Zabby, the Hair, and the Great Disappearing Brain

Zabby is my 18 year old fabularious wonder-daughter. She's very unique (her Senior Superlative even says so!). She's got this unbelievable waist-length hair, and this cool, gypsy-meets-molly-mormon kind of style: very modest, but quirky and funky and colorful. If it sparkles, she's all about it. She'll wear 25 bracelets simultaneously, with a broomstick skirt, a mohair vest, and pearls, and totally pull it off. She looks like that kid they're always trying to portray on t.v., but always end up going too trendy to get it right. Anyway, did I mention she's gorgeous? She is, when she makes the slightest effort. Like in the prom picture that I'm 99.9% sure I'm going to post on here. (Okay - it was more than the slightest effort - but I kid you not, she's fabulous with just lip gloss and a hair brush.) Problem is... she's one of those funky individuals who just couldn't possibly give a flip.

It's nigh unto impossible for me to believe that she in any way descended from my mother who literally, to this day, at 62 years old, will not go to the garbage dump without lipstick on. This child is perfectly happy wandering out the door with no shoes, no makeup, and no sign of a hair brush (as long as she has a funky hat).

Okay... enough about her looks... now on to the missing brain. :)

It helps to understand, as you ask yourself, "how can any self-respecting mother let her child go around like that?" that I keep telling myself she's smart enough to know better. But it may be that she's smart enough to know more than I do!

Her IQ is in the rather astronomical range of 141, which you would immediately assume translates into someone who is so smart that she wouldn't even need school. But the truth is... she's so smart, she needs a secretary. She can't tell her left shoe from her right. She never knows what day of the week it is. And she's been known to run into posts. (Admittedly, it was while walking and reading a book at the same time - but it has happened more than once!)

She's a cosmic underachiever, though. Where she is probably one of those kids that was meant to find the cure to cancer or something, instead, she inherited from me a bad case of the Idungivacraps and from her dad a bad case of the Nofreekinways. So instead, she's going to be the artsy-fartsy type. She's an incredibly gifted artist, and an amazing writer, who has already been published, and hopes to one day support her aging mother with the millions from her first novel. (Hey! Thirty-eight IS aging!! I didn't say OLD!)

So, as you can see... she's my pride and joy. She's my heart's devotion. She's the apple of my eye. She's the bane of my flipping existence!!!!

Let me tell you about her grades....

This, her senior year, is the first year I haven't been at the same school with her, and it's been a disaster. We missed out on the senior ads in the yearbook deadline, because dunder-butt never even noticed they were announcing it (every day for 9 weeks). And we narrowly missed ordering her cap and gown and invitiations for graduation for much the same reason. (And WHOSE idea was it that we order such things in October of the Senior year??? Probably the same doof-ball who decided we needed class rings in 10th grade, senior portraits 10 days after the junior year is over, and who told Wal-Mart to start putting out their Christmas stuff before Halloween.)

Ahem...anyway... this is the manner of her life. She is the poster-child for attention deficit disorder (as I'm typing this, she's scooping up her little brother in a bear hug, and knocking a plate of pizza onto the floor. Argh!!). Despite the fact that her mother was her assistant principal from 10th-11th grade, she could never manage better than mediocre grades (LOTS of B's), and actually ended up with a C in BAND (no, I'm not kidding) because she failed to turn in ONE STUPID WORKSHEET!!!. (Yes, I know it was over a year ago, but I'm having some trouble letting it go.)

Anyway, so she's a month away from her final semester in high school, with a 3.23 GPA, hoping to get into BYU, having never managed to take the ACT test (even though I kept writing the check...and she kept forgetting to turn in the paperwork!). Getting down to the wire (they want all their Freshman applications in December), she finally managed to take the test, but it was the perfect picture of Murphy's Law.

On the day of the test, she realizes she has no calculator (we stopped on the way and bought one) and she has no picture ID (couldn't buy that - and couldn't get a driver's license because we were afraid to let her behind the wheel). Luckily, they recognized her, and let her in. But, in true Zabby fashion, got sick as a dog in the middle of the test - I'm talking full-out stomach wrecking diarrhea sick - and they wouldn't let her go to the bathroom. She moaned and whimpered and sweated all the way through the first part of the test, just to streak to the bathroom during the break, and not make it back until they'd already finished the entire math section!! Then, of course, she wasn't done being sick... and long story short, $42 later, she comes out of the testing room and says, "Mom, I don't think I did very well...."

