Incidents and accidents

So, John took apart half the damn car yesterday… no, not really. Just all four spark plugs. The car still doesn’t start though, so this morning we went looking for the starter. After several hours looking through the repair book, looking online, following battery cords and calling Jared, we’ve discovered it’s location. It’s placed direclt under about 30000 cords, hoses, and wires. In order to get that damn thing out of there, we’d have to have rubber arms and be REALLY good practitoners of the Kama Sutra or something. It would cost us $140 (plus shipping) to have one sent to us to replace ourselves, and John says we don’t even know for sure if that’s the problem!
I was talking to Christine yesterday and she said “Heather, I think you just need to give up on the car. Buy a scooter or something.” I replied “A $1500 scooter isn’t really an investment we can afford to make right now.” to which she says “But you’ll buy a $900 camera?” She and John are of similar minds in this. To me, what I want and what I need are of equal value. Yes, I need a new car. Yes, I want a new camera. To me, same priority. It seems like to the people that matter most in my life, I’m really stupid for even thinking of buying a new camera, much less placing it on par with a car/scooter.

Larken and I went bowling today. She and Munchie have been sick all week, so she decided to get out of the house for some fun and asked me to come along. It was awesome! I put on the ugly shoes and threw the ball down the lane a few times. I got one strike, my first try. The rest of the balls didn’t knock over more than 7 pins. I have a habit of throwing it too far left. Larken actually won the game. I would have lost spectacularly if it hadn’t been for muchie. Unfortunately, bowling is hard when you’re four.
My car doesn’t work. I got in it on thursday morning to drive to work, and it made this awful sneezy sound and didn’t turn on. John and Stumpy have been out there for hours putting in new spark plugs for me, but to no avail. I called Jared (my brother the mechanic), and he thinks it may be the starter. If it isn’t, I have NO clue what to do about it. John keeps joking around that we should get a scooter for me. Larken and I were laughing about it earlier today. She says once it gets to be winter and I have to put on my skarf to get to work, I could have the thing flapping out behind me. I’m sure it would look quite silly. The cons to the scooter would be: 2 wheels (easy to tip over), no enclosure (freezing in winter, wet in the rain), not above 30MPH, useful for short ditances only. The pros would be: cheaper ($1500 new), good gas milage (80 - 100 miles a gallon), better for the environment. Not to mention that the vespa-retro styled ones just look awesome! I would totally buy one in baby blue and white. I’m not too keen on the freezing and wet thing though.

At work today, one of my kids runs up to me and says “Miss Hedder, a cadderpiwwar!” Normally, this is uneventful. I stroll over, pick up the caterpillar and fling it far away enough not to get squashed by overzealous two year olds. This time of year we’re thick with them, they’re literally jumping out of the trees (they’re Orange Striped Oakworms, which pupate underground overwinter). The kids usually smash at least three or four a day that I just don’t get to in time. Anyway, I stroll over expecting to find a longish black thing and instead find a HUGE green thing. I mean, this caterpillar was 4 inches long and an inch fat. It was the biggest caterpillar I have ever seen in my life. I picked it up on a twig because I wasn’t sure if it was poisonous or not, then showed it to some of the other kids before taking it away to a safer spot. I had my camera with me, so I got a picture of it so I could find out what kind of moth it would be. I know butterfly caterpillars don’t look like that, so I thought it might be a Luna Moth, but it turns out that it’s a Polyphemus Moth. It was neat to look at!

Truth or dare? Stolen from TaryAnn.

Yesterday while I was standing around outside, I noticed that there are piles of fallen leaves on each side of the parking lot now. It was so surprising. I guess it just didn’t strike me that it was so late in the season. Even though the hummingbirds are leaving, it’s still so warm that it just doesn’t feel like summer is ending at all. I’m sure that as it gets later in the season, the piles of leaves will get much bigger.
Stumpy and I took a walk today. She decided that she needed to hunt the birds though, so we came in rather quickly. Now she’s telling us rather loudly that she needs to go back outside, and make it snappy! I’d rather he be loud than eat the birds though. Especially my hummingbirds. While we were out, I got a few photos of her. They’re all on her page, with the Stumpy blogging captions. She had fun playing in the leaves and jumping up on John’s truck. I do love the photo of her standing around in the sunlight.

