Sunday, May 24, 2009

Once Bitten...

Those of you currently living here in the armpit of the Sunshine State might have noticed that it has rained daily for over a week. Normally this is not a problem. In fact, if it were happening every day at 3pm and someone complained, you would say, "Welcome to Florida," roll your eyes, and go back to poisoning ant beds. But this isn't like that. From Monday to Friday I saw the sun for about an hour, and 59 minutes of that took place on Friday. This is unprecedented without a hurricane, and it's genuinely depressing. Did I mention that the region just went through the most severe flooding in 30+ years? Of course I didn't. I was just testing you. But it's true.

Anyway, I don't want to talk about the weather.

We've got weird bugs now. I'm sure that they're normal bugs (I'm not taking any down to the agricultural extension office for identification), but these bugs aren't usually in my yard and something invisible bit me. During my 59 minute window, I was trying to run the weed-eater with enhanced speed and efficiency, something bit me on the back of the neck, and 48 hours later I still have a welt and stiffness in my neck. My 'pitmate has suggested that I do all sorts of crazy and irrational things, like, "call [my] mother" or "go to the hospital," but I don't have time for all that junk - I just want to sit around until the kids go to bed and play Gears of War 2.

I'll let you know if I'm suddenly paralyzed or lose bladder control.

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shudder

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Saturday, May 23, 2009

Four Days Left - Running on Fumes

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We're plowing through to the goal line, dragging would-be teenage tacklers and stiff-arming administrators who wave data monitoring forms, final exams, retention lists, standardized test scores, and professional development plans in our faces. The summer is the ONE reason for teaching. Don't give me any of that high-minded bullcrap about changing the life of just one child. I love my students. I've changed lives. I've righted wrongs and injustices. I've filled the vessels that had previously been impenetrable. (Holy hell, that sounded awful.) The only reason any sensible person would do what I do is for the reward of summer vacation.

And I pledge to make it a good one.

For one thing, it's my daughter's last summer before preschool. This is it. No more freedom for the tiny dancer. We're looking at pool days, spring days, rainy day video game/movie marathons, camping, beach trips, a visit from the greatest cousins on the planet, a visit to the in-laws in Nashville, and gratuitous amounts of popsicles. I think she'll be happy. The littlest ninja is completing the grind of kindergarten, so he'll be happy with anything that doesn't involve the Letter People, I'm sure.

My better half will certainly be happy. Why? Because I'll be home, that's why. I am the sweet nectar of our wedded bliss. (Remind me not to send her a blog update.)

It'll be a good one for me for all of the above reasons, plus this:

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motorcyclemotorcyclemotorcycleWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

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I wrote a new song. This is rare.

They paved the road behind our hay field that leads to Little River Road. "They" means "The Man & His Road Crew." I don't really have a problem with this, but I thought I'd write from the wistful, change-phobic point of view. Here ya go:

Heaven’s Streets (2009)

The county is paving the last road to the springs
It's getting harder to find back roads to drive down and sing
David Allan Coe songs to a world that sleeps the best hours of the day away

They call it "improvement" or, even better, "progress"
And property values are through the roof, I guess
But the roads Daddy taught me to drive stick on just aren't quite the same today

Don't glorify the past, I've been told
It's the canary in the coal mine for growing old
Don't let your life pass you by while you mortgage your soul
You'll still get dust in your eyes when they trade you pavement for gold

I’m gonna give this old limestone one final ride
Before the blacktop is put down to better all of our lives
Drop her into third with no foot on the gas and just let the radio play

You know, living old means you can never die young
Which sorta contradicts that old song Roger Daltrey sung
And if heaven’s streets are really paved with gold, I’m not so sure I’m gonna stay

Don't glorify the past, I've been told
It's the canary in the coal mine for growing old
Don't let your life pass you by while you mortgage your soul
You'll still get dust in your eyes when they trade you pavement for gold

Look, don't make fun of the simple rhymes. I'm not professing to be the next Dylan or anything.