Well... what could I say? The kid was sick. So I tried really, really hard not to anticipate the score report. I knew it would cause me pain, so I just went ahead and forked out the money to have her re-tested. Then... the scores came. And I'll bet you can see this coming...

If you know anything about ACT, you probably know that the scores range from 1 to 36, and most people get between an 18 and a 25. To be competitive at a school like BYU, which has pretty darn high standards, you really need the upper end of that range, along with a high GPA, great church leader recommendations, etc. We knew that the October test wasn't going to help her in THAT quest....

And then we got the scores.

Genius-child, beloved offspring of my loins, miraculously produced... a 34 in English, and a 34 in Reading... in spite of the fact that she was sick. She didn't get a regular composite score, because she missed the entire math test... and she got a 24 on the Science (ONLY better than 72% of all the students taking it), which probably has to do with the fact that she hasn't taken a science class in 2 years.

When one sees scores like that... and then hears her excuse for "getting distracted" when she was supposed to be getting her homework done...(its like her brain just disappears!)... one gets a little ... nuts. And she's been doing that stuff for...oh, about 18 years now. So I'm off my flipping rocker, and I've got no one to thank but Zabby, the Hair, and the Great Disappearing Brain. (Okay, that's a huge exaggeration. But you'll have to wait to find out where all my gray hairs came from until Katie is 18, and I can feel a little better about roasting her on the Internet!)

I love my Zabby... but I swear... she'd better marry a rich man. That's all I'm saying about that.

Back to Reality

For those of you who actually subscribe to this nonsense, I apologize for letting so much time, and so many events, to pass uncommented-upon. I shall try to rectify this horrendous error in the briefest manner possible.

1. Yes, I know Obama won the Presidency. Yes, I know that my dreams of seeing a female Republican in the White House have been crushed (at least until 2012). I survived Bill Clinton, I will survive this affront as well. However, I will note that if the man actually puts Hillary into any cabinet position beyond Secretary of Janitorial Services... well... anything I could possibly add to the end of that sentence would make me a target for the Secret Service guys, so I'll just shut up while I'm ahead. Even I can bite my tongue (mostly) for 4 years.

2. The world has changed in 3 months. My 20 year class reunion came and went, and being a teacher and a single mom, I was too broke to manage to attend it. That really annoys me. You know what annoys me more? I just learned that my best friend from high school (Cindy) has been living just a few miles from where I lived until I moved here!! And I had no clue. Which of course makes me wonder if SHE had a clue... and if she was just avoiding me because she heard all of those lame accountant jokes I've been telling for the last ten years. Honestly, knowing she's an accountant now, I might have to reconsider my position on how unbearably boring accountants are, because she was always the most fun person I could remember.

3. We moved (again). As much as I loved the farm (and I did)... cramming my three kids and myself into a tiny 450 square foot cottage, even lost in the middle of some awesome acreage, got old. Something about tripping over a box of dishes on the way to the toilet that tends to get you over the small thing rather quickly... Anyway, we're in Chiefland now. Here's the ironic part:

So I decided to home-school my middle child after her hospitalization, but I wanted to keep her supervised. So managed to make arrangements for her to spend her days at a local real estate office, doing virtual school assignments on her laptop. But driving 60 miles to go back and forth from Bell to Trenton to Chiefland to Trenton to Bell over and over was putting crazy miles on my car (and when gas hit $4.98 a gallon, I thought we'd be switching to peanut butter without the jelly!). So I finally decided to see about renting this awesome house that was sitting vacant next to our church in Chiefland for the last 3 years. We got it, so she'd be able to walk back and forth to her "school" at the real estate office. But immediately upon moving in, she stopped going, and now they're going out of business. Regardless, we love the house. (My bedroom is bigger than the entire old house!) And we're here to stay until directed otherwise.

