How to Get Your Kids Ready for School

How to Get Your Kids Ready for School

Subtitle: I’m writing this more for myself, in the hopes that while I do this I will take my own advice.

Fat chance.

36 days now. That’s like a month. Are you watching Doomsday Preppers? Ya should, just a suggestion.

Step 1: Have your significant other pack lunch since they have to get up an hour before you do. This lets you sleep longer, but also pawns off some work on your other because there was a point in your life where you went to parties, did crazy things, drove to strange places in the middle of the night, were the life of whatever event you were at but now you are a Room-mother and a Girl Scout mom while your husband (yes, it is usually the man - sorry) still manages to be the same person he has been for years so yes, he needs to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Gives you more Daniel time too...

Step 2: Use the Snooze button. Ok, maybe step one should have been go to bed before one a.m. or so but dammit, the house was so quiet that it was hard not to stay awake and just sit enjoying silence, beautiful, peaceful silence, like you are right now, the lingering Daniel Jackson dream still playing out in your head, his lips, his touch, his...

 “MOM!!!! WILL CALLED ME A BUTT CHICKEN AND YOU SAID WE COULDN’T SAY BUTT CHICKEN ANYMORE!!! 

This, my friends, is the reason I’m a fan girl. To escape THAT. 

Step 3: Coffee. Drag yourself up but even though your wonderful spousage most likely made those lunches, you will need to pack and repack their backpacks FIFTEEN times because for some unknown reason they have decided that there is a bouncy ball that they earned from the prize box, that you somehow missed because you would have taken that bitch out and HID it, that they needed this morning, right now, no waiting, while you were trying to tell yourself that you really were asleep wrapped in Daniel’s arms. Now, their homework, binder, everything is ALL OVER THE PLACE. Oh yeah, the coffee. That’s important. That’s what’s making you not just go back to bed and let them fend for themselves. 

Step 4: Don’t feed the cat the night before. Ok, fine, this should go before step one, but I’m only about a quarter of the way into my coffee and it really is seven in the morning as a I write this and the ONLY time I’m up at seven in the morning voluntarily is when I’ve been up all night shopping. Because, without fail, this morning, right now, as you are seriously contemplated running away to Vancouver to kidnap your celebrity love obsession, the cleanest creature living in your house by far will have decided to puke. Right in front of the silverware drawer. Seconds before Adorable Nerd needs a spoon for his cereal. And you will step right in it. It’s still warm. I’ve got coffee, anyone got an whiskey?

Step 5: Showers should be taken the night before because adding anything to the morning other than putting on clothes should be nixed. Just lay off of me for the list today, you can print it, cut and paste and reorder on your own damn time it is now seven in the morning for crying out loud! I have nothing else to say other than if coffee doesn’t wake you up having your six year old rolling in the floor laughing because she just pulled your seven year old’s towel off, as he is running upstairs naked holding his junk while she screams that she hid his tightie whities, that sure as hell will. But not in a good way. I need more coffee. Can I just go back to Daniel? 

Step 6: Start the countdown twenty minutes out to AIS. If you never watched “Everybody Loves Raymond” AIS = Ass in Seat. It is the exact moment when my ass will be in the driver’s seat putting the car into reverse so if you do not want to walk you need to get your ass into the passenger seat. This is how it goes down EVERY morning. 

Me: 20 minutes to bus.

Kids: Ok

Me (5 minutes later): 15 minutes to bus. 

Kids: Ok

Clare: Will stop watching TV. 

Me: (turns TV off). Go get your shoes on and brush your teeth. 

Me (5 minutes later): 10 minutes to bus. 

Will: Clare won’t go away. 

Me: What’s she hurting?

Will: Her presence makes me move slower. 

Me: Clare, go to the kitchen.

Me (5 minutes later): 5 minutes to bus. Are those teeth brushed? How about your hair?

Kids: We’re ready. 

Me: (Walking out the door): I am walking out of the door right now.

Will: WHERE ARE MY SHOES!!!

Clare: I HATE YOU WILL YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE ME MISS SCHOOL. MOM CAN I HAVE A NEW BROTHER. 

