Hillbilly Mansion Two

Preventing Extinction

2011-07-28T21:14:00.002-05:00

This is the blog where I stretched my writing wings like a pupa crawling out of a chrysalis and maturing into a butterfly. I'm a science teacher, you know. Just an update so this blog does not become extinct.

Sour Grape?

2007-05-16T21:26:00.000-05:00

Let's get this pity party rolling. Why do I complain all the time? It's my nature. I cannot change my spots, as the leopard said while devouring the rabbit that he so tenderly carried across the river in his mouth.

How dare we teachers complain about our jobs! We knew what we were getting into when we got into it. NO. An old dog such as myself never knew how quickly the handbasket days would overtake us. When I started, we did not serve breakfast and dinner to the kids. That was a little joke my cronies and I had: "Heh, heh. Before you know it, they'll expect us to feed them breakfast!" Yeah. What a difference a few years makes.

What makes teaching stressful? Take a gander at these. I'll try to link a couple of specific stories.

We don't dare have a beverage in the classroom, though we are talking every hour, and unable to stroll down the hall to the drinking fountain. If a beverage is in the classroom, it is fair game for a prank, or revenge.

We don't know if to follow the rules as instructed, or break them as need be. If a student asks to use the bathroom, do you grant permission? Every time? Pick and choose who gets the privilege? Oh, oh. FAVORITISM! What if the student really has to go, and you say 'No' ? Perhaps that student is bluffing, and will hold it until the bell. Perhaps that student is ornery, and takes out a soda bottle and urinates in your classroom. And THEN tells the administration that you TOLD him to do it. What then? Oh, and WE can't leave the classroom to go to the bathroom. Even between classes, because we must stand in the hall for supervision. Better learn to hold it until your plan time or your lunch time, whichever comes first. And don't count on waiting until after school, because you never know when something will come up, and you will be needed to supervise students.

We don't dare leave on our cell phones. In fact, we're not even supposed to use our cell phones at school, even though we are adults. And we don't dare leave them in plain sight. They are fair game, you know. The students may have at it. There's no such thing as personal property in a classroom, silly! If it's in sight, the student may grab it. Heaven forbid you've stashed some topless photos on your phone. That's fair game, too. The students can put those photos into cyberspace, by cracky! It's the American way.

Imagine doing your job with 30 people watching your every move. Underwear up your butt? You'd better get used to it. Even if you step out into the hall to rassle it out of your buttcrack, you'll be on camera for all those in the office to see.

You must not question a student's answer. They might say you are ridiculing them. If Johnny says the sky is green, you dare not respond with, "Class...does anyone else think the sky is green?" Because Johnny might jump up and yell, "Are you calling me stupid? My dad will be up here and he'll get you fired!"

You cannot touch the students. Not even an itty-bitty kindergartener with a hand on his shoulder if he's crying. You most certainly cannot hug him. Nor can you tap a high-schooler on the shoulder to get his attention. Hands off, in case something is misunderstood.

You must prepare your lessons a week ahead, but be ready to change them if a sudden assembly is called.

A student may swear at you, or write X-rated notes, or scribble profanity on the desk or bathroom wall, but you must not ever, ever show a reward movie at the end of the year that is rated anything more than PG.

If students are fighting each other, you are expected to physically restrain them. Touching is allowed for putting yourself between two or more brawny lads slugging it out. But if a student strikes you, you must not defend yourself or show anger.

Parents and students are entitled to call you at home. You must be careful in telling them that they may schedule an appointment with you during your plan time at school, because they might accuse you of being rude and refusing to talk to them.

You are a small-town celebrity. If students or parents see you in a store or restaurant, they will come up to you to chat or complain. You are not really allowed to have a personal life. You must be on your pedestal at all times. It is not fitting for you to relax in a local bar. Even though you are 21, and on your own time. That's a bad example for the kids. And don't dare to buy alcohol in a convenience store or The Devil's Playground, either, because that means you are an alcoholic.

There is a network of spies that will get on the phone tree and tell others what you bought at the store, the fast-food restaurant, what movies you rented, why you were at the doctor's office, what type of prescriptions you picked up, how many beers you drank at the county fair, and how many cigarettes you smoke in your car.

Teaching is not a cloak that you shed at 3:00 p.m. and don the next morning at 8:00 a.m. That cloak is stitched to your skin. It can not be removed, except for bathing in a windowless room. Sometimes, the cloak twists and twists until it chokes.

You can be fired for no reason at all if you are not tenured. Which usually means 5 years of teaching in that district. Say a new coach is hired, and his wife just happens to teach what you teach. Better say, "Buh bye" and get your royal wave ready. I've seen that happen twice in other districts where I've taught.

Oh, and let's not forget that sometimes, your job hinges on what adolescents write down on a test given over three days in the springtime. Tests that must not be counted as a grade for the students. Yeah. Those motivated little boogers are sure to do their very best, don't you think?

Now I have typed my fingers to the bone. I'm not really finished, but I will end it on that note. The sour note of standardized, ungraded tests telling how well I do my job.

Not ANOTHER Child Left Behind!

2007-05-15T19:16:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom has a bee in her bonnet. Her bowels are in an uproar. Her panties are in a wad. She's having a cow. She has a bug up her butt. Her cage has been rattled.

Today was duty day. Which means...one child left behind. Oh, and those of you who think we have it so easy, what with our cushy hours, and our summer vacations...when was the last time YOU had to stay at work after closing time, for free, not knowing when you would get to leave? When I used to coach, I had to wait from 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. one night for a kid to get a ride. That means the kid called home, talked to the parent, and the parent must have finished watching a TV show or something, because he didn't show up for another hour. Teachers are not allowed to abandon kids. Only the parents can do that.

People, take care of your own darn kids! The public schools are the cheapest daycare around. Imagine if you had to pay $5 per minute for being late to pick up your little darling. Hey! It happens. At another school, some teachers got up and walked out of faculty meetings at the stroke of 5:00, because they could not afford the late fee at the town's only daycare center. I'm not griping about them. It is a bit much to have meetings that last past 5:00 p.m. And they did not leave their kids with people who wondered if anybody would EVER pick them up.

But let's get back to that bee. We have duty teams. No one on the team is allowed to leave until the last student is gone. So we had 3 teachers waiting with one student. The student claimed that she was supposed to be picked up. The buses were long gone. We had no administrator, no counselor. Just us and the secretary. The kid called home. The kid called the cell phone. The kid called Grandma. The kid stated that younger siblings were picked up at another building, but that she was left. Upon further questioning, such as, "Do you know their work number?", the kid huffed, "They don't work!" Then she went on to say, "The last time this happened, they called the police. They didn't even check with the school to see where I was." Oh, and when asked where she lived, she named a neighboring town, which, DUH, is not our district. Another colleague hung around with us, and offered to drive the kid home. BUT...you can't do that without permission. One of the duty team called around. The secretary called around. We clarified the policy. You can't take a student home and leave the student if nobody else is home. Even if they ride the bus home and stay alone every day. Or ride the bus to the end of the route and then walk home to the empty house.

Something is fishy here. We were not mad at the kid. The kid can't drive. The kid does what the parents say. Sometimes, you question whether a kid this age has just decided not to ride the bus that day. But how can parents pick up some of the kids, and leave another? We only had to wait for an hour today. Other years, I've had to wait from 2:56 to 5:10. Alone. That was a kid who got kicked off the bus, and his parents worked. So I got punished. After the fact, I was told, "In a case like that, bring the kid down to the office, and an administrator will wait." That's a good plan. Unless the administrator is absent that day.

So...after more questioning about who might be able to pick up the kid, and where they might be besides home, and calling information for a phone number of a business in still another town...a relative came and picked up the kid. And started yelling out the window that they did NOT say they were picking the kid up.

No wonder kids get snatched off the street every day. The thing that irks me is: "The last time this happened..." It was not a simple miscommunication. It is a recurring problem. Some people need a good hotlining. But I'm not opening that can of worms.

I really shouldn't complain. This is part of my job. This, and other duties as needed. I should be glad I am there to keep your children safe. Because it's my job. My neverending job.

The school year is almost over, you know.

Even Karma Steven

2007-05-14T18:13:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's reign as Even Steven continues. This morning, I received 6 chairs from the colleague who wanted me to deliver a chair to Basementia. She also included 6 desks. I'm rakin' it in, now that I'm going to be a real teacher again. At Basementia this afternoon, I gave away all my Communication Arts posters and reproducible books. I receiveth, and I giveth away, by cracky!

I need half a tank of gas. That is 20 gallons for my behemoth. I notice that gas prices have gone up again. I know, who woulda thunk that would happen, huh? On the way home, I told the #1 son, my permanent shotgun rider, "I need some gas before the tank gets too low, but I hate to pay $3.00 a gallon. I swear it went up since we passed this morning." When the boy picked up the mail at the end of the gravel road, he read the envelopes, "...Your Doctor's Office..." Hmm...they never send me anything. My mom called them today to schedule a blood-drawing in anticipation of my appointment next Monday. I wondered if that had anything to do with it. Which was stupid, of course, because everyone knows a doctor's office doesn't do anything that quickly. After I pulled into the garage, and while #1 was taunting the dogs, and #2 was unlocking the Mansion, I opened it, still sitting in the car. Sweet Gummi Mary!!! It was a refund check for $60 !!! I suppose I will stop for gas tomorrow.

The next instance is not so much an illustration of Even-Steven-ness, as it is of Karma Lite. Last week, the entire faculty was supposed to talk to this guy about something. OK, maybe I can be a little more specific. The guy was a rep who had something to do with that ducky AFLAC thingy. I know this, because there was an announcement later that day that included the secretary squawking the AFLAC acronym accidentally, which caused my class to quack with glee. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Which is quite easy, actually, seeing as how I'm so slow.

I knew we were all supposed to sign away our right to duckfeed, or some such thing. Every year, we have to sign a form, even if we don't partake of the ducky goodness. I've tried before to do it at the first building, when I had time to burn over there. And the reps there would look down their noses at me, shuffle some papers, and declare, "You are supposed to do it at the OTHER building." Well, excuuuse me. So sorry to take time away from your eating of the donuts and reading of the Wall Street Journal. This time, I knew I would have to do this at Basementia, and that the email memo had told us to 'make sure you see the AFLAC rep sometime this afternoon'. I had it covered. I hiked up from Lower Basementia on the last 15 minutes of my plan time, around 12:50. There sat Mr. Ducky, with a colleague across from him, writing on a form. There were two other types of colleagues sitting at a table that made an 'L' with the Duckmeister. I did not know if they sat here every day at this time, or if there were waiting in line. I walked over by Mr. Ducky, and asked, "What do I need to do?" By which I meant, did I need to sit down after the other two, and wait my turn, or would he slide my form over for me to review, thus killing two ducks with one stone. Because that's how they usually do it, people. All the other times before. There is no privacy among teaching comrades. We are all up in each other's business day after tedious day.

Nobody said a word. I can't blame the one reviewing her form. I wasn't exactly addressing her. But the Duckmeister or the Sitters could have spoken up. Even a "Wait your turn, b*tch, we were first!" would have sufficed. But noooo! I was a nonentity. So I took myself back to Lower Basementia, figuring I would go 7th hour, during my small class, and I would just take them along with me on an impromptu field trip, to get a drink and wait in the hall for me. It's not like we're talking a platoon here. I have two students left in that class. That way, nobody would be inconvenienced by having to watch my class while I AFLACed. I also knew that Mr. Ducky was supposed to be there until 3:00, and by cracky, to 3:00 he would be! I had tried to do him a favor. But he wasn't accepting favors, apparently. At 1:15, there came an announcement. "Any teacher who has not met with the AFLAC rep should do so now." I called the office on the panic button intercom thingy. "I've just started class. Is it OK if I go during 7th hour? I can take my class along, and nobody will have to cover for me." Which was just the kind of thing they like to hear, so big brownie point for me!

Heh, heh. I went upstairs around 2:20. The Duckmeister said, "Oh, you're my last one." Heh, heh. I'm sure he recognized me from 12:50. To add insult to injury, I didn't want anything he was selling. He had ruded himself into an hour wait, what with ignoring me earlier.

Ain't that gal Karma a b*tch?

The Impending Vacation

2007-05-13T17:42:00.000-05:00

Eight days left. I told you the school year was almost over...way back in September. I have a knack for these things. I am somewhat psychic, you know.

Now I have to plan a vacation. A real vacation, not an overnight trip to the casino, which we WILL be taking, by cracky, because it's my Mother's Day present, and because I have two free nights there. We're only going for one night, as far as I know, unless my aunt can swing an overnight trip with me during the summer. For the REAL vacation, we're leaning toward the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas. Heh, heh. And you thought it wasn't possible for me to become hillbillier.

Yep, a diggin' we will go in a 37-acre field of diamond-bearing soil, plowed periodically when weather allows. OK. I got that off their official website. But that gives you an idea of the fun we'll be having. Dirt-diggin', by cracky! Can't beat that with a stick, so don't even try. Get that stick away from me, you psycho!

I imagine we will also stop in Branson. It is on the way, you know. I don't really want to go to Silver Dollar City, what with only one of us enjoying the rides, and it costing several pretty pennies. But the go-kart tracks are like crack for hillbillies, and the little guy likes miniature golf, and I enjoy the Dixie Stampede...so we'll see what develops. Thank the Gummi Mary, I have been saving money out of the new, despised cash budget each week to provide for such a moneysucker. I'm ready to get this vacation over with, so I can get down to the real business of the summer: doing absolutely nothing.

Yes, I have such lofty dreams. I have put in an Amazon order that is due to ship May 21. We get out of school on the 23rd, but I will still have to attend graduation on the 25th. My books and movies should make a timely arrival for the Summer of DoNothing. I shall set the Poolio hours, the housekeeping hours, the meal hours...and the rest will be MY TIME. I haven't broken the news to the boys yet. They are not so fond of schedules. They plan to shoot off rockets, and teach themselves guitar.

HH will be working. And bitter.

Poolio Dog Gift Manure

2007-05-12T19:49:00.000-05:00

The boys just went swimming in the buttwater soup. Poolio is open for business! They declared it cold, and hard to see through, but that is the nature of buttwater soup.

Two of the dogs went to the vet today. Tank got his booster shot, and Grizzly had a yeast infection of his right ear, which had caused it to swell up into a big lumpy thingy, which was probably due to the medicine they gave him a couple weeks ago for the worms he didn't have, but that the third dog, Ann, had. Oh, and this visit was $277.09. Better to be a vet than a doctor, methinks. Not many people sue the vet for malpractice. They offered to surgically remedy Grizzly's ear problem, for $230. No, I think HH would rather lop it off with a hatchet and cauterize the stump with a hot glue gun. It's not that we don't like our pets. We have them sterilized, you know, and get them shots, and treat them for infections...but ain't nobody doin' cosmetic surgery on 'em. There's plenty more dogs at the pound.

I will not be getting any cards or gifts for Mother's Day. I have requested a gambling trip, so that will happen when it happens. It is what it is. I don't need any figurines to sit around gathering dust. I don't need any cards with hastily-scribbled names. I figure my boys love me. They haven't tried to kill me in my sleep.

HH volunteered to send #1 son down to the neighbor's house with a pitchfork. I was not sure where this little scheme was headed, since HH spouts out some fairly outlandish plots without blinking an eye. Like the time he was going to mine copper in our back yard. Or sell the rocks and soil off our third 10 acres. This time, he said it was to gather some horse manure. First of all, I don't think we own a pitchfork, unless it is one of HH's Devil accessories. Secondly, I'm not sure the neighbors would just give away horse manure, once they found out we wanted some, because then they could get the idea to sell it instead of give it away. You know, like "Nobody will buy the horse if they can get the poop for free" or something. Thirdly, I don't remember ever, ever asking for horse manure. Then HH said that we could till it into the ground and plant a garden. Yeah. That would last about 5 minutes, with the deer and rabbits and birds eating their fill, and the dogs digging it up, and the cats taking a crap there whenever they pleased. I don't think so.

I did get a Mother's Day dinner of all-you-can-eat catfish tonight, and a trip to The Devil's Playground. I hope that catfish wasn't fed the poison Chinese pet food. The Devil's Playground excursion was really so HH could buy two bags of dogfood, a bag of catfood, and a 4-wheeler battery. That's because he didn't spend enough money at the vet, and on Poolio chemicals.

It's kind of expensive to live this high on the hog.

Gone Packin'

2007-05-11T18:11:00.000-05:00

And...we're back. Oh, I wasn't gone. New Blogger was gone. Magnificent New Blogger, which everybody was strong-armed into switching to, and promised that New Blogger would not be unavailable. I wish New Alex was gone. You know, that creepy Son of Sam on ER. Oh, that's right. New Alex IS gone. Sam banished him to a residential home for burning up the old man upstairs after dropping a match into a glass of spilled wine. Darn those young'uns, always spilling the wine! And burning up old men. I wish Sam had sent him to treatment at a facility for Kids With A Stick Up The A$$ Who Can't Act Themselves Out Of A Wet Paper Bag. That Sam! She could have just sent him to live with his dad, except that Dad was in prison quite a while, and though the other inmates might have welcomed Wooden New Alex with OH SO OPEN arms, the Department of Corrections probably frowns on that sort of thing, what with the place already being overcrowded, although I'm sure somebody would have offered to share a bunk with young Wooden New Alex. Oh, and even after Dad got out of jail, that little plan would not have worked because, well, Sam SHOT her Wooden Boy Daddy, and killed him dead, dead, dead. And I watched.

I will soon be gone. Gone from Basementia. Next year I have a new assignment, which is really my old assignment, from when I first started working at this place. But that is neither here nor there tonight, because it is only used as emphasis for what I am going to complain about next. Thank the Gummi Mary that people piss me off. I never run out of material.

Yesterday, I was a bit peeved. Seems two people asked me to cart some stuff over to Basementia. I have always been used as a mule between buildings. That doesn't mean I like it. I do it because it is the polite thing to do when people shove paperwork in your face and 'ask', "Canyoutakethistotheotherbuildingformethanks" and run out the door faster than doorstops disappear in not-Basementia. It wasn't such a problem when it was only paper, and I had my plan time to travel. The worst part of it was remembering to take it out of my bag and deliver it to the right person. Sometimes I had to take lunch money, before we went to the card system. Hey! I know these teacher kids. I would not want my own child to go without lunch, so I took them the money.

Every now and then, someone would try to take advantage. "Take this work to ISS. I didn't have time to get it in yesterday. And take this book, he doesn't have a book, he will need a book." That's where I had to draw the line. I would take a book ONE time. That was it. I have my own stuff to carry. I am not the one being punished. Take a zero, kid, or write reports out of the encyclopedia. I am not here to make your days in ISS easier. Why must teachers bend over backwards to get all the supplies to kids who broke the rules?

Earlier this week, someone sent down a bag of books. I didn't know it was books, but it was heavy enough to be books or a laptop. It had a note saying, 'My Supervisor wants you to take this bag to Teacher 2 at the other building.' Hmm...I sent my son to ask Supervisor if that was true. Yes. So I did it. As a favor to Supervisor. Yesterday, Teacher 2 waltzed past me while I was doing duty in the hallway, deposited the black bag in my room, and said, "You'resupposedtotakethisbacknow." Knowing how hefty it was, and still with all my own stuff to carry, and only 4 minutes to get from this doorway, drive across town, find a parking spot, and get to my classroom in Lower Basementia, I sent a note to Teacher 2 after the dust had cleared from the speedy exit. 'Are the books needed right now? We have that district-wide meeting here after school, and they can be picked up then.' Nope, I was told. "Supervisor needs those books today to score a test." So I carted them over. But I was running late, surprise, surprise, and left them in the car until I could send my personal pack mule, #1 son, to bring them in. Ahem. After some questioning, I discovered that Supervisor was not even at school, but at a meeting from 8:00 to 4:00. Teacher 2 had better not pee on my leg again any time soon.

Oh, and the second thing I was supposed to deliver at the same time was a set of completed tests. I can't blame the receiver on this one, and they were not heavy, but it was just something extra to deal with in the midst of driving, parking, remembering which lesson I would be teaching for this class, the fourth of my six preps, and getting the tests sent upstairs. The little messenger came back and said, "Well, I left them with the sub." DUH! I rushed those things over for a teacher who was not even there. Though it was not her fault that her presence was requested elsewhere at the last minute. That's just the way things go in Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's life. Try to do people favors, and it bites her in her ample butt. So Mrs. Hillbilly Mom declared, "I am DONE with it! I am not hauling anything else back and forth for these people. Seven years of it is more than enough. I have 9 days left of this job, and I am not carting things across town any more!"

I told a couple of cronies, and figured that word would get around. This morning, a not-Basementia teacher stopped by my room between classes. She said, "Can you take a chair to the other building for me?" I laughed out loud. Now that was a good one! A chair! Bwahaha! She must have heard of my chagrin at the Pony Express sign that had apparently been taped to my back for the last seven years. What a good joke. "Of course I'll take a chair to the other building for you! Ha, ha! I'll strap it on my back!"

She looked at me with her head tilted, like Tank the Beagle looks at #1 son when he farts. And then I understood. SHE ACTUALLY EXPECTED ME TO CARRY A FREAKIN' CHAIR TO THE OTHER BUILDING!!! And I had said that I would do it! How do I get myself into these situations? It was such a perfect Karma Moment that I was more amused than pissed off. So I took the chair to Basementia. But I made some adjustments to my technique. I did not carry the chair. One of her students carried it to my LSUV. It was for her son for field day. When #1 son went out with the keys to bring in Dead Lappy for the tech guy to take a look at (he ROCKS!), I sent Sonny with him to carry in his own chair.

It was the least I could do.

The Unusual Suspects

2007-05-10T20:07:00.000-05:00

When we last left Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, she was trying to adjust to her recent adoptees, Pete and Repete. Those guys held the door quite nicely for Mrs. HM, even though it took both of them to do the job of one. Mrs. HM was mulling over the evidence, on her eternal quest for justice. The very next morning, there was a break in the case.

First cat out of the bag, Mabel sang a tune of discovery. That cat ran up and down the hall, to the tune of multiple missing doorstops warbling, "Take, take me home...cause I don't remember..." Seems there had been a big shindig, and doors needed to be propped open. A mass abduction ensued. After serving so valiantly, our doorstop brethren were forgotten. Perhaps many more doorstops than Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's were stranded and abandoned. But Mrs. HM's was not missing from that date, only recently. That clue was a dead end. Thanks for the big, steaming bowl o' nuthin', Mabel.

Next, who should appear but the student-accused entity, and her sidekick. Not thinking exactly what I was saying, I greeted them with, "I'm so mad! My doorstop disappeared when That Inconsiderate Group used my classroom." And the sidekick replied, "I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS!" So forceful was her exclamation that I did not know if she was funnin' with me, or really, truly incensed. She went on to elaborate that since she was near the main area of the building, people always took her doorstop first. I almost sympathized with her...I really did...until...she said, "So you know what I do? I just go take one to replace it." OH, OH OH! Mr. Kottaiirrr! Pick me! Pick me! I think I know who did it!

Not really. It was just a theory. A conspiracy theory. I do not really think they took my Stoppie. But it is certainly some compelling circumstantial evidence, methinks.

Oh, but the saga of Stoppie continues. I told my mom about Doorstopgate this morning on the phone. She jumped to the same conclusion. Little did I know she would arrive at school a few hours later and meet Pete and Repete in person. Seems the #2 son couldn't hold his cookies. He tossed them at school. Three times. So trusty Gammy rescued #2, and stopped by my building so I would know she had him. It's a long story. They usually call me to see what to do with my kids, but we've had a changeover, and, umm, they said they tried to call me but I wasn't home. DUH! I'm at work! HELLO!

Anyhoo, she brought in the boy, with a white plastic bowl under his chin in case he tossed a few more, and asked for my keys to get the beloved DS out of the LSUV. She saw Pete and Repete and said, "Oh. That IS sad." I hope she did not injure their fragile self-esteem. It ain't easy bein' a brokeback doorstop. Or so they tell me. When Mom came back with the keys, she popped around the corner, waving something in the air. "Look what I found," she whisper-yelled to me. It was a loooong wooden doorstop. I grabbed it and held it down by my side. "Don't you know we're on camera? Where did you get that?" I quizzed her. "Oh, I found it lying outside," she said, cool as a cucumber.

Heh, heh. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, they say. And 'they' are always right. So I took that monster and wrote 'Mrs. Hillbilly Mom' on every facet in black permanent marker. Then I stashed him in my cabinet for the day when Pete and Repete of the broken back club are on their last legs. Hey! If I didn't get him, somebody would have. I shall call him D-Stop. He's a strapping, magnificent specimen of the doorstop species. I look forward to growing old with him.

And if anyone asks where I got my big, strong D-Stop, I can honestly tell them:
"My mother gave it to me."

Another Conspiracy

2007-05-09T19:49:00.000-05:00

There is a conspiracy afoot. I can feel it in my bones. Yesterday, I showed up to work bright and early, at the stroke of 7:35 a.m., much like every other day in The Conspiracy-Riddled World of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. I was greeted with a giant black trash bag full of trash. (Duh! Why do you think they call it a trash bag?) I had feared something like this might occur, since there came a hurried, jumbled announcement just as I was dashing out the door for Basementia. I did not hear the mention of my room number, but I nearly tripped over a giant 4-pack of paper towels, and a large black duffel bag. They were piled right outside my door. I knew that the Paper Towel/Duffel Bag Fairy is really just your parents pretending to leave you paper towels and duffel bags, so I didn't think they were a gift for me.

In the trash bag was a bunch of pizza boxes and plates and napkins. The trash bag was taller than my desk. I did not feel like sitting there inhaling the aroma of Yesterday's Garbage, so I drug the enormous bag into the hall. And there I left it, because HEY, it wasn't my trash, and I am not a custodian, no matter how many evil eyes I may get from some who would like me to be. I then busied myself baby-wiping the desks, because there were a myriad of crumbs. I collected my pencils that were strewn willy-nilly about the room. I gathered the used napkins from within the desk compartments. I straighted the desks back into rows, which earned me a sliming of the first order. It was some gooey white stuff under the edge of a desk. I'm thinking along the lines of frosting for Cinnasticks, though one of my classes though it was something more sinister, which they stopped just short of naming, but the gagging sounds were enough to give me the drift. That little bit of business required the Fantastik. That stuff is fantastic, you know.

So I was not in a very pleasant mood, what with that start to my day, taking valuable time away from taunting the World Map which had remained clinging to the wall overnight. Oh, but there's more. I went to prop open my door, and THE DOORSTOP WAS GONE! Doorstops for teachers in that building are like crack for crackheads. They are a necessity. We obsess over them. We write our names on them with Wite-Out. We lock them inside our rooms overnight. We have to buy them, you see. (Unless we have a special friend like Mabel, who deals in contraband such as doorstops, attendance-slip clips, ceiling hanger-thingies, and VCR cables.) There is not a doorstop fund. And those doors will not stay open without a doorstop. The door will hit your a$$ on the way in if you let it. I am on my 4th doorstop since moving in to that building. Or I WAS on my 4th one.

I interrogated one of my students, who was at the grand pizza extravaganza. He sang like a canary. I found out who gave out the pencils, who left the crusts, who sat at the sticky desk...but not what happened to my doorstop. I told him, "Well, I'm thinking that maybe one of the kids kicked it as he left, and then it got kicked down the hall and is long gone." But no. Tweety sang this song, "No. I was the last student out. It was still there when I left. And the lady in charge was still here. But there WAS another lady messing with the doorstop. She works here, but I don't know who she is." He described her. It was not as bad as the time a student described a svelte, tanned teacher as 'the black stick', but it did not give me a lot to go on. The kids guessed, too.

Was it the secretary?
No.
Which end of the building is she in?
I don't know.
Was it the counselor?
No. I know the counselor.
Was it that lady just down the hall?
I don't think so.
The librarian?
No. I just can't think of where I've seen her.
Is it the social worker?
No.
The speech lady?
No. I remember...the one that's always in (edited so as not to incriminate the guilty).

OK. Now I had a suspect. But I would worry about that later. The first order of business was to get my hands on a doorstop. Mabel had offered me a used one upon hearing my sob story. I turned it down. I thought I knew where I could get my hands on another one. I dashed off a note to send down the hall. But not to the suspect.

Dear Ms. Doodah,

Please take time to read my tale of woe. My doorstop, "Stoppie", has disappeared. The kids have been telling me all year that you have a doorstop with my name on it. I did not really care. In fact, I grew tired of hearing about it. But now that my beloved "Stoppie" has gone missing, I need his older brother, "Stopper", to come home.

Could you please return "Stopper" to me? I know you do not want to be responsible for breaking up a family. To fill the hole in your heart, perhaps you could adopt a new doorstop from Mabel. She has one that is physically challenged, but in need of a home.

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom*

Ms. Doodah denied any contact with "Stopper". She said that she had not seen him, but that I was welcome to any doorstop that she had. That's the catch. According to the message-bearer, much like Old Mother Hubbard's dog, she had NONE. So I sent the note to Mabel, with a simple question: "Can you hook me up?"

Always the Go-To Gal, Mabel sent me TWO doorstops. OK, so they're kind of like Brokeback Doorstops. They are spineless. They are differently-abled. It takes two of them to tango, if you get my drift. One has to ride on top of the other to keep my door open. They are a good team. They work like a charm, together. Alone, neither can cut the mustard. I'm not sure what to name them. I'm thinking 'Pete' and 'Repete'. There was a real kid on that MTV show Two-A-Days named Repete. If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's little helpers.

Just when you think this tale of woe is over...the plot thickens. I uncovered some new information today.

But you'll have to come back tomorrow to find out. You too, Mabel. All fingers point to...

Hey! I said TOMORROW!

*The information in the note is approximate. Mabel kept the actual note, and Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's memory is not what it used to be. Some days, she can hardly remember where she parked her Rascal.

At Long Last, The Volcano

2007-05-08T20:26:00.000-05:00

Sing praises to the Gummi Mary! My #2 son's Nintendo DS replacement game arrived yesterday from Scholastic. He has been thinking about it day and night since he got the broken one. It has been about two weeks, I think. Every night, he says, "Maybe my DS game will come in tomorrow!" And every afternoon, he gets off the bus, hangs his head, and greets me with, "It didn't come." Hallelujah! Those days are done. I had a meeting in Basementia yesterday, and when it was over, I walked across the hall (yes, indeed, Basementia's meetings are held in Lower Basementia) and found him happily pecking away at the controls. He'd told me to take his DS in when I got to Basementia, no doubt because the little eternal optimist thought his game would come in. And it did! He said, "Mom, it wasn't there by lunch time. Then after lunch, Mrs. My Teacher said, '#2 Hillbilly, there is a new box in the teacher workroom, and I think it's your game.'" That made his day. I'm surprised we didn't have to go to the ER to have the smile removed from his face.

The #1 son wants to build a volcano. Never mind that he made one back in 2nd or 3rd grade. He says he can get bonus points in class. That boy needs bonus points like a bicycle needs a fish. Oh, and he wants to work on it with a partner. Perhaps you recall my reluctance to let him make his Science Fair project with a partner. You know, the project that won 1st Place in his division, and earned him a $50 prize? Oh, excuse me...he only got $25 because his partner got the other half. Not to mention, I spent $40 on supplies and a display board for that project, and #1 spent many a night working on it, and, oh...the partner worked on it during class time at school.

I am not fond of partner projects. One always ends up doing most of the work. When I was in school, that one was me. I hated partner and group projects. OK, so maybe it's just because I'm so hard-headed and overbearing, but I do not like the partner thingy. Why does he need a crutch? He is perfectly capable of making his own childish volcano display. Every partner project has a pooper, and that pooper is me. I that so wrong? Would you want your child making a volcano with a partner? Would you want to drive him to town, or drive in and fetch the partner and then take him home? If you lived 15 miles from the partner? And drove a Large SUV? And the price of gas at your last fill-up was $2.79?