5. I've gone back to school. It wasn't a hard decision. My student loans, after consolidation (because they were previously at $1150 a month!), are now at $551. My "highly qualified" teacher pay, for someone with 11 years of experience and 2 graduate degrees, nets me $2800 a month, after the health-insurance leeches and taxation. So there's not a lot left to throw around, while supporting 2 children and a very expensive high school senior who is now, technically not a child any more. Thus, I decided that rather than continue throwing over six grand a year at my student loans, I might as well collect another degree in hopes that it will help me overcome the stumbling blocks in my career created by the state financial crisis. I am pursuing my Ph.D in Special Education Administration through Capella University. It's an enormous amount of work, but very interesting, and it is the primary reason I haven't found time to post anything lately. Writing this gives me a guilty conscience when I've got three discussion posts due.

4. My inclination is to make a rant about my darling 18 year old daughter, but I think she's worth an entirely separate entry.... so I'll rant about my 5 year old son instead.

HOW can a 5 year old possibly out-grow a pair of pants in ONE week? I swear, he got these gorgeous pleated khaki pants for his birthday (Sep 29) and he wore them to church on November 9. But by the 16th, they were too short by at least an inch, and we couldn't button them! I would think that they had shrunk, except I didn't wash them. (Hey, he only sat in a pew in church in them, for pete's sake. I do have SOME sense of responsibility to the earth and to my electric bill. I'm not washing clean clothes!)

So I took him to target last night, and we looked for new pants in a 6 slim... found some that fit beautifully... but they didn't have a single pair of pants that were appropriate for church for under $14. What is that about??? Who can send their child to church in $40 worth of clothes? He's a boy!! He'll either destroy them or wear them out in 2 months!!

Sheesh.

Okay, so I bought him some sweat pants instead. No, he can't wear them to church. I'll stress over that problem at about 9:30 tomorrow morning.

Heroes

Everybody needs a hero, right? Someone they can look up to, respect, someone they'd like to grow up to be....

At nearly 38 years old, I don't often stumble over many of those, and the few that I do are generally long gone, having made their mark in the world long ago. There are many women I admire, and many I respect, but few that I can honestly say - I'd love to wake up in her flip-flops one day. Not to imply that I'm becoming cynical (surely not me...), but I truly was beginning to lose hope.

I'd dreamed, almost desperately, of Romney in the White House this winter. Yes, I was living in a dream world. 164 years after the first Mormon ran for President (Joseph Smith, Jr. - yes, the LDS Prophet - ran in 1844 - look it up!), this country still isn't ready to truly embrace the concept of absolute freedom of religion in terms of a separation of church and state. Sure, those who find their own errant ways threatened by the concept of religion want to drag prayer out of schools and the words "One Nation Under God" off of our official documents, buildings and currency - but it's these same hypocrites who are so obsessed with religion that they can't even consider a candidate for President who has slightly less than typical religious views.

Yes, I was dreaming. I'm over it. I spent months wondering how I would sleep at night if I voted for McCain, especially if he did something completely assinine, as had been suggested, such as choosing Charlie Crist, the very bane of my existence, for his running mate. I have no shortage of respect for McCain, but the fact remains that he is, by all definitions, elderly, and not exactly in perfect health, a combination which could spell disaster for the United States with the wrong Vice President in office.

However, after spending months wavering between voting for McCain, and placing the "anti-vote" - a vote I knew wouldn't get anyone elected, but would send the definite message that I wasn't satisfied with either of the major candidates - McCain has now made a move which has put me solidly behind him in this election. He has chosen Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

I have long seen great appeal in the idea of a woman in the White House, but I've yet to see a woman that I thought had the morals, the intelligence, and the back-bone to do the job justice. But Sarah Palin seems to be the kind of woman I'd like to be. She's obviously a hard-working woman, but she's also taking her family life seriously too, as the mother of 5 children, including one just born last spring, who has Down Syndrome. Initially, I was concerned about how that would affect her performance, although, as a Special Education teacher, the idea of someone in office who has first hand knowledge of the special challenges these families face due to educational bureaucracy really appealed to me. However, then I learned that her blue collar husband turned stay-at-home dad in order to support the family and his wife's career. I can't tell you how much respect I have for him, in making that difficult choice, and for the two of them pulling that off successfully in a society where there is so much emphasis on men being the primary bread-winners in the family.

