Ready or not, here comes Summer!

   I'm at my kitchen table looking at my to do list of crap I'm fantasizing about pulling off before we leave for the beach for the week. My daughter wraps up fifth grade by mid Thursday this week. She has to survive one week of CCD after vacation and then she is a free birdie for the rest of the summer. This summer will be wierd for me because after having my husband home last year, I will be flying solo this year. This is definitely a good thing but it will take some getting used to. It was incredibly easy to get used to having him home.
   This particular week is a bit rough because I managed to get sick after substitute teaching for a whopping 7 jobs! There's nothing like trying to kill off a to do list when your butt is dragging worse than usual. Just to add to the fun, the germs are spreading. I've refrained from kissing my daughter, much to her relief, because I was trying Not to get her sick. That flopped. We are about to find out if the new insurance works. It's hard for me to figure out what's an allergy versus a bad cold this time of year, too. This is just another episode of guess your face off. I'd rather the doctor's office tell me I'm nuts and send me home when we're this close to vacation.
    Having a memory like a steel sieve is forcing me to make lists of all the crap I want to get done before we leave. My spouse shocked me and actually took an interest in said list. The problem is we don't agree on what's necessary. The husband is notoriously oblivious to mess and dirt, me, not so much. I'm already going to be depressed that I have to come home from the beach at all, I'll be damned if I'm going to have to clean on top of it. He is also regrettably immune to the threat of my Mother coming over while we're gone. I should have enough time to get the inside under control but there's also some outside maintenance I hope to pull off.
    The outside maintenance never gets done often enough, just ask our neighbors.  It was looking like Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom out there and I felt I had to do something. The frustrating thing about weeding of course, is that there seems to be no real payoff. I went out there like a good homeowner and ripped out enough crap to feed an elephant. A week later the junk grew back! I don't even get the fun weed in my yard. I get grass from hell, baby trees under my deck and lamb's ear trying to take over like Hitler invading Poland. I've also noticed our bushes are starting to look like Gene Wilder's hair from Young Frankenstein. My next yard will be concrete.

Still morw learning!

  My adventures as a substitute teacher are continuing to surprise. I knew I had a lot to learn, it's the nuances that amaze me. I've been home for a long time and while it's  not that I wasn't working, the job was different. Now that I'm in a professional setting, I have to remember to watch my p's and q's. You don't have to care what you look like at home. According to my closet, I haven't cared in about twelve years! The problem is how to spend money on a wardrobe when you've been unemployed and needed the money.
   The commute for me is now a whopping five minutes and yet I'm still scrambling to gtfo every morning I'm scheduled. I'm used to only getting one of us out the door! I'm only getting a short time to get some work in before school ends since it took forever to get my certificate. I had applied to be a substitute teacher at my daughter's district about two years ago but I'm guessing my application was ignored because I didn't know anyone there and my degree was not in education. I remember trying to follow up at the time and getting nowhere.
   There are bonus surprises, too. I learned the scheduling system the district uses can be at best, a suggestion. I've had my assignments changed repeatedly, sometimes in the same day before I get in! I'm trying to scare up some teaching work for the summer, too, but I'm wondering about whether that's such a bright idea.
   My daughter's district, does have an extended school year program. I heard a rumor about who may be in charge of it and emailed the person to let her know I'm available. I haven't followed up because it occurred to me that these programs are often aimed at special ed students. The first week of working for the district put me in rooms with kids who literally screamed all day, threw chairs, and used profanities. The kids were all between 5 and 7. Do I really want to be potentially trapped in a room with those kinds of kids all summer? How much money can I make if I just stick a fork in my eye?
    There is no shortage of stuff to do at home if I don't manage to find something job wise for the summer. It would be nice to keep some shred of money coming in, however. Our savings took a huge hit over the last year and it feels like there's a lot of ground to make up. There are some classes I can take over the summer that would help in the future. The question becomes do I physically go to a college or do something on line. I would prefer something with minimal travel, of course. It will be wierd having homework but I am planning to look at this as an investment in my career. I just need to wait until we get some income coming in first.

Adventures in Colon Country

   I finally approached that magical age where it became necessary to get my first colonoscopy.  This was something I'd be putting off for a long time. There was a reason I'd been stalling. It was the prep. My mom and my spouse had done it so it was my turn. The cattleprod to finally get me to schedule was the fact that I ran the risk of running out of time before my husband found a job and I would have had to find a driver. Getting behind the wheel too soon after general anesthesia is frowned upon and I like my car the way it is, unwrinkled. We got lucky in that all I had to do was call to request the procedure and skip the office copay.
    I called the same office my husband and mom had used, for lack of a better idea. They ordered a prep kit and mailed instructions so there was nothing to do but wait. The box was huge and took up a chunk of real estate on my kitchen table. We were expecting company that weekend. The box didn't exactly enhance the decor so I decided to move it. I put it on top of our refrigerator right in front of a box of Raisin Bran. I love bad jokes but I had no idea irony was ingrained in my subconscious!
    Since I had been dreading this for some time, procrastinating when it came to reading the instructions was no problem. The instructions themselves, were a problem. I was put on a clear liquid diet beginning after breakfast the day before my procedure. Vodka, I might point out, is a clear liquid, but alcohol was verboten. Apparently disinfecting from the inside was not appreciated by my doctor. I don't understand this but no one has ever clutched their chest and yelled for a writer so what do I know?
    When the real prep began the evening before I opened the packet of evil and choked down the stuff from the port a potty jar enclosed in that big box. Surprisingly, nothing happened and I felt fine. The bastards lulled me into a false sense of security. The next morning at roughly 10 after dawn, I had to take another round of the vile stuff. Shortly after that I was 'deals-with-God' nauseous and living in the bathroom.
    This lasted for about three hours. Honestly, it wasn't what I was expecting. My husband warned me about an impending "poopageddon" but really the majority of what came out was clear. That is all the gory detail I need to provide, at the end of it, I felt like a wet rag, despite being dehydrated. The doctor's office wasn't kidding when they said you needed to have a driver. We arrived at the office and just to add insult to injury, I was "required" to take a pregnancy test, which I would have to pay for! That ship has sailed so long ago, it's not even a dot on the horizon.
    Thankfully, since I had zero coffee or food that day, I didn't have to wait long before I was handed a gown, cap and booties and asked to get changed. The gown was pretty much a live cotton version of a four year old's drawing of a person (with added ventilation, of course). The cap made me think of a conveyor belt full of chocolate, which I couldn't have! Luckily, I got a fantastic nurse who got me settled into a hospital bed and hooked me up to an IV filled with no fun clear liquid, so much for internal disinfection. I'm guessing the responsible grown ups were concerned about the anesthesia. They also wouldn't let me drive the bed into the procedure room. 
     I asked the nurse about the aftermath. I got the impression from my mom and my husband that I would have to have a string tied to my leg and be led home like a parade float. The doctors use a carbon based gas and not as much of it as they used to. I had been somewhat "musical" before this but I thought it would be hilarious if they used laughing gas up there. Whatever came out after that would at least sound funny but again, I don't know much about medical issues, except that I have them.
      The good news is that once they gave me the shut-up-and-go-to-sleep juice, the next thing I knew it was all over. They found nothing (my head was not, in fact, up there) and I don't have to come back for ten years. It all came out fine in the end!