Well, you say, how about building that project at the partner's house? Let him take charge of it and buy the stuff and design it and haul it to school. Oh, nooooo...you don't understand my child. He would never take a back seat to a partner. He wants to run the show. Yet have a partner. I don't get it. It's not like he's friendless. He has a regular group of cronies. Is he afraid of failure? Does he want a scapegoatish partner? I can't figure that boy out. It's that darn Sagittariusness in him, I suppose. Always wants to be around people. Bah! Humbug! Hillbilly Mom does not like people. They piss her off. And take away valuable time that she could be spending with her favorite person...herself.

Why can't he just put an egg in a bottle? Alone.

Campbell's Mmm Mmm Good It Ain't

2007-05-07T18:44:00.000-05:00

HH is getting the pool ready for the summer. That means he is sucking the water off the top of the silver cover. Well, HH is not actually slurping at it himself. He is using a little pump of some kind that he set down in the deepest puddle on top of the cover, and he's raising the other edges until the water runs down to that sucker. That cover looks like one of those silver pouches that you put a hot-pocket or something in for microwaving.

Here's what I don't understand. HH does not plan to drain the pool. He says the water in it will be just fine. He will take a sample to the pool place and see what dose of chemicals Poolio needs to be healthy. This seems OH SO WRONG to me. What would it hurt to drain Poolio? We fill him from our well. It's not like it will cost a buttload of water to fill him again. The water needs to warm up for a couple weeks anyway. Would you fill your bathtub, bathe in it all summer, and then let the water languish in the tub over the winter, throw in some chemicals, and bathe again the next summer? Methinks not.

It's not like we have an Olympic-sized in-ground pool. It's above-ground. A little hose to siphon with, and Poolio would take care of business while we're at work. How much sunscreen is floating around in there? How much snot? How much toejam? I look at poor Poolio, and I see an icy cauldron of buttwater soup. What would it hurt to drain Poolio? Is there some aquatic custom of which I am happily ignorant?

I think this is a conspiracy by the pool-selling pirates. "Keep the water in your pool. Then all you have to do in the Spring is bring us a sample, and we can tell you what chemicals it needs. We can sell you those chemicals while you're here, by cracky!" Chemicals. They are but seasonings for the buttwater soup.

Hey! You're all invited to a pool party! It's a BYOA party.

Bring your own antibiotic.

Summeritis

2007-05-06T17:08:00.000-05:00

I am suffering from Summeritis. The symptoms include excessive sleepiness, malaise, chore-avoidance, and general slackishness. It doesn't help that HH goes to bed at 8:30, and after a full 10 hours of sleep, expects us to hop up and serve him in preparing his kingdom for the next foreigner's visit. Hillbilly Mom is a night-owl. She has been since her formative years, and isn't about to learn new tricks at this late date.

Speaking of fowl...after my rude awakening at 6:15, I went out to sit on the porch of the Mansion to survey HH's kingdom. The cats mistakenly thought I was there to feed them. Think again, pussies. That is not one of my myriad of chores. They followed me, perched atop the porch rail and watched me, jumped up and down several times to wind around my legs, and even tolerated the dogs chewing on them. The dogs viewed me as a long-lost litter-mate, as if I'd fallen down a well, and had been rubbing lotion on my skin to avoid the hose again for about 10 years. Amidst this commotion, the birds started mouthing off. I didn't recognize any of their calls, but I'm sure my blog buddy, 'Chickadee', would. I did see a redheaded woodpecker fly toward the back porch, squawking about the absence of the dogfood he steals from the pan. He made a brief foray into the woods, then came back to sit on the side of the electric pole that holds the dusk-to-dawn light. When I looked that direction, I saw the tiny hummingbird in some type of weedish growth next to my dead rose bush. He was no bigger than a medium-sized moth, with a red throat, and a white necklace below his throat. Or maybe he was a she, what with the accessories, but in the fowl family, it seems that the males are more flamboyant.

After lazing around the porch a while with the wildlife, I was tired, so I went to lie in the recliner for a while. The boys foraged for their own breakfast. I made a trip to Save-A-Lot, where nothing interesting happened. I sometimes long for the days when that lady followed me around declaring that I was SO PRETTY. Upon my return from town, the boys were in deep hiding. But sure enough, five minutes after I'd carried everything in, they drove up on their off-roadsy wheels. It's like an internal clock HH has...showing up after everything is done.

Then I got caught up in a show on the DOC channel about Aardvark and 12 Weeks With Geeks. They were writing computer code for a remote-access computer help program called 'Co-Pilot'. It would not have interested me, except that I am growing a little geek, and he has been writing computer code since last year. I guess it keeps him off the street.

Before I knew it, my hard day of doing nothing was coming to an end. I tossed only the third load of laundry in to wash, and started some spaghetti for supper. I used my new non-stick pan and spatula that I got for Christmas. OK, so we're slow in progressing from one holiday to the next here at the Mansion. That spatula took some getting used to. It was kind of long, and awkward. I felt like Ripley in Aliens, moving stuff around with that loader thingy. Except she was good at it.

And now, I have to get busy not doing stuff for school tomorrow. Hey! The school year is almost over, you know. The world is not going to end if I don't lecture on the space-time continuum tomorrow.

You Can Confide In Mrs. Hillbilly Mom

2007-05-05T20:37:00.000-05:00

I must be a good confidante. People want to tell me things. I know this, because when I check my statcounter, there are all kinds of information that people have used in a search to find me. ME! It really IS all about me! Here are a few things they want me to know. Sometimes, I'm like that Johnny guy in the Stephen King book. The guy who knows what people are thinking when he touches them. I didn't like that book much. That's what he gets for touching people. Keep your doggone hands to yourself, Johnny. That's what I always say. But then, I have that teacher thing goin' on.

texas fines for teepeeing houses. Hmm...what are you saying? I don't teepee. Just because other people have come to Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's advice column asking 'how to teepee', that doesn't exactly make me a criminal. And I've never even been to Texas. I certainly don't plan to go now. What kind of a racket is that, fining people for teepeeing. It must be like a speed trap. Texas has a teepee trap, Texas has a teepee trap. Sounds like a good way to taunt those lone stars. Chant that in a sing-songy voice. Or make it into a tongue-twister and say it 10 times, fast. And what's this about the 'houses'? Does Texas not fine for teepeeing mobile homes, or trees, or cows after you tip them, or that pesky mother-in-law? Sounds like the ACLU oughta come down on Texas.

elbow wenus high in nutrients. Good to know. But a 'wenus' does not sound very appetizing. And not just any wenus, mind you, but the elusive elbow wenus. It reminds me of a snipe, of hunting fame.

all you gotta do is cry. OK. But all I wanna do is graduate from high school, move to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die. Oops! That's not what I want. It's what Kristy Swanson wanted, when she was the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in the campy movie that was a hoot, not the series that took itself OH SO SERIOUSLY, (back in the day, before she had that little b*st*rd with Lloyd-the-skating-guy, when they hooked up for Skating With The Stars), right before she punched Donald Sutherland in the nose.

theres a little change in my pocket going jing aling aling. You don't have to brag. If you do a cartwheel, you're gonna lose that change, buddy. You need an old-lady coin purse. My mom has one, with pink and white beads embroidered on it. My son cried for it, but I wouldn't let him have it. Hey! He had a blue leather purse. It was not a good accessory.

the window was left open to let the fart out. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And then what happened? Did somebody come in the window and rob you? Did it rain and ruin your carpeting? Did your parakeet fly away? Did Tom peep? Did the cat get out and you blamed George Costanza?

beauty is in the eye of he beholder. Well, now...is this one of those trick thingies, like 'put the the cat out' or something, where you have to find the error? Because if it isn't, it seems a bit sexist. HE beholder, indeed! It's a man's world, huh? Is that the message you're trying to get across? Don't make me call those ACLU people on their way to Texas.

stop whacking in my camper beavis and butthead. Excuse me. I am not Beavis, nor am I Butthead. And I certainly wouldn't be whacking in YOUR camper, when I have my own camper right in the front yard.

trace adkins lost part of his left pinky finger in an industrial accident. I suppose that's better than having your FAT RED PINKY FINGER amputated 4 days after you are given that diagnosis and told to render your decision by Friday, but worse than seeing a specialist and having the bone scraped and having a pin in it for 6 weeks. And who are you, the Trace Adkins pity party organizer?

but she grew up tall and she. WHAT? Grew up mean? Did her daddy name her Sue? Did she become a model? Did people ask her 'How's the weather up there?' or if she played basketball? Did customers in The Devil's Playground ask her to get things off the top shelf? Did she whack her head on the ceiling of the camper when Beavis and Butthead invited her over? WHAT? Don't leave me hangin'!

iam checking the flights , put labels , sealing and sing. Aren't you a busy little beaver? Stop whacking...Sorry. Beaver. Not Beavis. Perhaps you should pencil in some time for some tense grammar, and present-participle yourself to sleep.

That's all you need to know. I don't want to let too many cats out of the bag. Then I would be a mediocre confidante. Or a world-champion cat-setter-free-er.

Up Your Street With A Rubber Hose

2007-05-04T17:05:00.000-05:00

The school year is almost over, you know. Next week, I have a faculty meeting Monday, the #1 son's Top Ten Percent academic banquet on Tuesday, and an insurance meeting on Thursday. Time flies when you're almost out.

Tomorrow, we have a school carnival. It raises money for the kids to take a senior trip. NOT to Amsterdam. The last few years, the trip has been to Hawaii or Mexico. The kids vote, depending on how much money the class has raised over 6 years, and where the majority agrees to go. The Veteran is going to be one of the Grand Marshals of the parade. The theme this year is 'Superheroes.'

I don't know if it's for the parade tomorrow, or what the deal is, but the town has been washing the streets with a giant firehose. (No, to those of you who plan to ask, giant firehose is not a euphemism for anything. Sometimes, a giant firehose is just a giant firehose.) I can't explain it. Especially since it has rained for the last 4 days. Washing the streets seem a bit redundant. Perhaps they are washing the mud that has washed down by the sewer grates. But I have only seen that in one place. The rest of the road looks clean to me. Today, it was pouring down rain when I went to Basementia. The giant firehose was stretched down the middle of the street, and all the early birds had moved their cars around back to the gravel lot. Welcome to MY world, early birds! I don't quite understand the hosing of the streets in a downpour. The workers weren't complaining. I could tell from their gray pants and white T-shirts that they were on loan from one of the local prisons. Not jail. PRISON. I guess the city wanted to get its money's worth out of the laborers.

Since we got out at 12:45, and HH had taken off the entire day, he called to see if we wanted to meet him for lupper. That is the meal between lunch and supper. Theoretically, lupper is when you haven't had lunch and are not going to have supper. I wish HH had told us this before we ate lunch, but whatever, I was game. We agreed to meet him in another town, on past the school town. I had to stop by the bank to deposit my hefty paycheck. Right, Mabel? That was kind of a problem, what with sitting in line at the drive-thru for 20 MINUTES waiting on the 4 cars ahead of me. I think the window girl was printing her own money today, and had to hang it up with clothespins to dry. Anyhoo, the front lot was full, and since last time I went in, I waited in line for 5 minutes behind a guy who finally turned to look at me like I had two heads, (which I don't, but I'll claim to be as smart as a woman with two brains, not to be confused with the Steve Martin movie The Man With Two Brains, which was really quite funny, in an early Kathleen Turner kind of way, and by the way, you did know that Kathleen is from Missouri, didn't you, and went to the same university as I did, but was years ahead of me, though I suspect she fudges on her age a little bit), and then stepped away from the counter and the girl pointed to her wooden sign thingy, which clearly said, 'Next window', I chose to remain in the drive-thru. HH blew on past us down the highway, and was waiting at the BBQ restaurant before we even left the bank. Stupid bank. I would keep the money in a sock in the backyard if I didn't think that chewin' dog would dig it up like a Case collector knife.

After a hearty lupper, we climbed back in the Large SUV for the ride home. I say 'we', not because I had a mouse in my pocket, but because neither of the spawn would ride with HH. Go figure! It might have something to do with the way he doesn't bother to look at the road while driving. We called him twice to remind him not to drive through the creek if it was flooded, because sometimes he just doesn't use good judgment. Then we called to ask if he'd picked up the mail, and he said, "No, the mailboxes were underwater." Which was not a very nice thing to say, because that would mean the bridges were also underwater. I'll have to keep my eye on HH, getting all clever and sh*t, and actually making a joke.

I dropped #1 son off at the front of The Devil's Playground for 4 AAA batteries, what with my beloved remote not asking how high when I say jump. Oh, and it has the words, "Low Battery" at the top of the screen every time I change channels. That was my first clue. Because I just thought I had a crappy remote, like my crappy receiver, which even though you pay the regular amount, they send a 'reconditioned' receiver to everybody and hope it freakin' works, which of course it did NOT when we first got it, and had to send it back, and then the next one did not work, and we had to send IT back, and the third try was the charm. Thievin' Dish Network! But they are not as bad as the Cable Pirates I had to pay protection money to when I lived in town. Their freakin' service could be down for days at a time, with NO refund or discount. Meanwhile, back at The Devil's Playground, I circled the lot until sonny appeared again, and swooped in to pick him up. He loves using the self-check thingy, the one that robs old people and teenagers of their minimum-wage jobs with no benefits. It's like an arcade game for him.

After all that excitement, we forgot to pick up medicine, which, contrary to popular opinion, is NOT for my Alzheimer's. But we DID NOT forget my Sonic Cherry Diet Coke, which the girl overfilled, and said, "Wait a minute," as she handed it out the window, and tipped it sideways so about a cup of liquid spilled through the X on the top, and then handed it to me, already seeping again, and I gave it to the shotgun-riding #1 son, and told him, "Slurp that up before it gets in the car," so he did, noisily, with his head bent over, leading to another lecture about children and front-seat riding, and my assurances that his death from an airbag inflation would be quick and painless, so he sat up a bit, and put in the straw, and put his lips on it to slurp some more, which made me scream, "I didn't mean through the straw! I don't want your salarva all down in my soda!" Which is a new word my students taught me this year, and it kind of has a ring to it, salarva, say it to yourself, salarva, see, don't you like it, you may to use it all you want. You're welcome.

And now I've retired to my dark basement lair, made my internet rounds, and am planning to go try out my brand spankin' new AAA batteries to see if my Intervention is on tonight.

Good day to you!

Bitter Pajama Amsterdam

2007-05-03T17:59:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, we have a half-day of school. In truth, it's a four-and-a-half-sevenths day of school. Really. I calculated it. Of course, HH got wind of it, so he has taken the WHOLE day off from his work. I hate it when that happens. It's not even like a holiday when he horns in on it. Color me bitter. It's just more work around the Mansion for me. And now, I've made more work for you by commanding you to color me bitter. And stay within the lines, too, or I'll have you screened for fine motor skill deficiency. By cracky. Because I hold all the power here at my Mansion, just like I do at school. Not that it's gone to my head or anything. I try to be reasonable. When a student suggested making a card for a girl who was injured in a four-wheeler accident, I agreed. I let them draw a big blackboard on the card, because she looooves the blackboard. You might say she is obsessed with it, but that wouldn't be nice, and I'm trying to be reasonable, so let's just say that she really, really, likes the blackboard. And on the blackboard drawing, a kid wrote, "you + we = miss", which I thought was kind of clever. And then we wrote "1 + 1 = 2 and 2 + 2 = 4", because, hey, we're her math class, and we don't want her to forget how to do math while she's gone. I refrained from writing "206 - 2 = 204" in honor of the two bones she allegedly broke, because, well, that would not have been very nice, even though it would have been funny, but I doubt that she would get it, because I don't think she knows there are 206 bones in the human body, which probably y'all don't know, either, and are scratching your heads and saying, "What's so funny about that?", except for the couple of you who might be saying, "Is that a tick?"

The #2 son had pajama day at school. He doesn't know why, only that it's for the whole third grade. He didn't want to participate, until he dug to the bottom of the shoe box and found some slippers. The way it works around the Mansion is that he slept in his green pajamas with the army truck thingies on them, and woke up, and dressed in his blue pajamas with the grizzly bears on them. I asked if he was sure he wanted to wear the shirt. They are winter pajamas, after all, and it was supposed to be 65 today, with rain. He assured me that he wanted the real deal. I had offered him a plain white T-shirt. I wouldn't let him go topless. That is frowned upon, even on pajama day. He declined. When I dropped him off, he climbed out of the Large SUV right in front of the duty teacher, the one whose name escapes me, but who never smiles, or acknowledges him, or even looks at him when he gets dropped off. Most of them at least smile. This one is a tough nut to crack. He hopped out, said, "Good day to you!" (like his older brother says when he thinks he's funny and dismissing somebody whose ideas don't mesh with his), and stopped right in front of that duty teacher, pointed his finger at her, and said, "Don't even say anything!" and ran into the building. I thought I saw a corner of her mouth crinkle slightly, but I can't be sure. After school, I asked if everybody participated in pajama day. He said, "Most of the class. A lot of them just had pajama pants. They said I was lucky to have a shirt."

Great Googley Moogley! My son's class has been assigned reports on various countries. One of the young 'uns asked for 'Amsterdam'. They sure are startin' young, eh? After being informed that Amsterdam is not a country, the child settled on The Netherlands. Thank the Gummi Mary this was my 12-year-old's class, not the 9-year-old. Still, it was bad enough when the 10th grader wanted a senior trip to Amsterdam. Now, the tweeners want to go, too. Does anyone else think this is OH SO WRONG, talking about the Amsterdamish goings-on in front of the children? Perhaps these people are world travelers, obsessed with the architecture, or the fabulous food, or the rich history of the city. Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions.
Nawww. I don't think so.

If you can read this post, hug a teacher. Then check your pockets.

2007-05-02T19:23:00.000-05:00

Hmm...it seems that some of us are giving teachers a bad name. Oh, not ME. I am a poster child for what a teacher should be. If, by 'poster child', you mean someone who's Social Security Number is '1'. I found out totally by accident that some of us are using our power for evil instead of good.

There I was, conscientiously looking up internet info the the great Moon Landing Hoax when a got an urge to Google. Hey! It was not during class time. It was my plan time. And after I finished planning my writing/propaganda lesson, I Googled. I will link the articles, lest you accuse Mrs. Hillbilly Mom of embellishing a story. Like that could ever happen! The headlines are mine. Here is what I found...

Where in the H*LL is our President?
During a lesson on collages for a class of 5th graders, an art teacher used the President's head as an example. Seems he had cut out George Bush's head, and slapped it up on his board. He then proceeded to draw horns on the Commander-in-Chief, and gave him a flaming background. Above his shoulder was a demonic figure, saying, "Well done, my son." The teacher told the students, "Don't go home and tell your parents about this." Which, of course, some little tattletale DID, and brought the mamawrath upon the common-sensically-challenged art teacher.

The Tattler whipped up an artist's rendering of the offending visual aid. It looks pretty good to me. Guess she should thank an art teacher. Whoops! She's trying to get him fired. Isn't THAT ironic! Anyhoo, Mama marched right up to that school building and gave the principal what for. She told the reporter, "I think he should be fired. I would feel sorry for him if he lost his job, but it's his own fault. I don't think that will happen, though. The principal seems to think that being yelled at by an angry parent is punishment enough. I think she is upset that I contacted the media."

OK, so maybe that's not it word-for-word. It's been about 8 hours since I read it. But that's the gist of it. You can check it out here.

www.dunndailyrecord.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=87007&TM=37778.52

And now, on to our next Bad Teacher.

Crime Doesn't Pay As Well As You Anticipate
A little girl lost her coat at school. Her mother turned to eBay in search of another one. And she found one! Exactly like her daughter's coat. Wait a minute! It WAS her daughter's coat. Mother saw that the seller was from the same town where she and her daughter lived. A Good Samaritan type, Mother notified the other bidder that she might be attempting to buy stolen property. Whoop-ti-doo! Did THAT ever open up a can of buying-back-my-own-coat-on-eBay worms! Other Bidder notified Seller. Seems that Seller had rigged the auction so that Other Bidder would drive up the price of the coat. That is a no-no on eBay. Seller had to remove the item. Then the coat mysteriously turned up on the school playground, with dog bites on it. And eBay coughed up the personal information on the Seller. Guess what? Seller was the daughter's teacher! Go figure! That's why teachers put up with so much...the fringe benefits are terrific.

I might have been confused on some of the pertinent facts. I would not make a good reporter. So don't offer me any reporting jobs. Hear that, school newspaper sponsor? The 6th grade kids can do better than I can. But I digress with my modesty. You can read the story for yourself here.

www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0502072coat1.html

And that is all I have to say for tonight. Shame, shame. Everybody is quick to point the finger of blame. But sometimes it is justified. They are guilty, I proclaim. No need for alleging.

A Nickel For Your Thoughts

2007-05-01T18:36:00.000-05:00

Hey! Guess what? Betty thinks I'm a thinker! THINKER. I know someone's out there mouthing, "Ya got that right! You truly are a stinker!" Stop being so mean. I am about to bestow the honor of Thinking Blogger upon five of you. I hate to limit it to five. That just doesn't seem fair. I like all of my linkies equally. You all have your strengths. Ahhh...I have to limit it to five. And it has to be five that update on a fairly frequent basis, because when I'm jonesin' for a blog read, I cannot be denied. I'm only listing five. I will not be responsible for any more of that namby-pamby I'm-alright-you're-alright touchy-feely raising-self-esteem crap that is ruining our youth. I'm pickin' five. Like it or lump it. (And if you choose to lump it, please tell me what that entails, because I've never actually seen anybody lump it, and I might need the reference sometime in one of my long-winded rages against The Devil's Playground.

1) Redneck Diva. OK, I'm sure you're tired of my touting of the Diva every day. But she demands attention. She's a diva, y'know. She's rambler, she's an ambler, she's a midnight gambler. She has snakes in her window, and yellow-jackets in her furnace, and a ghost who messes with her alphabetized canned goods. Diva's latest venture is scholarly. She's a college student, by cracky! And she still takes care of her passel o' young'uns, squeezes in some RLKOOTHS with her mister, avoids being hacked up and barreled by 'Fitty', the 55-Gallon Barrel Killer, and hosts a writing contest. I don't know about you folks, but around here we say, "You can't beat that with a stick!"

2) Mean Teacher. Meanie and I go way back. I can't tell you any more, or I will be kicked out of the Blogger Protection Program. Let it suffice to say that much of Meanie's prolific early work has been basemented. Meanie is starting a new journey, and I am along for the ride. And it's really NOT a cat blog.

3) LanternLight. Lantern always makes me see a bigger picture than normally inhabits my small mind. He's downright polite, a true gentleman, and I think he is just IT. This guy would give you the blood out of his veins (and not in a creepy vampirish kind of way). For someone from across the pond, he knows quite a bit about the Hillbilly culture. He has a Mabel theory, but I think he needs to redefine the parameters.

4) Cazzie. She don't do mornings, this feisty little whippersnapper, but she's good for what ails me. In fact, I seek her out for online medical advice. If you've got a fat red pinky finger, she's your gal. She, too, is from that funny side of the world where the weather is all cattywompus. I learn many new expressions and even get geographically educated when I drop in on Cazzie. She gets around more than that Waldo guy, and leaves cheery comments throughout the blogosphere.

5. Brian. He's got much more than an audience of one. If education's your bag, you'll know exactly where he's coming from, and you'll get to see school operations through an administrator's eyes. Brian also gives us insights into the growing-up processes of his own kids, and writes a killer Weekend Roundup.

There you have them. The magic five. They may not be your cup of tea, but methinks everyone can find something enjoyable on their blogrolls. So get readin', you slackers.

Here are the rules, in case you want to give this award to your favorites.

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to five blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

Tales Outside The School

2007-04-30T20:24:00.000-05:00

Here's an update on that darn car. When we last left HH, he had overheated at #1 son's school, and had to leave his precious Mercedes there overnight, safely parked under a camera in the superintendent's parking spot. The next morning, HH and #1 went back to school, towing a trailer to retrieve the Mercedes.

First of all, you must realize that the trailer was an HH trailer. Oh, it's the kind you haul cars on...not a cut-off bed from an ancient pickup truck. We have three of those. Not that I'm braggin' or anything. But this trailer is one HH bought about 13 years ago for $250. Which tells you right there, it's not exactly top-of-the-line. It's a long, black metal thingy. HH welded two ramps that he carries with him, to drive a car onto the trailer. But according to #1, the tires barely fit the ramps. "The tires squish in, Mom. They're probably going to blow up."

The Veteran met them at the school, which was a good thing, because he had to jump the battery for them to drive the Mercedes onto the trailer. Without the jump, I think HH planned to hook a cable on the car, and hand-crank it or some such thing. They stopped by The Devil's Playground to get some yellow paint to paint some rubber parts on the back of the Mercedes. "You know, Mom, where it's rotted out," #1 tells me. HH has come into a bounty of engine parts, in fact a whole motor, FREE, of course, from a worker at his plant. The worker has a diesel, and needed other parts on one he was junking. But no, the parts that needed paint were not included in the free deal, so HH bought them with insurance money from hail damage on his truck. He's such a Hillbilly! After that little side trip, they brought the Mercedes home. I hope not to sit in the barn for another nine months.

I did not hear the rest of the story until Saturday night, when #1 decided he was going to re-teach himself to play the piano, which he took lessons on from the age of 4 to 9, when he decided he really did not want to practice for 30 minutes each day, even though he loved the glory of recitals. So we made a trip to town to pick up a book of music from my mom's house, where there is a piano, even though she can't play it, because she had always wanted a piano, and when we moved from a trailer into a real house when I was in 7th grade, she got one, and I taught myself how to play it, but nobody else except my brother-in-law the mayor ever plays it now. On the trip to get the piano music so #1 could play it on the fancy-schmancy keyboard my grandma gave him for Christmas one year when he was taking piano lessons, the boy told me the rest of the Mercedes Rescue story.

After they got the Mercedes on the trailer to the barn, HH got in it to back it off the trailer. It wouldn't start. Without the Veteran to assist, HH decided to put it in neutral and roll it off the trailer. That worked for a few feet, until the tires hit a big crack in the metal of the trailer bed. You will hear more about the magnitude of the crack in a moment. HH started to get out of the car, but his door would not open. There are short sides on the edge of the trailer, and the door hit the side. HH told #1 to get on the trailer, in front of the car, and give him a push. #1 is pretty strong for a 12-year-old who's the size of a 14-year-old. He gave it a good shove, but HH is no lightweight, and the car remained stuck.

Being a problem-solver, #1 got a board and used it as a lever to try to dislodge the disabled auto. "I know how a simple machine multiplies the force, Mom," he said like the true junior nerd that he is. When this didn't work, HH climbed out the window. Perhaps 'climbed' makes him sound a bit more athletic than he really is. According to #1, HH went headfirst out the window, put his hands on the little side thingy of the trailer, got one leg out, put it on the side, and then extracted his other leg. He told the boy to climb into the car, and he would push. Again, according to #1, "I jumped into the car like a Duke of Hazard, and Dad pushed me off the ramps onto the ground." "Oh," I said, "so your dad was stronger, and you were lighter, and he pushed the tires out of the crack?" The boy shook his head. "Not exactly. Dad cheated. He pushed from the ground. You know that crack? It's so big that Dad stepped down in it. He had better traction on the gravel than I had on the wet metal."

I'm confident that more chapters on the Mercedes will write themselves.

Look What HH Dragged Home

2007-04-29T13:20:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I've told you of my husband's penchant for bringing home things he thinks he can use around the Mansion. The latest, until today, was the lumber from the pallets and boxes that come with the rolls of steel they receive at work. He is making a Mini-Mansion out of this lumber down by the creek. Yes, until today, that lumber was his latest unclaimed treasure. Until today.

Look at what HH brought us this morning.

It's a perfectly good Chinese man.
His name is 'Ben'. I told HH we can't keep him.

OK, here's the real story. Ben is here for work at HH's plant. He has been here one week, and has three more to go. According to HH, Ben is staying at a motel near work. He doesn't have anything to do in his spare time. I jokingly asked, "What does he eat, Chinese?" That is so wrong. And not very funny, either. Don't worry, I'm not going to pull a Rosie O'Donnell rant. I just thought about what I would do in another country for that long...a country that might not even have Sonic Cherry Diet Cokes.

HH not only did not laugh at my little joke (I think his laugher is on the fritz. I haven't heard it much since they quit making those Ernest Goes To...movies. Darn that Jim Varney for kicking the bucket!). Anyhoo...HH said, "Yes. He does eat Chinese. There's a restaurant close to the motel, and Ben walks over there so he can talk Chinese with the people who own it. I'm picking him up on Sunday to spend the day here. I'm always grateful when I'm traveling if somebody shows me around. I hate to sit in a motel room."

Since this was an HH excursion, there are a few things you ought to know. HH planned to pick up Ben at his motel, and treat himself to a continental breakfast. As he said, "They even have biscuits and gravy!" I hope Ben does not get evicted for his freeloading friend. Next, Ben got a tour of the barn first, HH's pride and joy. Then he came in the house to meet the family and observe HH's gun collection and hoard of 'treasures'. HH is always looking for fresh blood to brag himself blue in the face. Next, we went out back by the pool to shoot a BB gun. From there, the boys were off to tour the property, and show off the Mini-Mansion, which is proudly sporting one truss. The roof kind of truss. After that, HH took Ben about a mile up the gravel road to see our other 10 acres. Now, HH and #1 have taken Ben on a tour of the area. Included in this jaunt is the historical town of Ste. Genevieve. HH says it is because Ben wanted to see the Mississippi. I hope they are not going on a winery tour. Ben might be Buddhist or something, and be offended. Never mind that the Mississippi is less than one mile as the crow flies from HH's workplace. We must treat Ben to about 90 minutes of driving to show him HH's way.

Here are some of Ben's observations. Ben lives in an apartment in Beijing. He says HH has a big house, and a big family, that he is a rich man in property and family. Ben's wife is having a baby in July. They are only allowed by the Chinese government to have one child. If a family has more than one child, they have to pay a fine. Ben was very impressed that HH has FOUR sons. He was seemingly shocked by the number of guns HH has, asking if they were always kept locked, because of the children. (YES! They ARE!) HH had planned to let Ben shoot a couple of them (the guns, not the children), but Ben did not want to. Ben, after making sure that HH showed him it was unloaded, agreed to hold a .38 for a picture. He kind of took a gangster stance. He said, "When my wife see picture, she say, 'What are you doing with gun? Come home!'." Ben says that in China, the people are not allowed to own guns. Only the police and military can have them. HH did persuade Ben to shoot one of the boys' Red Ryder BB guns. He was a pretty good shot.

HH pointed to the 5th wheel camper in the front yard. "See, Ben? We can go camping at the State Parks in that." Ben motioned at all the land with his hands. "Why? You camp here. Pull it over there. Then over there. No need to go anywhere!" He's a funny guy, that Ben. Ben took pictures of everything with his phone. HH also had the #1 son taking pictures, and told Ben that we will make him a CD of all the pictures. Ben says to the kid, "You can email them to me?" Oh, yeah. That boy lives to fiddle with technology.

HH put Ben in the Scout, and a boy on each 4-wheeler. He said he was going to get some pictures of Ben driving the Scout and sitting on the tractor. Poor Ben. I wonder if he has ever seen Green Acres. Ben drove one of the 4-wheelers. As you can see by the picture, Ben was a proper Hillbilly, putting his helmet in the homemade basket to drive it around. I promise that the kids wear a helmet.