Everything I've read about her stand on the issues has appealed to me. Abortion, for her, is a black and white issue, as it is for me. Gay marriage is as well. And, conversely, as governor of Alaska, she pushed her legislature to fully fund education in her state. I can't imagine what that's like, in my second decade of education in Florida, where fully-funded education is an oxymoron of the highest degree.

I read that some folks believe that McCain somehow thought that Palin would win him the votes of the disgruntled female voters who were hoping Hillary would take the Democratic nomination, and frankly, anybody who believes that apparently is only motivated to get a set of breasts in office, and doesn't care one whit about the issues, since Palin and Hillary are about as different as night and day.

I have long said that I wanted to see a woman in the White House, and Hillary never satisfied that urge because, to her, powerful woman = man in dress. She's about as feminine as an old jock strap. Contrary to Hillary's delusions, slapping on a little lipstick does not make one a lady. She could take lessons from Palin, whose beauty and poise are just icing on an intelligent, determined, and morally solid cake. Sarah Palin is my hero. This ticket could only get better if she were running with Mitt Romney. But then the pair of them would be so good-looking, these vanity-obsessed democrats would never take them seriously!

Five Things You Don't Know About Me

I was challenged to do this... and I've never been able to resist a challenge, so here goes:

1. I have six toes on my right foot. Heh. Just kidding. Actually, I was once attacked by a kid with six fingers on each hand - I kid you not. Well, technically my car was attacked by her. She was the "surprise invitee" to my daughter's 8th birthday sleep-over party. And after she shoplifted while we were picking up the cake, and tried to strangle (literally) my 5 year old, I decided she needed to go home. But her parents refused to come to the door, and wouldn't answer the phone. And when I left her on the porch and ran for my car, she chased me and proceeded to rage and scream and bang on my car windows as I tried (successfully, thank goodness) to back away without running her over. I hadn't noticed the spare pinkies until her little fists were beating on the glass next to my face. But the kids noticed it too, so it wasn't just a fear-induced delusion.

2. I secretly covet my neighbors' livestock. :) Actually, my neighbors just have cows and donkeys, and I don't really want the donkeys. But I would love to have at least one milk cow, a bunch of chickens, a couple of pigs, and a horse or two. I have secret fantasies of marrying a farmer. Unfortunately, farmers don't generally join ldssingles.com since they're usually a lot more involved with their tractors than their computers. So I don't have much of a chance of meeting one.

3. I'm writing a novel. It's a slow, slow process, and would probably go a lot faster if I put more time into it. But it's a modern day Mormon romance, and since my life is pretty devoid of romance at the moment, I'm really lacking on inspiration. Is it wrong to pray to have my fat melted away over night so some fabulous priesthood holder will be able to see past my mile-wide backside to my mile-deep testimony?

4. I have always wanted to own my own business. Most of my adult life, in my head this has looked like a teacher-store - one of those stores where teachers go to buy cool posters, and manipulatives, and idea books. I even know exactly where I would put it. If I only had the $300,000 I'd need to start it up, I'd get it cranking and involve my kids in the family business!

5. I have the solution to the deadbeat dad (and mom) crisis in America: deduct past due child support from people's Social Security. If the deadbeat were to die, the kids would get it anyway, and isn't it a shame when a parent is worth more to their kids dead than alive? At least if they could collect it from the parent's Social Security, we could reduce the impact of deadbeat parents on the welfare system, and force them, in the long term, to take care of their kids, by having to work more years to take care of themselves.

6. Yes - I know there wasn't supposed to be a six, but I still had more to say, so quit counting.

I know something that the majority of the world hasn't figured out: Jesus is the Christ, Joseph Smith was a prophet, and there is a living prophet on the Earth today, and he receives revelation from God, and he can help us figure out what to do in these troubled times. His name is Thomas Monson, and he is the leader of the LDS Church. Check him out at http://www.lds.org/ or ask me and I will tell you more.

I saw a bumper sticker a while back that said "If they were arresting Christians, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" I'm a smart-aleck, and seriously sarcastic, and completely goofy 90% of the time. But on the off chance that there's someone out there who doesn't know where I stand with Jesus - make note. Jesus is the Messiah. He came to earth, as a part of the great plan of salvation, knowing He would be crucified to pay the price for our sins. He made it possible for us to return to live with Heavenly Father one day, and I love Him.

