Still have a lot of tweaking to do, but here’s the frame of my new Internet house. My old LJ posts will be stampeding here soon, and you’ll be able to read this via a number of feeds.
Thanks to Joey and Chris at ComicSpace for their help!
Today just pretty much blew. The entire tribe got up each other’s asses and died. Repeatedly.
Back to drawing.
Walk into my bedroom to find Summer’s cat has just peed on my bedside rug. I picked up the rug, swatted the cat with it, threw the rug into the laundry room and returned to my bedroom to scoop the cat boxes because they smelled like imps have crapped in them.
I discover the main source of the stench is not cat, but three Lincoln Logs courtesy of one of the dogs. That would’ve been enough, but the offending party left them on my footstool, my pretty green footstool. I pick them up, and give the footstool a mist of vinegar to kill the smell, and start on the boxes.
The boxes finished, I took the scoopage and put it on the front porch. I walked back into my bedroom and my foot hit a cold puddle. Figuring it was extra from the rug watering, I grabbed the vinegar and a rag. As I stoop to spot the puddle, I see Miss Kitty hasn’t left a puddle, but sprayed my bed skirt and left a puddle.
I sprayed down the skirt, sprayed the puddle, swiped at it with a rag, then leaned around my door frame, aimed at the guilty party (sitting right outside my door) and squirted her straight in the face, since the bedskirt couldn’t exact revenge on its own.
Now, will I go crap in the dogs’ kennels? Maybe not tonight.
There is nothing like a clean kitchen with two pans of freshly-baked cinnamon rolls in it. It’s like the Baked Goods Fairy came and rewarded you for wiping down the counters.
There is nothing like getting better at rolling dough so that your cinnamon rolls are pretty.
Here is my cinnamon roll recipe, from Pioneer Woman. (NOTE: I halve the recipe. I do NOT need seven pans of cinnamon rolls baked, nor on deck in the freezer. Not until I have seven straight-side cake pans.)
I am going to admit right here that Pioneer Woman gets up my ass sometimes (and don’t get me started on some of her commenters!), but her recipes are good, unashamed in their love of meat and butter, and goof-proof.
Before Pioneer Woman, I never made cinnamon rolls that were worth a damn. Now they’re worth a “Dayyy-um!”
ALSO: Her glaze: I skip the maple flavoring, but the coffee is a must. It keeps the flavor of the icing from being something besides “SWEET!” I also do not put it on in the amount she calls for. It kills the nice, yeasty bread flavor deader’n Elvis. “Butter” the tops of the baked rolls with the icing and it’ll be enough.
Back to work with me.
Summer, I, Fox and ex-King are watching a recorded America’s Funniest Videos. (Be still-it makes us laugh.) I, controller of the remote, forgot to fast forward through a few commercials. The first is for Pillsbury, and ends with “Let’s Fix Dinner.”
“Dinner is broke, let’s fix it!” says Summer.
I can’t even finishing laughing at that before the next commercial starts. It’s for Bumble Tuna, and it shows a blissed-out guy (thinking about residuals, no doubt) singing the jingle and floating through various places where people are eating. Their reactions are priceless: utter confusion, different on each face, all beautifully hilarious. Already high from Summer’s joke, we start laughing harder.
“Bumblee with heroin!” I yell.
Summer answers, “Now we know why dinner needs to be fixed!”
Let’s see if it works. If it looks good, wonky or otherwise, please leave a comment.
Good thing I’ve been walking for five months, because that gave me lots of training in walking up slopes and hills. When I had to push my bike up some slopes, it was easy. I am not yet strong enough (and still learning shifting) to deal with more than a slight incline.
I got through 2.5 miles of the 3.7 mile trip I was making, and my legs were rubbery and uncooperative. I helped myself to a bus ride the rest of the way to my doctor’s appointment, and walked my bike to the hospital. Since I’d left my bike lock’s key on my key ring, the key ring which I left at home, I had to bring my bike inside. People that saw it were surprised, but no one said anything.