Ben is OH SO POLITE. Not at all like us ugly Americans. He was dressed in slacks, dress shoes, and a dark blue oxford-type shirt. As opposed to HH, in his holey jeans, stained gray T-shirt, and scuffed tennis shoes. I am always interested in how other cultures relate. I could never in a million years learn enough Chinese to spend a month there. HH has also brought Helmut from Germany home from work. I didn't meet Helmut, but #1 spent the day with him. #2 thought his name was Hermit. Hey! He's a little kid. Several years ago, we sold a Toyota to Felipe, the Colombian. Thank goodness he didn't give us a necktie! Oops! There I go again, being politically uncorrect, as Gretchen Wilson says. Felipe's wife was a teacher in Columbia. HH said she was related to Fidel Castro. Though I don't know what Cuba has to do with Colombia. Then again, I am historically, geographically, and politically challenged. Throw some math or science at me, though, and I can hold my own. HH, the world traveler, knows a little more than I. But he is also a big name-dropper. He has been caught falsifying facts on other occasions.

So I leave you now, with images of Ben on a 4-wheeler dancing in your head.
Methinks he had a good time.

Hillbilly Mom Poses Some Questions

2007-04-28T17:10:00.000-05:00

Mr. Barky von Schnauzer? Mr. Barky von Schnauzer?

Am I the only one who finds that commercial amusing? I don't even remember what it is advertising, but I cracks me up. I'm a bit simple sometimes.

Did you know that The Devil's Playground has new plastic bags? They are BIG. I got three of them today. Instead of 20 small plastic bags of Devil-y goodness. It must be because I had a male checker. He packed those puppies to the top. My one complaint is that my buns and bread loaves were in a bag with a jar of mild banana pepper rings. How many peppers has Chipper Checker packed? Because he should really be informed that you can't pack a heavy jar of stuff with the breadstuffs. Especially in a large plastic bag.

Do people lose their minds in The Devil's Playground? Or do they just leave them out in the car, stashed safely under the seat, so they don't have to THINK during Devilish cart-play? The woman in front of me had two carts. Now that's not as interesting as if she'd had two heads, or two butts, but still...she had TWO carts. Most of it was cases of soda. Like, 8 or 10 cases per cart. She had one cart in front of her, and one cart behind her. Chipper Checker came around the counter to her cart, so she didn't have to handle her heavy cases or hoist them high for checking. And wasn't that sentence an alliterator's dream? Chipper asked if she would need help to get them to the car, and she said, in a kind of pissy, put-out manner, "Yeeaahhhh." So he called someone.

Am I the only one who senses something amiss? Helloooooo! She pushed them up to the counter by herself, didn't she? And we who shop regularly at The Devil's Playground certainly know that the cases of soda are found in the far back corner of the Playground. So she could push-pull both carts to the checkout, but not to her car? Methinks mesmells a rat. She was just taking advantage of young Chipper Checker. Shame, shame...we don't know your name. I shall call you Shameful Ratty Two-Carts. Low enough that you can't hear me, of course.

I really must stop letting my #2 son ride in the cart. He's big enough to climb over the side with no parental lifting. He takes up most of the room in the cart. And he's hard to steer. He's kind of like that redheaded kid in the basket being left on various porches in Problem Child. But it is WAY easier to shop with him like that. Today he took his book, Blood On The River, and barely looked up from the cart. Except to climb himself out to choose a new Nintendo DS game. He's a gamer...he's a reader...he's a loud, loud screamer...Sorry, I had a Steve Miller flashback to that 70s song, The Joker. I'll try not to let that happen again.

And speaking of The Joker, the Six Flags Joker had a bit of a malfunction yesterday on #1 son's educational field trip. Seems that 6 of his young cronies were TRAPPED on said Joker while it barrelled willy-nilly out of control. It would not stop. The operators could have pressed the button to undo their harnesses and let them out, except that HELLOOOO The Joker would not stop, so they would have fallen to their deaths. They were held hostage by the nefarious Joker for nigh on 10 minutes. Oh, and The Boss was broken right before #1's group got on it. Something about the brakes would lock and not let go. Which sounds like the opposite problem of The Joker. Anyhoo...#1 said, "I didn't want to go on it, Mom. I knew I was going to die." And I said, "So you waited for them until they got off?" But things are not so simple for the Hillbilly family. "No. I rode it. We had a rule that nobody could go anywhere unless they were with a group, and the minimum number of people in a group was two, and since everybody else wanted to ride it, I had to ride it, too."

I know there's more here. Something about my little #2 son reading Blood On The River. And playing a game on his computer right now that is probably not OK for a 9-year-old. I don't know what it is, but a couple minutes ago I heard, "...the severed head atop a pike...", and I shouted, "What?" And the kid replied, "That's why I hate the speakers." You see, what with the Vista-installation faux pas, his headphones do not work anymore. I don't think it's a bad game. It's one of the Civilizations, or something similar. It's not like it's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Don't call 1-800-BAD MOM. I do take care of him.
I push him around The Devil's Playground in a cart, by cracky!

What Kind Of Idiom Are You

2007-04-27T20:20:00.000-05:00

Here I am, browsing around the internets like I nobody's business, when my Intervention is at 9:00. I must be more vigilant. I think we're having heroin and alcohol tonight. Not in the same person, though.

Today at school, we did a writing assignment with idioms. Or as the kids asked, squinting, "Idiots?" I could not retort. I discussed idioms, gave them a choice to pick from, and had them write their own origin. We started with my example, "Let the cat out of the bag." According to my idiom dictionary, this saying originated in England during the 1600s. If a man went to the market to purchase a piglet for dinner, he had to be satisfied with a piglet in a bag, or 'poke'. Merchants kept them bagged so they didn't run away. Some merchants were unscrupulous! Sometimes a customer took that bag home, prepared to butcher the piglet, and was flabbergasted when he opened the bag and a CAT ran out. Shame on those merchants! This was also the origin of the saying, "Be careful not to buy a pig in a poke." That's just extra knowledge for y'all. We're all about the book-learnin' here at the Mansion. I'm going to start a new educational movement called Mansion-Schooling one of these days.

Here, according to my students, are the origins of some more idioms.

Cat got your tongue? One day, two guys were arguing outside a McDonald's. One got really mad, and went inside. He thought he saw something run by the door. When he came back out, the guy he argued with was bent over by the dumpster. The guy tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't speak. Then he saw that a cat had ripped out his tongue.

Caught red-handed. A kid named Niceguywhogaveuptheshoesonhisfeet was robbing a house one day. He ran out, and another kid saw him. That kid yelled, "Ha! Caught you red-handed!" The police heard this new saying, and then everybody said it.

Caught red-handed. During the Middle Ages, a serial killer was caught with his hands still in the victim's guts. Since he had blood all over his hands, he was caught red-handed.

Don't count your chickens before they hatch. This old man raised chickens. He had a bunch of eggs, and told people when they would hatch. A bunch of people wanted to buy chickens. They showed up on that day, but none of the eggs hatched. The people were really mad at the old man. That's why you shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch.

Goody Two-Shoes. A group of red-headed merchants thought they were better than everyone else. So they acted all snobby and people didn't like them and called them Goody Two-Shoes.

Goody Two-Shoes. In France, at the Eiffel Tower in the 1600s, only rich people had shoes. If you were rich, you had to buy shoestrings, too. When you were rich, you could afford two shoes instead of just one. Other people started calling them Goody Two-Shoes in French. And that is where the saying came from.

Kick the bucket. There once was an old man. He was very sick with the flu in the 1700s. He decided to walk to town. When he got there, he fell over dead. As he was going down, his foot flew up and kicked over a bucket. So they said he kicked the bucket.

That's all I can remember tonight. It's been a trying day. HH volunteered to pick up #1 son after his 6 Flags trip. However, HH's precious Mercedes (that ugly 1980 yellow piece of doo-doo) overheated again. So I had to go anyway. That means from 3:10 to 6:10, I was killing time. I thought of killing HH, but that type of thing is frowned on here in Missouri. I got to school, and there was HH, with the hood of that ugly beast propped up, his head in there, digging around. Oh, and there was a big puddle of water leaking out from under it. I'm hoping that was due to the car, and not HH, who has been know to treat the outdoors like one big toilet. Because there is a camera right on that spot. HH parked in the Superintendent's spot, (as if it could get any worse). He could not get it started again, and had to leave it there. He's hoping someone will steal it.

Another perfect end to a perfect day. And now...my Intervention.

Time Is Of The Essence

2007-04-26T22:34:00.000-05:00

Nothing ever goes as Mrs. Hillbilly Mom plans. Today, for instance, we had an assembly 3rd hour. Well, we were scheduled to have an assembly 3rd hour. So I planned on not having a lesson 3rd hour, and getting to Basementia before my students got to the classroom. But no. The assembly-presenter guy was running late. So instead of having the assembly at 10:00, it was changed to 12:15.

"What's the problem, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom?" you ask. I heard you. Don't pretend it wasn't you. No real problem, except that kids who sit down thinking they are having an assembly in 3 minutes don't take kindly to being told it will be later. Lucky for them, I always have extra worksheets on hand.

Guess what? The same assembly-presenter guy was scheduled for Basementia at 1:00. The presentation was rumored to be 90 minutes long. So when the dust settled after my arrival at Basementia, I asked around about the time. No. Nobody knew about any changes. No announcements. But I figured it would be later. By accident, I discovered that the kids were told at lunch that it would now be a 1:30 assembly. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom knows Math. She can add and subtract time. So I didn't really think it would be at 1:30, either. I tried to prepare the kids, but they were having none of it. "Uh uh. They're going to call us out any minute." Yeah. Keep on believin', children. At 2:00, we were called to the assembly. Guess who didn't get the 90 minute presentation.

Tonight was the fun night at #1 son's school. On the calendar, it said '6:00 to 7:30'. The smaller fry were not welcome, as in 'we will provide a babysitter for younger siblings' not welcome. I left #2 son with his grandma. HH met us. Once in the building, we were given a schedule to follow. Seems we had a general assembly with the same assembly-presenter guy. For an hour. Then, we had six stations to rotate through, with 15 minutes at each one. Umm...NO! That would put me home after 9:00 p.m. We left. I can only tolerate so much in one day.

Karma should not spring surprises on Hillbilly Mom. She is a creature of habit. Slow, methodical...the turtle winning the race. Except that HM is not a turtle--that was yesterday's sub.

Last cat out of the bag, #2 son brought home his book order. He had a Nintendo DS game that did not work. We tried it in three different DSes. I am sending it back to his teacher with a note. The boy wants his $19.95 back. He will shop at The Devil's Playground from now on. Darn those Scholastic people! They don't have to listen to a little boy sob broken-heartedly until he falls asleep.

I don't know how much longer I can protect him from the cold, cruel world. My Mommy Magic is on the fritz.

Too Much Info

2007-04-25T18:40:00.000-05:00

Things are afoot here at the Mansion tonight. And Mrs. Hillbilly Mom does not like feet. It is a busy time of year. Somebody has asked my child to help out with a prom for special needs students by burning some CDs. I thought it was for the music. He thought it was to put in a gift basket. We are in a quandary. We do not want to violate any laws. We are not making any money. We are creating gifts. But we really need to find out which task we are committing to. It kind of needs to get done tonight. Thursday night, we must attend a 'fun night' at #1 son's school. He did not want to go until he learned that anybody who attends will earn an afternoon in the park. So we are required to have fun. Friday, he will be gone to Six Flags all day. So we need to get on the stick. Or off the stick. To get these thingies finished. I thought it would be, like, two CDs. He's thinking more like 50.

I am so glad I removed my tattoos before the students saw them yesterday. Just today, they were talking about a substitute. Even though he had no tattoos, the description was not flattering. Opinions varied. Two different classes brought up the subject. One class announced that they had a sub who looked like a turtle. They did not elaborate. Next cat out of the bag, the class after them mentioned 'the sub who looks like a fish'. "Well," I told them, "funny you should mention that, because apparently there's a turtle guy here, too." And they filled me in. "Oh, no, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. It's the same guy. I could see where they might say a turtle. He's got this little bitty head, and a long neck, and he kind of hangs his head down on the end of his neck. But the reason we say 'fish' is that he has this big ol' eyes, and his lips go like this." And a girl squished her lips together like a fish making that bubble-producing 'O' shape. Please, please, tell me that they don't describe me to any other teachers. Please.

Another kid told me that he's been having trouble with his colon, and that he has to take medicine and that stuff on commercials for old people. I was not clear on this, but didn't really pursue the subject, which did not stop him from elaborating, "Oh, yeah, prunes...is there such a thing? Yeah, that's it. Prunes. And if I'm not better, they have to stick something up my butt. So you can bet that I'm going to get better, because nobody is sticking anything up my butt." With only one ear listening to him as I took roll, I said, "Well, I'm sure they will knock you out to do something like that." And he replied, "No way! That would be even worse, to be knocked out while they were sticking something up your butt. And on Friday, I have to drink this stuff that cleans you out." Never leaving well enough alone, I had to prolong the agony. "Why on Friday?" And he said, "In case it carries over to the next day." And all his cronies shouted, "We ain't doin' anything with YOU Friday night!"

Such is the daily life of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. She doesn't really want to know these things. She just gets drawn in, trying to be all caring and sh*t.

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Don't forget, the new stories are ready in Redneck Diva's writing contest. Go read them and put in a vote. You have until midnight, May 2, methinks.

Read Some Stories

2007-04-24T20:11:00.000-05:00

The stories are up for this week's writing contest. Go read. Give someone a vote. I command you. Thanks to you new people who are playing along, we have ELEVEN stories this week. It's a new record, by cracky!

3 Gripings And A Confessional

2007-04-24T18:25:00.000-05:00

I have issues. They are entirely my own issues. I am not blaming the school for what I am about to say. The school tried to solve a problem in the most efficient manner. I am not blaming the students, either. Kids will be kids. It's their nature. Our students are a pretty good group as students go. Even the substitutes say they're the best in the area. Now that the disclaimers are in effect, let's get to it...

Kids these days! Two of our buildings had no water yesterday. A pump broke in some town that supplies the water to those two buildings. This is not the first time it's happened. Goodness, no! The policy at one building is to set out bottled water for the kids, or set up coolers and cups in the main hallway. Port-A-Potties are rented, and it's business as usual. I'm not sure what happens at the other building, because I'm not in it. My son brings home notes that he can bring a water bottle to keep on his desk. As for their bathroom practices, I'm not sure. Anyhoo...that's not the issue. The issue is KIDS, people!

I'm thinking the school must have been led to believe the problem would be resolved sooner than it was, or that it was not as severe as it turned out to be. Because by afternoon, students from both of the other buildings were being bused to Basementia to use the facilities. That is not the issue. As a parent, I feel they did what is best for my child, under the circumstances. Now, for the griping.

First of all, the kids were told they could bring drinks to school. Unopened drinks, to carry to class. Did these kids bring bottles of water, to fill their hydration needs, to replace the drinking fountain visits between classes? NO! Some were fairly reasonable. They brought water, and those individual packets of Gatorade or some such flavory drink to put in the bottle and shake, shake, shake. Others brought soda. Yeah. Like they need that every hour of the day. Oh, not just a 20 oz. bottle of soda. Some brought freakin' 2-LITER bottles of soda. Keep in mind that at the time they were packing up this bounty to haul to school, the bathrooms were off limits. Yeah. Don't tell me the kids don't know what happens if you drink a 2-Liter bottle of soda in 50 minutes. Those soda-drinkers lucked out today, because the pump was fixed, and the toilets were a-flushin'.

Don't be feeling sorry for these kids. Because there was still bottled water free for the taking all day. Some kids had the free hey it's free I gotta get me some it's free mentality. They would try to take several bottles at a time. Others used the bottles to shoot the caps. Nobody actually did it in my class, but they gladly demonstrated how it was done. "See, you put the cap on where it's loose after the water is gone, and then you twist the bottom of the bottle and scrunch it up, and the pressure makes the lid explode off." Wow! It's a Bill Nye lesson as well.

Secondly, the bus trip to the bathrooms was viewed by some kids as a field trip. Never mind that they went to school in that building, or that it's only 5 minutes away. By cracky, those kids knew their rights! Never mind that some of them go all day with using the bathroom at school. If there's a bus trip to a bathroom, they are not going to miss it. Imagine your own kids, when you go somewhere, how they always have to check out the bathroom. Now, multiply your brood by oh...I don't know...maybe...150. Use a calculator if you need to. Don't be thinkin' they needed that trip because of the 2-Liter soda faux pas. No. This was the day before they could bring soda.

Thirdly, my own son, who is but a child, and fairly representative of the small fry population, demanded a water bottle to take to school. Well, he was out of luck, because the demanding was done to HH the night before, and by the time I got wind of it the next morning, it was too late to freeze one for him. Don't think the boy was in danger of dehydrating. NO! He had the exact same frozen bottle of water that he takes every day in his lunch. But he wanted a different water bottle, with a plastic straw, to set on his desk. Never mind that this kid goes some days without even opening his frozen bottle of water. I know, because when I unpack his lunch bag at night, the bottle is all shrunken after the ice melts. That cap hasn't even been tampered with from the time I put it on that morning.

Kids! Can't live with 'em...can't let 'em go without fluids for seven hours.

Now, to the confessional. Shhh...don't tell anybody, but today, on my plan time...I chewed a piece of Fruit Stripe Gum. It's OK. No kids were anywhere near the sugar. They were not harmed. Here is the embarrassing part. That Fruit Stripe Gum comes with little tattoos on the wrapper. All you have to do is wet your skin and stick that sucker to it for a few seconds. It seemed relatively harmless. I chose a stylish zebra riding a snowboard. Zebra. Because it's Fruit STRIPE Gum, get it? He was mostly blue, with some pink, kind of brightly colored. I put him on my inner forarm with a little spit, and admired him. I looked left, and I looked right. Nobody was around. I was at my computer. Nobody could see me from the doorway, and the window that is not covered with black butcher-paper faced out on a brick wall. I liked what I saw. And it looked like I could get a few more tattoos out of that ol' wrapper.

I put the snowboarding zebra up my forearm. Several times. Heh, heh. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom likes living on the edge. Good thing it didn't come with a self-piercing kit. After five minutes or so, I tired of being a rebel. I put a little spit on my arm to clean it off. You know how good mom-spit is at removing unwanted spots from skin! But NOOOOO! My tattoos did not wash off. They did not even fade!

Great Googley Moogley! Mrs. Hillbilly Mom could not teach 13-year-old students with an arm full of tattoos! She might as well run away and join the circus. Except that, well, the school year is almost over, and she hasn't missed a day yet, and is eligible for a handsome monetary reward, and somebody might just notice that her class is unattended for the next four weeks, which would not bode well for the handsome reward. I looked in my metal cabinet, bequeathed to me by Mabel herself when she left Basementia. OK, so the lock doesn't work, and it has a dent, and the handle is royally screwed-up, but it's MINE, by cracky! I tried a Clorox Disinfecting Wipe. It barely faded a smidgen of blue on one of my tats.

The last resort was the Fantastik. I sprayed some orangey goodness onto my inner right forearm. Lucky for me, I'm ambidextrous. I wiped it with the Clorox wet-wipey-thingy. Aha! Fantastik! People, that stuff is absolutely fantastic! Wait a minute--do you think that's how it got its name? Anyhoo, after several applications, and some good old-fashioned elbow grease, my tats were removed.

Don't tell anyone...'kay?

All You Gotta Do Is Ask

2007-04-23T20:52:00.000-05:00

Here's what those little crawdads looked like. Only ours were covered with mud, because they stirred up the creek bottom fighting over a worm. Cazzie asked for a picture, and that was an easy wish to grant.

Some other things people have been asking for in my stats are not so easy to answer. But I'll try.

where did the jetsons live? I just happen to know this, because my Trivia team missed it one time. They are proud residents of Orbit City. Not Space City. That is just wrong. Shame on us.

is a hollow bic pen ever used to smoke crystal meth? I suppose it is. I do not have first-hand experience, but it seems like I saw it once on Intervention. That is where you should go for all your drug paraphenalia needs. I saw a dude smoke crack off a piece of tinfoil, too. Or perhaps is was black tar heroin. I really don't know my drugs very well, for someone who watches them on TV every week. For bonus points, I will throw in that those little glass flower tubey thingies at convenience stores are made for the crack-smoking crowd. Who knew? I just thought there were some very thoughtful men shopping at convenience stores for flowers for their girlfriends.

a fool and his money are soon parted--meaning...give me your money, fool! Now do you understand?

what movie did gretchen wilson watch and announce she will eat at mcdonald restaurant? I don't know, though I'm guessing maybe that Supersize Me movie, since it deals with McDonalds grub. Not to be hatin' on Ms. Gretchen Wilson, our Redneck Woman, but it appears that she was...how you say...mighty familiar with McDonalds before she watched some movie. Just sayin'...

can you spare a square seinfeld? I think he can. Jerry is Even Steven. He'll get another square later, when he needs one. Elaine is the one who's going to give you problems. Offer to buy her a big salad, and make sure you don't call her 'Nip'.

who sang slip into my faith until iambored you never return my call? I never heard this song, but it doesn't sound like a very good one to me. No wonder you don't know who sang it. It's a stinker.

for prepositons, do you fall in or into the water? Stay out of the water. You'll catch your death of cold.

how much vodka per nip? Perhaps you should ask Elaine. I hear her boyfriend is on the wagon. Or is he OFF the wagon? Just don't let Jerry hold his drink.

julie andrews autiobiography released ? I didn't even know it had been arrested.

what does riflmao mean? This one is known only by Redneck Diva and moi. That is what we say around our parts. It means Rolling IN the Floor Laughing My A$$ Off. Because we lay IN the floor, and our kids play IN the road. That's how we roll.

how to describe the smell of a old mansion? Hold your nose, and shout, "Christ, did a cow sh*t in here?" And if you can tell me what old movie that came from, you're as warped as Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. Again, my money is on StewedHamm.

That's all I've got tonight. It's getting kind of late, as Mabel will be sure to tell me tomorrow.

Creeking Hillbilly Mom

2007-04-22T15:23:00.000-05:00

This morning, we went walking up the creek. Without a paddle, but with 3 dogs and a metal detector. The running score this year started today. So far, it is Metal Detector-0, Hillbilly Mom-1. The #1 son was running the detector. It is his, after all. He found nada. Not even a piece of barbed wire like last time, though he did find the rabies tag on one of the dogs' collars, but I am not counting that. I, on the other hand, with only my naked eyes, found a curved piece of metal thingy, about eight inches long, with a little chip out of the side. HH says it looks like a part of a plow. I don't know how he would know that. It's not like he has ever used a plow. I also found a thingy that looks like a piece of a plate. It's white and smooth, with a little ridge on one side. I suppose the upcreek neighbors might need to stop setting the plate out with the garbage. I'm afraid to even think about the baby and the bath.

We also found some itty-bitty crawdads fighting over a worm. We found them by accident, when I sat down on a rock in the middle of the creek to take a break. At first they looked like leaves. They were kind of muddy-colored, except for one. He was a pale whitish orange. The one with possession of the worm was really chowing down. He had that worm gnawed almost in half. When the others tried to creep in and get a piece, he backed away. Then a big one, bigger than my little finger, went after him. We knew he was the boss, because he had BOTH his claws. Which made me admonish the boys, "It's all fun and games until somebody loses an appendage." Too bad we weren't planning a fishing trip. Those little crawdaddies would have made good bait. It's supposed to rain all week. Maybe we'll go back next weekend and see what has washed up.

HH has gone to town. His buddy, Buddy, told him he could have an icebox from his house in town. Not a refrgerator...an ICEBOX. What Buddy is doing with an icebox, we'll never know. He could be part of some freakish Manhattan Project or something. What we are going to do with an icebox is a better question. Maybe HH will tire of it soon, and chuck it into the sinkhole--nature's wastebasket. I hate it when he does that. Maybe he will put in under the lean-to side of the barn that he enclosed with a giant Save-A-Lot sign. Hey! HH couldn't turn it down. They were going to throw it away!!! Maybe he will put the icebox in the Mini-Mansion. It is coming along. Though it still lacks a roof, all the sides are on, and the porch as well. Eat your heart out, Redneck Diva! A chance for a $250 piano, or a FREE ICEBOX? Uh huh. You heard me. FREE ICEBOX! Makes you want to pull up stakes and high-tail it to Missouri, now don't it?

There are four-and-a-half weeks of school left. My boy gets a trip to Six Flags on Friday. Thursday night is a 'fun night' at school, though I don't know how much fun I will be having, what with missing my favorite TV night. Next week, we have a night to orient next year's freshmen, and the next week is the academic banquet. It's a busy time of year. But the best time of year.

Like I tried to tell you last September...the school year is almost over.

Vista You Were Here

2007-04-21T17:04:00.000-05:00

Windows Vista is destroying my happy home. The #2 son has had his nose out of joint since Thursday night. The nasal disjointing was instigated by the #1 son, who had a FREE copy of Vista Home Premium that came as an upgrade offer with 'Lappy'. #1 has been eagerly awaiting his Vista disk since December. So eagerly, in fact, that we had to run by the post office Monday afternoon so he could ask the clerk if he had a package that wouldn't fit in the mailbox.

This was just wrong. First of all, the boy had been tracking that package every day. He crowed that it arrived IN OUR TOWN that morning at 8:00 a.m., and that we had to go get it. I tried to explain that the carrier was probably out on the route when it arrived, and that we wouldn't even get the orange notice card thingy for two days. Nothing would do but we go to the post office. We rushed over there after my meeting. They were just closing. A woman was taking down the flag. The boy ran by, and asked her if the window was still open. He went in. When he came out, he had no package. He was so sad, I could not even say, "I told you so." He was so sad that he declared, "And that woman was disrespecting the flag! She wadded it up under her armpit! She was supposed to fold it in a triangle. And not put it in her armpit."

We continued home. I stopped, as we do every day, at our row of mailboxes so he could get out the mail. He opened the door and screamed, "IT'S HERE! VISTA IS HERE!" He's probably the only person in the world who actually LIKES Vista. He upgraded his desktop that night. The next night, we had that board meeting recognition thingy. Wednesday night, he fiddled and faddled with Vista. He had persuaded his little brother that HE needed Vista on his new computer that he got for Christmas. It, too, came with a Vista upgrade. But the boy forgot to register it or something. Which is totally unlike him. When technology is involved, that boy in ON IT. I even gave him the receipt and warranty and stuff to keep with his.

Anyhoo...#1 upgraded #2's computer from XP to Vista. I was against it. All that little boy uses it for is CD games. I argued that Vista has a lot of complaints about drivers not working, and being irreversible after you upgrade. #1 was hearing none of it. "But Moooo oooom. It worked fine for mine. I know what I'm doing." OK, you know what that means. Just like in a horror movie when the girl says, "What's that noise? I'm going to check it out", you know you will never see her again. Alive.

Long story still long...the precious games wouldn't run with sound on the Vista. So after a few tears and a little screaming, #1 downgraded #2's computer back to XP. Only there was still no sound. He couldn't bear to tell poor, sniffling little #2 that night. He waited until morning. I do believe the boy even felt sorry for his little brother. He promised to let him use HIS desktop until he got the problem resolved.

Because, you see, Vista ate up the recovery partition or something. I know that's not accurate, but I do know that Compaq quit shipping a recovery disk with their computers and you have to, how you say...make your own backup disks from the partition or something like that. Which #1 did not do before installing Vista, because it worked fine with his. Then he was mad. He got on the phone to the HP/Compaq people and asked for a recovery disk. Hey, it worked with his desktop when he had trouble with it and its innards. Even though he had to go through 6 people before they sent him the problem software. For free.

No such luck with the Compaq people. They refused to send him one. In fact, they refused to even let him speak to a supervisor unless he agreed to purchase a recovery disk. That ain't happenin'. It's not that we can't afford 25 bucks. It's the principal of the matter. As the boy argued with various foreigners throughout the night..."I purchased this computer because it says on the box that it is Vista compatible. It comes with a free upgrade to Vista. It did not come with a recovery disk because it has a recovery partition. I upgraded to Vista by following all the directions. There was no sound. I downgraded back to XP. Now I still have no sound. Vista damaged some files. I want a clean reinstall of XP to restore my computer. I can not do that because Vista damaged files. I should not have to pay for an XP Recovery Disk. It is not my fault that your computer was not what you advertised."

The boy was told rudely by the first service rep that he could not speak to a supervisor unless he agreed to purchase the disk. The second rep put him on hold when he asked for a supervisor, and never came back to him. The third rep would not give her name. Every time she said, "My name is ___ " , the line went blank. I know, because he handed me the phone. I told her, "Ma'am, every time you say your name, we lose the connection. When she heard my voice, she tried that one more time. I told her I would have to keep asking her to repeat it until we heard it, and she cut the crap. She even spelled it. 'S U S A N'. Which is probably a lie, because she had an accent like Apu from The Simpsons.

Anyhoo...Susan told the boy she would check with the supervisor, then after 10 minutes told him no, he would have to pay for the disk. When he insisted on talking to the supervisor, she said, "The supervisor is busy because of so many people complaining about Vista. You can not talk to the supervisor." My boy said he would wait. She put him on hold, and after 15 minutes he got someone else, who may or may not have been an actual supervisor. He tried to reason that he also had a 2-year warranty, but the supervisor said this was not covered. My boy finally declared that he would never buy another HP/Compaq product because they want to charge him for something that came with the computer, and was lost because the company erroneously stated that the computer was Vista-compatible.

As Gummi Mary is my witness, we shall never buy Compaq again.

Oh, but the saga continues...we went to my mom's house to take a sound card out of her computer. Don't worry, it's not like the boy told her on the phone. "Grandma? We're on our way to rob you." Grandma replied, "Okay." He gave her that computer, anyway. It's her first. She loves the innernets. But the boy got the built-in sound thingy working, and took out his Turtle Beach sound card. He installed it on #2's machine. Nope. No sound. So we called around the various Devil's Playgrounds. They had sound cards. Were they Vista compatible? As one said honestly, "I highly doubt it." So the boy checked the brand for drivers on the innernets. He called back to speak to the Devil's handpuppet, and asked for the model number. They guy said, "Uhh...I can give you the serial number." My boy said patiently, like coaxing a 2-year-old to unlock the bathroom door, "Look on the box...see the name? Now what does it say right after that?" He found a driver. We set off to the Playground while he thought he was downloading the driver.

All morning and afternoon I stayed off the phone line. He said it would only take about 90 minutes, but I wasn't taking the rap if that driver didn't download. Around 4:00, when the boy got back from grandma's, and from taking the dogs for shots, he went to retrieve the driver. But NOOOOO! He had set it to download to LAPPY, and he always takes Lappy with him when he leaves the Mansion. So no driver for desky!

Having reached the end of my rope, and methodically twirling the frayed ends of it as I wondered if a noose would hold, what with all this fraying going on, I did not hold out much hope as #1 gutted #2's misery machine and put in the new sound card. BLUMP. "Mom! I thought I heard a noise from the speakers when I did that!" Yep. The new sound card worked without the driver.

It's a freakin' miracle. Thank the Gummi Mary, people.
I'm kinda sorry I let that kid eat her up to her knees and toss her in the wastebasket.

Laugh Or Cry

2007-04-20T17:48:00.000-05:00

I have a story to tell. I know, quite a surprise, huh? It's actually kind of two stories, but they both happened today, and they both made me think: you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Which brings me to that Stephen King story, "The Body". The kid, Vern, is not so bright. He has buried a jar of pennies under his porch, but can't remember exactly where. So Vern spends all his time digging for his pennies, which may or may not have been stolen long ago by Vern's hoody brother, Billy. And Gordy, the narrator, says, "You don't know whether to laugh or cry" about Vern digging all those holes for pennies that may not even be there any more.

Am I the only one who remembers this scene? It's in the movie, Stand By Me, as well. But whenever I mention it, people look at me like "Humor her. Just let her make the point, then we can nod politely and go on about our business of planning our regular kick-a$$ party to which she is not invited. Ever."

