Today's My Birthday

Jeepers creepers! Today's my birthday and I'm not exactly sure how I managed to get this old.


One day the calendar days flipped over in slow-mo, and now it's like gale force winds have taken up permanent residence whipping the days past at super-sonic speed.  I have–in many, many ways–become the eye of the hurricane. And trust me, it's not a pretty sight.


One day I'm standing in line for my first driver's license, getting married and celebrating my babies' birthdays, and now a nano second later, I'm thinking about retirement. How in the heck did that happen?


But most of all, I want to know who the heck is that old, tired stranger looking back at me in the mirror? My students always look surprised when I tell them how old I am. I'm not sure if they are surprised because I look younger than my 54 years or if I have that you-look-older-than-dirt appearance. I guess I can ponder that while I'm thinking about that whole "who's that staring back at me in the mirror" thing.


In the meantime, let's go through… 

Richie's Top Reasons 

It Sucks To Be Me On My Birthday 

#5…Unlike my much younger years, any cake I eat (and, oh how I plan to eat the tasty Barefoot Contessa's Carrot Cake my husband made for me) will stay with me and my hips for at least the next 500 years.


#4…Tomorrow is a teacher professional development day, and we all know how I feel about those kind of days.


#3…The day after teacher in-service day is state mandated TAKS testing day for English Language Arts.  (I feel the same about those days as I do those teacher inservice days.)


#2…I am drowning in yearbook disasters. Things (and you know how much I hate those darn tootin' things)…Things like discovering pages that haven't been started, pictures that haven't been shot and names that were alphabetized by first names, not last. These are the things that try men's souls and make one dream of retirement.


And the #1 reason It Sucks To Be Me On My Birthday? …Drum roll pah-leese!…


#1…I am working on yearbook pages on my birthday with only Howard the Shelter Cat to help me. And, as you can see by the photographs, Howard (bless his heart) is about as much help as the… Well, you fill in the blank.

Tornadoes, Yearbooks & Firestorms

[The tornado photograph was taken by one of the art teachers from her window. My rooms are located next to the art room.]

Thankfully I didn't have to whip out the flying monkeys during yearbook distribution week. I guess the tornado counted as enough excitement.

Yep, we're talking tornado here… as in the Wizard of Oz except minus the ruby red slippers, some singing munchkins and the witch. Oh, wait, I think I've got that witch part covered.

The day before the big Yearbook Distribution extravaganza and right after we had rechecked and resorted all 1,300 yearbooks, one of the assistant principals announced rather calmly to take cover and for teachers to sweep kids who were out in the parking lot and halls to safety.

Since my classroom is located next to the parking lot, I went outside to rustle up the kids who were still walking to class since there were about two minutes left in the passing period.

Yep, I waltz right out into the parking lot, and there it was. Jeez Louise, Mr. Tornado was right there. For a brief moment, I stood paralyzed. Not from the fear of Mr. Tornado. No siree, Missy.

Paralyzed because all I could think about were those 1,300 yearbooks in my room, all neatly sorted by fifth period classes and ready for distribution.

The thought of all those yearbooks being sucked into oblivion, having to reprint them all and re-sort them all was scarier than actually seeing the darn twister. 

It took me about a brief second to realize there was nothing to do, but rustle up the kiddos and sprint back into the building for cover.

I did stop by my room, though, and, for a brief moment, considered waiting out the storm with the yearbooks in the publications room instead of moving into the interior designated room of my hall monitoring buddy.

Instead, some common sense prevailed and I grabbed my keys and went to the designated shelter room.

I figured if the tornado hit but left my trusty blue mini-van, I would hop in and take off. Take off as in hit the road jack and don't come back no more, no more, no more.

Thankfully, the tornado moved on missing the high school and spending most of its energy above the ground. 

My little tornado incident paled in comparison to the stuff going on elsewhere. I'm pretty sure the folks over at Massaponax High School in Virginia would much rather have come face-to-face with Mr. Tornado than be involved in the yearbook storm over there.

According to news reports, the kiddos printed "confessions" and scattered quotes with sexual innuendoes throughout their yearbook. Jeepers creepers. We're talking about stuff like…

• "I have sex with people just to feel wanted."
• "I worry all the time my ex-boyfriend will use the naked picture I sent him to ruin my life."
• "I had an abortion and my mom doesn't know."
• "I once did so much pot that I woke up high."
• "I'm pregnant with my best friend's boyfriend's kid."

Stuff like that just makes me wonder what part of that equation ever sounded like a good idea? Secrets, teens, sex, abortions, drugs… does anything good EVER come out of that mix? 

Yep, Mr. Tornado and even the flying monkeys look  pretty good compared to that.

I do want a pair of ruby red slippers, though. You know, just in case.


[A newsier version of this post was  first published as Yearbook Content Creates Controversy on Technorati.]