The ride home was far easier. I bought myself some water and drank it. The return trip is mostly downhill, which is really fun. I felt so tall, and I felt free. Here I was, skimming along with the wind on me, going fast, and all I had to do was stay upright.
It’s the closest I will ever get to a broomstick.
I rode and walked my whole return trip, which is 3.7 miles. I went 6.2 miles under my own power. I was grininng like a loon when I got home. The walking was a great first step to”I can do this!” independence. Not just from the car, but from the idea that if something big is removed from my life, I can treat it as damage and route around it. Since I rode in the roads, I also claimed my part of them, instead of meekly staying on the sidewalk (which is bad practice, anyway), broadcasting my right to be there.
My usual bus-based commute takes 2 hours each way (this includes the parts where I sit on my butt waiting). Riding the bike and walking slopes the whole return trip took one hour door-to-door.
From four to two hours. Skuh-ORE!
I should finish by sharing that I have not ridden my bike at all for 15 months before yesterday evening, and that ride was about ten minutes. Before that, 12 years.
I’m really stoked.
Figured out that the slopes were wasting me yesterday because I was geared completely backwards. Buhuh!
My bike had to go in today because the housing for my right-hand gear cable disintegrated yesterday. I wasn’t quite ready to ride it the whole way back, because I have to go under a scary damn highway, but I had King let me out about halfway and rode the rest of the way home, a hair over 2 miles. It’s so cool to cover that distance in a little under ten minutes after five months of taking 20-30 minutes to cover one mile. Even better to be able to take slopes without feeling exhausted.
This means I can ride to the nearest grocery store in about 5 minutes or so, as opposed to a 30 minute minimum with waiting for and riding the bus.
Yeah, I’m kinda excited.
First the bike-riding and the LJ stuff, then the latest in the idjit clown fuckdown rodeo that is the Northside Independent School District and some ninny at John Marshall High School.
Biking: 4.5 mile ride today. I went from the bike shop to home, and would’ve been door-to-door in 45 minutes, but my chain popped and I stopped a good long while making sure it was okay. Tomorrow: Round trip, 3.8 miles each way. Hell, yeah.
The guys in the bike shop spend about forever putting on a pair of fenders I was pretty sure were too damn small, based on how they struggled. They eventually came to that realization for themselves and installed the correct fenders. I also had a basket installed on the back for my bag, and for groceries.
LJ: People have reported back that comments in crossposts from here to LJ are disabled. They’re not supposed to be! I’ll look into it.
Yet another damn school problem:
I was told last fall that Summer could not re-enter school no way, no how, without a birth certificate in her hot little hands. No matter what other ID we possessed. I was told this by the admissions lady at John Marshall High School in San Antonio, Texas. Even though the certificate was being ordered, no sir.
This is important.
We sent off, via the Internet, for Summer’s birth certificate through VitalChek, since California has human hands touch as little as possible. I called today, and there’s no order. I called because I found out today, when checking my order, that no info is kept online after 60 days.
I decide to call the district to see if I can get Summer in without the certificate if I can show it’s on order.
Which is when I find out Summer could’ve gone back to school last fall. Why? Because there is a 30-day grace period to get documents. We likely would’ve gone past that, but because public schools are loathe to kick out warm, get-state-money bodies, she’d have been fine.
I told the not-nice admin lady That that was not what I’d been told. She never outright said I was wrong, but she was mighty impatient when I asked what I should do if the school pulled the no way no how again. She said they wouldn’t. “But what if they do?” “Then call administration,” she said and hung up the phone.
It’s not her fault she has no idea who I am, so she has no clue why I’d be cynical and mistrusting.
I burst into tears of frustration. Summer has been home, depressed and out of her mind, waiting five months to return to school FOR NO GODDAM REASON. I am furious, and if I knew a lawyer who would put us in court pro bono, I’d fucking be there. Northside has been failing my children since Summer was in second grade. It’s goddam criminal.