Anyhoo...one of my classes was doing some journal writing, and a kid raised her hand and asked, "Mrs. Hillbilly Mom? How do you spell photo blahblah?" I asked her to repeat herself. She said it again. I heard, "Photo blahblah." So I said, "I'm sorry, I couldn't understand the last part. Photo- what?" I was thinking what's going on? Am I having a stroke? I've never heard a word like that before. What is she saying? The girl said it clearly: "How do you spell photo-grapher?" I was flabbergasted. So I just spelled it. After all that, I was much too exhausted to tell her, "It's pronounced phu tog ra fur."

The other instance occurred this morning. I gave my mathies a little worksheet for bonus. It had some facts from the four core subject areas. They had to subtract without calculators, fill in some blanks about electrons, put some sentences in proper sequence to tell a story, and answer some geography questions. There was a paragraph about maps, and part of the question said, "Name the seven continents."

I had even allowed the students to work in pairs. Here came a couple of them to my desk. "We don't understand this question." I looked at it. On the three lines that were given for them to write the names of the seven continents, there was only one word. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was NOT a word. It was this: aeiouy. And one of the kids said, "I didn't know there were seven. All I can think of is six."

Sweet Gummi Mary! This was not the class referred to me for English! These were the mathies--the students whose English skills were OK, but whose math skills were suspect. Not only did these two misread 'continents' as 'consonants'...they didn't know the difference between vowels and consonants.

I did not let on. I just said, "No, it's asking for CONTINENTS." Supposing that saying it louder would make them understand. Just like you do with foreigners. It worked! But sadly, Russia is not a continent. And neither is Mexico.

Some days, I am merely a part of the problem.

What's In My Head

2007-04-19T18:11:00.000-05:00

I really should be typing up my entry for Diva's writing contest. It is still in my head, rattling around amongst the math and the big crock labeled 'Alzheimer's' and the dreams where I went on a Sunday drive with Kendra of The Girls Next Door because I needed cheering up and I simply adored her laugh, and the other one where I was assigned to make a table centerpiece for one of my colleagues who was giving a banquet speech, but another colleague stole all the white lilies in the world, and when I went back to check on the ones I was saving, they had turned into stubs of cauliflower florets.

My head is spinning. Even without the story and the dreams and that mysterious crock, I can not get a thought for myself. The students must tell me the most inane trivia every day. Though I am a fan of Trivia, I can do without the trivia. It doesn't matter if the lesson has been presented and they are supposed to be working. It doesn't matter if I am in the hall supervising. They take any silence in the room to mean: free-for-all with Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's attention. Here's a tenth of what I heard, just today.

Igotanewpuppylastnight
mydadtradedhistruckforanothertruck
IwasabsentyesterdaybecauseIhadtoputanewmotorinmysisterscar
didyouhearthatboyslappedmeinthefacebymylocker
mycousinranintoapoletryingtocatchafootball
Imetagirlontheinternetfromnewyorkandshewantstomoveinwithme
Iwontevenusemyneighborstoilet
mybrothergaveagirlsomethingandherdadcalledtosayhesgoingtobeatupmydad
igotaturkeyitwasabigone
iwaspunchingthepunchingbaglastnightandhitmyhandonthedoorframe
whydonttheyletusplaybasketballinthegymanymoretherestenteachersintherejusttalking
todayslunchwasgooditwaslikeapplepiefillingwithgranolaalloverit
whydonttheyletushavepiercingsImgoingtowearmineanywayandseewhattheydo
someonesaidtheysawmybrotherdriving70milesanhourwhodoyouthinkdidthat
doesoneofthosecomputersplaydvdscauseIhaveoneherethatwecouldwatch
whattimedowegetoutofhere
arethereextrachairsinhereitlooksliketoomanytome
howmanydaysareinmayhowmanydaysofschoolareleftcanIwriteitontheboard
canIborrowyourtapecanIgetarulercanIhaveapieceofthatpaperdoyouhaveanymorefolders
doyouhaveanypencilstosellthemechanicalonesIhatethewoodpencils
doyouhaveany5-0leadIranoutandIdonthaveanotherpencil
rememberwhenthatgirlwantedtofightherandshebackeddownandshewasoncrutches
whatishesayingIwasNOTgoingtohitagirlwhileIwasoncrutchesthatwouldhurthertoobad
whywouldyouexpecthertofightanywayDUHshewasoncrutches

And so it goes. My head is too full. I need a thought-leech to drain out some of the thinks up in there, methinks. Why, oh why, won't their parents give them some attention so I can concentrate on the learnin', not the building of self-esteem?

The school year is almost over, by cracky!

I'm Just Wondering...

2007-04-18T19:03:00.000-05:00

Something on my mind since Monday is the fact that so many of those kids at Virginia Tech 'played dead'. I don't fault them at all. I'm sure I would have done the same. But I'm surprised that a couple of them didn't charge the gunman. I think an older generation would have. Not me. I'm not pointing any fingers. I am not leader material. I try to blend into the background. Call me possum. But I can't believe nobody but the OLD teacher guy tried to stop it. The people who shoved the table in front of the door showed good problem-solving skills. But still, they were bent on self-preservation.

Don't get me wrong. I am not blaming them at all. We have made them this way. We spoil our kids. We do anything we can to make them happy. We fight their battles for them. We want to make it all better when they're hurt. We want to make sure things are fair. But have we not created a generation who thinks they are entitled? They have rights, by cracky! Like the right to roam free even though they're crazy.

I also wonder what might have happened if, say, they gunman walked into the gym instead of the engineering building. Surely some students there would have rushed him. My son is the type who would end up in the engineering building. He is not a fighter. He is a thinker. He would sooner curl up in a little ball and sqeal like a schoolgirl than fight back. Like when The Veteran sat on his head and farted. But the athletes are physical people. DUH! Surely one or more of them would think, "I can take this punk."

I was seriously concerned about the ME generation. Until one of my classes strolled in yesterday. By 'strolled', I mean surged into the room like a tsunami, like pieces of popcorn bouncing around the microwave, like paying contestants entering a Wrestle Royale. These are my farters, my Band-Aid freeloaders, my buttsy-wuttsy players. It's the class that has no girls left, having driven two of them to move to different districts. The class who told me, when I asked what they'd done in Math class for the last two years, since Math seems like Greek to them, answered in unison, "Made the teacher cry."

After the tardy bell rang, and the dust settled, and all the bleeding was staunched, a kid who's logged as many ISS hours as classroom hours asked, "Umm...if a guy came in here with a gun...would you get in trouble for hitting him?" The ring leader of this Band of Botherers asked, "Did you see the news? How come nobody tackled that guy?" And a cheer went up, echoing from the corners of the room. A cheer of "YEAH! I would've taken him OUT!" Now, we don't really know how anybody would react in this situation unless it happens. But I truly believe over half of that class of scrawny freshman boys would have gone after the gunman. If for no other reason than they can't lie still long enough to play dead. Or keep from talking for 15 seconds. I think these little rednecks would have put up a good fight.

Thing is, they are not the type who will go to college. They will be the racecar drivers, the mechanics, the carpenters, the welders, the soldiers. They will fight for what they believe in. Even though I may not agree with the battles they choose...that's a good thing. They are the type of people who built this country.

But they still have to bow to the rules in Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's class.

And in keeping with the overall educational tone of this blog...who can spot the palindrome in this post? Anybody.........anybody?

*************************************************************

Hey! Why don't some of you enter Redneck Diva's writing contest this week at writeinthethickofit.blogspot.com. Entries are due by Saturday. I chose the words this week. So you can bet there's a faux pas in there somewhere. C'mon, people! We need more entrants. Be a sport. Nobody will laugh at you. And even if they do...you won't know it, because, DUH, you won't even know when they are reading it. Even on the sliiiight chance that somebody leaves a comment saying, "Ha, ha", you can leave one right back saying, "DO NOT MOCK ME!" See? I've got it all figured out.

A First-Aid Lesson

2007-04-17T20:19:00.000-05:00

I'm a bit late tonight, having attended the school board meeting where my boy recieved a nice framed certificate-of-recognition for his 1st Place ribbon in the local community college Science Fair. Oh, and his partner, too. The choir, band, and FCCLA students who won special awards were also recognized. It's that time of year. Things are winding down. There will be banquets, awards, rewards, dances, incentive trips, club trips, field day, etc. We play hard after working hard all year on the MAPs.

I'm not feeling longwinded tonight. Perhaps I have a fever. Anyhoo, I will leave you with a little lesson from Mrs. Hillbilly Mom.

HOW TO ASK FOR A BAND-AID
(or an adhesive bandage, if you believe in copyrights)

HOW TO ASK FOR A BAND-AID THE WRONG WAY
Students roam about the room before the tardy bell, playing grab-a$$ (a big shout-out to Mr. S for his favorite terminology, right up there with his second favorite, buttsy-wuttsy). When Mrs. Hillbilly Mom enters to begin class, the following conversation occurs.

Hey, do you have a Band-Aid?
I think so. Let me take roll.
I cut my finger.
Just a minute.
I'm dripping blood all over my book.
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's class doesn't have books. She doesn't really give a fat rat's behind. She has seen no sudden trauma. No stabbing, no hand slammed in a door, no biting, no hitting with a hammer, no cheese-cutting, no papercutting. Nobody has asked for a Band-Aid during the 4-minute Grab-A$$ Festival.
I said 'in a minute'.
Well, it's dripping.
I SAID WAIT.
What's the matter with you? Alls I did was ask for a Band-Aid. I cut my finger.
And that's my fault how?
Well,you won't give me a Band-Aid. What are we supposed to do, bleed all over everything?
Look. I don't HAVE to give you anything.
What kind of attitude is that for a teacher?
The point is, I told you to wait. And you wouldn't let me take roll without interrupting. That is rude. All you had to do was wait 30 seconds. Now look how long this has taken.
Why do you always treat ME like this?
You are the one always interrupting. There. There's a Band-Aid.
Student rips it open and puts it on his finger. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom has yet to see the river of blood he's been harping about.
This is a SpongeBob Band-Aid. Don't you have any plain ones?
I'm so sorry that my free Band-Aid doesn't meet your standards. Maybe next time, you should drive to Wal-Mart and buy your own Band-Aids to carry with you in case you cut your finger in Math class, what with all the sharp objects you're exposed to here.
Gosh, all I wanted was a Band-Aid. Why do you have to give me the lecture?
Did you ever see Fast Times At Ridgemont High?
No. What's that?
Never mind.

HOW TO ASK FOR A BAND-AID THE RIGHT WAY
(the next day, different student in same class)

Student reaches hand into jacket pocket.
Ow! I cut my finger on that broken CD case.
Student puts finger in mouth.
Let me see.
Student walks to desk, holds out finger with drop of blood oozing from bottom of fingernail.
Do you have a Band-Aid?
Yes, I do. Here's one.
COOL. SpongeBob. Thanks.
You're welcome.

Don't trifle with Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, people. She does not tolerate rude freeloaders very well.

Ten From Saturday

2007-04-16T18:35:00.000-05:00

What with all the excitement yesterday about seeing my first real live beggar in Hillmomba, I completely forgot to tell y'all about Trivia Night. WE WON! Oh, but we didn't just WIN. The second-place team was 14 points behind. I would say that's a decisive victory. Thank the Gummi Mary we had our ringer, the former student who is all sports all the time. He pulled in 8/10 on the Sports category. It just happened to be the second category of the night. One of my teammates told him, "All right. You can go now. That's all we needed you for." He was just joking. I think.

Are you up for some Trivia? Here are some that we got right. I'll give you one from each category. I won't give you any that we missed. How could I possibly expect any of you to know the answer when the Supreme Team didn't know it? Well, StewedHammalammadingdong might know it. And even if he didn't, he would manipulate the question until his answer was right. Some people are just too smart for my own good, by cracky!
As always...NO GOOGLING!

HILLBILLY MOM'S TRIVIA SAMPLER

UNITED STATES
In what state did Daniel Boone die?

SPORTS
Fred Dryer was the star of the TV show Hunter. For what professional sports team did he play before he became an actor?

CLASSIC TV
What were the names of the Partridge Family kids?
What was Eddie Haskell's nickname for Theodore 'Beaver' Cleaver?

MUSIC (Oh, the HORROR! We only got 3 right, and one was a guess!)
What artist released an album entitled 'Born In The USA'?

FAMOUS PEOPLE
These were people, so I'll give you two in one of the categories. In the meantime, can you conjure up a picture of John Wilkes Booth? We got him, though. 8/10 in this category.

GAMES
How many point is the 'M' worth in Scrabble?

MOVIES
What actress played Michael Douglas's wife in 'Fatal Attraction'?

HISTORY
What are the first words of the U.S. Constitution?

SLOGANS
What product used the slogan, 'Only her hairdresser knows for sure'?

MISCELLANEOUS
How long must a person be missing before he can be declared legally dead?

There. That should tide you over until our next Trivia Night. Or, as my friend Karen from long ago used to say, "That should tie you over." She was also fond of telling me, "I know you like a book." Mmmhmm. But could she read me like the back of her hand?

On The Road

2007-04-15T16:37:00.000-05:00

As we left The Devil's Playground this morning, (and by morning, I mean 11:58 a.m.), we saw a man standing on the corner by the stoplight. He had a beard, and was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. He held up a sign made of a piece of cardboard box that had written on it: "On the road. Any amount will help." We rarely see these people around here. In fact, he's the first one I remember seeing. Ever. And as my students will tell you, I'm so old that my Social Security number is '1'.

I don't know why I was surprised. Perhaps it was because he didn't even make a pretense of writing: "Will work for food." No. I suppose he did not want to work. After all, he was on the road. What does that mean? Is he traveling somewhere? Why not: "California or bust!"? Does he think he's Jack Kerouac? Is he walking? Driving? Homeless? Why not just write: "I live under the bridge and need money for meth."?

I've been thinking about this all day. Would he not have been better off, on a Sunday morning, to go to a local church, attend services, and stand in the parking lot as people left? "Help a brother out," he might write. Or maybe a scriptural quote. Why stand at the entrance to The Devil's Playground? Because where he was standing, he was only getting the traffic leaving the Playground. People are not so charitable after having the Devil to pay.

When I worked in the city, I saw these people all the time. But at least they offered to 'work for food', or sold pretzels at the red lights. There was an article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch once about a man who did this for a living. He earned more than I did, working for the State of Missouri. Don't tell me that he provided a valuable service. I don't think the demand is really that great for pretzels that are sheathed in a tube of waxed paper, absorbing exhaust fumes all day. People wanted to help. And he made more money than some of those people. Not that he didn't deserve it. He WAS out working. Same as people who sell drugs get out and work. At least they don't lie around watching their big screen TVs, drawing disability benefits on their kids whom they've had declared disabled by teaching them to fake mental disorders, or learning disabilities. Don't call me heartless, people. You wouldn't believe how much of this goes on. I'm not talking about kids who really ARE disabled. It's the scamming parents who piss me off.

Anyhoo...getting back to my beggar...I really wanted to stop and ask him his story. I didn't, because I had one of the boys with me, and because I was raised not to stop and talk to men holding cardboard signs asking for money. But I can't stop wondering. What if I had stopped, and said, "Look, Buddy. I'm going to give you $10. But for that $10, I want to know the true story. You don't have to make up a sob story. You're going to get the $10 no matter what. Just be honest with me. Are you really on the road? Where? Why? How'd you get here? Did you run out of money, or never have any to begin with? Are you on the lam? Are you headed to a funeral for a long-lost relative? Going to Florida to look for work? A serial killer looking for new victims? Do you live in a van down by the river? Is this sign really your line of work? How much do you make in a day? I'm just curious. Can you do that for me? For $10? Because you're going to get it anyway. And I'm not going any higher."

Do you think he would have told me the truth? Or made something up?

Would I have known the difference?

Intervening Ain't All It's Cracked Up To Be

2007-04-14T12:52:00.000-05:00

Too bad the show wasn't about a crack addict. Then my title would have been scathingly brilliant. I watched my Intervention last night. It was not quite so satisfying as my previous Interventions. For one thing, this show was more about the mother, because they had to keep the intervention a secret from the kid. Duh. Like they do on every freakin' intervention. We did not get to see him shooting his meth. Doggone it! That's the best part! We got to see his momma cry a lot. And some adorable home movies of him as a baby. When they mentioned how 'he thought he could get away with anything', I knew he wasn't fixable.

I hate to be saying this, in my line of work and all. We are supposed to be believe that every student has the potential to grow up a be a world leader, a gene-splicer, a novelist or textbook writer, a rocket scientist. I would never say out loud that some of them aren't going to make it. I don't treat any of them like I don't think they're going to make it. But sometimes, you have to be realistic. No matter how many chances, and how much extra help some people are offered...they're not going to make it.

The worst cases are those who think they can get away with anything. Or as the kids would say, get away wit anything. They believe they are entitled. This comes in all different flavors. Some believe it because of who they are. They have relatives who have connections, whether it be connections through school authorities, law enforcement, labor unions, etc. They believe they are entitled to have extra chances, break laws, or have a good-paying job lined up for them through no effort of their own.

Others think they can get away with anything because they make themselves so fearsome nobody will dare mess with them. They threaten, they fight, they act just crazy enough that people will back down from them. When they are caught, they make excuses. "Oh, well. I have to go to ISS anyway for that other thing. Another day isn't going to matter." Or "Hey, did you know that I should have gotten 7 days according to the rules, but I only got 5, ha, ha." They KNOW they are getting away with something. They know the rules. They just play the game. And sometimes, we let them. For whatever reason.

Then there are the bailouts. Somebody will always make excuses for them, or fight their battles. "My dad will be up here. You'll be sorry." And the dad comes up, and we may be sorry for the short term, what with having to call the police to cart Dad out in handcuffs, but in the long term, we are not sorry. Because we get to stick it to him, by the book, of course. Not in any vindictive kind of way. My, no. That would just be wrong.

Now don't go thinking I'm talking about my present workplace in all of this. It happens in every school district. In one former place, my room was directly across from the office. Some guy was mad about his daughter's schedule, of all things. He proceeded to tell the principal, (a woman, if that matters), that she was going to change his daughter's schedule to what he wanted. The principal told him that was not possible, what with the course offerings at a rural middle school such as ours. Dad said, "Well, I'm not leaving until you do." He jumped up on the counter in the outer office, crossed his arms, and sat there. I should know. He was facing right into my room, which was a bit disconcerting. He sat there about 15 minutes, until the police came in, handcuffed him, and carried him down the stairs and out of the building. Don't mess with a woman principal, people. She is not you pal.

Anyhoo...getting back to my little meth-shooting friend...though I really didn't know him, I know his type. He refused to go to treatment until the local police, who had themselves 'cut him a few breaks' over the past 18 months, told him they would be handcuffing him, and he would be going to prison for quite a long time. What a surprise, at the end of this Intervention show, that this kid left treatment after only 30 days, due to 'disruptive behavior'.

Sometimes, you just have to call an a$$h*le an a$$h*le. And leave it at that.

I'm Running Late For My Intervention

2007-04-13T20:52:00.000-05:00

I don't have much time tonight. It's almost time for my Intervention. Let the record show that I mean my TV show Intervention, not my actual Intervention, which would be kind of embarrassing, I suppose, what with all my addictions, such as gambling, Sonic Cherry Diet Coke, lottery (which I'm pretty sure counts as gambling), Trivia, ending sentences with prepositions, using the phrases oh so pretty, by cracky, anyhoo, people piss me off, thank the Gummi Mary, first cat out of the bag, The Devil's Playground, and probably others that escape me at the moment, because I'm in a hurry.

The Intervenee tonight is a kid who lives in a trailer and shoots meth every day. I might know him! Gotta go. I'll try to sneak in a post tomorrow before my Trivia Night.

First Annual Pissing Day

2007-04-12T18:15:00.000-05:00

I see that none of you paid attention to your science teachers back in the day. That is the logical conclusion, what with NOBODY trying to answer any of my Science Trivia yesterday. Thank the Gummi Mary I've learned not to invite any of you to play on our Trivia Team on Saturday night. Actually, we now have a full team. Plus one. We'll work it out. I have high hopes for this combination.

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is not in a good mood this evening. But she will not go into details, as it is work-related. Let it suffice to say that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom feels that an equal is taking advantage of her kind nature. Let's not forget that Karma is a b*tch, my dear colleague, who shall remain nameless. What goes around comes around. And don't ever, ever forget that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is Even Steven. Matters have a way of resolving, whether Mrs. Hillbilly Mom takes an active role, or just sits back to see what develops. The back-sitting is the preferred option for Mrs. HM.

The Large SUV has been acting up this week. It is hard to steer. The same could be said for the #1 son. HH thinks the LSUV's problem is the power steering belt, or some such thingy. Who knew cars had accessories like belts? I suppose next, it will be asking for new tires and a luggage rack to match the belt. I think it might just be my perpetually under-inflated tires. HH swears that he puts in air to match the instructions on the tires and the instructions on the door-edge-label-thingy on the LSUV. Funny thing that the other 4 LSUVs that teachers drive do not look like they have flat tires. I have been complaining to HH about this for 2 weeks now. He has given my LSUV a lick and a promise. Mainly, just a promise, because I can't imagine him licking anything other than his greasy fingers out in public when he eats chicken wings at a restaurant. And he makes those end-lick sucking noises, too. I HATE THAT SOUND!

Speaking of people pissing me off...I have been forewarned by my Hillbilly Mama that the 'new' Captain D's in a nearby town has some fishy business going on there. She went to lunch with one of her old lady friends, and they ordered, and sat down to wait. When their numbers were called, a 'dining room' (I use that term loosely for Captain D's eating area, which is just like one large square room) worker rushed the counter and grabbed their trays before they even had a chance. She brought the food to their table. My mom said, "You didn't even give us a chance to pick it up." And the girl said, "I figure if I'm nice to YOU, you'll be nice to ME." With that, she held out her hand and rubbed her thumb and fingers together. Even worse than the Grinch-smiling hotel worker in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. I believe his tip was a stick of gum. This dining room girl got NOTHIN'. My mom was offended that the girl dared ask for a tip. She and her crony said they didn't need anything on the 5 or 6 times that girl interrupted them. Then when she went to pester someone else, they got up to get sodas. They also left when she wasn't looking, being careful not to leave her one red cent.

I don't blame them. Why would you want to tip an annoying dining room worker? It's not like she's a waitress, and the employer can pay her $2.15 or something because she will reach minimum wage on tips. Kids these days. I don't mind tipping in a regular restaurant. Or tipping the Sonic girl if she has to haul your tray out to the LSUV. But I draw the line at fast food.

What's pissing you off today? Do tell.

Put On Your Lab Coat

2007-04-11T18:39:00.000-05:00

Hmm...countdown to Trivia Night. What can I quiz you on tonight? How about...SCIENCE? What? I should not hear screams of NOOOO, people. This is not a democracy. In addition, this is not a gas pump, son. Said Rachel in Coyote Ugly. Which is neither here nor there, but my mind wanders sometimes as I type, and I just answered a comment from StewedHamm with a reference to that classic movie, (stop MOCKING me), and it was fresh on my mind. Put on your lab coat. Make sure you are not wearing any open-toed shoes. Pull your hair back in a bun like Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies (no relation). Now, proceed to the lab single file. Only one person at each station, please. Begin.

Hillbilly Mom's SuperDuper Science Quiz Thingy

1) Who decreed that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction?

2) Who was the scientist who studied genetics using pea plants. Hint: It wasn't Punnett. He's too square.

3) What is the main difference between magma and lava?

4) What makes some atoms more stable than others?

5) Would you like to drop a chunk of potassium in the bathtub? Why or why not?

6) Where are phalanges found?

7) Who or what performs transpiration?

8) Why are there no old crack wh*res? OK, that's not really a science question, but I heard it on Intervention, and thought this was a good chance to use it.

9) A calorie is the amount of e_____ necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of w_____ one degree C_______.

10) Name 3 of the 6 types of simple machines.

Let's see which of you actually paid attention back in Science class, shall we? I have given you a variety of items. Surely you will know something from the Earth, Life, or Physical Science categories. Stew, I'm placing my money on you, because you knew the cube root of 8000. And anyway, I'm Even Steven, so I'm sure to get my money back. I just found $131.42 in the side of my purse this morning. I think I can afford a wager.

Your papers will be graded Thursday night. If you don't know the answer, give it your best shot. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is easily amused. Once upon a time, a Health student assured Mrs. Hillbilly Mom that one way to avoid AIDS like the plague was to always be monotonous. A Science student informed Mrs. Hillbilly Mom that a dramatic increase in the number of deer being struck by cars was probably due to some new kind of aphrodesiac that started growing on the other side of the road. Oh, and let's not forget the time the Chinese bombed the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, Japan.

Again, I wish you good luck. And NO GOOGLING, by cracky!

Sing, Sing A Song...

2007-04-10T18:19:00.000-05:00

Excuse me while I do some horn-tooting. I have won this round of Redneck Diva's writing challenge. As Diva herself would say...I am happier than a puppy with two p*ckers. Thanks to all of you who voted for me. Thanks to all of you who voted. We are trying to get more voters, and more contestants. Won't you please play along this week? The words will be posted soon. I should know. I get to make them up. Check it out at writeinthethickofit.blogspot.com. All are welcome to submit a story. You just email it to the Diva. Her email is on the top of the site. Come one, come twenty...we need fresh blood. Not that we're going to make you bleed or anything. It's just an expression.

Let's have a little song trivia for tonight's post. Oh. Y'all don't have a vote. It's not a freakin' democracy around here, people! All you get to vote on is the writing contest. So don't abuse the privilege, by cracky!

Hillbilly Mom's Song Triva From Her Windows Media Player Because She Is Electronically Challenged And Has Not Yet Mastered The New-Fangled MP3 Player, Much Less One Of Those Space-Age IPOD Thingies.

Tell the song OR the artist. Because you deserve a break today. But NO GOOGLING! Absolutely none. And here's a clue...these are the opening lines of the songs, not the catch phrase, or some chunk from the middle.

1. "Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road. Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go."

2. "City girls just seem to find out early/ How to open doors with just a smile/A rich old man, she won't have to worry/She'll dress up all in lace and go in style."

3. "You had a little love on a little honeymoon/You got a little dish and you got a little spoon/A little bitty house and a little bitty yard/A little bitty dog and a little bitty car."

4. "It's criminal, there ought to be a law/Criminal, there ought to be a whole lot more/You get nothin' for nothin' / Tell me who can you trust?/We got what you want/And you got the lust"

5. "I didn't ask/They shouldn't have told me/At first I'd laugh, but now/It's sinking in fast/Whatever they've sold me."

6. "My daddy was a charmer boys/He had a lot of style/He was the shining best of everything he did/They said that he could lighten up the room with just a smile/And I was proud as hell to be his kid."

7. "She turned up her nose as she walked by my Cadillac/From the corner of my eye, I saw you and you laughed/You was sittin' on the swing on your front porch, paintin' your nails like you were bored/And you yelled 'She was sure impressed with you!'"

8. "I got a little change in my pocket goin' jing-a-ling-a-ling/Want to call you on the telephone, baby, and give you a ring/Each time I try, I get the same old thing/'No huggy, no kissy, until I get a weddin' ring'"

9. "It was the third of June/Another sleepy, dusty delta day/I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was bailin' hay/And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat/And Momma hollered out the back door, 'Y'all remember to wipe you feet...'"

10. "I was a mess in my open-eyed youth, I grew up thinking /What's good for one oppresses the other, it's my turn, my life, my way, mine, me/It made me crazy, I couldn't fight it, I couldn't wait to get away...It's a war, with the whole wide world/It's a war, with the boys and girls, it's a war, and nothin's gonna change..."

Yeah. That's it. Good luck. Methinks you'll need it. Or not.

Hillbilly Mom's Pity Party Agenda

2007-04-09T15:33:00.000-05:00

Welcome! I'm throwing a pity party for moi. I think I deserve it. Just look at what people were searching for when the arrived at my Mansion. If this keeps up, I might develop a complex.

Hillbilly Mom's Pity Party Agenda

I don't know why people have to be so mean. After a hard day of teaching different kinds of hoppies, you'd think a person would be allowed to do some quality laying' around the shanty getting' a good buzz on. But no! People call my home the devils mansion. They ridicule my faux mink king bedspread neiman marcus. C'mon. He's family, like my Lovely Green Shirt, Jeannie. They don't appreciate my fine art, either. Especially that lovely, framed picture of mom getting a wedgie.

People are mean, people! They call me names like ingrown hair nostril nose, and gut nose instep balls miss congeniality, and skunk disposal, and cakey lover. They sing me the i don't love you much lyrics, and make fun of my Hillbilly heritage by rapping the lyrics of we'are hillbillies in hillbilly hills. And they call ME cindy preszler annoying! (FYI, Cindy Preszler is a local news meteorologist). Apparently, I was a gummi bears ogre for a day, and now they are saying it's about time I got the belt.

Then there are all those accusations. When they sarcastically typed somebody hit my parked car and dont wantto pay, I assumed it was just my rude neighbors claiming parking spots. Perhaps they'd gotten into the gold mercedes license plate cracky again. But then somebody said I was to blame when small red spots appear on arms and torso for about an hour and then fade. I beg to differ. Try staying out of the cefprozil rash sun, geniuses.

Next came the insinuations. Oh, they didn't come right out and call me an addict, but instead tried to trick me with 'innocent' questions. Like how good is histinex? And how long does histinex stay in your system? And how much hydrocodone is in histinex? And when you were little, did you have a prescription histinex toddler cough? It's enough to make me want to thump them over their pointy little heads with my histinex teaspoon. Which is a special kind of hillbilly silverware, it seems. But that's not enough drugs for someone with Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's evil hillbilly background. How do you snort benadryl? Is there much money in making meth benadryl? Are you a champion at meth trivia? And perhaps my favorite: fentanyl patches how to ho to shower with it on. Do they want to know how to ho? Or how to shower with a fentanyl patch? As Kim Darby told Glen Campbell in the Academy Award winning, badly-acted, 1968 classic John Wayne film, True Grit: "One would be as unpleasant as the other."

Let's lay off the meany-sounding searches for Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, people. Just go back to the everyday where to go buy sissy sleeve panties for men, and cartoons with the line oh my aching sacroiliac, and hillbilly tricks to fuel pump replacement. I'm just asking. Requesting, please. Because I will be the first to tell you: hillbillies mess with wrong guy and get gun pulled on them.

Whadda ya know?

2007-04-08T18:05:00.000-05:00

We have another big Trivia Night coming up on Saturday. Mabel is not playing this time. My team has 4 players. We need 4 more. I think we can snag 2. We'll see what develops.

In lieu of writing a real post tonight, I shall attempt to whip you into shape for my Trivia Night. No fair Googling. Any goober can Google. Let's see what you know.

1. Who did Alexander Graham Bell 'steal' the phonograph invention from?
2. What TV show featured Veronica, Marguerite, Professor Challenger, Roxton, Ned, and Dr. Summerlee?
3. What professional football player reported to training camp with his dog, Felony? Hint: Rams.
4. What song starts with the lyrics..."She grew up in an Indiana town. Had a good-looking momma, who never was around. But she grew up tall, and she grew up right. With them Indiana boys on them Indiana nights."
5. Which Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery?
6. What vegetable is actually a citrus fruit?
7. What was the name of Tom Hanks's 'buddy' in Castaway?
8. What is the cube root of 8000?
9. Who is the author of the book 'Roots'?
10. Which song plays during the opening credits of The Wonder Years?

That should keep you busy for a few minutes. Leave your answers in the comments. Just because someone answers one ahead of you doesn't mean it's right.

Good luck. NO GOOGLING, by cracky!

And don't forget to vote for someone, anyone, at writeinthethickofit.blogspot.com, Redneck Diva's weekly writing challenge. C'mon. I know more than 10 people around here can read. That's all who have voted so far. The voting ends Monday night. Help pick the winner. The only prize is choosing next week's word list. It ain't like we're asking you to support us for the rest of our lives. C'mon. A vote is a terrible thing to waste.

