Sistah Pat

Good Morning, Little Chicklets! Carnival.com says “17 Days till your cruise, Pat!” I looked up the weather forecast in Cozumel yesterday and it’s a whole lot warmer than Louisville. Highs running around 80 and lows around 67. Oh, yeah!

I got eaten alive yesterday. Worked 13 hours and still didn’t get caught up! I got home at 5:00 but I had to make some changes to the newsletter because of stuff people didn’t give me before I left so I brought it home with me and didn’t get finished with it until 8:00 pm. By then, I was ready to eat some dinner, help Andrew with his homework, and crawl into bed at 10:00. Hopefully, I can get caught up on some of your blogs today.

Yeah, I hear you, Joy and Brandie! I really don’t need to fool with this staff party. I’ve got way too much going on. Turns out, however, that Phyllisann was fooling with me. I’m not doing it by myself. There are three of us and I hope she’s going to take the lead but I’m going to be helping out.

The ROTC money was still safely stashed in my desk but I still didn’t get time to go to the bank. I’ve GOT to get that done today. We have a Booster Club meeting this evening and I want to be able to report a big fat deposit. Okay…instead of blogging, I’m going to try to catch up with you guys over the next 15 minutes!

6:15 - Feeling a little insecure about what I’m wearing today. A gorgeous, lime green cami, black pants, red Barbies, and a black jacket with a lot of different colors running through it, mostly red but it has green as well. Problem is…the cami is really sexy so I can’t take the jacket off all day and the jacket is from last winter so it’s too big in the shoulders and it’s a boxy thing with no real fitted seams in it. hmmm…I hate when I do this. If I get started, I’ll wind up trying on a dozen different tops, a half dozen pair of pants, and several jackets and I’ll leave for work with them thrown all over the bedroom. Better to stick with what I’ve got. It’s been freezing in the library at school anyway so I shouldn’t have a problem leaving the jacket on all day.

6:45- Okay, Okay, Okay…so I changed to a pair of jeans and added BIG dangly green earrings. I think I can live with it.

5:00 pm - Just got home and I have thirty minutes before I have to go back to school. I stayed after for a meeting and to get info about the Christmas staff party. I suggested we have DS cater it because I know he’ll give us the best deal he can but I still want him to make something for doing it. Principal agreed with this yesterday and I talked to him. Told him to figure up a bid for finger foods for 175 people. Today, Phyllisann met with the principal to get an idea of what she wants. She wants chicken wings, meatballs, chicken drummettes, sauces to go with them, assorted cheeses and crackers, fruit trays, veggie trays (both with dips) punch, chips and dip, and an assortment of cookies, fudge, or brownies for dessert. No pies or cakes. Okay…ready for this? Her budget is $400.00 for 175 people. I felt my temper rising but didn’t want to blow. Felt like saying, “Are you CRAZY???” I backed off the conversation because I was getting steamed. I know David is putting together a menu for us today with prices and I felt like saying, “If you knew what you wanted, why am I having him come up with suggestions?” Of course, the budget is ridiculous. Nuff said…

I’m totally starving! No breakfast, I took stuff for a salad for lunch and found the lettuce to be old and icky, the grape tomatoes were okay, the fat free cheese was gross, and the “bacon bits” DH got me were the fake things that taste like crunchy little rocks. Went to put the dressing on it and discovered that someone ate my favorite salad dressing from my little fridge. Poured some mediocre dressing over it, ate a few bites, and tossed it in the trash. Gonna try to find something to eat before I have to run back to school. Oh, yeah, I finally made it to the bank and deposited the moolah. Big relief to have $1,162.00 out of my desk drawer! I also kept my jacket open and showed cleavage most of the day. Hope I didn’t contaminate any young minds.

Later!

9:00 pm - I have no doubt Heaven is a wonderful place.  And I know, in that beautiful paradise, there’s a little corner where one can gently slide into a hot bubbling spa and soak away the aches and pains of the day.  Everything is perfect in Heaven so I know angels will be standing by to hand out lovely, clean jersey pajamas that are just a little too big and still hold the warmth of the dryer.  sigh… goodnight, girls.