Yearbook Panic, Brown Bags & Underwear

I spent most of the weekend trying not to hyperventilate and trying, rather unsuccessfully, to ignore my annual YBP–as in YearBookPanic.

Forget the Y2K hullabaloo. Never mind the stock market meltdown. And don’t you even worry your pretty head about the Swine Flu Pandemic Panic.

YBP eclipses everything. Nothing–and I do mean nothing–quite sends chills up and down your spine like yearbook delivery time. (I’ve written about it before. Let’s all hope we can go another year yelling, “Not it! Not it! Not it!)

Apparently my sick, twisted friends over at my yearbook reps office didn’t think I was quite jittery and jumpy enough. No siree, Missy. They thought it would be hilarious to send me that CNN link about the girl from Florida who went to school sans underwear, sat in the front row for her club group photograph and now appears to have pulled a Paris Hilton-Britney Spears-Lindsay Lohan shot for all eternity in the 2009 Sickles High School Yearbook (minus, of course, any good fame or fortune).




Mom now wants the school to quit handing out the yearbooks, confiscate the ones already passed out and reprint the entire book minus the offending photograph.

Jeepers Creepers. Someone hand me a brown paper bag. So you can see why I can’t wait until the 1,300 copies of our 2009 yearbook appear at my schoolhouse door. I’m sure there’s a mistake or two somewhere in those 304 pages despite ordering everything checked and rechecked. We do name checks. We do hand gesture checks. We do fact checks. We check, recheck and check again.

But an underwear check? Goodness gracious.

YB Disasters, Smackdown Meltdown & Goat Heads

I tried to tell my yearbook staff that it’s just never a good sign when your adviser has to make a folder that says, “YB Disasters & Other Emergencies.” (BTW, that YB stands for Yearbook for those of you not in the biz.)

About half of the YB staffers looked at me with those deer-in-the-headlight-kind-of-eyes. The other half, well, they just pretended to ignore me. (OK OK OK, so perhaps they weren’t pretending.) Nonetheless, now I have a folder with huge blue letters that says “YB Disasters & Other Emergencies,” and no amount of Emergency Chocolate is going to make me feel any better about that. (I know because my yearbook editor and I ate an entire chocolate bar that was even emblazoned with the words EMERGENCY CHOCOLATE.)

I’m not very happy about that either. That as in the fact that the tasty chocolate bar is now gone, and that as in the fact that the disasters remain. Now I won’t bore you with all the details because, after all, my parents taught me if you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all. But let’s just say the root of my angst starts with a photography company. And let’s just say that right about now, all across this great land of ours, I can hear advisers--the short, the fat, the tall--all shouting, “Amen, sister!”

Despite my new not-so-nifty folder, the absence of my cute little Emergency Chocolate Bar and an overwhelming urge to join the WWE to smackdown a few somebodies, three rather amusing things did happen this week. Let’s call them…

Richie’s 3 Amusing Incidents
That Stopped Her Smackdown Meltdown

Incident #1…While all the haranguing was going on with the yearbook staff, one of the new tech guys was in the room busily uploading some new software and trying to make himself invisible. I can’t remember exactly what transpired, but it was typical deadline stuff--bantering back and forth, fingerpointing and blah blah blah I’m-more-stressed-than-you blah blah blah you-stress-me-out blah blah blah.

That’s when the new tech guy piped in, “I’m getting stressed just standing here…”

We all stopped quicker than an InDesign program crashing, just looked at him and laughed.

Obviously, he never experienced a newspaper or yearbook deadline.


Incident #2…I was duly performing my hall duty between classes with my hall monitoring compadres when one of my students ran up to us and asked, “Can I go the restroom?”

“Go ahead,” I answered.

“What did she say?” he asked my hall monitoring compadre.

“Hey, she didn’t call you a Goat Head! She said, ‘Go Ahead,’” my compadre answered.


Incident #3…I’ve decided to try a bit of yoga, so I asked Mikey the extraordinaire to please look in the library for some yoga DVDs for me. The next day, Mikey duly reported his findings…

“Ahhhhhh, Ms. Richtsmeier…” he stammered, “I was, ah, looking for those, you know, yoga DVDs…”

“Yeah,” I said, “did you find any?”

“Well, we have a problem… one has been out a while and is probably lost…” he said, sounding just a tad bit uncomfortable.

“Problem? As in what?” I asked.

“Well, the only other one, was… Well, it was called, ‘Big Yoga,’ and I went to look at it, and it said it was for people who were afraid to try yoga because of their size and age… and I, well, I didn’t want you to think that I…that we… think you’re old… or fat… or nothin’…because it was a yoga DVD for old, fat women…really we don’t think you’re fat…so I…ah…didn’t get it because, you know, you’re not old… or fat… or…”

Great, I thought.

I just ate a gajillion calorie chocolate bar.

I turn 52 this month.

Maybe I should goat head go ahead and get that Big Yoga DVD after all.