odd bits from a Sunday

It's Sunday afternoon. Poison oak, my constant companion, because I insist on walking my dogs in beautiful wooded places and am violently allergic to it, has once again raised red welts on my wrists and hands. This time there is a special bonus, and it's appeared on my right eyelid, causing it to squint shut, making me look like Popeye the Sailor, without the cute little corn cob pipe. My head being already shaved, the effect is really quite terrifying. Too bad it's Valentine's day instead of Halloween. Pity my poor, long-suffering boyfriend.

I'm in the midst of an ugly fight with school administrators, and it's engulfing me in anger and frustration. I had a dream I was trying to get to my class, but was caught in a crazy mall-from-hell full of glitz and style and couldn't find it. I was begging vain salesgirls to stop looking in the mirror long enough to show me how to get to my class. I kept taking escalators that led nowhere, and asking more people, and I was in tears because class had started without me.

Someone has left a comment on one of my blog entries twice now that are nothing but links to porn websites. My brother has sent an email to his friends, mentioning my blog, and inviting them to feel free to harass me, in return for years of disfunctional babysitting. He was kidding, of course. HE WAS KIDDING! No, I'm sure those two things aren't related.

It's true I did babysit my younger siblings a lot. They were six and seven years younger, and I was a very responsible child. The only time I really remember was the night they got in a fight, as usual, and brother hit sister in the nose, or the ironing board fell on her nose, depending on who is telling the story. It swelled up and blurred across her face. I put an impromptu ice pack on her and called my uncle, the doctor for a consultation. Meanwhile, in the other room, my remorseful brother had gone in to apologize, they had quickly gotten into another fight, and he hit her in the nose...

It's time to walk the dogs in the wooded area and no doubt invoke the poison oak demons once again.

kvetching + a cartoon

Random, unrelated things are conspiring to make me very very grumpy:

Yesterday, as I headed off to work, driving by a house a few doors down from mine, I noticed that their garage door was open. Now usually this doesn't signify anything special, but on my street, I'm the only person who actually keeps their car in the garage. The rest are rented out to desperate souls or used as attics.

This particular garage has great significance. It's the office of a drug dealer who has been in jail for several months, and the fact that it was open...Yup, there he was, FAT KENNY, unmistakably. A four-hundred-pound black man holding court, surrounded by his homies. Their version of a welcome-home-from-the-big-house party, no doubt. Oh hell, here we go again.

Worked a 15-hour day, getting home at 10:30 pm, and just as I was falling asleep at midnight, POP POP POP POP POP POP!!! No, not a gunfight. Chinese New Year. I guess it's traditional to start the new year by waking and angering the whole neighborhood. Year of the cock. Yeah, well that's fitting. They too strut around waking people up at god-awful hours, caring not a whit, and have brains the size of peas.

Today, standing talking to the school secretary, I felt a tug and suddenly I was being sucked downwards. Oh ho! The paper shredder had decided to grab the hem of my favorite garment and pull it into its merciless metal maw. Tatters.

OK, if you've gotten this far, I owe you something besides complaints. Hmmm, let's see. Imagine a bulldog puppy playing with a wolf, and you pretty much have a picture of my puppy playing with her best friend at dog park. She teases him into chasing her around and around a segment of old baseball bleachers that act as benches, and just as he's about to catch her fat little rump she takes a shortcut underneath and comes out on the other side, and they start all over again. If people happen to be sitting on the benches, she uses the place between their calves and the bench as a tunnel to run through.

After they finish with the benches they run over to lay down and wrestle in the dirt or sometimes on the grass, where the wolf picks up grass stains on his light fur and gets a greenish tinge to him.

The other day they were doing the bench run, as I sat on it with a friend. An absolutely massive new dog by the name of Duke, part mastiff, part bloodhound, easily weighing 150 pounds, was standing on the sidelines, watching the chase, drooling slightly. Suddenly my friend and I found ourselves flung backwards, legs in the air, shrieking in surprise and laughing as Duke decided to join in the merriment, and pushed his way through our leg tunnel to lumber after them. It would have made a great Looneytoons feature cartoon, ending with my porky little dog saying, " Th' th' that's all folks!"

My life is on 'fast forward'

Five minutes before it's time to launch myself out of here into my day. It's 7:25 am. First on the docket is an excruciating once-a-week hour-and-a-half class with twenty-five teenage boys, the fabulous video production. At the new semester on Monday, a girl transferred in. Tuesday she brought me the little 'I'm outta here' paper to sign so she could flee to study hall. Don't blame her a bit. A friend of mine described this class like being caught in a stable of race horses, but I corrected her. It's like being in a stable of race horses and clydesdales, and someone has let all the horses out of their stalls, but locked the door to the outside.

Then it's off to community college, where I have a new class of 25 adult students. I love these classes. Grown up people with volume controls and manners, who are there to learn. Such a nice contrast.

Then a quick dash home to collect dogs, fling them at dog park, and home to dish out kibble.

Time to leave for night class, where more kind adults await, and blam, it's after 9 pm and I'm too tired to do much except crawl home and collapse. Is it June yet?

OK, deep breath. Here we go...