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Friday, November 10, 2006

Playing Hookie - Hookey - Hooky - I dunno, I'm sick

I rarely miss school - especially for my own illness. Usually a sick child, children, or wife can cause me to turn the reigns over to a substitute, but still not very often. I hate leaving my lovely pupils with somebody else, but especially my classroom. It's like loaning your car to a person who doesn't know how to drive - when you get it back there's likely a scratch or two, unexplained stains in the seat, and the check engine light starts flashing all the time. Fortunately for me, this guy is my sub today:

THE TALL MAN Pictures, Images and Photos

No lie. Take about 15 years off The Tall Man and you've got a fascinating character I'll call Dr. Checkett. I'll call him that because it is, according to the school board via the FBI, his real name. And title. I have doubts.

Dr. Checkett's arrival could not have come at a better time. We've been talking about scary books and movies all week in preparation to read "The Tell-Tale Heart". I was going to turn out the lights and fire up a few candles and have another teacher bang on the door at the climax, but alas, I've got catbite Ebola or some shit. In my plans I left Dr. Checkett instructions to read the piece aloud himself if he was feeling dramatically inclined. I'm almost certain he will.

Let's take a moment to recognize my lovely custodian, Ms. Sandra. I'm sorry about the feces and urine you're about to discover coating all my desks.

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Thursday, November 09, 2006

Time to Kill

No, not the movie - Sam Jackson is cool, but not cool enough to float this white-man savior flick. It is me who has the time for the killing. Er, killing time, that is. Whatever. I was sick last time I posted something and I'm sick now - not the same illness. That would make it AIDS or something. I went to the doctor's office yesterday because I was bitten by a cat at my principal's house. Really hard and repeatedly. My finger looks like it was slammed in a door with nails sticking out. So the doctor (male nurse practitioner) points out that I have a sinus infection to go along with my infection caused by feline bitery and prescribes me these gigantic and expensive horsepill mammajammas. (Teacher health plans suck goats.) So I'm sick, but not for long. And my finger is guaranteed not to fall off. By a male nurse practitioner.

Anyway, I'm killing time because I'm still at school waiting for a meeting on my own time. Each year we have to draw up specific individual plans for students who fail to meet FCAT goals. What is FCAT, you might ask? A great test with monumentally stupid implications thanks to the No Child Left Behind (but neatly swept under the rug is OK) Act. So all of the kids in my intensive language arts class have a plan and their parents are supposed to come tonight to sign it and, if previous years are any indication, stare blankly at me because these plans are stupid and redundant and probably flash cleavage liberally because they've never seen a male teacher under the age of 30 with no visible scars.

Wish me luck.

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Thursday, May 04, 2006

Tribute to Andre the Giant




It's, uh...damn - gettin a little dusty in here.

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Saturday, April 29, 2006

The Final Countdown

15 days.

Aaaaaaah, the glow of summer vacation is brightening on the horizon. This, my friends, is the beginning of the ultimate perk of working in education. After dealing with other people's teenaged problems for 36 weeks, we get a time to sit back, relax, and grow our beards out. Well, some of us will grow our beards out - I'm sure many of the ladies will continue to shave regularly.

Summer is a time for family - trips to the aformentioned pristine springs (avoiding la basura blanca peak hours, of course), backyard barbecues, and showing off manliness by building shit. Like this:



No, I didn't cut the lumber myself. Yes, it came in a box from *gasp* Wal-Mart (a mom and pop business bursts into blue flame and the owners get ass cancer every time that word is uttered, so be careful). But I spent the last part of my spring break putting it together in the blinding-hot Florida sun just to see the excitement on the faces of my children. And to prevent the look of utter contempt and disapproval on the face of my wife. My son calls it Star Command because he is Buzz Lightyear. I'm The Evil Emperor Zurg and he shoots me with his arm laser, kicks me in the junk while I'm not looking, and then flies to another galaxy while I garble curses and flop around in the sand. My daughter calls it "bwaaagraaaphilagina" because she's 16 months old and talks like a crazy person.

Did I mention that I'm off Monday? The wife has an appointment and I'm staying home with the kids.

So make it 14.