Yawn….Time to wrap my head around where I am.  Up, slurping coffee, removing chipped nail polish, blogging.  My mind is whirling with work stuff.  I finished the new newsletter while on the trip and need to get it to graphics today, I have a faculty meeting after school today, I need to find out what I’m supposed to do about a Christmas party, I have an ROTC Booster Club meeting tomorrow.  I did a stupid(?) thing the Wednesday before we left.  Major comes up to my desk around noon and hands me a bank bag with more than a thousand dollars in small bills (mostly ones) and change.  We did a “dress down for $2.00″ fundraiser for ROTC a couple of weeks ago and he brought me the money with no advance warning.  I don’t know where he had it before then but I certainly didn’t have time to drive all the way to the bank they use and deposit it when I was leaving town in a couple of hours so I put it in my room in my desk drawer.  As treasurer, I have to get it to the bank.  My room is very secure because it’s been used to store more than a thousand laptop computers for the last five years.  There are no windows and no one has a key to it but me, Paul, and the principal and no one knows I have the money, much less that I put it in my desk.  I felt fine about locking it up in my desk in my room when I did it but it’s been bugging me ever since..  I want to get it to the bank today.  We’ve got a controversy going about the days we missed from the wind damage back in September and I don’t know when we’re supposed to meet for that but I assume it will be this week.  Seems like the school board decided that instead of adding an extra week at the end of the year, they would take away one teacher professional development day and the remaining parent teacher conference day of the year and just tack three days on the end of the year.  Of course, teachers are not happy about that because it takes away two optional work days for us when we can get an extra day’s pay for them.

Off to the shower and into the lion’s den.

Finally home.  It seems like the drive took forever.  Even though Mom is pretty comfy in the RV, we don’t like to push it so we took two days to get there and two days to drive home.  Pretty rad for an 11 hour trip.  Actually, we couldn’t have covered any more yesterday than what we did.  Traffic was a major pain in the butt.  It took us nine hours to cover about 300 miles.  Never seemed to be any major wrecks or anything but we passed a lot of minor fender benders that were just enough to overtax the crowded interstate and bring things to a standstill.  Today, we encountered some snow and sleet and that slowed things down a little but not too bad.

Now I can get the RV unpacked and get my mind wrapped around work.  Phyllisann called the house earlier today and left a message that I was selected to do the staff Christmas party.  I guess that’s what I get for being gone today.  Not sure what that entails but I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

DH and I did not want to come home.  We were on the balcony in the cabin, in our tee shirts, watching the sunset and he said, “I wish we didn’t have to go home.  Ever…”  I know what he means.  We sleep to the sounds of birds and crickets.  The only light is from the moon and stars.  Half the time, our cell phones won’t work and we love it. 

We’ve been home an hour.  The phone has rang at least six times.  DS is here with his latest girlfriend.  She has her ratty little dog with her and he ran in and peed on the carpet.  DIL showed up with granddaughter, Holly, and then called me to tell me to make sure she doesn’t hang around with DS’s girlfriend because, I quote, “She’s nothing but a slut.”  I told her to talk to DS and leave me out of it and she immediately starts telling me all kinds of crap and trying to put me in the middle.  DS comes in the kitchen complaining about her and I told him I don’t want to hear it.  Just get the damn divorce and be done with it.  He says he’s paid for it and signed all the papers and she’s the one who won’t finish it up.  I don’t know.  I don’t care.  I just want to go back to Florida.

Okay, so let’s go back to Florida…The weather was gorgeous Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  It was gorgeous Saturday morning but then it started raining and turned off cold Saturday afternoon.  I got most of the grass mowed and that was a major job.  I hadn’t been down there since the first week of April.  The meadow had grown up to where the weeds were over my head in a lot of areas.  I cut it.  Then I cut it again.  Then I cut it at right angles to the other two times I cut it, and finally, I cut all the areas that didn’t go down in all the other cuttings.  I went walking in the woods several times.  Had long steamy soaks in the clawfoot tub and looked at a million stars while I laid back and sipped wine or beer.  Lots of times, when I’m lying out there late at night, I imagine that a deer wanders out of the woods and stands in the clearing.  One of these days, it’s going to happen.  In the meantime, I just lie under the stars and wait.

Sitting at a rest area in Kentucky, just across from the Tennessee border.  Hitting a little snow but we should be home in a couple of hours.  We get free wifi in the rest area!