The poo pixies visited my classroom today. I promise, they were there. They are responsible for explosive diapers. Well, maybe it’s the 24 hour tummy bug that’s going around, but the poo pixies were still there.
This morning, I had one stinky diaper to dispose of. This is pretty normal.
This afternoon, I had NINE. I only had SIX kids in class today!
I had one child who apparently craps anti-grvity poo, because that shit crawled up to her neck. I swear, I didn’t even bother with wipes. I just took her to the bathroom and threw her in the sink. Her mom forgot to bring extra clothes for her, so I had to raid the lost and found.
I had another child who crapped so much that her diaper leaked out the bottom and dripped onto the floor. Her mother forgot to bring extra clothes as well, so she got to wear her twin brother’s clothes.
Everyone else had multiple runny craps, but none of the anti-gravity or exploding kind. This ALL happened within 30 minutes. Damn you Poo Pixies!

Do you ever have these wierd food binges? I have them. No idea what they’re really called. They’re called ‘food jags’ in children, but no one applies that term to adults. Anyway, it basically means that you want to eat the same food over and over for a few weeks at a time. I do this a lot. A few months ago, it was Milk Duds. I went through boxes of the things a day. After a few weeks of it, I was done. I still love them, but I don’t need to buy them in bulk anymore. Lately, it’s corn. I have always loved corn, but the past two weeks I’ve eaten corn at least every two days, sometimes more than once a day. I don’t know what it is. Tonight I made myself Mac & Cheese for dinner, because I’m on my period and my tummy can only handle bland things. So, as I was wating the mac boil, I thought “You know, This would go well with some corn.” WTF? So for dinner I ate a dinner plate 1/2 and 1/2 of corn and Mac & Cheese. Yellow and yellow. To top it all off, I opted for some apple juice to drink. Maybe I’ll have a can of cold peaches later.

Stolen from Larken

7 things I plan to do before I die:
1. Hang-Glide
2. Visit Japan
3. Become a hummingbird bander
4. Finish my graphic novel
5. Go on a cruise
6. Learn to better manage my money
7. Learn to think of myself as sexy

7 things I can do
1. Draw pretty girls
2. Herd 12 two-year-olds for a day
3. Take pretty pictures
4. See the beauty in everything
5. Build a computer
6. Code HTML
7. Make children smile

7 things I cannot do
1. Use the oven and the internet at the same time
2. Yell at children
3. Hurt people or animals
4. Stop myself from making fun of idiots
5. Stop eating sweets
6. Sculpt anything but dragons or bacon
7. Stop myself from loving almost everyone I spend time with

7 things that attract me to men
1. Long hair
2. Dark eyes
3. A well and often used brain
4. Good personal hygiene
5. The ability to be silly with me
6. The ability to tell me no
7. Forearms like bricks

7 things that I say most often
1. Get that out of your mouth, please.
2. Use your inside voices.
3. I love you.
4. You need to keep your hands to yourself.
5. Go pee-pee.
6. Wait your turn, please.
7. What did I tell you about hitting?

7 celebrity crushes likes
1. Tom Selleck
2. Liv Tyler
3. Bruce Willis
4. Hugh Jackman
5. Kate Winslet
6. Zhang Ziyi
7. Lucy Liu

7 people I want to do this
You, you, you, and you.

Larken is perhaps considering moving: Clickey. This makes me really sad for all of the obvious reasons, but it also make me thoughtful. A while back, John and I were considering moving closer to Atlanta as well. He goes to school in Kennesaw, which is 105 miles away from here. This is a 2x a week trip for him, which eats gas like you wouldn’t believe. I haven’t finished my degree here yet, and moving would really blow.. again, but it was somehting we were considering at the time. I think I would really hate it though.. the move, the job hunt, the traffic.. etc. Plus, the closer you get to big cities, the fewer hummingbirds you see…