Hakuna Matata

I've put my behind in the past...or the past behind me. I forgot about my terrible day since writing about it.

Things are good. Colin went to court to defend two tickets (about $250 in fines) and left me a voicemail saying he heard the four most beautiful words in traffic adjudication..."Your cop didn't show." Success! No fines and no record. The charges were bogus anyway. We saw the police car at the intersection; of course we stopped at the stop sign.

Other than being a PhD widow, life is going pretty well. I hardly see Annie but she has really stepped up her chore game in the last few days which is very nice. She's making friends which is also very nice.

Rebecca and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

Yesterday was a very bad day. [scroll to the bottom for the * short version].

I had to get up early to vote because I had class at 9am and Colin is in class until 10pm. I was walking out the door and I realized I didn't have my wallet. I went back inside to look for it but couldn't find it and really didn't have much time to look. I also couldn't find my water bottle and if you know me, you know I drink about 2oz of water every three days. That morning it just felt like it was catching up with me and I really wanted my bottle. Colin left to get in the car. As I ws walking out the door, I realized I didn't grab the little calculator I wanted to bring for my midterm but I didn't have time to go back.

I got in the car and I was already grumpy. I couldn't find my keys and so Colin had to come back inside to lock the door. We voted and went on to school. I was loaded down with bags because I not only had my books but our laptop in tow (which I never bring to school).

I had my 9am class which has the same profs as my noon class, in which I had a midterm. She said it was easy, which really undermined my determination to study in the two hours I had before the test. As I was waiting for the previous class to leave our classroom, I stepped on some gum. Yes, there was gum in the middle of the law school main hallway. What is wrong with people?

I brought my computer for the exam in my housing finance class. While it was recommended that folks buy a $100 financial calculator, it wasn't required. When someone found one on-line, the prof said we could bring computers to use the calculator, but it was an otherwise closed book exam. I had been using the online calculator for all my homework. It's very straightforward and user friendly.

I got to class 15 minutes early to give our slow old computer time to boot up. I went to plug it in (it literally won't last a full minute on battery) and the little nub piece at the end of the power cord was missing. I couldn't plug in my computer. I became frantic. I looked around to see if anyone had a calculator to share but I didn't know the people. I just sat down, resigned to taking this exam - figuring compound interest and mortgage payments and loan balances and amortization schedules by hand. (Mind you our textbook only teaches the calculator key strokes. I begged the profs to teach the formulas and they said no.)

My hero lent me his iphone which has the financial calculator ap. I have never used an iphone or this particular financial calculator (on-line you can just fill in all the fields and hit the button, on this you can only view one value at a time). I couldn't figure out how to do arithmetic or exponents, how to clear fields, how to calculate the answer...I was so frazzled. Half the test was essays but in my frantic state I could barely calculate them.

Then I went to the law school town hall which was weak. All the deans of the school are there and its an opportunity to ask hard-hitting questions and the "selected" questions were all softballs - why are the classrooms so cold? why can't the library be open later in the summer? Also, while I was getting my free meeting pizza, I spilled Coke on my plate. The napkins had run out and my poor pathetic eczema hands were dying from touching the wet pizza and I had to leave to get paper towels.

I went to the library and instead of doing work, complained to a friend (who I have barely seen in the last three years) about all the issues that should have come up at the town hall. I stood there for three hours. I can't even believe it. I was so looking forward to getting home before 9pm for once in my life. By then it was 6pm and since I would spend 1.5 hours driving from home to school to home again (to pick up Colin) I figured I might as well just stick around for 3.5 hours until Colin was done.

Then my phone died. I had charged it completely the day before and barely used it. I had unplugged and replugged it in during the process and I think that ruins the charging. I had to borrow a phone to tell Colin I was staying.

I think some more bad things happened. I stayed up until 1am doing dishes. I was so exhausted from my 17 hour day and I couldn't wait to lay down my little head. Colin usually invites me to rest my head on his shoulder and puts his arm around me when we get into bed. Before my head was completely down, he asked me what time we needed to get up in the morning. This involves some in depth thought. We usually get up and drive in together but Colin had to be downtown to fight two tickets at the same time I needed to be on North Campus for class. So I had to think about the shuttle schedule and getting to the blue shuttle from Allen Street to South Campus (which runs twice an hour) to get to the Stampede shuttle from South to North and arrive in time for class. Instead my exhausted self yelled "I don't know!" not thinking it was right in Colin's ear. He immediately took his arm off me and rolled away from me. That was the saddest part of the whole day.