So lock me up. I've already been convicted. :)

A Special Kind of Stupid

I've got a 17 year old daughter who, if left home alone, will honestly forget to eat. She gets so caught up in ... whatever... (a book, Spongebob, watching paint dry...)... that she is completely oblivious to the passing of time, and doesn't even recognize the pangs of hunger in her belly. I've always said it takes a special kind of stupid to forget to eat. And judging by the ever-expanding size of my backside, I must be absolutely brilliant.

However, I have to say... her place as the flower of the family has been overtaken... by me.

Did you ever have one of those days when you knew you should never have bothered to roll out of bed? Well, I do believe I've got one for the record books.

Let me preface this absurd tale with a little disclaimer - this has been absolute hell week, and as a result, I've been dropping IQ points by the hour, as I worried myself sick over my middle daughter who has been in the hospital for the last 8 days, which also explains the extended period without posting on my blog. (Don't worry, she's fine. It's a story for another day.) Oh, there was also the 4 day layover with Tropical Storm Fay, which put our entire world on hold until today. But that's another story too.

Anyway, so I'm more than mildly sleep-deprived, and severely stressed out... thus it is no surprise that when it came time to get ready for work this morning, I wasn't quite prepared. Somehow, I failed to do enough laundry during the storm, and I was down to one pair of work pants - the hated chestnut brown ones, which nothing really matches. When I'm desperate, though, I've been known to pair them with a butter yellow tunic I got from Cato last year, that has a johnny collar and a drawstring waist, and is just so flattering and adorable that I actually bought an identical one in white to wear to graduation in June (except it disappeared immediately thereafter.... I'm suspecting that one of the girls killed it in a load of red laundry, and rather than present me with the offense of its pink remains, just put it out of its misery, in the garbage can outside... but that, of course, is yet another story). Anyway, so I was planning on wearing the brown pants and yellow shirt, right? Except everything I own needs to be ironed (the downside of cramming a family of 4 into a 450 square foot cottage - no storage space!).

So while simultaneously cooking my son's breakfast this morning, I set up the ironing board in front of the stove, and got busy ironing my clothes. The pants are that delightful gabardine, that generally requires only minimal heat to drop the wrinkles, so I did them first, and then threw the shirt on the board, while I was putting the muffins in the oven. As they baked, I got busy with the ironing, making sure to thoroughly saturate my shirt with starch, since I like my clothes really, really crisp. Unfortunately, though, the iron didn't seem to want to evaporate the starch, like it normally does. So I touched the bottom of the iron to make sure it was hot enough (and roasted my fingertip). Confused, I tried ironing longer, pressing harder... nothing. I just couldn't understand it. The more I tried to iron, the tastier those muffins smelled, but the starch spots just wouldn't go away.

Then, as I went to set the iron down in frustration, you can imagine the horror that befell me, as I realized that I'd never managed to get the starch out of the closet - and had sprayed my favorite shirt down with Pam!!! I was so aghast that I dropped the iron, whose high-quality plastic casing shattered into a million pieces on my tile floor. The light was still on though, even though all manner of wiring was visible, so I figured it would probably still serve my purposes, and I chose another shirt - a lightweight cream sweater (which I would normally never wear in Florida in August, but I was desperate to match those darned brown pants!!!) and I placed it on the board to be ironed. Unfortunately, I failed to realize that on the way down, the iron apparently bounced on its tip, and created a jagged edge which, when applied to the fabric, resulted in a horrendous, irreparable snag.

One blouse, one sweater, one iron - 15 minutes. I guess I should be thankful that I didn't starch the blasted muffins!

Yes, my daughter's place as flower of the family has been usurped, by me - the bloomin' idiot.

Vices

So... yesterday I read a quote from Kathryn Heigl, who was reportedly raised in the LDS Church... (okay, she was raised by an LDS family, and I'm fairly sure they periodically took her to an LDS Church...let's not split hairs, 'kay?) Anyway... she said something about how she's being lazy about the church, and that she'd have to quit the smoking and the drinking if she were to go back to church. Hmmm...

