Hillbilly Mom Broke Her G-String!

What? You didn't know that Hillbilly Mom had a G-string? I don't
like to brag about my personal business. Yes. I had a g-string. I
broke it last night, trying to tune my guitar. The guitar that I don't
know how to play. But I can tune it, by cracky! Tune it like a
m)(#@$)(&%*r! That is, the last time I tuned it, a couple years
back. The same strings have been on it for 12 years now. Do you
think that's too long?

I asked my Hillbilly Mama to call the local music store today while
I was at school and see about a g-string. There was an old man
working, and he started to laugh when she said, "My daughter broke
her g-string, and wants to know if you can fix it." I had to explain
to her another use for the term 'g-string'. Turns out the old man was
there alone, but said that tomorrow another guy can fix my g-string.
It will cost $2 for the g-string, or $13 to install 6 brand new strings
on it. AND, they will tune it for me. Hmpf! Like I don't know what
I'm doing.

In other news, I arrived at school this lovely Friday the 13th, wrote
FRIDAY THE 13TH on my white board in black and red, and then
picked up the 4 posters who had lost their grip on reality overnight.
It's a little game we like to play, called Humidity: too much, or too
little? I whacked them back onto the wall with my whacker. That's
a wooden yardstick that I keep on top of the little ledge where my
white board hooks onto the wall.

By 2nd hour, I had learned that it's MY fault that a kid does not pay
attention in Math, and has gotten low scores for the past week. I told
him he needed to stop wasting time talking, and pay more attention to
the explanations, and what he's putting on his paper. To which he
replied, "Well, it's YOUR fault. You didn't move me." Ohhh...that led
to a little discourse on how we are all responsible for our own actions,
that we are not in kindergarten any more, and that we get out of life
what we put into it. I think they all enjoyed that bit of insight. Ninth
graders can be such a good captive audience.

Oh, and I also learned that a boy I told to turn to face the front, since he's
always talking to the boy behind him, wasn't actually talking. That's what
HE said. So I asked why he could possibly be turned around all the time,
like at that very instance, for example, while Mrs. Hillbilly Mom was at the
board explaining yesterday's problems. The expanding exponentials
problems that the highest score in the class was 50%, and the lowest was
1%. Surely he wasn't turned around just looking all that time? Guess what?
He turned to face the front! You don't mess with Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, boys
and girls. Once the lying begins, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom digs deep into her bag
of dirty tricks. Though you may think that you can get away with lying, Mrs.
Hillbilly Mom can stretch the boundaries of what she can legally do without
being fired by poking at your tender self-esteem with a needle-sharp
fragment of sarcasm. Oh, she won't come right out and accuse you of
doing such a thing...but she will question your actions. It sounds kind of
cruel, until you consider that any of them could take a swing at me--oh, I'm
sorry, THEY CAN HIT ME--and be right back in my class a couple of
weeks later. OK, so that only happened once, but still...it doesn't seem to
be a fair trade-off.

Karma reared her mullet-coiffed head today as I headed out to my large
SUV for my jaunt to the other building. Just yesterday, I questioned what I
would do in an emergency. As I was locking my door, a seried of buzzers
went off. The double doors lost their magnetic grip and slammed closed.
Lights flashed. The next-door teacher was herding kids down the hall and
out of the building. A third of the kids were at lunch. My class had just gone
to the lunchroom. I went on out the doors. I told the kids gathered in the
parking lot to move away from the building. They said, "But Mrs. Hall-Herder
just told us to stand HERE! OK. I stood with them. "I'll have you know," I
told them, "that I am supposed to be at the other building right now. But I
don't think it's right to make like a rat and leave this sinking ship.And it's
ONLY a coincidence that the alarm went off just as I was running out of
the building. I had nothing to do with it." My old lunch buddy, Mr. G, came
over. "You can go on to the other building. We have enough people to
watch them." Another teacher also told me, "There's no reason for you to
stay. You don't have any kids right now. And it's NOT a drill."
WHAAAAAT? We assumed it was a fire drill. The one building had said
we'd have surprise at odd times. But NOOOO! Not here. I left, but I keep
thinking I will be in trouble for it. We'll see on Monday. I had planned to
stay a few minutes until the 'all clear' for the drill. I don't know how long it
went on. Or what it was all about. Mabel? Clue me.

That's about it for tonight. It's all the excitement fit to print.