Sugared Harpy

If you are like my sister, and can’t see anything, follow this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eEGjXObPRQ

I just received this email at 6:31 pm tonight.

I WISH I was making this up. God, do I wish.

Dear Instructor,

I just got back in town this afternoon. Some of the girls in my class today told me that we had a test yesterday. I also missed a day last week and I am now totally off schedule. I somehow missed the fact that we had a test on yesterday. I did not even receive a study guide.

Please advise if I will be able to make-up the test. If so, please let me know what I will need to study and in what type of format. I have not yet, but I will go online to see if the study guide is available.

I am sorry. I was totally dumb founded when some of the girls in my class today told me about the test.

Thanks!

I’m going to find that vodka in the cupboard.

But variations on this conversation have happened to me a few times this year …both from younger and older students.

From Rate Your Students

On Adult Students, Or, Another Reason Not To Have Study Guides

Up until recently, I was on the same page as the “Woe is us, these children hath no sense” brigade. I started many sentences with “When I was an undergrad . . . ”

Then I started noticing a few things, namely: it’s not always the “kids.” In fact, I don’t think it’s a generation we have to be worried about. It is society. This complete and total self-absorption and refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions is now a cultural thing. You only have to be on public transportation and overhear someone else’s VERY personal cell phone conversation to know that the comfort and sanity of others is not at all important to the average American. But outside of public transportation, I think the same applies: “It’s all about me.”

My colleague, let’s call her Dr. Madge, teaches a class that meets only once a week. The week before the midterm, Student Sally missed the class. Student Sally is in her early 40s and has two sons in high school, as she likes to remind the class. Sally shows up for the exam to find other students poring over some last minute notes. She sees another student holding something that resembles a study guide. “What’s that?” she asks 20 year-old undergrad. “It’s a study guide for the exam,” says 20 yr. old. Student Sally wants to know WHERE she got this study guide. “We got it from Dr. Madge, last week,” undergrad replies. And faster than you can say, “Aw, HELL no!” Sally was in Dr. Madge’s face. The conversation went like this:

Sally: I demand to know why I didn’t get a study guide.
Dr. Madge: Because you weren’t in class last week.
Sally: Why didn’t you send me one?
Dr. Madge: Because it’s also posted on the class website.
Sally: Why didn’t you tell me it would be posted on the class website?
Dr. M.: I believe it says in the syllabus you are responsible for obtaining any missed material.
Sally: Based on this recent turn of events, I no longer feel qualified to take the exam. I am leaving and I will take it next week, when I have had a chance to study using the study guide.
Dr. M.: Um, come with me out into the hallway.

They go out into hallway.

Dr. M.: I’m sorry, but you do need to take this exam, today, with everyone else.
Sally: I won’t.
Dr. M.: Then you will lose 5 points every day until you take the exam, per the syllabus.
Sally: Who can I complain to then?
Dr. M.: Department Chair Charlie
Sally: What is his phone number?
Dr. M.: Honestly, I don’t know it off the top of my head.
Sally: Is he available right now?
Dr. M.: I also don’t know his schedule.
Sally: I am going to see him RIGHT now!
Dr. M.: Okay.

Remember – Student Sally was NOT a 20-year-old punk kid who thinks the world revolves around her. She is an “adult” in the sense – I guess – that we have all been talking about adults. She probably has a mortgage, a job, we know she has children. And yet, she misses class the week before the exam and is surprised and shocked that her teacher “Mrs. Madge” didn’t send the missed work home with her younger brother and a “Get Well Soon, We Miss You!” note.

Maybe – just maybe – these kids are just reflecting back to us society at large. And since we don’t like what we see, we blame them.

Is it wrong to dance with your kids to Scissor Sisters’ “Filthy Gorgeous“?

They LOVE it.

I just spent the morning writing a letter to a student to tell her that DUDE, it’s been three weeks and I am not extending this motherfucking exam deadline for you anymore.

I believe all her relatives have now died and she has had every illness known to man. It’s quite remarkable the way god hates her so much.

Bought: Eat to Live.

Thanks to Vegan Lunch Box for steering me to a Dr. Furhman decent weight loss/healthy eating/disease reducing book that makes some damn sense for me. It even makes sense for my skinny-ass kids.

Update: I AM interested if anyone doesn’t like this plan, tried it, or knows any damn thing about it!

Good Hangover Day to you all!

HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, you want me to stop shouting? HA!

I was totally sober and watched the worst movie of all time on St. Patrick’s Day, “Idiocracy.” Even though Mike Judge made it, it was so bad that friends have decided I am forbidden to pick movies ever again and I agreed.

A reviewer says it was just as good as “Office Space.” He LIED. It was supposed to be a biting satire on the future and sure, it was, without the biting and in a totally obvious non-snarky annoying blatant way. It was a one-trick pony that just wouldn’t stop for 84 minutes.

I stayed in because I just didn’t feel up to the whole messy crowd thing and usually St. Patrick’s Day has traditionally been an impromptu high school reunion for me. This is not a good thing. I already talk to the people I want to from high school and I don’t want to meet the rest when I’m dancing on a bar table to “My Humps.”

That’s just uncomfortable for us all.

So I stayed in, even though I’m supposed to be a bit Irish. My sister and I found this out about two years ago when we realized that my grandmother was a redhead named Helen Patricia Moore who went by Patty as a kid and her siblings names things like Danny and other various Irishy things. We asked her, and she’s all “Of course we’re Irish” and then she stared into my soul for a while to determine why I needed to know such private information.

But. Who fucking knew, Grandma? No one shares this kind of thing with anyone in our family!

As far as Lindy and I were ever told, we were planted here by magical fairy princess witch gypsies.

Brett turned eleven on Tuesday.

I had to wait until now to share that with you since he asked me earlier, “Are you going to put that on your Sugar site?” in way that suggested I did not.

But I did. Ha, eleven year old boy!

I am proud of you and I wish all the internets to hear Mama say HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

I am attempting to change a few things I suck at in life. I am a typically late person and I hate being late so I am not being late all the goddamned time. I am typically a procrastinator so I am trying to not wait for the last minute for work, stuff for the kids, shopping…and picking up my birth control pills.

So a few weeks ago, I decide that I shall not wait until the day I run out to procure the next pill pack. I will go early! I will not procrastinate!

I am shut the hell down.

My insurance will only authorize a new pill pack after three weeks from the last one. Which, whatever, fine.

But then I said, “Oh, okay, can I just pay for them since I’m here?”

I was surprised when the nice lady answered, “No.”

No?

Uh…I’m sorry, huh?

God knows I need to ask questions.

Why?

What if I used them as a morning after contraception and now I needed a new pack?

Nice Pharmacy Lady, I don’t mind waiting for my insurance to pay the part they pay since I didn’t need them yet.

But don’t tell me NO.

You are not my doctor. You are not me.

New Cat, Lydia, will apparently shun delicious sushi…in favor of the chopsticks.

Gnaw, gnaw, bite, gnaws on the wood as I struggle to get them back.

I think she is defective.