…what a donkey.

Why do I get so upset about seemingly ridiculous things? I couldn’t tell you. But it made me shake my head and smile this morning, as I went through some blog post history, cleaning up broken links (a job I hate, and often neglect). It’s a miracle I maintain my teeming throng of 100-some (worldwide) daily readers.

From the “Rant” and “Boot to the Head” categories, here are five silly reminders of why I really need to keep my day job:

• From 2008: Blathering about spoilt-rotten athletes
• From 2011: Illustrating my inability to deal with other people’s (perceived) inefficiency
• From 2013: Getting just a little too honked off at uppity hypocrites
• From 2012: Flippin’ out at Domino’s Pizza
• From 2011: Destroying everyone’s zen by blasting quotation memes

And the comments are fun, too.

Ah, I feel a retelling of the David Soul story coming on. Now there’s a laff riot, Jimmy. But first, the shower, the road and the school house.

Happy Monkday, fiends!

And lots of it. I know this may strike you as odd — me posting about good things when school starts up in one week   — but there is a list, and I feel impelled to share. Of course, at the end of this little treatise, I shall ask you to do the same, for the general good. That, and your comments just make me happy. Behold, today’s…

RANDOM NEURON FIRINGS

1. Remy is improving on the sidewalk. The Thriller takes him out once or twice a day to practice, and while he still gets nervous away from the house, he’s handling it better. (Downside: he’s beginning to get a bit rotund from all the treats, despite the fact they’re only 2 calories each, and that he goes for bigtime runs in the dog park every day. We need to address this.)

2. Anne Rice has written a new novel in the Vampire Chronicles series, a longstanding guilty pleasure read for me. It’s been a long wait; the last installment was in 2003. It won’t be released until Halloween, though, bummer. Upside: I’ll have something to read on those sleepless nights during production week for the musical. Another bonus: Looks like Anne hit the mother lode by selling the series to Universal to be made into films. Yay, more Louis and Lestat.

3. Barring a significant blizzard that paralyzes the Midwest for weeks, I don’t think I’ll have to worry about making up snow days at the end of the year anymore. As my district runs “long” on the daily school hours, we should be safe under the new rules for calamity days. Yippy!

4. I have one week left to see my grandsons as many times as possible. I plan to take advantage of it.

5. I know it’s ultra-hip to not like television. We’re supposed to eschew it for going outside to play and riding bikes and gardening and sitting on the porch, admiring the beauty of nature. I get it. I barely have time for it during the school year anyway. Still, the fact is there is smart, entertaining, compelling programming on TV right now, and I have no reservations about saying I will set my DVR as often as possible to enjoy it. Thank the gods for on-demand viewing.

6. For the first time in 21 years, I have not bought school clothes. And for the first time in 21 years, I haven’t given it a moment’s concern. And…gray hair? Don’t care.

7. There’s a person in my life whom I have allowed to infiltrate my soul and wreak havoc on my inner peace with astonishing regularity. I call “game over.” On goes my Teflon raincoat. *biNg*

OK, how about you? What’s your good news for today? Lemmehaveit!

It’s an official end to summer on that first day I return to my classroom to get real work done.

During the break, I hired a student who’s good at woodworking to fix my desk (a nice mission style, very similar to this, given to me by the Music Parents Org. 15 years ago). Over time, some hardware worked its way loose, causing the drawers to be all janky and off-track.  Now that it’s fixed, it’s time to go in and put everything back together — including all my sound equipment and laptop station, which were disconnected in order for the carpet cleaning guy to do his thing.

In other words, I’m out of excuses to avoid the school house. Have I mentioned that with each passing year, retirement looks better and better? Not because I don’t love my job, mind. I do. Anyway, what would I do if I retired? We don’t have a big enough nest egg to build a home on a lake, or just travel and relax all the time. Mortgage and student loans won’t wait. Even if I didn’t have to work, I probably should. I’d drive everyone around me batty if I didn’t.

Still, I get kind of, well, grumpy about it sometimes. But I shouldn’t complain (I can see all my private sector readers rolling their eyes), so I’ll zip it. Why so serious, after all? Life is wonderful and everything is great. The gym guy at my high school jokingly calls me The Angry Midget. Whatever could give him such an idea? I’m such a delicate flower.

Are you Happy today, and not Grumpy? I hope so, because Brother does look a bit nettled. I’ll make the transition to smiling myself, once I get showered and gussied. But maybe one more coffee first…

Maybe it’s because work is staring me in the face, or that the morale at my place of employment could use a shot in the arm (several, actually), or that I paid four bills yesterday morning and the total came to $1400 and change — but I’m kind of perturbed today.