More Griping From HM

2007-04-07T19:25:00.000-05:00

This post shall be neither here nor there. Well, physically, it's here, but it's not about any certain thingy, and I feel a ramble coming on, so we shall see where it takes us. Or, precisely, where it takes moi, since you are just along for the ride.

We went out to supper tonight. Actually, it was more like 'lupper', the meal my 12-year-old invented, when I don't want to make lunch or supper, and combine it. We thought perhaps we would get the half-price appetizers at a chicken-wingy thingy restaurant that tries to be like a small-town hick Hooters. In the past, we have saved a bundle by getting the half-price appetizers, with the #1 son and HH getting chicken fingers that come with about 7 large pieces for $3.50. They each get one. There is no sharing in the Hillbilly family. They each consume every morsel. Plus, HH gets fried mushrooms, telling me I can have 'a couple' if I want them. My new favorite is the Super Nachos, which are actually home-fried potato chips underneath the tomatoes and cheese and jalapenos and black olives and chicken. The #2 son alternates between the mini corn dogs and the cheese pizza on the kids menu. Don't be hatin' on our menu. It's not like we set out to have health food.

Anyhoo...HH drove his Mercedes (1986 ugly yellow clunker that has cooled its wheels in the barn for the last nine months after overheating on the trip back from HH's annual family reunion last July) since he would be stopping to get one of the boys a haircut on the way home. He and #1 got to the restaurant (and I use that term loosely) before #2 and I. We called them on the way and told HH to go ahead and order, since he was running about 10 minutes ahead of us. Upon arrival, we discovered that they no longer have the half-price appetizers, since "People were coming to eat them". Which is a bit preposterous, don't you think, because isn't that the purpose of a special, to get people into the restaurant to buy them? And let me tell you, when it was half-price time for the Hillbilly family, HH drank more overpriced beer, the boys played a buttload of video games, and the waitress got a bigger tip. This full-price thingy was not really an issue, since we still planned to eat there anyway.

As if all the talk of the not-half-priced appetizers was not enough for you to see how cheap Hillbilly Mom really is...we have coupons for haircuts. YES! From Great Clips. Cheap haircuts even cheaper! Hey! It's $5 off per haircut. And I have FOUR coupons! For those of you who are not Math teachers...that is a savings of $20, people! We didn't build this Mansion by being spendthrifts, you know! Alas, HH discovered that Great Clips closed at 5:00 tonight. He discovered it when he arrived there, coupon in hand, at 5:05. Never mind that HH had already been there at 9:00 a.m. today, while waiting to pick up some prescriptions across the street. Heaven forbid he would read the hours on the door while walking through them this morning. I'm sure the boys' hair will still be there on Monday. The coupons are good until May 31, which doesn't mean that I want to let their hair grow that long without a cutting. Boys in our school wear their hair shorter than the boys in the district where we live. They look like 1970s kids around here. We see them at the bowling alley, and can tell which school they belong to.

There was way more to this post, (I know, you're thinking isn't this enough?) but alas, our dear NEW BLOGGER has digested it in a sudden locking-up of my unstable stone-age system. This is all that was recovered. And I ain't a-goin' there again. I hate NEW FREAKIN' BLOGGER, and it's little b*tch GMAIL, too. They are at the root of all my crashes. Is it too much to ask that my 7-year-old computer and Windows ME operate without a major malfuntion for 90 stinkin' minutes? Apparently so. I am not extravagant. I do not dream of running MediaPlayer while typing a post. I shut down all non-essential windows. I exit GMail. Oh. I forgot. Now I must sign in through GMail to operate NEW FREAKIN' BLOGGER! Whoever told me how much I would hate it (all of you) and how it takes an extra 5 minutes to get signed in (one of you, perhaps Mrs. Coach, or DeadpanAnn) was definitely right. My son smirks at me every time I rant about such things. "You know, Mom, GMail is designed for XP. It supports ME, but not very well." Thanks. You pass the smartypants test.

I hate progress.

Don't forget to check out writeinthethickofit.blogspot.com and vote for a story that appeals to you. Voting closes Monday evening, methinks.

At Home With The Family Of Morons

2007-04-06T17:54:00.000-05:00

We didn't have school today. Which meant my boys honored their unspoken pact to drive me crazy. It started with a sound. A sound much like I heard last week, when I thought #1 son was launching a rocket in the front yard, but it turned out that he was sitting on the toilet. Ahem. That kind of sound.

It was so reminiscent of last week's gas-passing that my #2 son, safely ensconced at his computer playing Civilization 3, just an arm's lenth away from me, said matter-of-factly, "#1 has launched another rocket." Which has become our little euphemism for a fart. A loud, long, echoing fart.

This was the pick of the litter as farts go. I was sure the boy was flying around the room like a rapidly-deflating balloon. I hollered from my office, "What are you DOING?" He laughed an evil laugh. The next thing I knew, he was standing right behind me. And I heard it again. The rocketish rumble, and the evil laugh. I told him he was nasty, and to get away from me and stop it NOW, right now, this instant, or I was taking away his Lappy for the rest of the day. He continued to laugh. I get sooo much respect from my young 'uns.

Then the boy spilt his little secret. "Mom. I was not really farting. Look. I have this straw down my sleeve, and I blow in it, and it makes my armpit sound like a fart. Listen. BRAAAAPPPPP! See? And it's not really a fart, just air in my armpit. Then you lean down like you're tying your shoe, and you hide the straw like this. I learned that at school yesterday when The Boy Who Was Born In A Truck did it with a piece of inkpen to Ms Homeroom Teacher. We all thought it was a fart. The kids laughed, and she told him to STOP IT. Then he showed us how to do it. Isn't it cool?" He grinned, like a kid who had just invented a robot capable of completing 6th grade homework.

He practiced his newly-acquired skill for the rest of the morning. I mean from 10:30 until 12:30. I called both boys up to the kitchen for lunch. As I put the finishing touches on #1's sandwich, #2 finished his Circus Os and milk (the Save-A-Lot version of Froot Loops), and began to taunt #1 and his fart straw. "Moooo oooom! #2 won't let go of the end of my fart straw! It's plugged up! I can't fart! Make him stop it. NOW!" #2 giggled his fiendish giggle, fueled by the sugary Circus Os. I had had enough. "STOP PLUGGING YOUR BROTHER'S FART HOLE!"

Both boys stopped their scuffling and looked at me. #1 said, "I bet that's something you never thought you'd be saying to your kids, huh, Mom?" I agreed. "And I never thought that one of my kids would be telling me that the other kid "...has a butt hole", either," I told them. #2 remembered his little butt hole faux pas from December. "What I meant was...he had a butt hole, in his pants!" Yeah. Like that makes it better.

I suppose you mothers of daughters are putting the finishing touches on the Easter bonnets right about now. Perhaps sitting down to a tea party, or playing My Little Pony, or having a Barbie furniture and clothing auction like my sister-the-mayor's-wife used to do with her girl young 'un. Shed a little tear for us mothers of boys. One single tear will do. A tear that runs down one cheek, and then your little princess pats you on the shoulder and wipes it away with a Kleenex and compassion.

Please. A single tear.

And while I'm making demands, go to writeinthethickofit.blogspot.com and read some stories. Place a vote. Because I said so. Don't make me plug your fart hole!

Brush With Greatness: Wernher von Braun

2007-04-05T22:05:00.000-05:00

You are in for a treat tonight. We have the guest blogger,
NotImaginary Mabel. She told me her story, so it will be
like a Drama in Real Life from Readers Digest. Only
longer, probably, because Mrs. Hillbilly Mom never
condenses anything. Sorry if I have taken some poetic
license, Mabel. I should have recorded your quotes on
a super-secret voice-activated thingy instead of standing
in the doorway with one ear on my DoNots.
Here, now, is Mabel's Story.

*******************************************

Mabel's Story

I will never forget the day I met Wernher von Braun.
At the time, I was just a schoolgirl, and did not realize
how important he was. I thought he was just a friend of
our family friend.

I lived in Belleville, Illinois, with my parents. Their friends,
Charlotte and Bill, worked at Scott Air Force base. Being
Civil Service workers, they received a transfer to England.
The assignment was supposed to last two years, but
'Chuck' and Bill did not like their life in England. It was
not the standard of living to which they were accustomed.
They heated with COAL, by cracky! (OK. The by cracky
comment is mine, not Mabel's.)

Chuck and Bill left before their assignment ended. They
returned to the states, and stayed in our home. I can still
remember the day they came back. We had about 3 feet
of snow, and my dad put chains on the tires of his panel
van, and went to get steaks and ribs so he could BBQ for
them. He put on boots and went outside to grill.

Because they left England early, Chuck and Bill did not
get their jobs back at Scott Air Force Base. They were
transferred to Huntsville, Alabama. Chuck was brilliant.
She worked in a cubicle right next to Wernher von Braun.
I don't know the job title, since it was a Civil Service job.
It would have been something like a G4 or some number.
I don't know if she waw a mathematician, or chemist, or
rocket scientist, or exactly what, just that Chuck was
brilliant, and worked on rockets with Wernher von Braun.

That summer, our family was invited to Huntsville to spend
some time with Chuck and Bill. Chuck got us top security
clearance. We had a tour of the building, and got to see
the test firing of a rocket. They did not launch any rockets
from Huntsville, but the tests made the ground shake all the
way in town. We got to go in the place where they made
astronauts weightless, too. I don't know how, but I
remember sitting in a chair that made me feel weightless,
and picking up a suitcase that also felt weightless.

It was on this tour and the rocket test that I met Wernher
von Braun. As I said, I did not know how important he
was. He seemed like a regular guy. He shook my hand.
I will never forget that rocket test. I want to watch a
Space Shuttle launch if I ever have the opportunity.

********************************************

From here, Mabel and I debated the merits of the U.S.
space program a bit, me being the skeptic who thinks the
moon landings never happened. Mabel disagreed. She is
more of the opinion that we landed on the moon, but that
the Space Shuttle docking is a conundrum. That's fine.
We have agreed to disagree on other things before this
minor issue concerning the history of our great nation.

Hope you have enjoyed the VERY REAL guest blogger,
my pal Mabel.

Now get on over to writeinthethickofit.blogspot.com for
some readin' of the writin' people like me submitted to
Redneck Diva's writing challenge this week. Pick the one
you like best, and give it a votey-thingy.

Where, oh where, has my little dog gone?

2007-04-04T18:39:00.000-05:00

Doggone! (As Redneck Diva taught me last summer.)

This morning, we could not find our little Beagle, Tank.
He was not on the porch with the big dogs. He didn't
come running to eat when HH doled out the food at
5:30 a.m. (The Devil's Playground brand dogfood that
has not killed any pets yet.) He didn't come running last
night at 9:00 p.m. when I went to the garage to get a
math paper. The doggie Ann came a-runnin', whining
at me for going into the forbidden garage. But there
was no sign of clumsy little Tank.

This morning, we prepared to toss the dogs a treat to
keep Tank on the porch, out from under the tires of
the Large SUV, off the street (OK, gravel road, I'm
puttin' on airs like I live on a paved street), and just
basically out of harm's way until we got out of sight.
But there was no Tank to bribe.

#1 son called HH to see if he had seen Tank. Not since
last night. HH said he was probably in his little house,
asleep. Which I didn't believe for a minute, because
that house is in his PEN, which even with the door open
is still a PEN, and I didn't think Tank would want to go
back to the PEN. Every time I see him sleeping, he is
curled up behind the doggie Ann, with his chin resting
on her butt.

#1 did not speak all the way to school. I was afraid the
pup had caught his collar on a fallen limb, or that the
doggie Ann had chewed the collar plumb off him and
somebody was holding him hostage, thinking "Hmm...
purebred Beagle pup. Think I'll keep him."

At school, I told the not-imaginary Mabel of our plight.
She suggested a prayer to St. Francis of Assisi, patron
saint of animals/pets. I also mentioned it to one of my
classes, which was perhaps not such a scathingly
brilliant idea, since a student who does not even drive
commented, "Oh. I thought I ran over a Bugle last night."

Every time I had a minute without chastising DoNots, my
thoughts turned to my little Beagle. I thought of his soft,
soft, muzzle area (he's shore got a purty mouth), his white
legs with their brown freckles, the thin white stripe down
his little nose, the way he falls off the porch when he gets
too close to the side, the way his back legs take off
running before his front legs, causing him to scoot several
feet on his shoulder. Sigh. I missed that little pup.

I worried about what to do if he was still gone. We rushed
home after school. I use that term loosely, what with a
stop for a Powerball ticket, the requisite Sonic stop (y'all
know what for), a stop at the day-old bread store for
some hoagie rolls (not because I'm thrifty, but because
it's waaaayyyy quicker than The Devil's Playground, or
Ye Olde Expired Food Shoppe, and because Save-A-
Lot does not have hoagie rolls), and of course a stop at
Save-A-Lot. Then we had to stop for the mail.

As we came up the driveway, #1 hollered, "There he is!
In the front yard! Stop! I'm getting out!" Those two ran
to greet each other like long-lost lovers. Well, not exactly,
because one of them is a dog, and they are both male,
and well, the one is OH SO WRONG, but the other
is OK, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's
not exactly what I would wish for my boy.

Then we saw it. Near the front sidewalk made of bricks
that HH salvaged from a brick street that used to run
behind our old house. It was plump and white, with red
accents. I hollered out the window to #1 son, "Is that
what I think it is?" He looked. "Uhh...I'm afraid it is."
I told him to run take a closer look. #2 son wanted out
to investigate. By that time, we had HH on the phone.
He demanded to know what it was. Because, people...
it looked like a chicken. A dead chicken. A dead,
bloated white chicken with a big red comb, or some
blood on its head.

I parked the LSUV in the medium-sized garage. #1 son
came running in. "Well...we were right. It's a chicken...
or a duck...or something. Let me get it." With that, he
ran back to the front yard. I didn't have time to scream
"NOOOOO!" #1 came running back into the garage
with it. One look, and I told him to return it to the front
yard habitat. We have no idea where it came from.
I blame the doggie Ann. But possession is 9/10 of the
law, so Tank is the one whose face will appear on the
wanted posters, coming soon to a Post Office near you.

Whew! That was kind of a long story for that payoff, huh?

Now I'm off to check out writeinthethickofit.blogspot.com.
It's later than you think. Diva is posting the new edition of
stories for her writing challenge later tonight. OK, that's not
a good sentence. She's posting them later tonight. Her
challenge is every week. Go read some stories. Vote.
Don't feel beholden to vote for me. Vote for the one you
like best. Visit it every week. Don't cost nothin'.

LET ME CLARIFY THAT. The new stories will be
posted after 8:00 on THURSDAY night. You see, I'm a
bit confused, what with posting at night, and many of you
don't read it until the next day, and, well, it will be on
THURSDAY night. Sorry for discombobulating anyone.

Even Your Mom Slacker Parasite

2007-04-03T18:44:00.000-05:00

Hey, that kid I loaned $10 for food on his band trip, who
paid me back $5 yesterday...paid me the other $5 today.
See? It's like pulling a thorn out of a lion's paw. The lion
will bring you ten dollars in two installments. That's a good
ol' Hillbilly Mom fable. She's Even Steven, you know.

On the other side of the coin, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom became
fed-up with a long-time DoNot this morning. Every word
out of somebody's mouth, he had to make the smart-butt
comment: "Your mom." After the eleventy-eighth time of
hearing this time-wasting, totally inappropriate attempt at
humor, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom interjected: "Oh. Your mom.
She's going to come sit by you at the mandatory after-
school tutoring you were sentenced to yesterday?" He
did not much think that was funny.

There was bad weather forecast for this afternoon. I told
the #1 son that it was too bad I had bus duty after school.
Just our luck, the school might apply the new policy of
not sending kids home during a weather warning. Oh, the
bad luck of those late-bus kids, what with me and the
#1 son's science fair sponsor having duty today. Are we
the take-charge kind of teacher who will not let one hair
on a kid's head be harmed? The kind you know will take
care of you, even laying down his own life to protect you?
Nope. We are the clock-watching, half-a$$ed-is-good-
enough, slacker kind of teacher. Thank the Gummi Mary
that the storm hit about 5 minutes after we left. Because
all would have perished if they depended on us to lead
them out of harm's way.

On the home front, I found a TICK on my leg yesterday.
Yes. A parasite. At least he didn't pee on my leg and
tell me it was raining. That sucker had a death grip on
my flesh. I could NOT get him loose. I tried alcohol.
Twice. For the tick, not for me, though I could have used
a good snort of some spirits when I saw him brazenly
sucking the lifeforce out of my flesh. I mean the rubbing
alcohol stuff, the kind that will make you blind if you drink
it, so I'm told. It works when HH puts it on the boys. Not
for this tick. Hillbilly Mom's blood must be extra-sweet,
with all that dissolved Sonic Cherry Diet Coke flowing
through her veins. I finally had to grab that pest with
tweezers to yank his head out. I know you're not
supposed to do that, like it allegedly squeezes all the
tick toxins into you, like...umm...that Lyme Disease
bacterial stuff. What was I supposed to do, leave him
there to bloat up, like some kind of fluid-filled brooch,
to be the envy of all with my verminy faux-gem jewelry?

To add insult to my injury, I am the only one of the family
with a tick. Unlike Tom Sawyer on a slow day at school,
I was not looking upon that tick as an asset. I have not
been off the porch or sidewalk. I have not so much dipped
a big toe into the lawn. The boys and HH spent all day
Saturday and Sunday down in the woods at the Mini-
Mansion. They sat in the woods and listened for turkeys.
They shot the BB guns. They played with the dogs. They
were USDA Prime tick-bait, by cracky! But I got the
tick. I've been Stevened again, and need some Evening.

Perhaps I should adjust my karma. Your mama is so not
fat that nobody can even think of any jokes about her.

Three Mine Vices

2007-04-02T18:38:00.000-05:00

Let's talk about Hillbilly Mom's vices. I know you think I
am perfect, and so do I. But there are a few thingies that
probably need correcting. The preposition-ending sentence
vice is not what this post is about. The alleged gambling
addiction...it ain't broke, so we ain't fixin' it. For brevity
(Ha, ha, what's that, asked Mrs. Hillbilly Mom), we shall
limit this vice-fest to the workplace.

Let's start with money-lending. I know I should not lend
money to students. Most of the time, I don't, because I
don't like begging in a dog, or a person. But if I see a kid
who wants something, something reasonable, and it looks
like the kid won't get it unless I cough up some cash, I
break my own rule.

For instance, there was the recent book fair, and kids
who wanted a fancy pencil. They did not ask. One had
a dollar, and needed tax. I told him he could go to my
room and get the pennies out of my desk. Nobody likes
pennies. They are the red-headed stepchild of the money
family. (No offense to any red-headed stepchildren who
may be reading.) And then I loaned the kid money for
that book, and he paid me back the next day. Friday,
a student was going to the band contest, where they
would stop on the way home that evening to get some
food. He had forgotten to bring money. I only knew
because I asked if they were leaving before lunch. He
said, "No, we eat lunch here, but we're stopping for
supper on the way home. DANG! I forgot to ask my
mom for some money. I guess my friends will give me
a few fries or something if they don't want them." He's
a good kid. Always polite. He's the kid who loaned
another kid the shoes off his feet on lab day in Science,
so the kid wouldn't have to take an 'F'. Karma, baby.
I had a $10 bill in my pocket. I told him, "Here. I'll loan
you so you can have supper." These kids are bottomless
pits. They are always hungry. And he's a good kid. Today,
he came to me before school. "I wanted to pay you back,
but I only have $5 right now. Some people owe me
money, and I'm going to collect it so I can give you the
rest." I took the $5, and told him not to worry. As long
as I got it by the last day of school, I'm OK with it.

Moving slowly along to another Mrs. HM vice...I don't
really care if a student asks to go to the bathroom. Hey!
My classroom is right next to the bathrooms. Location,
location, location. They are not going to bother anyone.
There are no classrooms between mine and the bathrooms.
As long as it's not in the middle of my lesson, I don't care.
Also, I will send them to get assignments that they have
'left' in their lockers. That's part of my class, seeing that
they don't neglect homework. I always write them a pass.
I don't let them go to the gym, or to talk to another student,
or to another teacher's classroom. Library, yes. Computer
lab, no. The philosophy of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is: The Less,
The Merrier. A few minutes of peace while one of them
is gone. Yes!

Yet another vice...I don't give a lot of homework. In fact,
I don't give any homework. The reason for that now is
that my At-Risk class is to help the student understand the
work. I want them doing my Math in my classroom, so I
can help them if they don't get it. But I also did this when
I taught Science. I have time to present my lesson. I make
sure there is time to start on the assignment. I have been
known to say, "Since most of you are not finished, we'll
work on this some more tomorrow." Because I have seen
these kids copying work in the gym before school, heard
them talk about copying on the bus, seen them take
someone else's paper home with them to copy, heard
them say their mom did it for them, etc. It's been that way
in every school where I've taught. Oh, I turn them in when
I catch them. That is called 'CHEATING'. It is in the
discipline policy that we read to them at the beginning
of every school year. If they do my work in class, I see
that they are doing their own work. I even let them work
in partners sometimes, because at least they will discuss
the material, not just copy an answer out of the book.
That's why I don't give homework, even though I should.

Great Googley Moogley! How time flies when we're
discussing Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's vices! I'd better stop
for now.

Is longwindedness in telling my boring stories considered
a vice?

Tax Time Tale

2007-04-01T13:07:00.000-05:00

This is a four-day week for us, as next week will be. It's
our Spring Break. WooHoo! We get a Friday and a
Monday. A four-day weekend! Yeah. I'm not really
that excited. I was typing sarcastically.

I will be mailing the taxes tomorrow. Really. I plan to put
them in an envelope later tonight. Really. I don't have much
time left. This one time...at our old house...(thought I was
going to say 'Band Camp', didn't you?)...I mailed the taxes
on Friday, April 13. Which should have been a warning
sign right there. But nooo...I was stickin' it to Uncle Sam.
Actually, to Cousin Mo, because it was the first year we
owed money to the state. So I held onto those taxes as
long as I could, almost. Good thing I didn't wait until the
very last moment and mail them Saturday the 14th.
Because on Saturday the 14th, I went to the front porch,
took the mail out of the box, and saw our state and
federal tax returns. They had been returned to sender,
with postage due. Yeah. The freakin' envelopes were so
fat with forms that I should have put TWO stamps on
each. I rushed the two blocks to the Post Office and
mailed them again. That'll learn me to procrastinate.

Yesterday, #2 son and I made an excursion to the local
grocery store. Not the Save-A-Lot. We hit it, too, but I
needed some sweet banana pepper rings, and some
sandwich roll bread thingies. I did not want to go all the
way to The Devil's Playground because a big storm was
coming. But not really, because the weather guys were
about as accurate with that as with the snowstorms this
winter. Anyhoo...we went into the store which I detest,
because you HAVE to read the expiration dates on
everything, or you might just end up with some four-
year-old ranch dressing.

Our change from two packs of sandwich rolls and the
peppers was $13.13. Which kind of freaked me out,
because even though I'm Even Steven, I don't like to
tempt fate. It's not like I would live at 1313 Mockingbird
Lane or anything. So I didn't want to leave the store with
that (no doubt due to my undiagnosed case of OCD).
I bought the weekly Powerball tickets for myself and
my mom. The young 'un cried for scratch-off tickets.

I tried to reason with the kid. I haven't been buying them
for about the last month or 6 weeks because we were in
a slump. I only buy them when we're on a roll. He looked
so pitiful that I agreed to $2. He could have one $2 ticket,
or two $1 tickets. This store has a big ol' scratchers
vending machine. The boy made his choices. I put in the
two dollars, and hit the first choice. Nothing came out.
The boy squatted down and looked up the slot thingy.
"It's stuck. I can see it." But he couldn't reach it. I pushed
the button for his second choice, thinking it may knock
the other one loose. Nope. But it did come out. We had
to get a store worker to crack open the machine for our
$1 ticket. Which of course was a loser, along with the
other one. I tried to tell him. When Hillbilly Mom does
not want to buy a scratcher, you know she's had a bad
feeling about it. I haven't checked the Powerball tickets
yet. I am not optimistic. But it was only $2, so it ain't
like I bet the farm.

Now, it's only a matter of waiting to be Stevened out.

Mini-Mansion

2007-03-31T17:40:00.000-05:00

Here is the better side of my better half.

HH's new project is a cabin down by the creek, on the
new 10 acres we bought from the LandStealer last
summer.

The building material consists of pallet lumber. He gets it
from his job. His company buys big rolls of steel, and
machines and thingies to cut it into little pieces of steel
to make saw blades and thingies that butchers use. Or
something like that. The pallet lumber used to be free,
because it saved the company from paying to have it
hauled off. Now I think the employees have to bid on
it, because boo hoo, somebody was afraid they weren't
getting their fair share of pallet lumber. Anyhoo, we
already have an A-frame cabin by the creek behind
the Mansion, and a tool/work shed between the
Mansion and the barn, and a giant L-shaped work
bench in the barn made from pallet lumber. I'm sure
HH has done it to recycle the wood. He's sooo green.

As you can see, the new Mini-Mansion is air-conditioned.
Watch out for that first step.

The Veteran is in town this weekend. I hope he didn't
plan to spend the night in the Mini-Mansion.

Looks like a few more steel shipments are in order before
this abode is finished. I haven't asked, but it looks like
the Mini-Mansion is built on skids. HH likes to think he
can take his Mini-Mansion with him wherever he goes.
It also looks like he's planning a front porch.

I hope HH has built it far enough away from the creek.
It's spring shower season, you know.

A Mini-Mansion is a terrible thing to waste.

Writer Joker Quoter

2007-03-30T19:31:00.000-05:00

The new words are up for Redneck Diva's second writing
challenge. You have until Thursday, April 5, to submit
your entry. C'mon, the more the merrier. I think I was
4th out of 6 entrants last week. I suppose I need to step
it up a bit. You can read all of last week's entries at
writeinthethickofit.blogspot.com. If you want to enter
this week, you can submit your entry by email to Diva
at theredneckdiva@gmail.com. She will post it to the
site after the deadline on Thursday, and the voting will
begin. Join us! You can beat me. Don't cost nothin'.

I have another joke for you. Not so much a joke as an
insult: "Your mama is so poor she goes to Kentucky
Fried Chicken and licks other people's fingers."

Oh, and I forgot one of my favorites from yesterday:
"Your mama is so fat that when a bus ran into her, she
hollered, 'Hey! Who threw that rock?'"

Kids these days! They know all the mama insults, but they
don't know common sayings. I asked mine a few, and
here is what they said.

Don't throw the baby...down, it'll get hurt.
Don't throw the baby...ever.
Don't throw the baby...at the wall.
Don't throw the baby...a knife.
Don't throw the baby...out with the trash.

If you lie down with dogs...you'll get licked.
If you lie down with dogs...you'll get bit.
If you lie down with dogs...you'll get ticks.

It's always darkest...in the hall.
It's always darkest...at night.

The squeaky wheel gets the...WD40.
The squeaky wheel gets the...oil.

Oh, a few got ONE of them right. But none knew more
than one. The 8th graders got "If you lie down with
dogs, you'll wake up with fleas." I was proud of them.
I explained, know-it-all-ishly: "That means you turn out
like the company you keep." And a girl said, "Yeah. I
knew that one because yesterday, I watched Judge Judy,
and there was this guy who bought his girlfriend a really
expensive car, and she wouldn't give him any money for
it, and he worked two jobs, but she wouldn't, because
she was deadbeat...and Judge Judy told the guy, 'If you
lay down with dogs, you'll get fleas.' I can't believe I
just saw that yesterday, and now I know the answer
today."

I suppose I could have thrown in another saying if I'd
known that she was getting all her learning at the knee
of Judge Judy.

Don't pee on my leg...

Fat and Taxes

2007-03-29T17:36:00.000-05:00

Not much news from the Mansion tonight. On the tax
front, taxes are done, but not mailed. I thought I'd struck
it rich on the state taxes with a $551 refund. But noooo...
I had entered the Social Security withholding, not the
state tax withholding. Once that little error was corrected,
we owe Cousin Mo, or whatever the the state counterpart
of Uncle Sam is called, a grand total of $9. That's TEN
Sonic Happy Hour Cherry Diet Cokes, if you add $0.20.
Oh, the humanity!

The kids at school are still one big wacky pack. My first
hour couldn't quit telling 'Your mom is sooo fat...' jokes.
After yesterday's money-snatching, window-shouting,
tardy-filled day, it was a bit of a relief. One of them had
printed out a LIST of these jokes somewhere. Not in
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's class, mind you. She is selfish with
her ink cartridges, having paid for them herself.

I listened with one ear, and tried to fill out my requisitions
for next year. Since we haven't chosen a new Physics text,
I'm not sure what I will need for my Physical Science
semester. Anyhoo, this is my class that should have been
begging me for help with work they don't understand,
since none of them are gathering As at a record-setting
pace. But no, they were hooked on the fat mom jokes.
At least they were READING, instead of playing the
'who farted' game.

I must say, some of them were funny. Here is a sampling:

Your mom is sooo fat...
They tie a rope around her waist and use her to clean out
tunnels.
She fell in love, and broke it.
When she gets into the bathtub, the toilet overflows.
They have to grease her to get her out of the bathtub.
Her jeans have a run in them.
The talking scale says, "One person at a time."
After sex, she smokes a ham. (They were afraid to say
that one out loud, but brought it up for me to read silently.)
When she broke her leg, gravy ran out.
She has to use a boomerang to put on her belt.
If she fell into the Grand Canyon, she'd get stuck.
When she goes to the movies, she sits by everyone.
When she sits down on the beach, GreenPeace tries to
rescue her.
She earns money selling shade.
The only time she sees 90210 is on the scale.
If she rode a bicycle across the moon like ET, she
would cause a total eclipse.
When she rides in the back of the bus, it does a
wheelie.
When she was born, the hospital got stretch marks.
By the time she turns all the way around, it's her birthday.

That's all the come to mind at the moment. Which reminds
me of a class yesterday who pointed out how good-natured
one of their classmates is. "He never gets mad, no matter
what you say. The other day I told him, 'Your mom is so
fat, the all-you-can-eat buffet has a restraining order against
her.' And all he did was say, 'Aww...she told me she was
on a diet!'"

That's my DoNots. Always good for a laugh. And anything
else that delays actual schoolwork.

The Crazies Are Among Us

2007-03-28T18:44:00.000-05:00

Is it too early for spring fever? My DoNots have gone
absolutely crazy. And I'm just talking about today. Oh,
they do things to irritate me every day. That's their job.
For the most part, they're pretty well behaved. But today
was extraordinary. Would you like to hear more?
Try and stop me, by cracky.

First cat out of the bag (and wouldn't that be a fine way
to start the day, with a giant bag of cats tucked neatly
away in a squirming bag, to be let out one by one to
run squalling down the hall) a girl in my first hour showed
me a $5 bill some guy had given her. She didn't know
why. But that's not the weird part. A boy snatched it out
of her hand and ran into my room, taunting her with it.
Another student went in, and another. It looked like I
was not going to give out a tardy for the first time in
about a week.

I glanced into the room from my hall post, and saw a
student standing at my front window with the top and
bottom windows cranked open, yelling at somebody
in front of the school. Pardon me. This just does not
happen in Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's classroom! I shouted
his full name, and told him to close the windows, sit
down, and to never, ever even think of doing that
again. Which earned me a round of applause from
a teacher standing way up by the cafeteria. Ahem.
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is not shy about keeping order
in her classroom. Approximately 5 seconds after the
tardy bell rang, another student asked to go to his locker
for his science book. I told him "For a tardy." Because
you can't linger about the hall for 4 minutes after
consuming your OH SO TASTY school breakfast, and
then think you will be permitted to waltz all the way back
down the hall to Mabel territory and get your stuff.
Though methinks the waltzing would be a nice addition
to the streaking, yowling felines being released from the
large economy size bag o' cats.

