Cool!

I found out that my grammar doesn't suffer too badly when I write intoxicated! If you read the previous entry here on blogger, that was written after too much wine. I re-read it just now and thought, WOW, that's coherent! I woke up at 330a with a bad headache, so I know that I drank too much. Either that or I just drank too much without drinking water alongside it. I know better than to do that, but I think I was sitting at the computer while drinking, and I believe it made me lose track of trying to drink my water too.

Obviously, I don't have the kids with me this week. They are at Rob's because Ariana has the week off (spring break) and I don't. I get them back Friday. Alex shows up tonight, and then I'll leave him at the apartment tomorrow so he can work on a paper for one of his business classes. After school, I'll head on over to fetch my babies.

I'm really going to miss Ariana when Jared and I are over in France with Alex (April 30th-May 14th). Unfortunately, she just can't miss any more school so I can't take her with us! Rob will get to take care of Ari and also the cat, Chian. Jared only cares about France = Trains. He now asks me repeatedly, when are we going to France to ride the trains? I shake my head when he inquires about it. I want to correct him: "No, honey, it's when are we going to France to eat chocolate and cheese and drink wine!" Although I think Jared'll be missing out on the wine part. He IS only four after all. I'll have to bring Ariana back some French choccies and a few presents to make up for the fact that she can't be with us.

You know, my cat Chian is a hoot. He weighs....well, about as much as my children do. The boy lives for food. He gets his canned food treat in the morning and this is the highlight of his 13 yr old cat day. When a cat gets older, he or she sleeps and eats. Oh, and occasionally gets up to take a dump. Therefore, since he can sleep at will, food becomes the big focus of the day. Chian obsesses about chicken and meows and circles like a vulture while I cook it. Otherwise, his food issue is that he wants me to wake up and give him his canned food treat.

Basically, this situation means that I wake up early in the am to use the bathroom and MEOW! he's up from his place on my bed, circling me, weaving between my legs, howling excitedly...and then I go back to the bed and you can just HEAR the meow of despair. Sometimes he'll even swat at my ankles and try to STEER me to the kitchen. I think I have the world's only Australian Sheppard Cat because damn, can he ever herd with the best of 'em.

The best part about Chian, however, is that he is child friendly. We're talking this cat puts up with ANYTHING a child dishes out! When he's done being abused, he goes under the bed. But if he's not done being abused and I try to remove him from the situation because I don't want him to get hurt, he runs right back and allows for more fur pulling. For some reason, he just adores little ones.

I fear the day he dies. My kids will NOT take it well, especially Ariana. They already saw a previous cat pass away (Hecate, on Christmas Eve in 2003), and Ari's still upset by it. Jared deals with it by telling me Hecate is NOT dead, she's just lost and she'll come back. I guess life would be a lot easier if every living thing we love could die with us at the same time!

****

Ok, so let's review the wonderful students of yesterday. Not only did I get to see Brenda, who just plain rocks all on her own, but I also got to see Stephen who has a spare laptop with a wireless internet connection that he can let Alex borrow. Supposedly, he'll come to school with it today so that Alex can use it until A's own laptop is fixed! Alex's motherboard blew on his Toshiba piece of CRAP that the school made the students all buy. In fact, in that same week Severine's Toshiba's motherboard ALSO blew. Holy hell, over half of the students there have had the motherboard blow on their laptops! PIECE OF CRAP I SAY! Anyway, they are out of the part and so it's taking a while to repair. WHY are they out of the part? LET'S REVIEW! If just about every piece o' crap computer of theirs has this part blow out, I should say there's a shortage! Ok, so anyway, Stephen may be able to help out by lending his computer to Alex until either the end of april or whenever the laptop is repaired.

THEN I had a student who works for a really wealthy lawyer mention that he knew I liked wine....and that his boss just handed him $100 bottles of wine for no reason sometimes (or wait, something else he said might mean that his brother is the one working for the lawyer, but I thought it was HIM...hum...oh well, regardless, he gets this wine LOL). The guy is a beer drinker and he admitted he can't tell the difference half the time between crap wine and good wine, but he knows I can, and so would I like one??? SHIT YEAH!

Ok, and so THEN we also had Brit Lit Culture Projects this week, and a lot of the kids brought in medieval or renaissance recipes of food as part of the project. Yum! One of the items brought in was this deer tenderloin that had been marinated and rubbed down with lard (!) as per they'd do in the 13th century. My god was it good! The student who brought in the deer is one I had in 101...who tracked me down for a 102...and then who deliberately signed up for 205 this term only because I was teaching it. So, she loves me. When she saw how nuts I went over the deer tenderloin and I told her I liked to cook but never could get tenderloin to cook (the ex's brother was a hunter but he'd only give me the ground deer, deer sausage, or deer cube steaks...never the tenderloin!), she said, oh god my brother AND my dad hunt. My mom hates fixing deer. You want tenderloin? I'll try and bring you some next week. WOOHOO! Emeril's pecan encrusted tenderloin of venison, here I come!

I must have a big "gimme" sign on my forehead as far as students are concerned. They're always loading me down with stuff, even well after they have had me as a teacher and moved on. I really DO appreciate it though. Most of the time, I appreciate it not just because of the gift itself...but that they thought of me and WANTED to give me something. I guess I'm just sentimental like that.