Coup d'Lynn

So I'm no longer PTA treasurer.  The executive board staged a coup three weeks into the school year and ousted the president.  That's right, all the women who re-elected her at the end of last year (and I was at the meeting. They all voted 'aye') got together and in a flurry of emails and texts decided she had to go because she, wait for it, disagreed about the website.  Oh. My. God! Off with her head!  And it involved the council level pta people and the district level pta people and the assistant superintendent and the principal who finally said, "Holy shit. You gotta go cause these fuckers are crazy and I'm not losing my dental insurance over this."  Okay, I don't know what he really said.  I'm paraphrasing.

But anyway, I decided that this was the perfect time to resign as well.  For a couple of reasons really.

One: this was a clear shift from the usual Ha-Ha Crazy to a World War Z Crazy where you have to slowly and quietly back out of the room before they notice you and try to eat your brain.  Ha-Ha crazy is entertaining.  Zombie crazy is just plain scary and I'll leave that to Brad Pitt.

And two: this was the Worst. Coup. Ever.  It wan't even a real coup.   It was a Slap Fight.  Frankly it was embarrassing and I demand to be in charge of the next coup.  I'll go all Argo on their asses.  We'll storm the gates of the school.  Well, someone will have to call ahead and make sure the gates are closed and locked, and then we'll storm the gates.  We'll need a ladder, someone write that down. We'll break windows and burn files.  Papers will be shredded.  Demands will be shouted over the PA system.  Kids will sneak away on bicycles. And hostages!  What's a coup without hostages?!  Someone is getting handcuffed to a fucking radiator!   I want someone down a rat-hole until the marines show up.   We're in this for the long haul so line up your babysitters now!  And the next person who plans a Twitter-coup is getting put on cafeteria rations for a month.  Jeez.

Careful what you say...

So my mom is down for a visit and I was showing her this amazing blanket that I found during our trip to France.

Me:  "Feel it!!  You gotta feel it!!  It's sooooo soft...."
Mom:  "You know, you can get those at Costco."
<pause>
Me: "I'm going to remember that comment when it's time to put you in a nursing home."

Miscommunication

So John was watching football when I walked into the family room and said, "So I'm thinking about doing something different in the bedroom."

He jumped up, tossed aside the remote and said, "YEAHHH?!?!?!"

Me: "With the furniture."

John, plopping back down on the couch and reaching for the remote: "Can this wait till halftime?"

My Homage to The Bloggess

Eight Pounds of Uncut Cocaine

Okay, it's my Grandmother's china but after I unpacked it, I thought "Holy shit, I'm a mule!"

Now that's the response I was looking for

I've been cleaning closets for the last couple of weeks and I really should have taken before/after pictures because I'm under appreciated in my time.  See, I am an awesome purger.  I know what to keep and what to get rid of.  And most importantly, I know that most of the crap is not worth keeping. We may not have been Army brats but my Dad worked for the government and we moved like Army brats.  Is it Grandma's?  Are they your baby shoes?  Have you touch it in the last year?  Nope? It's gone.   You know all the stuff that you shoved in a closet to deal with later?  I dealt, baby.  I dealt. I cleaned out all of the closets in the house except John's.  He has a strange attachment to personal items that only a person who spend 25 years in the same house can have.  I really don't get it.  And I really don't get that he can't tell the difference.  Look! Just look!

Me:  John, come in here!!
John:  What?
Me:  Come on! You have to see this!!
John: Where are you?
Me:  Sam's room!  You've got to see this!
John:  What?
Me:  Look!!
John: What?
Me: The closet!! Look in the closet!!  Look at the shelves!!
John: Ooh, yeaaah, it looks great. Can I go?
Me:  As soon as you can tell me what I did?
John: Ahhhhhhh, I really don't know.
Me:  I cleaned it out!! I emptied four garbage bags worth of crap out of here!! Look at all the space!!
John:  Oh yeah, it looks great.  Can I go?
Me:  Ugggh.  Never mind.  I'll call mom.

I had the same problem when I cleaned the garage.

So finally my friend Deb came over.  I opened up the cupboards in baggage claim to show her:

• all the school supplies that had been gathered from throughout the house and neatly organized on one shelf
• the oddball Christmas decorations that were together and out of the way on the bottom back shelves
• containers of cd's and dvd's we can't part with in neatly stored way up on the top where you can't reach things anyway.  
• all the umbrellas in one spot

It was a work of art.

She took one look at it and said, "Oh, now that's sexy."

See, now is that so hard??

Dogs - Man's most expensive best friend

So I stopped by the vet's this morning to pick up Abbey's meds.  Just regular ole over the counter flea/tick meds and heart worm pills.  $147  When did the cost of caring for your dog raise to the same level as the cost of caring for your kids?

