Rocky Road Icecream…

Some marshmallows, some nuts, some chocolate… all in all, total wacky goodness, you know? And really, it sounded better than ‘crapdoodles’ or any of the other random names we have for random-bit posts, right? (Although I don’t know… I may pull up ‘crapdoodles’ at a later date. It’s starting to grow on me:-)

Let’s see. Where was I?

Ladybug is boycotting sleep. I don’t know what her purpose is in doing this, but if she wants to make me flaky, spacey and irritable, I’d say it’s been a rousing success. She has also been proclaimed, ‘bitch-queen-goddess’ of day care. Today she told the resident whiner to “stop being a crybaby”. The babysitter let her–it seemed to get results.

The Cave Troll is learning to read–but not right now. Right now, he’s trying to sleep while junior-baby-bitch-queen-goddess climbs on his head. Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?

Chicken has joined ismarah in tackling Bitter Moon II– she seems to like it so far but thinks that Eljean is a “pissy, whiny little bitch.” I said, “So you get the book then. Great!”

There are big fucking snakes migrating from Florida. . Seriously. I wouldn’t bring it up, but, well, John Stewart did a bit on it that was both horrifying and funny. *shudder* Emphasis on horrifying.

My sophomores took the CAHSEE (California High School Exit Exam) yesterday and today. I still hate this test. I hate the way we treat our students. I hate the way this country regards intelligence and productivity. I hate a lot of things about testing and how it’s fucked up our education system. But I was really really proud of my students and how hard they tried. (I also got a fantastic amount of knitting done when I went in to proctor. Everyone thought I was soooooo talented because I could knit and walk. *ooooooooooh* Only you all know the truth.)

And speaking of knitting, I’m almost done with my roulette sock–close enough to need to measure against my feet. Except I’d just put my tennis-shoes on in anticipation of my evening walk. “Ah-HA,” I thought, “Mate has just taken his shoes off, and our feet are almost exactly the same size.” (Which is, fortunately for me, pretty much the size of my partner in sock-roulette’s feet as well.)

“Mate,” I said, “did you just take your shoes off?”

“Uh-huh,” he answered, puzzled. He was wondering how I knew that.

I looked at my clean, dry sock, hoping his feet were clean. “Are they ripe and sweaty?” I asked, and his expression turned hurt.

“Why? Can you smell them from there? Is that why you asked about my shoes? I didn’t think they were that bad!”

By the time I’d finished laughing, I’d promised to put that bit of conversation on the blog. He begged me not to. I love my Mate, and seriously–after a conversation like that, you’d love him too!

And hey–I’m getting near my 600th blog post (less than nine posts, actually, if you count the old blog and the new blog–which I do.) Should I do another contest or just throw some confetti, clap myself on the back and say, “Job well done, old girl, Job well done?”

And finally… another gift for you. It’s a tiny fragment of conversation from Rampant, because it was funny.

from RAMPANT

OF course, this meant that La Mark was driving when we hit the winding portion of the road on the way to the cabin. I broke the stunned silence with the inevitable.

“Oh Christ, La Mark, pull over. I’ve gotta hurl.”

Ugh. It doesn’t get any better doing that, you know? It certainly doesn’t get any better when it’s a hundred-gazillion degrees Flamingheit and your skin sticks to your skin and your sweat’s running down your pits and in the crease of your body as you bend over to spew. Between that and the merciless, bloodless, bitter motherfucker of a sun, my head was starting to throb in time with the heat distortion coming off the road. The guys were sweet about it, but I felt like Bracken had looked yesterday as we pulled up in front of the cabins.

Bracken took one look at my face as he opened the door and swore. “Why didn’t you drive?”

I shook my head and took another swig from the water bottle Jack had given me. “Do you want the long version or can you live with ‘It didn’t come up when we were loading the car’?”

“The long version can wait. Come inside, shower, get out of the fucking sun…”

I started to giggle, having gone completely round the bend. “If the sun was fucking, it would be a hell of a lot cooler!”

“Why’s that, genius?” Bracken asked, swinging me into his arms because he liked to do that when he was feeling all big and manly.

“Because then all we’d see is his moon!”

Behind me I heard Jacky and La Mark grumble, “Oh Jesus!” and “Now I’ve gotta hurl!” and then Bracken had me inside the cabin and into the blessed, blessed coolth and the shower was running and they ceased to matter much at all.