shipp here.

No siree, missy, none of that at my school.

Of course, our administrators stayed on top of things. When rumors started flurrying about a planned schoolwide snowball fight, we just didn’t let the kiddos walk outside unless they had to get to the Ag building or the field house. 

It’s amazing what a little common sense will do, and for that, let’s give my principal the Common-Sense-I-Can-Probably-Forecast-Better-Than-Those-Ninnyhammer-Weathermen-Snow King of the Century Award.

And while we're talking about amazing things, one of the freshman principals deserves a very special Neither-Rain-Snow-Nor-Stiletto-Heels-Wearing-Snow Queen of the Century Award for running speedy-quick through the snowy, slushy parking lot in stiletto boots to nab a perpetrator for 

1. failing to obey the edict to quit lobbying snowballs and 
2. for sagging.

Of course, it probably helped that the kid’s pants were falling down as our Stiletto Heeled Assistant Principal grabbed him. All that raucous  gave me and my hall buddy Rhonda a chance to chant, “Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, lookin’ like a fool with your pants on the ground…”

Geewillikers, I love this job.

Invisible Snow, School Cancellations & Yearbook Page Proofs

I hate snow days.

We had one on Thursday.

It was very, very, very cold that day. My yard was frosty. The cat's water bowl on the front porch was frozen. And, all the dog's noses were cold.

But snow? Not a flake in sight.

Ice? Well, just a tad here and there.

Since my alarm clock goes off at the twisted hour of 5 a.m., I had already stumbled out of bed, eaten breakfast and dressed  for work by the time I got the telephone notification that school was delayed for two hours. Jeez Louise, I had even dried my hair and slapped on some make up.

No problem. I just fired up my computer and started working on stuff.

Then, at 8:32 a.m., school was canceled. My district was one of the few in our area to shut down. The decision for us apparently had much to do with the dangers of driving school buses on rural roads. Still, I always hate to give up a balmy spring day to make up for a nasty, cold day—especially when I'm already dressed and ready to go. Hails bails, my lunch was even made.

I hated it even more when  I realized I had left all those nasty, unfinished yearbook page proofs on my desk.