The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Where’s my jacket? 

Step 7: Do not let them play with their pets. EVER. Even if by some miracle of Athena they’re ready to go twenty minutes early keep them away from anything furry including vomit cat. Because if not, they will pull the tail off the the gerbil, in a panic, as you give the AIS last call up the stairs, and then come downstairs screaming with a gerbil tail in their hand while the creature it is supposed to be attached to is upstairs, loose and bleeding. Trust me, nothing says parenthood like crawling all over the floor after a scared bloody gerbil that you have to wrap in a dishtowel to take with you to the bus stop only to come home and spend most of the day on the phone trying to figure out if this beloved pet is going to die. No worries, he’s fine - my sister is the president of her 4H club and works at a pet store, she fixed him right up. I just call him Stumpy. 

Step 8: Drive like the wind, maybe with a bloody animal in your hands, down your insane long OMA why do we live out here like this driveway, around the potholes your neighbors won’t have filled in because they cannot grasp the basic concept of road maintenance and are too stupid to just buy gravel and shovel themselves to drive over the plastic speed bumps installed by the stupidest of your stupid neighbors, because really SPEED is an issue in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, while lead stupid neighbor pulls out in front of you, slowing to a crawl and then stares down the bus driver like she does not belong on our private road picking up MY kids. I really hate these people, like madly, can someone PLEASE make them go away. And bring me another coffee. And Daniel. 

Step 9: Get on the bus. Kiss. Hug. I love you too. Go, no, go Mrs. T is waiting. Go, wait, where’s your coat? Did you brush your hair? Your teeth are yellow? No, I didn’t have time to get your coat, I was retrieving your gerbil who is bleeding on my yoga pants. Get on the bus, I will see you at three. Wait, Stumpy, stay in the dish towel!!!

Step 10: We know what this step SHOULD say but it is seven thirty a.m. I want wine. Badly. I want Daniel. More than words can express. I want to go back to bed but I have to log into work and deal with someone else’s kids.  So, let’s do some math. It’s gotta be 5 p.m. somewhere, right? One of your international readers? Have a glass, please, for me, and tweet me a pic. 

My twitter handle is @ladiosabri 

Thanks in advance. 

How to Treat a Teacher

How to Treat a Teacher

Subtitle: I am the reason you are not with your kid 24/7. A thank you once in a while would be nice. 
Oh and before I forget....110 days left my friends..110 days...

Just a note to kiddos in my area. Good luck to you guys starting this week. And good luck to your parents, because you act like idiots when it comes to homework. And come up with stupid reasons as to why you didn’t do it. I’ve heard them all. You are lucky they took away our paddles. 

Step 1: Recognize that a teacher is a person. Once of the greatest surprises in my life as a teacher was the first time I ran into a student at the grocery store.  No exaggerations, the conversation went down like this: 

Student: Sra! What are you doing here!?!

Me: Buying groceries hun, how are you? (see, I call everyone hun, even Michael Shanks - hee hee). 

Student: I’m good, you buy groceries here?

Me: Yea, they have good sales and double coupons. 

Student: You double coupons? So does my mom. 

Me: Smart woman. 

Student: (Stares at me dumbfounded saying nothing). 

Me: Well, I will see you later, got lots to do ya know?

Student: Ok Sra., I just can’t believe you shop here. 

Me: It’s weird I know. Especially when I have to stuff all of these groceries back into the ceiling of the classroom (Bri exits stage right)

Step 2: Understand a teacher’s schedule.  I will never get enough laughs out of those signs that say “The three reasons for being a teacher: June, July & August.”  THOSE signs were not made by a teacher. Because a teacher’s REAL work day/week/year looks something like this.  

September (for some of you, well me, August - sorry) - June

6:00 am - wake up, get your own kids moving if you have to, shower, dress and pack a lunch because some of those b$*ches think teaching high school is a damn fashion show AND the food in the cafeteria will cause you to die of type 2 Diabetes by age 40.