So many teachers complain parents aren’t involved, and so many people believe this is true. I wonder how many parents have been trained not to be involved. They’re told everything’s good, even though it’s not, but they believe the school people because they have no idea how much school people lie, how much keeping their jobs requires lying, how many spiteful martinets reside in admin, and they believe it and never ask again. Or they simply exhaust parents, and their parents give up.
I don’t know how it is elsewhere (and fucking spare me to-be-fairs and stories about how awesome your school(s) is/are), but here, if you are involved, you are punished. You are treated as a troublemaker, overbearing, nosy, unwelcome, interfering. You are treated the same as a student who dares to ask “Why?”
Luckily, this shit doesn’t work on me, I’m far past the age where I can be terrified by a pissant who has his or her shoes on a desk behind the door with “principal” on it. This is bullying, diminishing, demeaning, and it just pisses me off.
I will make people miserable because my daughter has been at home FIVE FUCKING MONTHS when she could have been where she wanted to be: with her friends, socializing, being a teenager.
Every single failure of Northside ISD has been because of bullies, louts and idiots, mean little people doing their mean little jobs, and teachers scared shitless they’ll be fired if they tell a parent the school owes their child an education.
I will be writing a letter that will cover this latest fiasco and reach back in time to the first time NISD fucked up and lead back to the present day, and it will be going from the top down to the principal at John Marshall. There was absolutely no excuse for me not to be told about the 30 day’s grace period, and I am furious because my daughter, once again, could’ve been spared so much misery.
Ask yourself, the next time a parent seems to not care, if they just don’t know their fucking rights, or they believed someone they’re supposed to be able to believe in but who has done nothing to have the privilege of that trust.
After I had my stormy but brief howl, I wiped my eyes and said, “Summer’s going to school on Monday.” Knowing we have a grace period, and I can lay that on the table if some clown tries to say otherwise, means they will fold.
Now off to draw before this firey mad wears off.
SCHOOL
Tomorrow is the day we march into the local high school and re-admit Summer to public school life, armed with the knowledge that we have 30 days to get her birth certificate, and that they HAVE to let her in. I’m okay with her returning to public school because it’s her choice. She’s better emotionally than when I pulled her from middle school two years ago, and we’re now clear of the problems of middle school as well. (Mainly that the principal, S.Z., was a huge, inappropriate douchebag.) I know she misses her middle school friends, and I think she wants to be like her friend who is now in a (private) high school.
Summer and I spent the afternoon getting her ready: new understuff, pants, shirts from my dresser, shoes, hair. She looks really cute and pulled-together.
I’m stoked for her, and stoked about having my day free again to work without guilty conflicts over work and schooling.
We played our last-for-now evening RPG, and I read to her. (We read to each other. Try it, it’s fun!) She is snoozing, and I am on the verge of a stomachache from nerves!
What will they throw at us? Where’s your work? What are her grades? Why did you homeschool? (That one’s easy, and I can even answer it without saying “Because the junior high principal is a douchebag.”)
Well, they can’t eat us.
What I feel right now isn’t “sad” as such, just an awareness of how time has passed, but proud of my kid and myself, and a bit in awe that my baby has grown into a young lady. A young lady who always laughs at the F word.
BAD SANDWICH! BAD!
Just minutes ago, stb-ex King brought me a bag from what used to be our closet. In this nylon bag was the yellow plastic bag from last Summer’s San Diego Con. There was this weird translucent brown…stuff on the bag, and it smelled like hell. My guess was pee, and I said to toss it. Then I decided to pull out some rubber gloves and go through the bag in case there was something I was looking for and hadn’t found.
I pulled out flyers, some leave-behinds, a pack of Maple Story cards, a Magic deck and this flat, spongy-looking squishy thing in plastic. It looked like sourdough starter, a sick off-white. I turned it over, trying to figure out what the hell it was, and I found the label. Tomato and pesto sandwich, probably with ham.
A meat sandwich from last year. From six-and-a-half months ago. I bought it on the way home from San Diego and forgot it. I have already sorted my transport and sleep space for this year. (more…)