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Saturday, April 08, 2006

Apocalypse Mound

About six months ago we moved back to the family farm. This was the result of a seller's market, skyrocketing bills, and the desire to be closer to our friends with children. So, here we are, about 3 miles from the house I grew up in - in a place I said I'd never live again.

See, O'Brien isn't a particularly bad place - in fact, it is surrounded by famous springs that cave divers from around the world flock to in order to get fantastically stoned and huff nitrous and stuff. And dive some. It's quiet here and the meth labs are generally well-hidden. To top it off, every backyard is stocked with a veritable menagerie of local wildlife. We have fox squirrels, redheaded woodpeckers, skunks, bats, hawks, and my wife saw a bobcat out our kitchen window a couple of months ago. Hell, my friend's wife gets chased by large lizards due to their proximity to the river - this is funny to everybody but her. Not to mention more common and plentiful creatures - I was just giving you the high points. (I watched a lot of Marty Stouffer's Wild America when I was a kid - we only had three channels, y'know.) All of these beasts are fine with me. I've got no beef with them.

I have a real problem with pocket gophers.

Around here they call them salamanders, which always makes me think of lizards for some reason. Oh, right - because salamanders are fucking lizards, or amphibians or something. One of the many things that salamanders are not is a fuzzy rat-like behemoth with giant incisors, threatening claws, and great big pocket cheeks so they can carry all manner of shit for their pocket gopher wives. (That's a pretty rad description - makes it seem like they burrow up from the center of the earth to feed on Asians and test meddle with Godzilla.) For the record, I'm pretty sure that pocket gophers are called salamanders (even though they are obviously not amphibians) to eliminate confusion with the gopher tortoise, which apparently has a corner on the "gopher" tag and is a protected species. All this does for somebody who refuses to bow to rural parlance is create even more confusion - I swear one of my neighbors was about to call a game warden when I told her about my ongoing battle with gophers.

Anyway, we've moved back here and have been trying to put together a yard, since our property was previously a briar and cherry tree (not the good kind) buffer between my grandma's house and 80 acres of open field. I got on the tractor (not the one in my pic - a BIGGER one) and ran around the yard with a harrow and drag, reducing all vegetation to dust and then I proceeded to plant grass, which is much friendlier to small children. The pocket gophers did not like this one bit. Mounds began springing up all around the yard as they re-dug their old tunnels and, seeing that they were already going through soooo much trouble (and to stop the incessant nagging of their vermin wives), they actually expanded their territory.

I wasn't sure what to do. Everybody I spoke to about the problem suggested something different, from the common (traps and poison) to the slightly insane (Juicy Fruit bubble gum and a hose from the lawnmower exhaust stuffed into a tunnel.) I have a problem with anything that causes undue pain and anguish to animals. I mean, it's one thing to snap a chicken's neck, but it is an entirely different thing to feed said chicken chewing gum and watch it fill up with shit like a feathered colostomy bag until it falls dead.

Then came the breakthrough. One evening, my wife and I were enjoying a smoke out front and she spotted movement in the yard. A gopher was making a new mound just to thwart me. As it pushed dirt out of its tunnel, it poked its little head up out of the hole over and over - like the game at Chuck E. Cheese. Since I don't own a cartoonishly large mallet, I turned to the gift my dad gave me when I was 15 as a rite of passage into manhood: a 12-gauge shotgun. My shotgun hasn't gotten a lot of use through the years, but it has always been in the closet, ready to go. (Yes, concerned parents, it has a trigger lock.) I ran inside and loaded up with the closest available ammo - buckshot.

Holy shit, this gopher had no chance. There was enough carcass left to determine that it was, in fact, a mammal. Triumph and victory - horns sounded as I paraded my quarry around the borders of my kingdom. Then I got out of the road.

I have since repeated the feat three times. Sparing most gory details, I once launched the head and forelegs of a furry foe in a parabolic arc some 15 yards from the point of separation. And it pleased me. Those few battles won, the war is far from over. New mounds have sprung up on the north side of the homestead and I won't be satisfied until I hang the last gopher pelt to dry.

I will have a yard free of burrowing vermin if it takes all the buckshot in my closet.

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