I had been looking forward to 2nd hour. I have a whole
class of freshmen. That's definitely not the reason I was
looking forward to it. There was an announcement
yesterday that all freshmen should report to the gym
2nd and 4th hour. That's just how it was worded. The
kids started coming to my class. Whoa, Nelly. Or not
Nelly, because I don't have any girls left. We have used
up two of them and they moved to other districts. I sent
a fine young man (really) to the office to see if they should
report to class first for roll. That is the normal procedure,
but it always says so in the announcements. He came
back and said, "Yes. We wait to be called out." So we
settled down for a long spring midmorning, foregoing the
assignment, because hey, they were being called out.
10 minutes passed. Then 15. I sent a different fine young
man (really) to the gym to see if they were ready. He
returned, saying, "The gym is full of us!" Good thing I
sent him. I'd already wasted 15 free minutes of my life.

That's when it started. As the others got up and went,
two remained seated.

Only the health classes are being tested. Not us.
It says right here: ALL freshmen report to the gym
2nd and 4th hour.
But we have health 4th hour. He told us just to go 4th.
That's not what the announcements say.
You'll see. We aren't supposed to go.
GO already!
We don't want to go. We're not supposed to. They'll
send us back. You'll see.
Then go and make them send you back.

Just then a classmember came to get the vocal one.
"They just called your name. Get in there." Heh, heh.
As he went out the door, I called, "I told you so."

In Lower Basementia, I began a lesson with the younger
fry on the addition and subtraction of time. Like converting
seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days, and
vice versa for subtraction. Hey. These are kids who say
24 - 18 = 14. So you can't overexplain things the first time.
Normally, I explain the concept while standing at the board.
I put up an example. I ask the class what I should do next.
They shout it out, and I write it down. Today, a back-row
dweller said, "Oh, I know that." He stood up, walked up
front, took a piece of chalk from the tray, rubbed out the
first part of my answer, and wrote in his answer. Which
was correct, but I wanted to leave the logical steps on the
board for reference. And, oh yes...who did he think he
was, getting up out of his seat and taking over my board
problem without permission? That has never happened
before. Great Googley Moogley! I must have really
motivated him, y'think? I don't.

During that same class, another boy kept trying to flirt with
one of the girls. Which is nothing too new, except he called
her 'Georgia Sunset', and held up a picture he'd been
carrying around. It was on notebook paper, with a sun and
many rays, and a smiley face in the middle. 'Georgia Sunset'
was written at the bottom. She was not impressed. Funny
thing, he was the only one who didn't do well on the
assignment. Go figure! We had time left over, so I asked
if anyone would like to go over it with him so he would
know what he did wrong. And this little girl who wouldn't
say, "OWW! You're on my FOOT" if you drove your car
over her foot, volunteered.

Something is in the water. Or the air. Or the Georgia sunset.
It just ain't right.

It Lives! The Family of Morons

2007-03-27T18:22:00.000-05:00

A while back, I might have mentioned that the Hillbilly
family is not the brightest pack of Dry-Erase Markers on
The Devil's Playground pegboard. We have recently
seen a resurgence of our moronity.

Just last night, as I was standing in the kitchen, cutting
the cheese, I heard a noise. Let it be noted that I was
literally cutting the cheese, a 16 oz. chunk of sharp
cheddar, so that it could be grated using smaller chunks.
I thought the boys were out in the yard. They pooled
their money to buy a rocket thingy that runs on hydrogen.
Before you go thinking that we watched The Astronaut
Farmer a few too many times, let me point out that this
rocket was purchased from The Devil's Playground,
and changes citric acid into hydrogen fuel somehow.
I ain't teachin' chemistry next year for a reason.

Anyhoo, there I stood in the kitchen, placidly cutting the
cheese, when I heard 'ppffffffftttttttt'. Like a toy rocket
that runs on water-and-citric-acid-made hydrogen,
shooting into the air and spraying its chemical goodness
all over my boys and the yard. But my kitchen looks
out the back of the Mansion, so I had no view. I yelled
for #1 son, the idea being that if he didn't answer, he
was surely out front launching his rocket.

The boy answered me. "Yeah?" I asked where he was.
"I thought I just heard your rocket launching out front.
It was loud!" The boy answered me from the direction
of the bathroom, "No, that was just me. I farted."

Moving on to this afternoon...I had bus duty at Basementia.
My boys loitered around the main hall, waiting for me to
finish. Some little sons-of-teachers got off a bus, and went
to the teacher workroom. They often hang out there. Don't
worry, the teachers are long gone as soon as the clock
strikes 3:10. My #1 son started in the teacher workroom.
One of the little kids slammed the door in his face. "Don't
ever come in the teacher's lounge any more!" My boy was
a bit flustered, as he's not used to being told he can't go
somewhere. Especially by a 7-year-old. He related the
story to me. I thought it was kind of funny.

After bus duty and a visit to my aun't office, we went to
the car. Slammer and his buddy were playing around in
the buddy's car. My #2 son passed our car and went
toward them. "Hey! We're parked up here," I told him.
And I heard him tell Slammer, in a threatening manner,
"Don't slam the door in my brother's face again!" I don't
know whether to be proud or concerned. My just-turned-
9-year-old told a 7-year-old to leave his 12-year-old
brother alone.

And now, for the final act in this Moronic Trilogy...
We stopped for a bag of ice on the way home. It was
81 freakin' degrees today. I usually have my coat laying
about in the back of the large SUV, and we wrap the
bag of ice in it for the 10-minute ride home. I have also
cautioned #1 son that when I send him in for ice, he
should wait in line and pay, then go get the ice out of
the cooler. That place is a cooker. They have a counter
where they sell fried chicken and other hot greasy stuff
right by the checkout line. I don't like my bag of ice to
melt into an iceberg that is OH SO HARD to crack
into pieces for my big recycled Sonic foam cup of
ice water that I make every night. The boys call the
bag of ice the 'ice baby', because we wrap it up in a
coat, and I have cautioned #1 not to carry it in his arms
like an infant, because his body heat accelerates the
melting. He complies, holding it by the 'hair'--that tuft
of plastic at the end of the bag.

Out of the convenience store came my son, holding the
ice baby by its topknot. He put it onto the back seat,
on one of his winter coats that he never wore all winter,
and put the other winter coat that he never wore on top
of it. We drove home, and stopped for the mail. #1
became entranced by a cardboard package of two
DVDs from Amazon. I told him it was NewsRadio
Season 5, and Dolly & Friends, the 80s TV show of
Dolly Parton. He grabbed my school keys to try and
saw it open. Lappy, his laptop, clamored for attention
from his resting place atop the dashboard. #1 had to
shove Lappy back from the edge several times.

Coming up the driveway, we saw that Tank, the 4-month-
old Beagle, was alive and kickin'. We have been leaving
him out, hoping that the doggy Ann doesn't dismember
him like a chew toy. #1 got out and called the dogs. I
parked in the garage, and #2 ran to unlock the door. I
went to pet Tank, who prompty peed on the porch. HH
has a fit over porch pee and poop. I rubbed Tank's nose
in it, shouted "NO" and swatted his behind.

Man, can that little dog hold a grudge! He refused to look
at me, or come over to the edge of the porch where I
called him. I petted two cats, plus Ann and Grizzly. #1
picked up Tank and brought him to me. He politely let me
pet him, then trotted off to the end of the front porch and
wouldn't look at me anymore. Just this morning, he was
chewing on my hand and whimpering for more attention.
What an attitude that little dog has!

I opened the back of the car for my phone, which I had
left in my school bag. I got my Sonic Cherry Diet Coke
and my purse and the mail from the front of the LSUV.
We went in the house, washed hands, and read the mail.
#1 got a card from his grandma congratulating him on his
Science Fair win. HH called to report that he had cancelled
his eye doctor appointment, and was on the way home.
I went to change from school clothes to Mansion clothes,
and it hit me. THE ICE BABY!!!!!

We had left the ice baby in the car all that time. Like,
30 minutes. Which is kind of like neglect of an ice baby,
what with the temperature being 81 degrees and all.
#1 son ran out to rescue the baby. He said, "Mom, my
coats are all wet. Look how full of water she is!" So we
took the ice baby out on the back porch deck. #1
dangled her over the rail by her hair, while I stabbed
her bottom three times with a sharp, black-handled
kitchen knife. We let her drain until her liquid essence
stopped flowing. Please don't report us for neglect.
We didn't know any better.

We are a family of morons.

Warning: Product Recall

2007-03-26T19:44:00.000-05:00

And now, for a public service announcement from Hillbilly
Mom. Recall warnings have been issued on the following
products.

********************************************

HM's Recall List of Keyword Products

the devil's playground lesson plans esl
Though in high demand from teachers this spring, the
Devil's Playground Lesson Plans book of reproducibles
has been taken off the market. Seems that too many
youngsters were being lost in H*llholes, and the ones
who weren't were clamoring for ice water all the live-
long day. Fearing some explainin' might be in order
after parents noticed their children never returned home
from school, administrators nationwide called special
school board meetings to ban this teacher resource book.
For the record, the 'esl' stands for 'extra special lessons'.

height and blood spatter worksheets
Teachers just can't catch a break. Now their high-interest,
student-centered curriculum is taking a hit. Nothing got
blood pumping like these height and blood spatter
worksheets. Students couldn't get enough of this hands-
on scientific method bell-ringer. Teachers could stand
in the hall for duty (transl. gossip sessions) and return
to find the students happily measuring blood spatter as
instructed. Nothing was better at keeping kids on-task.
Especially since those who weren't on-task were deemed
the donators of blood for the next day's lesson. Because
some Jehovah's Witnesses complained that they don't
like their kids giving away blood that can not be replaced,
the day of the height and blood spatter worksheet is over.

hornet's nest boosterseat commercial
According to the Attorney General's office, makers of
regular boosterseats complained that this commercial
shows exaggerated 'good times' with the hornet's nest
boosterseat. The commercial in question shows toddlers
waving, squealing, wriggling, kicking, and jumping for joy
after riding a few minutes in their new Hornet's Nest
Boosterseat. They furthermore state that the use of the
song 'I Don't Love You Much ' in the background tugs
at the heartstrings of the tail-end Baby Boomers, and
exerts undue influence over them to buy this boosterseat
over a no-frills, no-hornet boosterseat. Don't worry. The
boosterseats are still on the market. Only the commercial
has been recalled. Who knew kids would enjoy sitting on
hornets' nests so much?

talking mirror hm
This mirror has frightened several old ladies to death.
Ladies so old, their social security numbers were 1, 2,
and 3. So old that if this mirror hadn't killed them, and
some wiseguy on the street had told them to act their
ages, they would have dropped dead. The problem
lies in the cranked-up volume of the talking mirror. It
shorts out the hearing aids of the elderly, and gives them
brain spasms leading to death by auditory amplification.
The mirror shouts: "Mirror, mirror, propped against the
back-bedroom wall...who's the OH SO PRETTIEST
one of all?" If you have one of these mirrors, you can get
a replacement volume-control button at Walgreen's.

bone weenus
Get rid of it! It's neither a bone, nor a weenus. Preliminary
tests have pointed to a synthetic, cartilaginous strip of
material that pops out of wireless underwire brassieres
after they have been worn every day for three years.
Scam artists have only recently begun selling them on
eBay as 'bone weenuses'. Don't expect a refund unless
you paid by PayPal.

fat man in a little coat lyrics
Not even an 'explicit lyrics' sticker can keep this song
alive. The recall stems from the terrible loss of fat men
and fabric each time this song gets airplay. Fat men and
coat fabric are terrible things to waste. Please, if you are
near a fat man when this song comes on, for the love of
Gummi Mary, hide all the little coats. It's not a pretty
sight.

story about a little old lady who had stopped at a stop
sign and was slow getting going
This literary gem may seem harmless, but it has caused
more deaths than 4-year-old expired ranch dressing.
Countless readers have keeled over from boredom before
getting even one paragraph into this story. The author
could not be reached for comment. It is believed that she
is sequestered, writing an entry for the next contest at
writeinthethickofit.

********************************************

There you have it, your official recall list.
Learn it. Know it. Live it.

Those Wacky Teachers

2007-03-25T14:24:00.000-05:00

Let's talk education. Or to be grammatically correct, which
is something that rarely happens here at the preposition-
ending sentence blog, 'Let's talk about education',
or thereabouts.

I have been doing some research on the internet. Which
means I have been reading Google News. I always find
a search for 'teacher' to be quite eye-opening. For instance,
did you know that the world is full of vampire teachers,
biting teachers, toilet cam teachers, murdering teachers,
and suffocating-your-child-with-office-products teachers?

Item 1: Vampire Stories Teacher Quits
Somewhere in the UK, there is one more unemployed
teacher. Seems that her employers did not look kindly
upon her moonlighting as an author of vampire romance.
She used a pen name, and had warnings on her website
of the explicit content. Unfortunately for her, teachers
are not allowed to have lives when not at school. I'm
supposing the linking of her writing site on her personal
MySpace account was her undoing. That, and the
allegations of some students that she read her work
to them at school. Which I'm not so sure of, since she
was given the equivalent of an honorable discharge,
what with a glowing recommendation after she agreed
to resign.

Item 2: Teacher Chided for Biting Thigh of Wrestler
Who Tried to Give Him a Wedgie
Salem, Oregon, baby! Back in the USofA. Only here
could a teacher become the big bad victim. The highly
unfortunate history teacher was walking down the hall
when a minimum of 6 wrestlers, ranging from 180-215
pounds, grabbed him from behind, and attempted to give
him a wedgie. The athletes pinned him to the ground and
would not let him up. In an attempt to free himself, the
teacher bit one of the wrestlers on the inner thigh, leaving
teeth marks. The student and his family did not pursue a
complaint, but the school officials got wind of the situation
and (gasp) chided the teacher. He was required to write
a public apology to the student, was given two years'
probation for his "neglect of duty", received a reprimand
from the state of Oregon, and was forced to take a class
on appropriate behavior. The students? They were
disciplined by their coach. That's all.

Oh, great Googley Moogley! Where do I begin? How
dare that teacher go walking down the hall, swinging his
butt-cheeks in a 'come wedgie me' manner, just asking
for 6 strapping young lads to pounce on him. How dare
he feel that he was being attacked, and a need to defend
himself before they stuck their fingers or something else
where the sun don't shine. How dare he bite the part of
a student that was within biting range as he was pinned
down by 6 strapping young lads. Methinks that was his
undoing. He dared to bite the 'inner' thigh, which is OH
SO CLOSE to Inappropriateville. So if any of you plan
to become history teachers, make a Note To Self. 'When
attacked from behind by 6 strapping young athletes, let
them do what they want, because they have every right
to pin me down and touch me wherever they please.'

What chance did this guy have? Maybe it's just me, but
I have a feeling that 180-215 pound wrestlers are pretty
good at pinning someone to the ground. Umm...don't
they train for that every day? Wouldn't just ONE of them
be able to pin this guy? And what's with exposing your
'inner thigh' to some guy's teeth? Some guy who is pinned
down and can't move, so that you must squat over his face
to put your nether region in danger. But I digress. For a
brief moment, I forgot that the student-athlete is always
right.

Item 3: Toilet Cam Teacher
Has a good alliterous ring to it, don't it? This occurred
in Canada, which begs the question 'Do y'all need to
get out more?' Don't be offended, dear sweet neighbors
to the north. I'm sure we have plenty of toilets in our
closets down here. Seems this teacher bought a little
hidden camera type thingy to spy on the babysitter for
his twins. He brought it to school to try it out, and put
it in his closet. Next cat out the bag, the camera was
found in the unisex teachers' restroom, hidden in the
toilet tank. When questioned, the teacher admitted
that he bought the camera and brought it to school.
He went to his closet, flung open the door, and was
astounded that it was not there. When asked why his
fingerprints were found on the toilet tank, he reported
that he had removed the lid a couple weeks ago to
fix a flushing problem with the toilet. Gosh! What a
nice guy! No wonder y'all polite Canadians didn't
charge him with a crime. After all, there was no info
from the camera on any of the computers owned by
the teacher. So we know he couldn't have viewed
any co-workers' buttocks on any other computer,
because he said he didn't.

Item 4: Teacher Beats Student To Death
A teacher in India beat a 12-year-old to death for not
doing his homework. The teacher tossed the student's
body down a well. He was caught when he confessed
to the murder. Perhaps a good Note To Self could
have prevented his embarrassing incriminating-myself
faux pas.

Hey! India! Y'all need to take a chill pill and attend
some anger management meetings in Canada

Item 5: Teacher in Sticky Situation After Allegedly
Taping Boys' Mouths Shut
Another case of domestic teacher violence (allegedly),
brings us back to the US. Like you couldn't tell. You
know how incredibly evil 2nd graders can be? Well, this
little devil wouldn't stop whistling, even after the teacher
told him. So she took matters into her own hands and
plugged up his whistle-hole with Scotch tape. Yeah! Free
advertising for you, Scotch-brand tape! But wait!
Whistler's mother didn't complain. It was the mother of
Laughs At Whistler who got her thong in a wad. Her
boy laughed at the tape incident, and got his gob glued
shut for good measure. Not real glue. Tape.
Scotch-brand tape.

Said the student's mama: "I don't believe a teacher should
be able to cut off a child's airway to where he just has to
breathe through his nose." Gosh, woman! Why don't you
just ask for the moon next time? Now we can't require
students to breathe through their noses instead of drooling,
slack jawed, mouth-breathing all the live-long day?

Furthermore..."I was shocked," said Gina, who asked us
not to disclose her last name. "It was like no, not in these
days and times. A teacher is not going to touch your child
and tape them, and basically assault your child." Oh, she
didn't want her last name used, but she mentioned the
name of her son earlier in the interview: DeUndre. Yeah.
Nobody will guess who it is, will they?

Alls I got to say to you, Gina, is "You and DeUndre should
not plan on moving to India any time soon."

Three Stinkin' Words

2007-03-24T14:42:00.000-05:00

Here's another little somethin' I took from Redneck Diva.
I hope that gal doesn't go out of the blog business, or I
will be hurtin' for certain to come up with topics to post.

THREE STINKIN' WORDS

01. Where is your cell phone? in my purse
02. Boyfriend/girlfriend? can't you decide?
03. Hair? got enough, thanks
04. Your mother? my saving grace
05. Your father? dead 8 years
06. Your favorite item(s)? books, computer, CDs
07. Your dream last night? rich school conference
08. Your favorite drink? cherry diet Coke
09. Your dream guy/girl? I'll never tell
10. The room you are in? my basement office
11. Your fear? my family dying
12. What do you want to be in 10 years?
above ground, please
13. Who did you hang out with last night? my bratty son
14. What are you not? snobby, gregarious, refined
15. Are you in love? I think so
16. One of your wish list items? what wish list?
17. What time is it? you taking medicine?
18. The last thing you did? watched math contest
19. What are you wearing? that's so pervy
20. Your favorite book? King's 'The Stand'
21. The last thing you ate? turkey/swiss/wheat
22. Your life? quite a ride
23. Your mood? can change quickly
24. Your friends? make me laugh
25. What are you thinking about right now?
gotta finish taxes
26. Your car? dirty silver Yukon
27. What are you doing at this moment? typing, you fool
28. Your summer? shorter this year
29. Your relationship status? married with children
30. What is on your TV screen? dust and fingerprints
31. When is the last time you laughed? 3 hours ago
32. Last time you cried? just last night
33. School? it's my job

********************************************

There. You've had a peep into the dark, twisted world of
Hillbilly Mom. And I didn't even use the terms:

OH SO PRETTY
thank Gummi Mary
thirst for knowledge
sweet, sweet Histinex
I got nothin'
that'll learn ya

That pretty much sums up my overused sayings. The
3-word sayings, anyway. Did I leave any out?
You be the judge.

Writin' and Readin'

2007-03-23T22:17:00.000-05:00

Redneck Diva has started her own writing contest. Drop
in and check it out at writeinthethickofit.blogspot.com.
There is something for everybody, no matter what style
of writing you like. She posts new words every week
or two. Anybody can enter, and anybody can vote for
the week's winner. But only ONCE. The current contest
voting closes on Monday, methinks. Then she will post
a new set of words.

In other news, we've had a book fair at school. I took
my classes to browse few minutes each day. Don't cost
nothin'. Not as many wanted to buy as last time, but
last time was near Christmas. The librarian says the
second book fair of the year never sells as much, but
the school gets a bigger cut. She thinks the profits will
be comparable to the first.

Of course my boys bought a lot of books. The librarian
must have thought it was a lot. She gave us three (THREE)
free posters. Can you believe it, Mabel? I know you can't,
but it's true. I bet they were even worth more than $4. If
you know what I mean. And Mabel does, but you don't,
so sorry for the inside joke, but it's a hoot.

One kid in my class didn't have money on the last day.
He browsed all around. As we were getting ready to
leave, he picked up a book and said, "I really wish I
had this one. I've read all the others, and I've been
waiting for this to come out. My mom was supposed
to give me the money this morning, but she never got
up." He paused for a minute, and his eyes widened.
"What if she's dead? Ha, ha. Do you think you could
loan me the money? I'd pay you back tomorrow. She
was going to give it to me anyway." He looked so
hopeful, I couldn't turn him down. OK. I'm a sucker
for a kid wanting a book. And I'm even more of a
sucker for a kid that can make a joke. Even a macabre
joke about a dead momma.

This morning he showed up for class with that book
about 9/10 read already. And he gave me my $6
first thing. I didn't even charge him interest. Mrs.
Hillbilly Mom is getting soft in her old age.

Or else more forgetful.

Steven Is A B*tch

2007-03-22T18:43:00.000-05:00

Ahh...the plague of being Even Steven. As I gloated
yesterday, I received a magnificent Christmas-in-March
gift of 4 DoNots Sentenced (to ISS). Now, my flaunting
ways have come back to haunt me.

This morning I was chatting away with a DoNot, and it
hit me. Not the DoNot, though that has happened one
time, which I don't like to remember, and was well on the
way to forgetting, since I don't have that kid, "Mum"
anymore, but I just had to make this stupid joke, and
that's what I get for trying to be all funny and stuff. No.
The DoNot didn't hit me, the following thought did, so
I said it right out loud. "Aren't you supposed to be in ISS
today?" Imagine my HORROR when he said, "No. ISS
was overbooked. Most of us don't have it until Monday."
Oh, the humanity! I was counting on some peace. But NO.
I have been Stevened. On Monday, the other ISSer from
my class will be returning to the general population. There
is no peace in DoNotVille. The mighty DoNot is let out.

But on to more interesting topics, such as ME. Or my
son, actually. He missed school today to attend the big
Science Fair at a community college. He was quite excited
to be going. We're not like some schools, who send a
buttload--I mean busload of entrants. He and his little
partner were the only ones chosen to represent our
Middle School.
.
I'm not saying the partner didn't do any work. He would
have done anything he was asked, but my son is the kind
who must do things himself. I don't know why he wanted
a partner, but it was his choice to go it alone or as a team.
So he had somewhat of a silent partner, who aided in the
actual experiment, and building the apparatus, but was not
in on the writing of the specs, the graphs, the results, the
recommendations, etc. Oh, he knew about them, but my
boy and his trusty Lappy did all the writing here at the
Mansion. Yes. My son has named his laptop. And was
excited over the Science Fair. The nerd doesn't fall far
from the tree.

I called at lunch time to check on him, and he said, "Mom,
we won FIRST PLACE in the 6th grade physics division!
We are being re-judged now for Overall Winner and the
judges are coming. I gotta go!" I'm OH SO PROUD of
him. It's his first time entering the Science Fair. He and his
partner will be splitting the $50 prize. Maybe that'll learn
'im to do a project by himself next year! They did not win
the Overall Winner thingy. That's OK. I told him this
morning not to get his hopes up, because this was his first
project, and they only give a 1st and 2nd place. Now I
won't hear the end of it. The principal wants them to
present their project at the next school board meeting.
He's going to have his picture in the paper. He might be
mentioned in the announcements tomorrow. All the glory
a 6th grader yearns for.

He's fired up for the Math Contest on Saturday.
I hope he doesn't get Stevened.

DoNot Holiday

2007-03-21T19:01:00.000-05:00

Well now. My DoNots have been pulling through for me.
I arrived at school this morning with the beginnings of a
headache, made the grand tour of my classroom, stowed
my sandwich in the mini-fridge, taunted the map of the
U.S. which did NOT fall off the wall overnight, logged
on to both computers, wrote the date on the board, laid
out the materials for the day, and proceeded to the
teachers' workroom to check the mail.

And there they were, like Christmas in March, stashed
in my mailbox. Four notices for ISS. And not just any
students, mind you. The livest wires I've got, if you don't
count the one that was sent there last week, and had all
of this week added to his sentence. WooHoo! Peace at
last. A staff member said, "You really have a crew this
year! I couldn't believe it when I saw those papers."
I told her this was nothing compared to 5 years ago. I
had some hard-core looking-for-trouble kids back then.
This year, they are just annoying. Like no-see-ums, only
I can see 'um. And HEAR 'um. They rattle on day after
day. The other kids, who spend all day with them, are
also fed up. The ISSers don't do anything bad enough
in my class to be sent to the office. Thank the Gummi
Mary, they overstepped their boundaries in the lunch
room, with a sub, violated attendance, and slacked a
bit too much. That's what caused each to be sent there.
Bon voyage, my little NotHeads. We'll see you when
you get back.

As an added bonus, a Basementia resident told me a
little story. I will call it fiction, as he is not the most
reliable of sources.

"In elementary, my teacher didn't like me. She was all
the time staring at me, giving me the evil eye. Finally,
one day I said, 'Hey, you got a freakin' problem with
me?' And she sent me to the office! I told the principal
she hated me. He told me I needed to watch my mouth.
Can you believe that?

One day, Mrs. Teacher was at the closet in the back of
the room with Mrs. Next Door Teacher. They were
standing right in the doorway, and Mrs. Teacher took
a drink of beer out of a paper bag. The she handed it
to Mrs. Next Door Teacher, and she took a drink!"

"That's hard to believe, that a teacher would risk her
job just to drink beer where the whole class could see.
How do you know it wasn't root beer? Or water? Or
Gatorade, or juice?"

"It didn't look like root beer to me."

"How could you tell? It was in a paper sack."

"The bottle was glass."

"How do you know, if it was in a paper sack?"

"Because she held it really tight at the top, like it was
glass. And then, one day we were down at the gas
station, and we saw her buy a bottle of beer! She
was telling the clerk, 'I'm going to take this home
drink it.' Then she turned and saw us, and went,
'Oh!' like she was surprised that we caught her."

"How do you know it wasn't for her husband? Maybe
she knew you were there all the time, and knew you
were spreading rumors about her drinking beer in the
closet at the back of the room, so she was pranking
you by saying that to the clerk where you could hear."

"No. She meant it. Teachers aren't supposed to drink
beer!"

"She's over 21, isn't she? And it was after school, so
she wasn't at work. I don't think she broke the law."

"Well, she's not supposed to drink."

Ahh...don't hate me because I lead such a charmed life.
Hate me because I flaunt it.

They Just Don't Get It

2007-03-20T17:52:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, my students don't say what they mean. Just
this afternoon, a girl was incensed that a boy took her
stuff.

Mrs. Upstairs Basementia gave me a highlighter, and
Bobby flushed it down the toilet!
What? How did the two of you come to be in the same
bathroom?
Well, we weren't. That's what Johnny told me--that
Bobby flushed it.
Why did you let him look at it?
I didn't. See...he got in my purse.
He got in your purse? He must be really tiny!
Yeah, well he got in my purse and he took it out and...

She didn't get it. But the kid standing by me waiting
for help during our comedy did.

This morning, a boy came in late after getting his driver's
license.

How'd you do?
Passed it.
What was your score?
She took off for my parallel parking.
Couldn't you do it?
I ran into the sidewalk.
You backed onto the sidewalk?
No. I ran into the sidewalk. It was about two feet high,
and I backed into it. There was a 'bump', and I said,
"Oops!" and pulled up into the space.
Is that all?
No. She said I didn't look good enough.
That's an outrage! How dare they grade your driving
on your appearance!
No, she meant that when I pulled out, I didn't look
good enough for traffic.

Nobody got my little joke. They rarely do. Try as I
might to entertain myself throughout the day, the lot
that I have this year don't make the connection. I
suppose that means it takes 3-4 years to develop a
sense of humor compatible with Mrs. Hillbilly Mom.

Or else I've lost my funny.

Out To Get Hillbilly Mom

2007-03-19T20:43:00.000-05:00

The gremlins are out to get Mrs. Hillbilly Mom tonight.
She has tried her best to put out a quality post for you.
While it may not be entertaining, it is chock-full of
essential nutrients for preparing your own taxes. Hey!
Wake up! You can skim that part if you must. Just read
the parts where Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is OH SO MAD
because thingies and PEOPLE PISS HER OFF!

Here's a list of them. Because Mrs. Hillbilly Mom
and ten thousand monkeys, typing all night until their
fingers were bloody stubs, could not do justice to the
trials she has been through tonight. Read 'em and weep.
Weep for poor Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, who has taken to
referring to herself in the third person, a la 'Jimmy',
because as we all know, her life is a Seinfeld episode.
Weep, by cracky! Get the cryin' towel! Here they are:

McAfee, the pesky window-peeping security center
Rnaapp, who doesn't respond. Crash! Crash!
irs.gov, where you can never quite find what you need
SBC/AT&T, who doublespeak and double bill
dor.mo.gov, where you always time out
e-file, the Devil's Handmaiden of tax preparation
George Bush-just because

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is not pleased. She has wasted her
valuable time fiddling about on the internets, trying to find
crucial information. Let's begin with a hot tip from her
blog buddy, Lantern.

Lantern, though not required to file a U.S. Federal Tax
Return himself, has gone above and beyond the call of
blog-buddy duty to inform Mrs. Hillbilly Mom of the
telephone federal excise tax one-time refund. Kudos,
Lantern, on your diggingest dog technique to ferret out
the nickels and dimes Mrs. Hillbilly Mom so vitally needs
to support her gambling habit. This could snag her $60
of HH's hard-earned (HE says) cash. Job well done,
Lantern. Don't hold your breath waitin' for your cut.
But Mrs. Hillbilly Mom will keep looking for more
ancient pictures to post, since the Lovely Green Shirt
Jeannie was not forthcoming on March 17.

After finding some tiny loopholes in the Child Tax Credit
publication, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is ready to get a discount
for procreating. Only on the U.S. Federal Tax Forms
do you round $100 to the nearest multiple of $1000.
Which means: $1000. And not in a good way, like in
"I won $100, but they are rounding it to $1000!"
Weep. Weep for Mrs. Hillbilly Mom.

And to add insult to injury, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom must
freakin' PAY to e-file her taxes. It isn't enough that people
who don't even EARN as much as Mrs. Hillbilly Mom
PAYS in taxes get HUGE refunds to buy their plasma TVs
and meth ingredients. They also get to e-file FOR FREE.
But Mrs. Hillbilly Mom earns too much for that. Ha ha!
The last laugh is on you, evil IRS minions! Mrs. Hillbilly
Mom refuses to pay to file her taxes! She will do it the
old-fashioned way, with a number two pencil, on your
papery packet of slaughtered trees. She don't need no
rapid refund. Snail mail is just fine for old Hillbilly Mom.

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom would also like to thank her real-life,
real-person teaching buddy, Mabel, who informed her
this morning that the Educator Expense Deduction of
$250 is STILL IN EFFECT this year. Sorry, Mabel,
that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom called for reinforcements to
verify your claim. You see, not being quite so independ-
ently wealthy as Mabel, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom does not
use TurboTax, and TRUSTED the evil 1040 instructions.
Thank the Gummi Mary, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom has friends
in tax places.

You can't be too careful when you're dealing with
Uncle Sam.