*In summary, I couldn't find my wallet, keys, or water bottle. I forgot my calculator. I stepped in gum. I lugged the laptop to school only to have left a piece of the power cord at home and had to take a finance midterm without a calculator. When someone lent me one, I spent half my time reading the manual for the calculator. I spilled pop on pizza, got home at nearly 11pm and stayed up until 1am washing dishes. Also, the crappy Sheriff that is being investigated by the FBI for prison conditions got reelected and three county leg seats flipped.

Trick-or-Treating with Christal

I took Christal Trick-or-Treating again this year. We hadn't actually discussed it, she just called and said "what time are you picking me up?" I let her bring her friend, despite much internal deliberation. I think it might be against the rules but its really not any fund to trick-or-treat alone. Had I known her "friend" was 6 years old, I might have said no, but she turned out to be hardier than Christal (though her friend requested the first bathroom break - about 5 minutes after we left a place with a bathroom).

I picked up the girls and neither of them had costumes. I took them to CVS and bought them vampire fangs (their choice). Christal's friend, Niera, immediately didn't like them and never wore them. We started out in the old neighborhood (Brantwood in Amherst) and hit up a lot of houses. They got tons of candy - about 200 pieces each.

We went to a house on Mt. Vernon (I think) and their front door was open but they had a class storm door that was closed. The girls walked up and when they got close, they saw a bald life-sized bluish green mannequin with dark bags under his eyes. Christal screamed bloody murder and ran away. Neira was scared, too. I told them it was ok, the homeowner felt a tiny bit bad, and they got their candy and went on their way.

After that, they were scared of EVERYTHING. Everything. Not just the coffin with a dead body and smoke machine and a speaker the homeowner spoke out of like Oz when you rang the door bell. They were scared of a black and orange "Happy Halloween" sign on someone's door. They were scared of jackolaterns. They were literally scared of every Halloween themed item after that mannequin...and everyone's dogs, too.

All in all it was a fun night, though. Sitting on the floor with them and helping them sort their candy was more fun any party I could have gone to. (They didn't know how to sort their candy properly but were eager to have me help them do it).

Harvest Festival with Christal

Yesterday Christal and I went to the a Big Bro/Big Sis fall event. It was out in Lancaster on someone's 18 acre property. We had a lot of fun.

I told Christal I would pick her up at 12:30. She called me at quarter to noon and said she was already so could I come get her now. It was very cute.

There was facepainting, marshmallow roasting (Christal ate about a dozen), cocoa, kickball, volleyball, sack races, roll the pumpkin, donut on a string, a gigantic cross with praying, and hiking. She loved the hiking. She was scared at first but I reminded her of the horses and she went on the hike. She wanted to go again. She was having so much fun that she want to call her mom and tell her. She did and then she was trying to tell her about the hike and couldn't remember the word. She said, "Sister, what was that traveling thing we did?"

It reminded me of 30 Rock when Tracy Jordan starting coaching an inner-city little league team. He said, "One of them asked me what the sun was!"

Life with FooFoo

Saturday morning...

Annie: Let's make pancakes!
Me: Ok. You can make pancakes.
Annie: I would only make them if you and Colin wanted them.
Me: We'll eat pancakes.
Annie: (silence...) I'm gonna make a bagel.

Vegetable Tragedy

The back of our yard is bordered by a house...it's a back house. There's a front house the faces the cross street.

Anyway, the owners were having both their houses painted which necessitated coming into our backyard to paint that side of the house. I wasn't looking forward to this because when they fixed the roof on that house, they left roof tiles all over our yard.

Well not only is there paint chips everywhere, probably leaking poison into the spot where I wanted to start a blueberry bush, but they have damaged some plants.

There was an awesome mystery plant that had a vine crawling across the yard. It had purple flowers and originated in the compost pile. It could have been anything and I couldn't wait to see what it was. Day one is sustained some damage and I went out and told them the plant was there and they apologized and said they would be more careful. That was more than a week ago. Lots a rain put the painting on hold.

Today I looked out the window over the sink and noticed they finished painting. That wasn't all I saw. I saw that my precious precious rhubarb had been trampled. I ran outside to see the damage. Half my plants (not the Connecticut one tho) were trampled and their stems were snapped off. I'm not sure what this means for the future of the plants. I was under the impression that they needed to be in tact until the ground gets below 40. You're not supposed to harvest rhubarb after July for this very reason.

The other part is that these were new plants started from rhizome pieces. The plants are not supposed to be "molested" for two years before harvesting. My plants have clearly been molested and now they have been set back a year.

I would post a picture but it might be too upsetting for the faint of heart and gardening lovers.

To end on a high note, my cauliflower has finally started crowning.

Nobel Prize

I was talking to Mom one time, probably after bringing home a 99% on a test only to hear, "Where's the last point?"

I said, "Geez Mom, you won't be proud of me unless I win the Nobel Peace Prize!"

She replied, calmly, "I would be proud of you if you won any Nobel Prize."