Life of a SINGLE Social Queen

This blog was encouraged by some who seem to think my life is exciting. I am not convinced of this all the time, however I do have a way of making life interesting. To put it in another way, with me, life is never BORING!

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Saturday Night "Excitement"

Let me start by saying that I just spent the last week in Indiana, where I got to spend some time at home and helped my mom recover from knee replacement surgery. Mom is doing well and if she can keep off her feet enough, I think she will recover nicely.
My friend Alby came and picked me up from the airport and we went straight to the Pastor's house, where my Sunday School class was having a party. It started right after I got on the plane in Fort Wayne so I didn't know if anyone would still be there. To my elation everyone was still there! I had really been hoping to see people. See, whenever I'm away from my church and all my friends, the sooner I can get back together with them the better! So this was right up my alley! I guess I broke up the party because just after that everyone started heading out. They had been there over 3 hours, so I am not taking it personally!
Today I woke up to a power outage which lasted only about an hour.... then headed out to the soccer fields at church for Upward Soccer where I announced the 2nd half of the morning's games. I came home and got cleaned up, then called mom to see how she was doing. At 5 I headed to Osborne's again for our Ladies Care Cluster carry-in. You know the 1000th reason I love my church? I love my church because people from all kinds of backgrounds in different places in their lives and of all different ages can get together and share their precious faith, uplift and encourage one another, bear each others burdens, and have a good time in each others company. We don't care about the differences, we just love each other.
So, after the carry-in I came home and, after calling a couple of people and finding no one to hang out with, decided to do some bill paying and checkbook-balancing. I was sitting in my chair doing the bills and I see movement out of my peripheral vision on the left. I look up, and there . . . . . . . crawling up the wall . . . . . . . . . . is a cockroach. Oh, this isn't just any cockroach, it's one of the flying kinds. It's not just a flying cockroach, it was one of those palmetto bug cockroaches which are at least 3 inches long, 5 with antenna. You have to understand that I am a cool, calm, and collected person about almost everything. It's the teacher in me. A kid throws up in the classroom? No problem, are you ok student? A person cuts me off in traffic? No problem, I probably just say, Dude, what the heck? Then I go about my way. I have even had a little child pass out in my arms. She was 3. I pulled her up and propped her legs up so they were above her head. Not a problem. I am a teacher. It is my job to not overreact. However, this is nullified when bugs are concerned. The fatter the bug, the worse. Spiders are less scary. Lizards and Frogs are a-ok to me. But big fat cockroaches? I am glad no one was here to see and hear the scene. I racked my brain for someone to call. Too late I thought of Michele's husband, Chris, who lives 5 minutes from me and likes being manly. Anyway, I went to get the broom and I watched La Cucaracha crawl across the wall and ceiling, then down another wall and start heading for the kitchen. I did not have happy feelings about the image of that thing being in my kitchen, especially if I killed it and it dropped down onto my counter! EEEEEWWWWWWW!!!!! AUGH! I am getting the willies just thinking about it. I was thinking, do NOT start flying, do NOT start flying! I was freaking out this whole time, but I knew what I had to do. I flung the broom at the creature as hard as I could. It dropped down to the ground FLYING the whole way!!! DAHHH!! So now it is crawling on the ground and crawled UNDER MY CHAIR!!!!! I moved the chair around and couldn't see anything, so then I flipped the chair over to look at the guts of the chair. There, on the side of one of the feet of the chair............. was the La Cucaracha Gigante. Enter screaming and heart palpitations. Oh, and don't forget rapid breathing. This is the point that I was rapidly going through my friends to see if I knew someone who could come over and eradicate the house from unwanted guests. So I ran into the bathroom where I had some flying insect spray. So I came out and started spraying the heck out of the bug, which continued to crawl away, despite being heavily laden with pesticide. The beast continued crawling, I continued spraying, throwing caution to the wind, recklessly, spraying without abandon. Finally Senor Gigante slowed down and started writhing around on the tile. I went to go look for a dustpan and could not find it. I grabbed a piece of paper and came back out to see the creature belly up, missing a leg, and fighting much less vigorously. I swept it up on the piece of paper and carefully took it to the outside