What do you do when a black mood strikes you? Go for a walk or run? Think of better days ahead? Look at vacation photos? Paint? Write? Usually, the latter makes me feel better, so I suppose I’m in the right place.

If I wanted to be really honest with myself and with you (which I do), I’d say what’s bugging me the most today is my infuriating propensity for procrastinating on unpleasant tasks. I’ve only just submitted the first purchase requisition for the music I will need for school in 16 days, when I should have taken care of it when the fiscal year rolled over three weeks ago. Oh well. At this writing, high school is done, and now I need to total up all the middle school stuff and fill out the online forms, which work precisely 71% of the time. (Refer to Cute Rat Girl at right.) Yeah, I’m peeved. May as well go for it and get it all said…

I’m sick to death of reading about who’s to blame in the Palestine/Israel conflict. You’re both to blame, jackasses. ALL of you. This whole issue has degraded into an embarrassing, tragic political catastrophe, and the kids of these countries are paying the highest price. You can’t have a decades-long war without two participating sides, so cut the crap with the throwing up of hands and saying, “We want peace; they started it!” It’s a mirror image (without the physical casualties, of course) of the Republican-Democrat battles here in the states. No one backs down, no one listens with his mouth shut, no one concedes graciously, and no one puts his pointy finger away. No minds are changed, and the rhetoric and acrimony ramp up exponentially with each passing day. I’m sick of hearing about it. B00M. Boot to the head.

I “met” our new high school band director on the phone yesterday, and we’ve been texting back and forth today with questions and answers. He seems really cool and nice. I sure do miss our other guy, though. I’m starting my 16th year in the district, and this will be the 7th band director I’ve worked with. I guess it’s somewhat to be expected in a small, rural school system. I’m far from what you’d consider a “country girl,” but I do love teaching in the sticks. I love the people. Love ’em.

OK fiends, middle school music isn’t getting ordered this way. Back to the other browser tabs. Hey, one awesome thing: In continuation of the Thriller’s birthday weekend, we’re all getting together tonight at Eva’s Frozen Yogurt, where we’ll all make our own sundaes and hang out for a bit. Fun!

I’m skipping lunch in preparation.

It’s a full-time job around here, lemmetellya. We do enjoy it, though. Having one dog is plenty of work for us, since we basically treat Remy as if he’s our child. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he’s a good boy. Since the Friday arrival of our campers (Dusty and Oliver), however, he’s been a bratty, spoiled-rotten little monster, which somewhat increases the workload.

They basically dictate the day for us, which is also fine. Their humans are on vacation; why shouldn’t they be as well, right?

The Ritual

1. Take all three — separately — to the ladies’/men’s room.

2. Feed breakfast (separately, of course).

3. Moderate the daily post-meal discussion.

4. Brief nap while breakfast settles. (Them, not us.)

5. Supervise random flip-outs as people begin their days by walking on the sidewalk in front of our house. The nerve, seriously.

6. Revisit ladies’/men’s room.

7. After human breakfast, take two for a fun walk in the park. (I’m glad we live so close.)

8. “Listening practice.” Do your tricks, get a biscuit.

9. While Dusty and Oliver recover (they’re 12 and 9 years old, respectively), take Remy to the dog park.

10. Return home, leash ’em up and take ’em out. (Why didn’t we pull the trigger on that back yard fence?)

11. Hit the showers.

12. In between petting and playing and conversation and breaking up arguments, get work done. (Today’s job is to order fall music, if it’s the last thing I do. Which it probably will be. At midnight.)

13. 5:00 p.m. — feed, then repeat numbers 6 and 12 throughout the evening.

14. Bedtime:  me, in the guest room with the guests, and the Thriller in our room with Remy, the toy hoarding brat dog.

Truthfully, this is not “work” for us, as we’re dyed-in-the-wool dog lovers, and Oliver and Dusty are sweet, affectionate, obedient and good-natured. We continue to discover new things about Remy, although I was hoping that food/toy aggression wouldn’t be one of them. Oh well…we work through the challenges, because he’s worth it, and deserves a happy life. Dogs are fascinating.

Tomorrow, Mavis and I travel to the Ohio State Fair to meet up with our aunts from Illinois and reminisce over lunch. Exciting! As for the Thriller, staying on the homefront? Well, you know the drill.

Happy Monday!