I was really, really lucky. When I joined the Church, I had never smoked (still haven't, never will, yuck). I had already quit drinking (quit when I learned I was pregnant with my first child - technically 2 years before I was legally old enough to drink - my career as an alcoholic was pretty short-lived). And although I had learned to really like coffee if it had enough hazelnut or amaretto sauce in it, I had already figured out it was causing my migraines, so I'd pretty well quit that too. And, I was pretty much of a mind that drinking tea was like unto drinking syrup. The first sip wasn't too bad, but you just had to start gagging after that.

Point being - I didn't have to make too many big sacrifices to qualify as meeting up to the basic societal standards of the Word of Wisdom when I joined the Church.

But this is not to say I don't have a vice or two. Aside from an occasional chocolate binge, my latest kick is commonly known as "Saving Grace" - a t.v. show that is aired on TNT on Monday nights at 10/9 central starring Holly Hunter. Now, I know when it comes on because I happened to see a commercial for it yesterday. I actually watch it on my computer, by downloading the episodes off of iTunes. If you've ever seen the show, then you know why I have to do this. #1 - This show is NOT fit to be playing with wide-awake children around the house. Besides the fact that Detective Hanadarko is an absolutely horrible role-model who celebrates every vice she's got (and seems to have them all), there's also the ever-present possibility of a sudden and completely unnecessary bout of nudity. When I watch it on my computer, I can zip right through those embarrassing scenes the same way I sometimes do when I accept a romance novel on my mom's recommendation and it turns out to be a bit racier than I was anticipating. Except the computer has a fast-forward button, where with the book I just have to flip pages really fast. Anyway, you get the idea.

So I was watching an episode today and I just had to ask myself... what is it about this vile character that appeals to me so much?

Well, first off, I want to grow up to be the actress who plays the main character. Holy mackerel, that woman is RIPPED!! I mean, she has arms like a MAN - a BUFF man!!! Okay, I'm calm again. Seriously, how do women get like that? I think, in real life, her vice must be pumping iron, because her body is really amazing. I would LOVE to look (and be) that strong. Of course, I'd have to sell my kids to afford the years with a personal trainer and a personal chef that it would take to get there (not to mention the plastic surgeon). Oh - and let's make it worse. She's FIFTY years old!! I look like HER mother, and yet she's old enough to be MINE!! (We agreed not to split hairs, remember?!?!)

Okay... back on track. What is it about this heavy drinking, heavy smoking, over-sexed, frequently cursing character that appeals to me? Here's my theory. She is bad. She is really, really bad. She has an angel that follows her around, and when he makes her mad, it's not unusual for her to decide to fling Froot Loops at him with a spoon, or wrestle him, or cuss him out, or whatever. The dude is sent from GOD, and yet she has no issues with telling him where to stuff it!! That's bad!!

Conversely, I am very, very good. I do not drink, or smoke, or curse (often... does "dangit" or "fart" count?) or have sex with men in bar bathroom stalls while people get murdered 3 feet away. My house is immaculate (compared to hers at least). I go to church and read my scriptures and pray and pay my taxes and try to act like a responsible person (90% of the time).

So that's it... I like her because she is so bad that she makes me look like a saint!! My vices - chocolate, and a little too much inappropriate t.v. - are nothing in comparison to this woman who has her own personal angel assigned to follow her around!

That... and I really want to grow up to look like that. Well...grow down, I guess. (I think she's about 5'2".)

Of course, if I were to wake up looking like that tomorrow, no one would know it because my unbelievably ripped biceps would be appropriately contained in a very modest outfit. But it would still ROCK!!

I Am Such a Schmuck.

I just have to quickly post this note, after my last rant.

It's related to the Murphy's law thing, somehow. Things don't have to just go wrong, so much as prove me wrong though. I should have made all of those obnoxious claims about the men on these LDS dating sites a long, long time ago.

Tonight a fellow sent me a smile... and he turns out to be nothing like the jerks that I complained about in my rant. In fact, he and I have so much in common, my daughter suggested that I might have made him up and written his profile myself!

Hmmm... unless I'm having a really bizarre version of that "Faces of Eve" thing... I may have actually been contacted by a man who is not a cretin or a reject of any sort. He's a college graduate, gainfully employed, a Gator fan, loves his kids, (named one of them after me)....

Maybe now I need to write a rant about the steadily increasing price of gasoline. Apparently, I have an untapped gift!!