garbage can. He was still moving and I was dreadfully afraid that he would flip himself over and, I don't even know what he would have done. Crawl off and terrify me more. He was just dying is all, though. I was still excessively nervous, but breathed a little easier once he was in the garbage can. Only a little easier because I knew what needed to be done. I went into the garage and got the garden sprayer, which held pesticide "Demon" from last year. Yes, it was time to re-bolster my home's defenses with a good spraying of Demon. This is good stuff. A 16 oz concentrated solution of it is $50 at the farm supply store. But it dilutes 1 oz to 1 gallon of water. I keep it in the fridge to last longer. So I mixed up a whole new batch of it so it would be nice and strong! Then I proceeded to give the perimeter of most of the rooms in the house a good dose of the stuff, concentrating on doors and windows, keeping La Cucaracha Gigante in mind the entire time. I worked uncharacteristically fast, and even proceeded outside to fortify the outside perimeter of the house so as not to allow the beasts to even gain entry. My garden sprayer has a leaky hose so my right hand, which held the actual nozzle and hose, was dripping with toxic pesticide, so I came inside and washed up, then satisfied that my home was appropriately protected, I put the Demon away, righted my chair, sat down, and began blogging.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Holy Mother of Pearl! It's been 2 months since I last posted. I know because my mother just reminded me. I enjoy posting, but it takes me so long because of the length of my posts! Anyway, things are going pretty awesome for me! I have 3 tutoring students right now, all home schoolers, so really they are not tutoring students, they're just students. I teach a young brother and sister science and a 6th grader math. I just started with the siblings, but they are a real joy! They just absorb whatever I feed to them in our lesson and beg for more! It's really rewarding! Any my 6th grader is so ridiculously fun to work with that it's not even work. She's my mini-me. We are alike in many areas, and it just seems to work in our sessions! I had a 9th grade student for about a week but it didn't work out. I wish it would have, but it was not fun like my other students, so I am not completely upset about it. I don't normally do 9th graders anyway. Hormones are not my favorite. Mine or anyone else's.......
So this week I am going to be a little busy because I am preparing to go back to Indiana for several days to help my mom out. She's having knee surgery on Tuesday and gets out of the hospital on Friday if all goes well, so this week I'll be getting ready to head out for 8 days. I'll fly into Indy on Thursday night and AMY TENNEY will pick me up from the airport and take me to her place so I can spend the night, visit with her, play with her toddler, hold her baby, and go pick up mom from the hospital the next day...... if she's lucky. Mom, I put that in there for you since you're probably the only one who READS THIS BLOG! So, I'm going home to help her out and get some time hopefully to visit with some friends. Ok, actually, I'm going to leave the old lady at home alone while I go out and have fun. JUST KIDDING AGAIN MOM! Nah, I'm an old pro at helping her around the house, especially after she has surgery. I've been doing it since before I turned 13. I think my mom would agree that I'm a great help to her, kind of a natural. Her right hand, even. Yeah, that might cover it. Oh, don't forget indispensable. I do have a lunch date with my favorite red-headed lady, Dr. Curry! I consider her a mentor, but also my dear friend. She is the Chair of Teacher Education at the college I graduated from. Me and Smitty (Amy [Smith] Tenney), were 2 of her favorite students. I. Love. Her.
So tonight after a great service at church, I decide that I don't want to go home for the rest of the night, and that I want to go to Taco Bell. So I invited Alby. I knew from past experience that there is a crowd of retirees from church that congregates there after church on Sunday nights, but I have never gone inside and sat with them. Tonight we did though and it was so much fun! I knew a few of them, just from being the friendly-teasing sort, but we had a real blast with them! The funnies part to me is that the men sat in one section and the women sat in another! I asked one of the women why the men were segregated and she said, "Well we don't care what they have to talk about! We want to talk about our own stuff!" And it was perfect! Alby and I sat with the ladies and just had us a big ole' time! And that's what I love about my church. I, at 30, was there at Taco Bell with a close friend, late 40s, sitting there talking with a bunch of 70 yr olds! It was amazing! A lot of them are from the North, so you get to talking about Indiana and Ohio and you realize the world is a pretty small place!!!
Well, that is all for me for tonight! Will try to be more regular but I can't promise anything (Mom! I love you, dear!!!!)