Don't get me wrong, I love Abbey.  She may be pushy about the belly rubs but there are days when she's my favorite person in the house.  She hangs on my every word and no one in the world is as happy to see me as her.  Even when I've just been in the bathroom.  Bouncing, tag wagging: <where have you beeeeeen? I missed you soooooo much! scratch my belly.  scratch it.  scratch the belly.>

But $147 for flea/tick and heart worm meds??  Let face it, if fleas and ticks didn't bite humans, no one would care about them.  And heart worms?  I'm still not entirely sure they exist.  I didn't buy the pills until they starting putting those 3-D plastic models in the examination rooms.  Neither did you; stop lying.  But that model is so gross, and strikingly similar to several sci-fi movies, that I bought the pills.   I didn't want that those things bursting out of her chest and eating the rest of the crew.  Who needs that?

Me:  The vet wants $500 to clean Abbey's teeth so she doesn't die of kidney failure.
John:  How can bad teeth cause kidney failure?
Me:  I don't know but the price is still $500.
John:  The dog didn't cost $500.
Me:  I know; that's what I said and she gave me a funny look.  The vet, not the dog.
John:  Her teeth look fine.
Me:  I know.
John:  So what are we going to do?
Me:  I bought a $13.99 canine toothbrush and told Sam I'd give him a quarter every time he brushed the dog's teeth.
John:  Genius.
Me: I have my moments.

Welcome to San Ramon!

That's right, Harry Sachs is running for City Council.

Almost as good as the flyer we received in Arizona for a Kindergarten social hosted by the teachers:  Ms. Kuntz and Ms. Cox.  (hand to god)

Or the attorney in the office above John's buddies:  Richard Head, esq.  (you really can't make this stuff up)

Treasurering's Hard

So yesterday evening was my first meeting as PTA treasurer at the middle school.  It was the first meeting of the year so there was a good turn out, maybe 25 people. Mainly strangers.   I muddled through the treasurer's reports and stumbled through the motions I had to proposed but all in all, I though it went pretty well.  Until the agenda moved on to the student directory.  The principal piped in and said, "Well, I suppose this is the time of year we discuss whether we should move towards an on-line directory only and eliminate the printed hard copy."  And so the discussion ensued...the pros and cons of an on-line directory...the pros and cons of a hard copy....lots of opinions.....lots of comments.  And during a lull in the conversation, I blurted out, "Well, I always like a hard one!...oh damn,  totally came out wrong....oh sh-!" Then Lynn, the president, said, "Jennifer, stop talking!" Or something along those lines.  I really couldn't hear anything at that point and my vision had gone all blurry.   Sometimes you really need a friend to tell you when to stop talking.  I think I'm going to embroider that on a pillow.

The Mantis Shrimp

After seeing the mantis shrimp on Saturday, I've been thinking that maybe we should get one.  It would go great in the Beach Shack.*  I guess John was thinking the same thing because we had this conversation last night.

John:  "I've been looking into getting a mantis shrimp."
Me:  "Really??  How much do they cost?"
John:  "Well, it's not the cost of the mantis shrimp that gets you, it's everything else."
Me:  "It needs a special tank, right?  Cause it can break the glass of a regular tank?"
John:  "Yeah, and you need chain mail gloves lined with Kevlar to clean it."
Me:  "Oh, I'm sure we have some of those in the garage."
John:  "And some of these retailers won't ship them.  You have to drive out to get it."
Me:  "To Florida?  really?......What do they eat?"
John: "The usual"
Me:  "You don't have to feed them things that are alive?"
John:  "Not like crickets or a rabbit but you could give them live mussels or something like that."
Me:  "Okay, but how much do they cost?
John: " Anywhere from $40 to $100. Depending on the type.  They're not all rainbow colored. Did you know that?"
Me: "But I want a rainbow colored one."
John:  "Cause they're pretty?"
Me: "Cause they're pretty......That's kinda pricey though.  What if it dies?!"
John:  "If it dies, we can eat it."
<silence>
Me:  "I can't believe you're going to eat Rosemary."
John: "Rosemary?  Really?......Rosemary with butter and garlic.....that works."



*We don't have a formal living room.  We turned it into the boys' play room with a beach theme hence "the beach shack"  We also have "baggage claim".  It's that strange area at the end of the hall that you walk through before going through the laundry room and into the garage.  Not sure how it got that name but for the longest time we didn't know what to call it and now we all do.

What's wrong with people?

So we went to Monterrey this weekend to see the mantis shrimp at the aquarium.  If you don't know what a mantis shrimp is check this out:

www.theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp

Mantis shrimp rock!

When we got back to the hotel, John went to check out the pool and there was an emergency phone on one of the walls.  It was enclosed in hard plastic with a break-away lock and a posted sign that read "Emergency Phone".   Pretty clear?  Thought so yet this guy was trying to break into it.  John, seeing no emergency anywhere in the pool area, stopped and said, quite incredulously, "That's an emergency phone."
And the guy responded, "We're out of towels."
John, "but it's an emergency phone."
Guy, "but...the towels are gone."

John, stunned speechless, walks away.