This Much Is Certain

2007-03-18T16:42:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is OH SO BUSY tonight, my friends.
She is up to her armpits in Form 1040, trying to see what
went so horribly wrong. She MUST have her Child Tax
Credit, or pay the evil IRS. All because her income was
$350 too much. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom blames HH. She is
off to seek Publication 972 on the internets, and try to
salvage her hard-earned moolah. Or HH's half-a$$ed-
earned-moolah. The moolah which supplies her gambling
habit. Wish her luck. Perhaps she will entertain you in
the manner to which you have become accustomed
tomorrow.

Perhaps not.

It depends on your level of satisfaction with your visits
to the Mansion. Some say they have never, ever, been
entertained here. Rotten freeloaders!

Drop in tomorrow to see what's cookin'.

Fantasies, Schmantasies

2007-03-17T19:48:00.000-05:00

Some freakish people have been landing at my lovely
Mansion, after searching for some freakish things. The
time has come to put away the freakish things, people!
No good can come of this.

It's almost enough to hurt my tender feelings. My Mansion
is not filled with black mold, staph infections and lice. So
what if HH spotted a rat as big as a shampoo bottle? It
was over by the barn, I tell you!

I do not have wench boob, or moldy pototatoes, or the
recipe for fentanyl. I do not host unsightly pr0n with
pregnant women. I am not a creepy hillbilly who wears
saggy britches and sissy stirrup pants, and lives in
booger county, missouri.

I do not spend my days human toilet training a lesbian
gymnast, telling people with rotten buttholes, "its called
speed stick its not expensive." Nor is there any truth to
the rumor that i accidentally took an extra lisinopril, had
to go to the hillbilly hospital where the doctor left a junior
mint inside after surgery, and found it necessary to hide
arm scars for blood test.

I most certainly have never said to my best buddy, "get
off the table mable, those two dollars are for beer lyrics."
Never.

And I assure you that hm fantasies DO NOT include
being diapered and spanked at church, being chased by a
red suv, a fat man in a little coat, or anthing connected
with butt biting, and especially nothing about butt boogers.

Honest.

That Dirty Rat

2007-03-16T19:07:00.000-05:00

Wednesday morning, as I was combing down #2 son's
hair before sending him off to school, he announced, "Dad
went out to the camper to get more cardboard to burn, and
when he picked up a box, he saw a rat as tall as a shampoo
bottle."

Okaayyy. That's how I like to start my day. With a bit of
mystery, a bit of danger. Why was this not mentioned to
me before? Is this an everyday occurrance around the
Mansion? Methinks not. Mehopes not.

It all started because the floor was sticky, with a granular
substance. According to #2, "Well, Dad held the cereal
bag upside down, so it must be cereal sugar. He was
getting out the cardboard." Then he dropped the R bomb.

We burn our cardboard. Hey! We live in the country. It's
no worse for the environment than the big garbage truck
exhaust that would haul it off from our dumpster. I was
sickened that HH had been storing cardboard in the 5th-
wheel camper in the front yard until he decided he had
enough for a burn pile. We don't keep any food in that
camper. I didn't want a rat bigger than the cats getting
into the house. Or even a rat smaller than a cat. We had
a field mouse get in about 5 years ago, and that was bad
enough. HH got a bunch of those sonic sound thingies
and plugged them into the wall. We haven't seen any
such critters since.

When I next saw HH, I quizzed him on the rat matter.
"It wasn't the 5th-wheel," HH said sarcastically. "It was
the cut-off pickup bed with the camper shell that my
oldest #1 son had borrowed and finally brought back."
OK. So maybe it wasn't even OUR rat, maybe it hitched
a ride here. But at least it was in that piece of junk over
by the barn, not in my front yard. And HH doesn't put
cardboard in the 5th-wheel to wait for proper burn
conditions.

Whew. Dodging bullets makes me tired.

No-Conference Day

2007-03-15T20:52:00.000-05:00

It's been a long day. No parents showed up to conference
with me. I cleaned out a cabinet in preparation for my new
duties next year. OK, it was only one shelf of a cabinet.
But I still have four-and-a-half months. I think I can do it.

I almost gave away two Math books with reproducibles
to the LD teacher who is going to have to teach more
Math to her students, what with the new requirements.
Then I remembered, 'Oh, I am still teaching a Math class.
Bad idea.' So I copied them instead. Did she revere them,
treat them with the dignity they deserved, and puncture
their carcasses with a three-hole punch and place them
lovingly in a three-ring binder? Let me answer for you:
NO! She took them each to a common folder from the
Devil's Playground, the ten-for-a-dollar back-to-school-
special folders that she stocks up on each fall, shoved
them unceremoniously into a too-tight pocket, and
stashed them in her cabinet. Oh, the humanity!

I will leave you with a sorry sight I witnessed yesterday.
I shudder at the thought of it. But I would like to share
the horror. It was ninth-graders. Two boys who are
cousins. They do things like fart on each other, and
plan to ride bicycles 30 miles to visit one's girlfriend.
They hunt. They ride 4-wheelers. Just everday, normal
kids. They sit next to each other in class. One leaned
over to annoy the other, placing his head on his cousin's
shoulder. And the cousin leaned down and LICKED
HIS NOSE. The lickee hollered, started wiping the
side of his nose like a dog that's been stung by a bee,
and ran to the cabinet. "Mrs. Hillbilly Mom! Can I get
a baby-wipe out of here?" He scrubbed and scrubbed
at his nose. "Eewww! I can't believe you DID that to
me! That is gross!" And the licker replied. "It doesn't
bother me. I'm comfortable with my sexuality."

Heh, heh. I'm still having nightmares.

Read All About It

2007-03-14T17:58:00.000-05:00

I just had the most scathingly brilliant idea! Right after I
read the Diva's post yesterday. So I guess she is the one
with the scathingly brilliant idea. I am just the plagiarizer.
A little bit. Go check her out. There are many new things
afoot in her corner of Oklahoma. She tells it better, so I'll
let you read for yourselves. She's even got a writing
contest goin' on. That woman is too ambitious, methinks.
Thanks, Diva, for my inspiration. Feel free to steal the
favor any time. Assuming I can come up with my own idea
in your lifetime. Let's get right to it.

********************************************

Local Woman Held For Questioning

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, a teacher at NoName School District,
was detained today by local authorities. After 90 minutes
of interrogation, it was determined that she really does
know what she's talking about. This was confirmed by
the other 5 detainees, between bites of candy and bouts
of horn tooting. The Committee to Evaluate the School
released Mrs. Hillbilly Mom and her cronies after they
provided insider knowledge concerning the day-to-day
activities of the educational institution.

Hardworking Dad Denounced By Offspring

The breadwinner of a Blogger Protection Program
family was disowned by his children today. They were
outraged when he brought home sweet & sour chicken
without the sweet & sour. When questioned, Mr. H.
Husband stated: "I guess I won't have any sweet &
sour sauce with my chicken." The patriarch blamed
the culinary omission on the English-as-a-nonexistent-
language workers at a restaurant near his mansion.
The last words he was heard to utter were: "I spent
the last of my cash budget money on that food."

Freak Accident Narrowly Avoided

Witnesses were shocked to see a black Ford truck exit
the Rhodes 101 at the corner of Main St. and Not-Main
St. this afternoon. With no regard for eastbound traffic,
the club cab pickup pulled in front of a white compact car,
across the left turn lane, and halfway into the westbound
lane before stopping. Apparently sensing the error of its
ways, the truck then backed up across the left turn lane,
eastbound lane, and back into the Rhodes 101 lot. Then
pulled right back out, but not as far, and backed up
again. A local, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, was heard to exclaim
from her Large SUV, "What's that crazy idiot doing?"
Upon closer inspection as to the identity of the crazy
idiot, witnesses discovered that the truck was empty.
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom could not be reached for comment,
as it was nearly the end of half-price Happy Hour at
the nearby Sonic.

Educator Throws in the Pie

Longtime physics teacher Mabel O'Mabel did not hand
out Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies today in recognition of
Pi Day. Having relinquished her physics post to further
mathecate mathematically challenged students, Mabel
bequeathed the crown of Pi Maiden to her successor.
Who was out of town on business. Many a student was
heard to bemoan the sad fate of Pi Day, as their stomachs
rumbled in commiseration.

******************************************

Yes, it was an eventful day. There will be future editions
of the Hillbilly Mom Times as news warrants.

Thanks again to Redneck Diva for the idea. She ROCKS!

Mmm...What's Cooking In The Microwave?

2007-03-13T20:03:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I've mentioned that my boy is entering the
science fair at the local community college. It is next
Thursday, a school day, so I can't go. HH is taking
the day off to check it out.

The 10th graders have been learning about the scientific
method in biology class. I used to teach science, and run
the school-wide science fair in one of my other districts.
OK, not the whole school, but K-8, which entailed
approximately 810 students. I attended a workshop in
the city, and pretty much understand what goes on at a
science fair, and how the scientific method works. I
know that ethics is a big deal these days, and that there
are strict guidelines for experimenting with animals. For
example, you can't hypothesize that Cheetos do not give
a rabbit all the nutrients he needs to carry out his daily life
processes, because you will harm the rabbit if you feed
him a diet of only Cheetos.

Nobody is doing this, so don't get your granny panties in a
wad. It's all hypothetical. It's some of that touchy-feely
I'm OK You're OK BS that we have come to call today's
public education.

Imagine my surprise this morning when a student asked me
for help on a worksheet. It was not a teacher-generated
worksheet. It came from some workbook or website. It
had about 15-20 questions concerning the scientific method.
The questions were good. They made the kids think. They
assessed the knowledge they were supposed to be assessing.
They were geared to grab the students' interest.
But at what price?

Here's the problem, to the best of my old-lady, so-old-my-
social-security-number-is-one, so-old-that-if-I-act-my-age-
I'll-die memory. "Bart Simpson has heard that if you put a
hamster in a microwave, he gains strength. Bart has
decided to test this theory. He put 10 hamsters in the
microwave for 10 seconds, and then measured how far
each could move a wall. Bart also tested 10 hamsters
he did not put in a microwave. 8 out of 10 of the
microwaved hamsters showed greater than average
strength. 7 out of 10 of the nonmicrowaved hamsters
showed greater than average strength. What is Bart's
conclusion? What is the independent variable? What is
the dependent variable? What is the control? How
could Bart adjust his experiment to make it better?"

Now, on that last question, I believe the answer they
were fishing for was: Use a larger sample than 10
hamsters. But the student did not grasp this fact.
She said, "Put the hamsters in the microwave for
a whole minute?" When I suggested that the idea
was to increase the number of hamsters, perhaps
to test 50, or 100, she replied: "That's stupid. You
can't fit 100 hamsters in a microwave!"

Maybe I'm being a bit judgmental. She DID know
that the dependent variable was the strength of
the hamsters. That's not always easy for them to
figure out. But I don't think they should be joking
about putting hamsters in a microwave. Because
sure as I would try something like that, a kid would
go home and do it, and say: "Well, Mrs. Hillbilly
Mom gave us a worksheet about it, so I figured
it was a real experiment."

Let's be more realistic. Life isn't all fun and games.
What's wrong with giving them actual experiments
to analyze?

Am I allowed to give my math kids a problem such
as: Mrs. Hillbilly Mom was stabbed, and found
lying on her classroom floor near the whiteboard.
If the height of the blood spatter on the whiteboard
was 3 feet, and the distance from the top drop of the
blood to Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's body was 5 feet, how
far was Mrs. Hillbilly Mom lying from the wall holding
the whiteboard? Hint: Use the Pythagorean Theorem.

I think I might receive a few phone calls about that.
But let's give these kids something they can relate to.
We can't spend all day learning not to end sentences
with prepositions, reading about Mendel and his peas,
and memorizing the amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Or can we?

A Time, By Any Other Name, Is Still Just As Late

2007-03-12T20:44:00.000-05:00

My little meeting after school went about two-and-a-half hours.
That is just a bit too long for me. My poor abandoned children
sat in my classroom, not doing their homework. OK, they were
not actually abandoned, because my mom came in to keep them
company. Or staunch the flow of blood. Hey. That has only been
a problem ONE time. So hang up on that 1-800-BAD-MOM
call, y'hear?

I am kind of exhausted, having slept only four hours last night. I
awoke at 2:30 a.m. with an excruciating headache in the area
above my left eye. Which had not even hurt when I was awake,
but no doubt was demanding equal time after yesterday's post
crediting the right side of my forehead. There. Happy now?
Cause I don't want a repeat tonight. That was brutal. I thought
I was dying. HH slept on, whistling out of his blowhole. I got
up twice to drink some water. Which is of course what you do
when you are dying of excruciating noggin pain. Unless you are
DeadpanAnn, in which case you take a snort of Benadryl. Her
mom swears by it, you know.

I am not in a very festive mood tonight. The rest of the week
does not look any better. So I'm going to whine just a bit more
and retire for the evening. The resetting of the clocks resulted
in my cushion of time to get to Basementia being cut by four
minutes. And of course, I encountered the local police while
I was dashing over there at 15 miles over the speed limit.
Lucky for me, he was heading the other way. I jammed on
the brakes so that he could see in his rearview mirror that
I was repentant, and went on my merry way, unmolested.

I now plan to put my feet up, and perhaps fall asleep in the
recliner. Unmolested, I hope.

A Little Nap Would Be Good

2007-03-11T15:04:00.000-05:00

Ho hum. Aren't you all tired from losing that extra hour of sleep?
You domestic readers, anyway. I will not enjoy walking into my
classroom tomorrow morning, and seeing that it is 6:42 a.m.

This is a busy week. Tomorrow is the longer-lasting faculty meeting
in Basementia, so long we are having food. Tuesday is #1 son's
Beta Club induction ceremony at 6:00 p.m., so we will stay in
town to avoid rushing back. Wednesday, I will be interviewed
by a visiting team of somebodies concerning not-Basementia.
Looking forward to that, aren't we, Mabel? Thursday is an early
out for the kids, but Parent Conferences for us until 7:00 p.m.
Now I'm really tired.

I have a pain in my forehead above my right eye. It's about an
inch above where the pain was yesterday, which I thought had
something to do with my sinuses. Unless they are migrating to
meet my lovely lady-mullet, I don't know what besides the
sinuses is causing this pain when I touch my head. It feels like
I smacked it on the door frame of the Large SUV. But I'm sure
I would remember something like that.

My neverending laundry is still not done. Add the federal and
state tax returns to that list. And this uninteresting blog post.
But my 3rd Quarter grades are done and computed, despite
that demon gradebook program that booted me out 7 times
on my quest to complete that mission on Friday morning and
afternoon.

The cash budget experiment is going well. In my opinion, but
not HH's. Seems he had to spend $25 on dogfood this week.
Quit overfeeding the beasts, I say. He feeds them twice a day,
in a big pan for each of them. There is always food left in them,
even after we come home. Which means even the neighbor
dogs have eaten their fill. I will trade him the dogfood for the
kidfood in my budget. Let's see how he likes that.

Yawwnnnn. I am absolutely putting myself to sleep. You know
what that means...time to go operate some heavy machinery
like the washer & dryer and the stove.

See you tomorrow, unless there is a horrible industrial accident.

Fighting Mrs. Freshley

2007-03-10T17:47:00.000-06:00

I decree that Mrs. Freshley should be sentenced to a day of basic
math with Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. I can do that. It's MY blog.

Have you met Mrs. Freshley? She bakes little chocolate donuts
for Save-A-Lot. Methinks she also bakes brownies for The Devil's
Playground. She's an off-brand of sugary, chocolatey goodness.

I have issues with her math aptitude. You see, on the label of her
little chocolate donuts, she proclaims that a serving is 4 donuts,
and the amount of servings per package is about 6. C'mon, Mrs.
Freshley! Do you really think people won't count how many
donuts you put in each bag?

OK, maybe normal people don't. But I have to stay on top of
things around my Mansion, what with my probable, undiagnosed
case of OCD. My little son, the crybaby, eats little chocolate
donuts for breakfast each morning. That's when he's not on a
Little Debbie Cosmic Brownie binge. Only the best for my
young 'uns.

The little chocolate donuts have a habit of disappearing from the
pantry. So some mornings, much like Old Mother Hubbard's
dog, my little crybaby has none. Which does not go over too
well first thing in the morning, when we are on a tight timetable
to rush out the door for school.

I admit that I, too, have a bit of a little chocolate donut addiction.
Don't even try an intervention. I'm onto your tricks. But what I
was getting at was that I accused my #1 son of sneaking 11 of
the little chocolate donuts from a brand-new package. He denied
eating any. He blamed HH. HH denied eating any. I knew I didn't
eat them. Where's Judge Judy when you need her? Out in the rain
somewhere, I suppose, accusing passersby of peeing on her leg.

After some tough interrogation techniques, I determined that the
#1 son was the culprit. Sensing that the jig was up, the boy at last
admitted to eating 3 donuts. After further questioning, he copped
to consuming 5 donuts, then 7, then drew the line at 8. That's 8
little chocolate donuts. Which I suppose, once you've admitted
to sneaking 8 little chocolate donuts out of the pantry behind
your sleeping father's head, you might as well spill your guts on
all 11. But he insisted he 'only' ate 8.

Which led to the big Mrs. Freshley's inquisition. I began to count
each new bag. You see, to me, 'about' 6 servings at 4 donuts per
serving amounts to 'about' 24 donuts per package. Do you follow?
Because 6 x 4 = 24, you see. But I found that the last 3 bags of
brand-new donuts I opened contained 18, 18, and 20.

So to me, Mrs. Freshley, it seems as if each bag of your little
chocolate donuts actually contains 'about' 5 servings, not 6.
Because in math, Mrs. Freshley, when you estimate a number,
you round it to the nearest number. If your bags contained 22,
or 24, or, unbelievably, 26 donuts, Mrs. Freshley, I could
accept your claim. But they don't. So stop trying to pee on my
leg, Mrs. Freshley. Stop treating the Save-A-Lot shoppers like
they are Cavemen who can't count little chocolate donuts.

Don't make us start a national ad campaign against you.

Any of you who buy Mrs. Freshley's little chocolate donuts...
perhaps you'd better do a little investigating. We can call in
Geraldo. He hasn't had a story this big since Al Capone's
Vault.

We must not let Mrs. Freshley perpetuate this fraud any longer.

Somewhat Like An Onion, HM Elicits Tears

2007-03-09T18:14:00.000-06:00

My boy got off the bus crying today. The first thing I noticed was
the red ears. Though they have dark hair, my boys are lily-white.
The daycare lady used to say they glowed in the dark. What do
you think, Diva? We lived by a large chat pile when the oldest
was born. Perhaps they are radioactive. When they run a fever, or
cry, or get embarrassed, their ears light up like Rudolph's nose.

Anyhoo...this is the little boy, the just-turned-9-year-old. He is still
babied, so at times he acts like one. He was trying NOT to cry,
as he climbed off the bus and entered the halls of Basementia. He
held in the tears until he got to me. He's either a sensitive little soul,
or a good actor. At first I didn't see him. I was in my aunt's office,
and he went down to my room. I thought perhaps he was afraid I
had left him there. Even though I have not even joked about this.
I called him over, and he buried his face in my side. He's not a talker,
this one. So we had to play A Hundred-and-Twenty Questions.

Were you afraid I left you? He shook his head. Nonverbal, this
lad. Always has been. At daycare, unless he was bleeding, she
could never figure out the injury. Did someone hit you? No. Did
someone hurt your feelings? No. Did someone say something to
you? No. Did someone take your stuff? No. Push you? No. Did
you get in trouble on the bus? No. Did you get in trouble at school?
No. Did your teacher say something? No. Did you pee or poop
your pants? No.Will you whisper in my ear and tell me? No.

Tears were rollling down his face now. He turned to the wall, so
as not to be seen, even though I had my arm around him and my
giant old-lady head right next to his. Do you want to go in the
teacher's bathroom and tell me? No. So I told him, "If you can't
whisper it to me now, you'll have to tell me in the car, and your
brother will hear, too." That boy sang like a canary.

He held out his left hand. The pinky finger was a bit swollen, and
a bit purple. Nothing like my mom's FAT RED PINKY FINGER,
though. "Classmate Girl shoved her desk and my finger was in the
middle of her desk and mine." He sobbed. I told him we would fix
him up. In that little-kid, trying-to-get-a-breath, unable-to-stop-crying
way, he huffed, "The person I told to get my stuff while I was in the
bathroom running cold water on it didn't get it." Sob, sob, sob, sob.
"We have to go back to the elementary because I don't have my
lunch bag!"

Okaayyyy. I'm not such an ogre that forgetting a lunch bag should
make the child hysterical. As a matter of fact, we had to go back
to my other building, too, because I had forgotten a book that I
need to inspect over the weekend. It must have been the day of
forgetting things. The minute I logged on to the school website in
Lower Basementia to take roll, a message appeared asking me
to please bring a fellow traveler's plan book with me. Too bad it
was sent 5 minutes after I left that building. I replied, and so did
she, saying that she'd go back and get it during her plan time. Did
I remember that I needed my book, and ask her to get it? Yeah.
When I saw her return, and walk by my window with her plan
book, I remembered. I didn't bother asking.

Oh, and her child was crying in the hall one day, too, after getting
off the bus. He wanted to eat some sweet-and-sour chicken that
was in his lunch the day before. That he had forgotten in her room,
and had sat out overnight, unrefrigerated. She told him it wasn't
any good any more. He heard. "I want to be mean and make you
cry and go hungry. You can't have it."

And you people send your kids off to us every day. So we can
make them cry, too. It's for their own good.

Challenge Time

2007-03-08T18:57:00.000-06:00

I am in a hurry tonight. So I will give you a little challenge.
We'll get to that in a minute. First, to add a bit of padding to
the ol' Mansion, I'll give a shout-out to our best substitute.

He will teach the lessons you leave. He will grade papers, even
if you don't ask, as long as you leave an answer key. He expects
the kids to behave, and be respectful. He gets along with all the
teachers. He doesn't steal your pens, or rearrange your furniture,
or take the kids outside for a walk, or leave the class unattended
to go have a smoke on the parking lot or read magazines in the
library. He knows where the teachers park, and never takes a
space away, even if he gets there first. You know who I'm talkin'
about, Mabel. I bet he wouldn't even walk on your stepping stones.
Oh...if the maintenance woman hadn't taken them, and they were
still outside your window. HooRah, Mr. Substitute Man. You rock.

And now, I present the knowledge you've been thirsting for...in fact,
yearning for. Or at least, the challenge I promised. It is from 6th
grade math. Just when you were thinking you are as smart as a
5th grader, I have to challenge you. Good luck.

What fraction is equivalent to 3/4, with the sum of the numerator
and denominator being 84?

Let's see how smart you really are, by cracky!

Book Learnin'

2007-03-07T18:35:00.000-06:00

It's time to crack the book again.

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's Encyclopedia of Common Knowledge.

Location of the Weenus. A 'weenus' is a bone in this part of your
elbow. Isn't it Mrs. Hillbilly Mom? Because a lot of people have
told me that, but That Little Girl Over There doesn't believe me.
She'll believe you, because you're the teacher. So tell her, Mrs.
Hillbilly Mom, what a weenus is.

Free Money For Indians. All you have to do is go to an Indian
Reservation and tell them that you have Indian blood in you. They
will give you a check for $6000, and you will get one every month.
For doing nothing!

Standards of Modern Hillbilly Society. It is OK to think your
stepdad is hot, isn't it, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom? Oh! I'm so embarrased!
That's just eewww! What I meant to say was, It's OK to think
your stepbrother is hot, isn't it? We're only related by marriage,
not blood related. So there shouldn't be anything wrong with it.

Possession is 100% of the Law. Last night, this guy tried to steal
our electric poles. Yeah. The poles that hold electric lines. My
dad saw him out there and ran out and said, "What are you doing?"
and the guy tried to say that the electric company sent him to pick
them up. My dad took his keys and threw them and then punched
the guy's truck and left a big ol' dent in the side. That guy took off.
He can't take our poles. My dad's going to build a garage out of
them. He brought them home. The electric company said he could
have them.

I've Got The Fever. Last night, I was really sick. I had a fever of
one hundred and twelve. That's why I wasn't at school for three
days. What do you mean I would be dead? It was one hundred
and twelve. That's what it said on the thermometer: 101.2.

Where There's Burnt Smoke, There's Fire. Did you hear about
the fire in tech class yesterday? I walked in and smelled burnt
smoke. I thought it was from somebody in class before us, so I
went and started sanding this thing. I kept smelling burnt smoke,
so I quit. Then there was this fire, so I ran away, because I didn't
want to get blamed for it, since I was the last one using the
sander. I didn't set it. But somebody did!

Young Drivers Are Better Than Old Drivers. If two people are
going somewhere, the old person should let the young person
drive, because he's a better driver. Old people cause 30 % of
the accidents, because of slow driving, and running over little
things like cones in the road. Old people should get tested again
to keep their driver's license, starting each year at age 35.
If you see an old person driving, you should get off the road.
Especially if you value your life. People should be able to get
a driver's license before the age of 16. In Africa, 4-year-old
children drive, and they don't have any problems.

The Celebrated Jumping Tick of Calveras County. Ticks can jump.
That's how they get on you. Why do you say they don't? How do
you think you get them? They're not going to sit on a weed and
wait till you walk by! Who told you that? They could be there for
days and nobody would walk by. They sense heat, and come to
you and jump on you. How do you think they get up on your legs?
They jump. To get them out, you hold a match or lighter to them.
They don't like heat. It won't burn you...just the tick.

Always a Borrower and a Lender Be. Can I use your stapler?
I want to staple my pants together so they don't rip any more.
Do you have scissors? Can I use them? I want to take a Kleenex
and cut it up in little squares, smaller and smaller. Clean up? Can't
the janitor do that? Do you have a nickel? No, I don't want it for
free. I will give you five pennies for it. Can I buy a mechanical
pencil? Oh...you want the money for it? I thought I'd get a soda
today. I'll bring you the money on Monday. But I need the pencil
today. C'mon. You know I always pay you back. Hey! You
wouldn't loan ME a pencil! I know. But I only took ONE. That's
nothing, one pencil. Why won't you give me another one? Can I
use your tape? I need to put something up in my locker. Do you
have a safety pin? I don't want to get in trouble if my pants rip.
Yeah! I got in trouble just because my boxers were hanging out
the rip. Like I could help it that the rip kept getting bigger. Do you
have a band-aid? Cool. SpongeBob. Don't you have any air
freshener? It smells like old feet in here. Can I have a bottle of
water? I'm really thirsty. I don't like the water from the drinking
fountain. Do you have any gum? Do you have any cough drops?
You're almost out of Kleenexes. Can I borrow your eraser? Is
it the one that smells like watermelon? I don't know why you
have to find that hall pass. It's just a roll of tape. Like you can't
get another one. Do you have a Sharpie? A permanent marker
is too big. You need to get a Sharpie. Can I use your white-out?
I want to cover up this pink pen where that girl wrote on my
Nikes. Can I get some paper? Do you have any more of those
folders? The last one you gave me wore out.

Ahh...yes. Drink, my friends. Drink deeply from the fountain of
knowledge that you have been thirsting for.

If a sentence ends with a preposition, but nobody knows it's a
preposition, does it still make Hillbilly Mom look uneducated?

A-Mathing We Will Go

2007-03-06T19:28:00.000-06:00

I lost my marbles today. Well, not so much marbles as my ability
to do math. Which would have been OK, I suppose, if doing math
was just a hobby, like collecting marbles, and sometimes taking
them to your grandpa's basement and putting a coffee can of water
on the gas burner of that stove he kept down there to boil his work
clothes on, not to eat, silly, but to get them clean, because to the
best of my recollection, he worked in the lead mines, but so did my
other grandpa, although he didn't boil his clothes, but washed them
in an old ringer washer, not him, but my grandma, who was also
good at swinging a chicken and popping its head off, not in the
basement, but just outside, though she didn't have a stove in her
basement to cook marbles, which is what I did, boiled those
suckers for a few minutes, then poured cold water on them,
which caused them to make snap/crackle/pop noises, and whee
doggies, wasn't I lucky that I didn't burn the place down, or have
an eye put out by flying crackling marble glass while I performed
my totally unsupervised marble-cooking act at the tender age of
ten or so, which would surely lead to a DFS intervention these
days, but by cracky, back in the day, a child might as well be
cooking meth for all those agency people cared about them,
what with letting them ride untethered in the back windshield
ledges of automobiles, swing their legs willy-nilly off the tailgates
of pickup trucks traveling down the highway at 75 mph, passing
motorcycle-riders without helmets, on their way to buy cigarette
brands they'd seen advertised on TV.

But doing math is not exactly a hobby for Mrs. Hillbilly Mom,
who is not a real teacher of math, but plays one at school for
three hours each day. So this morning when she first sensed that
she had broken her math bone, it was with a bit of scorn that she
told the students, "Well, I've been showing you this for two years
now...don't you think you would have learned some of it by now?
What do YOU think we should do next." To which a little devil rose
to the challenge, walked to the white board, and said, "Put that there,
and that there, and it will work." And he was right, by cracky! For
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom had forgotten how to do a problem with unit
multipliers, precisely:

Convert 20 meters to feet, using 3 unit multipliers.

Oh, she could get the correct answer, all right. By using 2
unit multipliers, or 4 unit multipliers.It was just the doing it
in the proper manner that was her Achilles' heel. Or perhaps
that was her Achilles' big toe, because it was actually the
second of her math moments this morning in which she could
not perform. The first was in finding the volume and the total
surface area of a solid that had a base shaped like a house.
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom tried to divide that sucker and make two
right triangles out of the roof area, when she should have only
made one regular triangle and used the old standby 'Area =
1/2 Base x Height'. But no. She tried to make it too hard,
and was thankful when Mabel arrived to save the day. As
were the DoNots.

And then, in Lower Basementia, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's math
impotence reared its ugly head yet again, when she was asked
to use the Pythagorean Theorem to find the missing measure
of a hypoteneuse. Which Mrs. Hillbilly Mom could have done,
in two steps for this evil book-torture problem, except that
Mrs. HM pronounced "One squared plus one squared equals
one, and the square root of one is...well...one." Au contrair!
Seems there has been a new development in the math world,
and Mrs. HM did not receive the memo. One plus one is now
TWO! Who knew? The regular Mathie, that's who, who
bailed out Mrs. HM in place of Mabel.

Which perhaps explains that $600 checkbook faux pas.

The Curse of Even Steven

2007-03-05T19:26:00.000-06:00

Where is everybody, Sweet Blog O' Mine? Nobody here now
but those twisted tumbleweeds. Is it because I dare speak of toilet
paper? Or give a quiz ALL ABOUT MEEEEE? There was a big
crowd up in here Friday, but they've all gone. It's Monday, and
they are still staying away in droves. I'm sure it's only because they
are as busy as Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. Yeah. That's the ticket.

I'm throwing a big pity party for myself. As soon as I find the time.
Oh, sure. I brought this all on myself, what with my incessant
procrastinating. The six 3rd Quarter tests that I must have ready
by Thursday afternoon and Friday morning are my fault. I have
known all year that I am expected to give a test at the end of each
quarter. I was just discombobulated by those four snow days
that popped up.

I've also known that I have to turn in my Writing Across the
Curriculum binder with samples of student work. It's just that
only about six of us turned them in at the end of 2nd Quarter,
and did we get a big "H*LL YEAH" out of it, or at least get
the chance to sit smugly through a meeting where the slackers
got a talkin' to? NO! And it does not seem so rewarding to do
what is expected of you unless you get...well...a reward. So
this task was put on the back burner.

And I suppose it's my own fault that I misread the lesson plans
of a fellow Mathie in Lower Basementia, mistaking last week's
plans for this week's plans, and congratulating myself on being
only two days behind, when in all actuality, I'm supposed to be
one day behind anyway, to emphasize what she introduces.
Imagine my horror this morning when she handed me THIS
week's plans, and I had to chuck my old plans out the window,
though not literally, because I have encased one such window
in black butcher paper because nobody who promises to get
me shades 'this week' has ever followed through.

But the things I WILL NOT take responsibility for are the new
email system which was just installed Friday afternoon, which
even when I followed the full-page, 10-point-font directions to
a T, would not let me into my email, where I had an attachment
of beautiful, color-coded Science GLEs, 18 pages of them to be
precise. Thank the Gummi Mary that my other computer let me
in to admire the GLEs, only refusing to print them for me. Which
took me an hour of hard labor to discover.

Oh, and then five minutes after the discovery, in waltzed the kind
Science teacher who gave me these colorful gems, cradling a
rather large cardboard display of a new textbook, in all it's glory,
with a teacher's edition, student edition, study materials, computer
test bank, and all kinds of goodies, if I could please review it and
get back to her, because we need to order some texts for next
year. Which I would have gladly done, except that the information
I needed to search that text for were not coming out of my computer
any time soon, and I can not just plop myself down to read and
annotate 18 pages of Grade Level Expectations while neglecting
my students, who are rather high-maintenance this year, if I do say
so myself.

But then...it gets better. At Basementia, I tried to take roll online,
as is the custom there, and NO INTERNET. So I wasn't gettin'
any GLE attachment out of that computer, either, not even the
lesser black-and-white copy that I had anticipated. Oh, and do
you know that if there is no internet connection there, you also
can not log on to the other building's gradebook program to
enter grades that you ran out of time for there, what with the
email/printer fiasco, and the mini-discussion of the new text?
It really was not my fault that I could not enter my homework
hotline info for the week, because hey, there was no freakin'
internet. That was because, as I found out by accident when
I went to make ONE copy of a thingy I want to put on a 3rd
Quarter test, and neither of the two copiers would work, so I
had to commandeer the one in the office, that a truck had in
some freakish manner backed into some phone lines (about
15-20 feet in the air, mind you), and taken out Basementia's
connection to the world.

Oh, and while I was there, I thought to beg (ahem...ASK) for
my paycheck, which others get delivered to their classrooms
in the morning, but since I am not there mine becomes a
scavenger hunt twice a month, and wouldn't you know it, my
check could not be found! Not by the counselor acting as the
secretary, who could not find the administrator who had them
last, and even rifled through his desk but came up empty-handed.
So I declared that I would just have to pick it up tomorrow, IF
it could be found at that time, because I had a meeting in the
other building right after school, and had to hit the road, Jack,
but planned on coming back tomorrow.

Lucky for me that when I balanced my checkbook on Sunday,
I discovered a little error from the snow days early in the month,
having written down a withdrawal and not gone to the bank until
the next day, due to the snow, and by cracky, writing that ol'
withdrawal down again the next day, making me $600 wealthier
than I thought I was at the end of the month! But it was a bit of
a consolation anyway when the acting secretary brought my check
down to Lower Basementia about 10 minutes before I blasted out
of there for the meeting, having found it in the vault, which is of
course the last place you would look for a misplaced paycheck,
since they are usually found under some cluttered papers on the
desk, or folded in a jacket pocket...while the vault is used to
store paper clips, discipline slips, tape, and the absentee slips
we don't need because that is done online. Except when a truck
pulls down the lines.

The meeting lasted until 4:00, which meetings in that building
never do, but we are having a committee of people visiting us
next week, plus it's a short week with Parent Conferences, and
we need to prepare our classrooms with exemplary student work,
which I have also know most of the school year, but my students
are not particularly known for exemplary work, and I have been
waiting and waiting for some to magically appear.

Even Steven, baby. I find $600 extra dollars in my bank account...
but I have a buttload of work to keep me busy.

Just A Quickie

2007-03-04T18:39:00.000-06:00

I am SOOOO sick of dial-up.
But too cheap to remedy the situation.

Just so you know...HH is off his deathbed from that plague thingy.
He got a shot in the butt on Wednesday, plus some other medicine,
and he perked right up. Of course, that was 11 days after he came
down with it, so he might have been on the mend anyway. He is
his usual surly self tonight. I asked him to take the sheets out of the
dryer when they're done, and put them back on the bed. He had
a little hissy fit. "I put them on the last time!" Oh, excuuuuse me for
washing them every last goshdarn time. It's not like I could get to
them for the last two weeks, what with him plopped in the bed 20
hours a day and NOT WORKING for two weeks. Great Googley
Moogley! You'd think I asked him to bring me home a gold medal
in Olympic Pentathlon, by cracky!

I have quite a bit of schoolwork to do tonight. That's because I
put it off until the last minute. That's because I'm an Aquarius. Yep.
I'm a dreamer. Yet a procrastinator.

Wednesday is an early out because of professional development.
We are preparing for a visit from some kind of team. Guess I'd
better pay more attention at the faculty meeting tomorrow after
school. Oh, and we have another faculty meeting next week
that's going to last so long we are getting food, and then on
Thursday and Friday next week we have Parent Conferences.
Oh, and then the MAP test season will be here. Requisitions
have to be in by the end of the month. It will be April before
you know it.

The school year is almost over, you know.

HM Is Still On The Toilet

2007-03-03T16:29:00.000-06:00

Since inquiring minds want to know...here is what the toilet paper
behemoth looks like.

I could not take an actual photo of the one in my building. Then
I might be perceived as an industrial spy. Our walls aren't nice
and tiley like this. They are concrete blocks painted white. I
certainly hope that I am not sitting on the throne when that giant
earthquake hits, the one that will make the Mississippi River run
backwards again, because this monstrosity could fall on my head
and knock me the freak out, by cracky!

Now let's talk about my Hillbilly Mom quiz. Because the only way
to learn more better is to find out why you missed the right answers.

1. Hillbilly Mom's favorite drink is currently...
Jack & Coke...no, that's HH's drink.
Sonic Cherry Diet Coke...elixir of the gods.
Coors Light...once upon a time.
Two bottles of cheap champagne...learned that lesson.

2. Hillbilly Mom has an article of clothing named...
The Devil's Blue Dress...no, but she sings the song in the car.
The Jezebel Red Romper...no, her friend Kelly had one.
The Lovely Green Shirt Jeannie...HM loves her Green Jeannie.
The Passionate Purple Pants...fictional embellishment.

3. Hillbilly Mom's claim to fame in high school was...
She 'knew' the whole football team...Bette Midler in The Rose.
She applied and was accepted to West Point...class salutatorian.
She dated a 24-year-old freshman who had just returned from
the war...had class with him, didn't date him.
She was class valedictorian...out of 171 students. But still. She was.

4. Though not a doctor, Hillbilly Mom once...
Took out her dog's appendix...that is just wrong. Serial killer wrong.
Played one in her grandpa's basement...a thirst for knowledge, always.
Told a friend Take two aspirins and call me in the morning...Friend?
Played 18 holes of golf on a Wednesday...on Saturday, and hated it.

5. Hillbilly Mom's personal motto is...
What the hell, Gumby, you might as well smoke...a buddy's saying.
I would roast my own ass before I would admit to it...a Mathie's.
I'm going to Disneyland!...from the commercials.
People piss me off!...SO VERY MUCH!!!

6. The highest office ever held by Hillbilly Mom is...
Band president...and also a member. Clarinet. First chair.
Honorary President of the Hair Club For Men...umm, not a man.
Secretary for the Conference Schools Association...not a real deal.
Ward 3 Alderman/Dogcatcher...made it up.

7. Hillbilly Mom does NOT claim to make the world's best...
Chex Mix...it is revered throughout the land of Hillmomba.
Oreo Cake...from a box, but still OH SO TASTY.
Chicken & Dumplings...crappy. The quickie 2-can recipe.
Garlic Cheese Bread...just like Pizza Inn used to make. Before
they went out of business.

8. Hillbilly Mom loves to watch...
NASCAR on TV and in person when she gets the chance...HH.
American Idol...never watched it.
ER...seasons 3-10 were the best.
George Bush giving a televised speech...she must change channels.

9. Hillbilly Mom has never seen...
Virgin Mary appear on a plate of microwaved gummi bears...did so!
Dogs and cats living together in harmony...lazy days at the Mansion.
A headless man in her basement...it was shocking!
The movie The Exorcist...read the book, couldn't sleep for days.

10. Hillbilly Mom's sister is famous for...
Being married to the mayor...and dressing like a dalmation.
Performing at The Funny Bone...no, but she has a funny bone.
Almost having her pinky finger amputated...that was the Mama.
Writing children's books...no, but a classmate of hers did.

11. If Mrs. Hillbilly Mom was not a teacher, she'd like to be...
A writer of non-fiction books (because she is fact-oriented with
a touch of the OCD)...true, but doesn't like to fact-check.
A stewardess (because she would love to travel, and could
two or more families)...heck no! More families, more chores.
A lawyer (because what could be better than to be paid to argue)
A taste-tester for Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream (or even Blue Bunny)
...no, that would make her too sweet.

12. A singer that Hillbilly Mom does not much care for is...
Dolly Parton...her favorite.
Trace Adkins...hate that badonkadonk songasonk.
George Jones...Mr. No-Show Jones resides in her CD collection.
Sheryl Crow...great for car-singing-along-to

13. A subject that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom has never taught in a regular
classroom setting is...
Social Studies...nevah!
Science...years and years of it.
Math...doin' it now.
English...doin' it now.

14. Hillbilly Mom has never, in any of her blogs, posted about...
Mr. Kickball...rest in peace, Mr. Kickball.
Jaffle...created for a contest in the original Big Blogger.
Fitty, the 55-Gallon Barrel Killer...Diva, you launched him.
Burning Up Wally's Lawnmower...this honor belongs to the
esteemed Miss Ann.

15. A talent that Hillbilly Mom does NOT have is...
A good sense of direction...got lost in Dillards. The mirrors!
Fine artistic ability...sold one of her etchings for MONEY.
A knack for car-singing...you know it.
Hunches on scratch-off tickets...250 bucks can't be wrong.

16. Hillbilly Mom has never been to...
Massachusetts...spent a week in Boston.
Alaska...spent two weeks not saying 'Eskimo'.
Florida...Daytona Beach, baby!
Texas...never been. What's there?

17. Hillbilly Mom's nickname, given by one of her 10th grade
teachers, was...
Toonces...The Driving Cat, stolen from SNL skit.
Night Train...after some ancient sports legend for some reason.
That One Girl...college acquaintance, wish she wasn't.
Bean...my best old-timey friend, knows how I roll.

18. Hillbilly Mom is afraid of...
Devil stuff...yes indeedy.
Snakes...don't poke them with sticks, and you'll be fine.
Dwarfs...kind of enjoy them, due to Charla on Amazing Race,
the clan on Little People, Big World, and that dang Wee Man.
Peacocks...not afraid, just annoyed. They screech.

19. Hillbilly Mom does all of the following regularly EXCEPT...
Let cats out of bags...some must see the light of day.
Make long stories short...never have, never will.
Give the gander what the goose gets...it's only fair.
Use propositions to end sentences with...it's what she's about.

20. The LEAST imaginary thing in Hillbilly Mom's universe is...
The sitcom of HM's life...truth is funnier than fiction.
The roaming gnomes in Lower Basementia...may be headless.
The immense love, admiration, and respect that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom
receives from her students each day...still waiting for it to manifest..
Mabel...her bestest current friend. ;)

That's all for tonight, chums. I must go bake some corn muffins
to accompany the bubbling pot of potato/sausage/cabbage
goodness that we are having for supper. Perhaps you can detect
the current aroma of the Mansion from your computer.

Can You Spare A Square?

2007-03-02T19:49:00.000-06:00

Thanks to all of you who've been playing along with my "All About
Hillbilly Mom" quiz. More about that tomorrow. Tonight I have
more pressing matters to discuss. Namely: the new toilet paper
holder at school.

Cazzie hoped it was a real live human, a cabana-boy type handing
out squares of tissue at the door. No. Not quite.

This gargantuan new toilet paper holder is in the faculty women's
restroom at my first building. Heavens to Betsy! Just the thought
of that ginormous thing being installed in Basementia is enough
to start the ancient walls a-cracking.

So the other morning, I dashed into the restroom to do what all
female teachers of questionable age who are taking diuretic
medications to keep that blood pressure at a reasonable level
do before the start of the workday. And as I assumed the position
on the porcelin fixture, I nearly whacked my melon on a newly-
installed fixture. I say 'nearly', because to actually knock my
noggin on that behemoth, I would have had to grow about six
inches taller.

I understand that equipment must be installed as the architecture
permits. I can appreciate the fact that we must have that metal bar
of the type a gymnast would use, the male ones utilizing the parallel
ones, and the females flinging about on the uneven ones. Surely we
might have female faculty members some day who are differently-
abled and have superhuman strength in their left arms and can pull
themselves off the toilet with incredible displays of southpaw
dexterity. But until then, we have this useless bar on the left side
concrete-block wall, and a big open area on the right, so good luck
to anybody who needs help and can't hoist herself off the toilet with
only her overdeveloped left arm.

Anyhoo...back to the hulking monument that has been installed.
To obtain the toilet paper, one must now reach up over her head
and pull down in a motion much like lowering those $9.99 white
vinyl window shades purchased from The Devil's Playground.
Oh, the toilet paper is not nearly so sturdy as those shades. But
the motion to remove some is the same. I nearly dislocated my
shoulder trying to pick some toilet paper from the Great Toilet
Paper Dispenser in the sky.

I suppose this colossal contraption is necessary to hold those
immense bales of tissue-paper quality toilet paper. Gone are
our precious near-to-home-toilet-paper-thickness rolls in the
tri-holder. Now we have a lesser-quality toilet paper than is
used in Basementia! No wonder we must have two BigFoot-
tire-sized rolls instead of our three normal-sized rolls. We will
no doubt use more of it, and require those mammoth Aztec-
calendarish circles of flimsy paper to keep from restocking it
hourly.

I also suppose that the reason for installing this elephantine
leviathan just inches shy of Machu Picchu elevation is to allow
those prodigious rolls of paper to be slipped into that gargantuan
structure without being hindered by the gymnast bar.

Alls I'm sayin' is...we're not ALL into weight-training and optimal
flexibility like some people, MABEL. We shouldn't have to work
out to be able to wipe our own nether regions.

Did I mention that this toilet paper dispenser is a little too big?

And with the restroom itself being constructed like a concrete box
for solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison, but without
the little slot to slide in a food tray, I can not even hope to reach
under a stall and ask Elaine if she can spare a square.

Have I told you how my life is a Seinfeld episode?

Did You Know...

2007-03-01T20:48:00.000-06:00

Here's a little something I stole from Redneck Diva. Except it's not
about her, it's about ME, silly people. All about MEEEEEE!

http://www.testriffic.com/friendtest/2510065

I hope it works. If not, I've wasted my blogging time this evening.
Good luck.

As Generic As It Gets

2007-02-28T18:36:00.000-06:00

HH went to the doctor today, a regular appointment. I have been
telling him to go back since last Thursday, after the doctor told
him last Monday to come back if he wasn't better in a couple of
days. Now, the doctor says to stay in bed, and come back Friday
if he's not better. We'll see. I'm sure HH hates to miss 2 MORE
DAYS OF WORK.

One of my old teaching buddies was back in the building earlier
this week, subbing. With my busy schedule, I didn't get to talk
to her the first day, but the next day she hunted me down before
school started. I hope the accident victim from my LSUV reverse
faux pas does not know her.

We picked up like old times, like it hasn't been almost a whole
year since we could chat about people who are not as good as
we are. Heh, heh. Then she leaned over my desk, glancing
sideways in each direction, even though my door was closed,
and only the two of us were present. "I feel like I have to tell
you this," she nearly whispered. "Did you know you will be
teaching Science next year?"

Gosh! It's great to have a friend to watch your back, even
though this is the first time time she's been in the building in
several months. What if she hadn't told me? What if I showed
up the first day of school, and found out then? It could happen.
Anyhoo...I thanked her, and told her that was OLD news to
me, that I had known for 3 weeks now.

In other news, I see that my Intervention show on A & E has
been moved from Sunday nights to Friday nights. Great Googley
Moogley! Won't all the people who need interventions be out
drinking and drugging on Friday nights? Is this a ploy by the
programmers to save them, because surely they will say, "I'd
planned to go out drinking and drugging, but by cracky, I think
I'll stay home to watch that Intervention show!"

In still other TV show news, I have grown addicted to The
Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency. It doesn't hurt that every
week she tells some of those comely young men to strip off.
Plus, the DRAMA! I even like seeing her son, Nathan, try to
take on the responsibilities she gives him, just before she takes
them herself. I tried watching The Agency, a knockoff on MTV
or VH1 about the Wilhelmina Agency, but they appear to be a
cheap imitation of Janice's show. Janice does look somewhat
like a cadaver, though. A well-preserved, high-strung, loud-
mouthed cadaver.

I am still not my usual vibrant, entertaining, controversial blogging
self. I thinks it's something in the atmosphere. Because I never
write 'I thinks' when I am my old self. I am stagnant. I need my
head to unstuff with the HH congestion. I need some new ideas.
Sweet Gummi Mary, I would even settle for some old ideas.
Any ideas.

Perhaps tomorrow I will tell you about the new toilet paper
dispenser in the faculty women's restroom.

If you're good.

HM Is On The Lam

2007-02-27T18:39:00.000-06:00

I'm a fugitive. I'm on the lam. Will somebody harbor me? I've got
to lay low for a while. According to HH, anyway.

Remember when HH backed his giant Ford F250 Crew Cab Long
Bed 4x4 pickup over a compact car, slicing the hood like a can
opener? Well, today Hillbilly Mom herself committed an bit of a
backing faux pas at the bank...

Funny thing is, I never park anywhere that I have to back the
Large SUV without room to see behind it. I won't pull up to drop
off the kids at school where I have to back up. I park at the end
of a row, or somewhere I know nothing is going to close me in.
Funny thing is, I wasn't parked at the bank. I was waiting in line
to cash a check from the people who share our lake lot. This cash
budget idea is going to be the end of me. Funny thing is, this isn't
exactly a laughing matter.

There was one car at the drive-thru thingy. The commercial lane
was empty. The lane on my right was empty. Hey, that's all there
are: three lanes. It's the middle of nowhere. So, this car in front of
me was taking a while. In fact, it was turned off. Which usually
says 'little old lady having her checkbook balanced by the drive-
thru teller' to me. So I decided that I might as well back up to get
into the right lane. Even though there is usually just one teller in the
afternoon, they alternate between the two regular drive-thru lanes.
So if somebody else pulled up in the right lane, they would get
served before me when I pulled forward.

But there was nobody in the right lane. I looked in the rearview
mirror. Nothing. I looked in the driver's side mirror. Nothing. I
looked in the passenger side mirror. Nothing. I turned around to
look out the back. Nothing. I even said to my #2 son in the back
seat, "See anything behind us?" He said, "Nope." I put it in reverse.
I backed about two feet. I felt a bump. I put it in drive and pulled
up to where I had started. I got out, and saw a little black car
behind me. A little black car that had stopped my backing progress.

A hair-thinning man more older than younger, with a grayish pointy
meth-looking beard was out of the car, with a white dog on a
chain. "Get back in the car!" he shouted. But I figured he meant
the dog, so I went on back to see what hideous damage I could
have done to his little sardine can. A very clean, black, sardine
can, I might add. There was not a mark on it. On the can, that is.
The license plate was kind of crumpled, like the foil after you
unwrap a miniature red or green holiday Reese's Peanut Butter
Cup. My OnStar round thingy that is on the trailer hitch had hit
his little car in the license plate. I grabbed the license and bent it
back a little bit, nearer to its original shape. Our bumpers had not
even touched. Well, my bumper had not sliced open the hood of
his car like a sardine can, I suppose, because there would have
been none of the bumpin' of bumpers, what with my LSUV being
so much taller than his little car. I told him, "I didn't see you. It
looks like I've crunched your license plate." He came around to
look at the damage. Then he drug the dog back to the car.

Now here's the part I don't get. He seemed like he was afraid of
me. Hey! He's the one with the dog on a chain! He acted like he
didn't want to get close to me or talk to me. Kind of timid-like. I
don't really think he was a meth-head. He didn't look like that
style, but who knows what that looks like these days. I thought
maybe he didn't want to be bothered, or maybe he was drunk
and didn't want the police called. Something didn't seem quite
right. He called into the car, to his wife, I suppose, "She just bent
the license plate." The woman nodded her head. He stood by his
door, looking at me. I stood between the cars, looking at him.

"I have insurance," I told him. "I have insurance, too," he said.
"We can call somebody if you think we need to," I said. He kind
of shook his head. "It's OK?" I asked. He nodded, and got back
into the car. So I climbed back into my LSUV and pulled forward
to the money-tube-sucker-upper thingy. A red truck had pulled
in behind him while I was out of the LSUV. Apparently, nobody
wanted to use that right lane. It was open, you know.

So now HH tells me that I should have called the police. Because
now the guy can call them with my license number and tell them
I left the scene of an accident. The same HH who said during his
unfortunate sardine-can-slicing incident, "There's no need to call
the police. We're on a private parking lot. They can't do anything
except take a report." Which is what the principal at another school
told me after a kid's girlfriend plowed his farm truck into the back
of my parked 3-month-old Nissan Sentra. Which was kind of
expensive to repair, and took the whole school year to get the
money out of his parents, because they wouldn't turn it into their
insurance because he'd had a recent wreck and had to pay for
plastic surgery for a different girlfriend or some such thing.

Anyhoo...the point is that I got out and offered to call the police,
and give him my info, but he didn't want to. I am not a psychic.
I don't know what he wanted. He seemed like a nice enough
guy. I would have been madder than he was if somebody backed
up into my little sardine can. I could not hold him down and
force him to take my info while I called the police. There was
no damage, except to his license plate, and I'm pretty sure the
insurance won't pay to hammer it back into shape. He had pulled
up so close that I couldn't get a good head of steam backing up to
WHACK his car and go over the top of it, like GraveDigger, or
BigFoot, or those monster truck thingies.

People! If you can't see the driver's face in the mirror, the driver
probably can't see your little go-kart behind him. And please tell
that to the black-haired little moonfaced kid in the red sardine can
who tailgated me for 5 miles this morning. If I hadn't seen him slam
on the brakes at the Wal*Mart exit, and whip out behind me like
a Roller Derby queen out on a jam, I wouldn't have known he was
back there, except when he kept swerving over the center line, like
he was going to pass me, but wouldn't. Good thing for him I didn't
need to back up at those three stop signs.

I need one of those LOUD beepy things when I back up.
And one for the LSUV, too.

Be Careful What You Search For

2007-02-26T18:28:00.000-06:00

Preposition: ending with. Just sayin'...

Since the magic still ain't a-happenin'...you will be treated to HM's
interpretation of some wacky keyword searches. For those of you
who enjoy them, I may do it every night this week. For those of
you who deplore them, this is it for a while. I promise. You can't
see behind my back, can you?

buy some land read a book it's called speedstick it's not expensive
Yeah. That's all together in a search string. So I figure somebody
has an annoying friend with too much time and money to burn.
Thus the advice to spend the money on land. It's a good investment.
They aren't making any more, you know. And read a book, so you
will quit bellyachin' that there's nothing to do, since you are OH SO
RICH and don't have to work. Unfortunately, you must have some
killer BO, because this dude wants you to loosen the purse strings
and invest in some Speed Stick. By Mennen.

free knit directions for a rastafarian hat
Do you really think that someone who wants a rastafarian hat will
knit it? Because methinks they would most likely just make a trade
of some substance for the hat.

sitting on head and fart
Join the circus already, freak. You must be quite the contortionist.

taum sauk gym
Umm...perhaps you don't really want to work out here. Because
I would not quite call it a gym, really, and ever since this reservoir's
unfortunate collapsing faux pas the morning I was sitting in court
waiting for jury duty to start, I have been a bit uncomfortable even
thinking about hydroelectric power.

two kidnapped boys found in moi
NO! They were NOT! That is saying I am as big as an apartment.
Which is not considered polite.

mom showing her boobs again drinking beer
NO! I am NOT! If I ever did. Which is for me to know and you
to find out. But I don't think I did. Because if there ever was a
time I was drinking beer, then the boobage was in fine shape to
be shown off, but I don't think I did, since I never partook of that
Mardi Gras bead-hoarding agenda, but perhaps I did lean over
the copier a time or two when a fellow science teacher at my
first teaching job commented on how he liked my white-and-
black teeny tiny polka-dotted dress (the dots were teeny, not
the dress, we are talking about HM here) and how he especially
liked the V-neck thing it had goin' on, and so what if he was a
29-year-old with braces on his teeth, he was an OK kind of
guy, and when you live in a town with 29 churches, maybe that's
about as much fun as you are legally allowed to have, but I was
most certainly not drinking beer near the copy machine, oh, my
no, because that would be just wrong, because what if it got
spilled (Oh, the humanity! What a waste of schoolbeer!) and
messed up the copy machine, which would make a whole lot
of teachers mad, so mad they would not ever forgive me, even
if I showed them my boobs, which certainly weren't drinking beer,
which is kind of what the search thingy seems to say, but that is
impossible, I am not some circus freak with beer-drinking boobs.

picture of hillbilly idiot
Why, oh why, oh why oh...did this string of words bring someone
TO MY MANSION?!? I will admit to the hillbilly. But not to the
idiot. Though perhaps I did have a post about A Family of Morons.
Duh. And why, oh why, oh why oh...did I get stuck with that
Middle School music teacher who would only allow us to sing
SHOWTUNES for my entire 7th grade and 8th grade year?

what are the five nations of iraquois league
I don't know. You've stumped Hillbilly Mom. I could look them
up, but meh...I'm not in Trivia training at the moment.

teepeeing ideas
Wellllll...you pretty much just take a big ol' roll of toilet paper,
the really thin and cheap school bathroom kind, not the good
stuff like Charmin Ultra With Aloe, and toss it up over a tree
limb. It's not rocket science. It's not even astronaut farmer science.

she pushes really hard and jams the pencil sharpener
NO! I DON'T! Stop saying that. I have two pencil sharpeners,
and they're both in perfect shape. In fact, people comment on
my pencil sharpeners. "This is the best pencil sharpener in the
building. I save my pencils to bring in here and sharpen." So
there. No pushing. No jamming. HM hearts her pencil sharpener.

Sadly, we've come to the end for tonight. Play along, people. I'm
sure someone is sad that it ended.

Poker At The Mansion

2007-02-25T13:58:00.000-06:00

False advertising alert: this post is not about poker. It's just the
only title I could come up with. Said Hillbilly Mom, ending yet
another sentence with a preposition. Two, in fact.

HM is a KnowNot. She has lost all creativity, even the portion in
her little finger that was more than HH has ever had in his entire
body. She can not think of anything today that could possibly stir
even the faintest interest of a studyhall teacher who has finished
reading the USA Today from cover-to-cover by the start of
2nd Hour.

Tralala...what pops into my mind? Academy Awards tonight?
HoHum, who cares? I haven't seen any of the movies. TV?
There's not much on TV these days. I watched an old ER on
DVD. What's with the charcoal, people? We know you give it
to the overdoses to pump their stomachs. So why do you leave
it all around their mouths? Do they drool it out all day? Do they
not feel it, and wipe it away with the backs of their hands? Do
those caring nurses ignore the black gunk and make faces behind
their backs, like, "Heehee! Look at that black drool! These ODs
are a riot!" It just seems that they would wipe it away.

The boys have been sick, and not up to their usual hijinks. My
mom's FAT RED PINKY FINGER is normal again. No gambling
trips on the horizon. The Annie dog hasn't eaten any UPS packages.
No trysts with my Sonic manboy who used to discount my sodas.
No drama at work that involves me. But Mabel, I've got a story
for you. No freakish weather. No Hot Cabana Boys. No stray
dogs or kittens to adopt. No LandStealer feud. People just have
not been Pissing Me Off at the usual rate.

So I'll have to turn to my surefire source of entertainment: HH.
Perhaps I mentioned that HH spent 4 days at home with the
plague. Or what he seems to think is the plague. He also came
home early the other day. HH spent most of this time sleeping,
sometimes in the bed, sometimes in the recliner that makes a
deafening ratcheting noise when he throws it back. Thursday
evening, HH said he had trouble getting any rest during the day
when we were all at school..

"Every time I get into a good sleep, something pokes me." He
pointed to his arm/shoulder area, the deltoids, like where you
get a shot. "It's like this...like the end of a finger poking me to
wake me up."

I don't know what to make of this. I would say he was crazy if
there hadn't been other odd things happen around the Mansion.
Or I would think he was just falling into that REM sleep, and it
was some kind of recurring dream, or that he wasn't getting
enough oxygen and his brain was having some kind of hallucinatory
spasm. All I know is that I've never had anything TOUCH me,
thank the Gummi Mary, and I've never seen or heard anything
in our end of the house. This is a new one on me.

Perhaps something from beyond is telling him to get off his lazy
butt and quit sleeping 20 hours a day.

Snort, Cough, Cough

2007-02-24T16:47:00.000-06:00

I certainly hope HH is happy now. I have caught the plague that
he has carried into the Mansion. It started on Thursday, with the
headache and nausea, after a night of 3 hours sleep due to the
hacking and recliner-riding of HH, the plague carrier.

Do I get 4 days off from work, to lie about the Mansion, whining
and simpering about how bad I feel? NO! That's why I have a
blog. Did I visit the doctor and get antibiotics and a hydrocodone
derivative? NO! But I had my mom ask for one of the two.

I get to spend my weekend weak as a waterlogged kitten, with
not even the pleasure of my longtime companion, Sonic Cherry
Diet Coke. He hurts my throat, so I've given him up until I feel
better. Or until I have some Hot & Sour Soup. Because that
stuff will kill me without my Sonic Cherry Diet Coke to put out
the hot. I have found the soup to be good for what ails me. I
had some on Thursday night, and again on Friday night. Perhaps
I will try some tomorrow, if I feel like driving to town.

Oh, and I am still expected to do the household chores and
pay the bills and make sure the young 'uns are fed and watered.
#2 son had to miss school Thursday because he thrashed all
night with a fever. Hmm...wonder where he picked that up?
My mom picked him up at my classroom before school. She
asked if he thought they should go by McDonalds for some
pancakes. He looked at her through his glassy eyes, and said
earnestly, "Yes. I think so." He is doing better now, thanks to
me doping him with Children's Tylenol Cough Plus Fever, or
one of those variations.

This morning, #1 son came down with it. He crawled back in
bed until 12:30. And he asked for an acetaminophen, which
he never does, because he's a big ol' baby and has to have
them cut in half or he can't swallow them. HH went to work
this morning. From 7:00 to 11:00. WooHoo! He's settin' the
world on fire! He's a regular Trump, it seems.

I didn't go to bowling this afternoon. I got to do the grocery
shopping, bill mailing, laundry, and dish washing. I have been
drinking lots of water and running my electric space heater
under my computer desk to soothe my aching muscles. HH
has been bellowing about this and that, so it seems that he's
on the mend.

My mom went to the doctor Friday, and I had her ask him
to call me in a prescription for sweet, sweet Histinex. They are
good about that stuff. Plus, they sent me that $60 rebate check
a couple weeks ago. I don't know why. I don't recall paying them
anything extra. But I'm on guard in case the want to lop off a pinky
finger sometime in the future. I picked up my sweet, sweet Histinex
Friday evening. He is now sitting in the kitchen cupboard, on call
for when I need him. I figure it will be Sunday night or Monday.
I'm in the snotty, throat-closing-up stage now, so I figure the
wheezing and hacking aren't far off. It's good to be prepared.
With this new schedule of mine this year, I've found that everything
is closed for lunch during my plan time. It is really difficult to carry
on the war with the insurance company, or contact the doctor or
any other business during 12:15 to 1:05.

It's going to be a long week.