7:30 am - arrive at school, where you either have some sort of silly duty that would not need to exist if parents just whupped their kids once in a while OR get bombarded with students giving you excuses about why they don’t have their work. Because their goat ate it. No lie.  Which I have had told to me. And it was true. “How to Live in the Country” remember??

8:30 am - 3:30 pm - teach and teach and herd and teach and herd and scream and shout and grade and plan and SHOVEL FOOD DOWN IN 20 MINUTES BECAUSE WE ARE THE ONLY PROFESSIONALS ON THE PLANET THAT DO NOT GET AN HOUR and teach and grade and herd and yell and DONE.  That was the bell. Sweet Athena, get out of my room.  

5:00 pm - Make dinner while or after or during your own children’s soccer/football/basketball/yoga/robotics practice. Have stack of papers to grade for every free second.   This is how you will spend the next four hours. 

9:00 pm - Put kids to bed and sits with husband on sofa watching something on TV. Attempt to laugh reactively at the appropriate times despite the fact that you are knee deep in AP Spanish essays and it is insanely hard to grade in one language and watch TV in another. Suck it up and pour some wine (yeah, in step 2 already, it’s THAT bad) and get to work.  

11:00 pm - Fall asleep in papers.

1:00 am - Realize that you are asleep on sofa and husband has left you. Drag yourself to bathroom, brush teeth and pass out, hoping that at the very least Daniel Jackson will visit you in your dreams. 

3:00 am - Get up to go to the bathroom, no damn Daniel yet, pee and head back to bed, looking at the clock realizing you only have three more hours to sleep. 

“Next Verse, same as the first, southern accent now little bit worse” (No former scouts here? For shame...) 

Oh, did you think I forgot the summer? Here’s how we spend the summer.....

planning,taking classes, recertifiying, getting endorsements, engaging in school sponsored traveling, shopping for next year since they give us no money or supplies, doing every personal thing in our lives (marriage, etc) since we can never get time off during the year, all doctors visits, surgeries, major car repairs, 

You get the idea.  Remember my birthday? Don’t get me one of those little signs. I will smack you. 

Step 3: Make sure your kid is ready to start school.  Yes, I know the supply list is insane, but they are paying us a waitresses salary while they spend crazy amounts of money on things like football stadiums and electronic marquees and giving us a box of chalk and a smile. We know how expensive it is, but really, all we want is for you to send them with paper and pencils, that’s it.  If you kid has something to write with and write on, we’ll be happy and start begging for the rest. 

Step 4: Be involved in your child’s education and I mean really involved, Help them with their homework, spelling lists, reading charts and help out in the classroom when needed. And attend meetings about and for your kids.  Sober.  For real.  Do NOT waltz into a meeting to discuss your child’s academic future, did I say waltz, I meant stagger, announcing to the room that you are still young enough to get your period and are on it right now, so let’s get this shit over. True story. Happened to a friend. You just can’t make that shit up, you know? 

Step 5: Parent your child, leave the education to me part one. I am a professional. I have completed an insane amount of training in order to be underpaid and under appreciated.  But, in this training that my friends in college continuously mocked because I COULD have been a translator or something cool, I have learned a lot about, well, learning.  About how children learn, motivating children to learn, enhancing their educational experience, so trust me, ok? I don’t like those standardized tests any more than you do, but I have spent a LOT of my time trying to make sure the kids don’t even know they are prepping for the tests. Throw me a bone ok? 

Step 6: Part two. Now, if I’m spending all of this time planning and getting lessons straight, you need to be covering the other bases. Like sex. Please sit your kid down and explain them in an age appropriate fashion what is going on.  Not only do I find it disturbing that most ten year olds know more positions than I do, but they shouldn’t know sex jokes either.  Yet another true story. Friend teaching in third grade class. Approached by student. Mrs. ________ do you know what the difference between kinky and perverted is.  Kinky is when you use a feather and perverted is when you use the whole chicken.  (Pauses). I will now give you time to close your mouth.  Take note, and head this off at the pass. 

Step 7: Have realistic expectations. You kid could be and NFL player or the next Michael Shanks (see, I even fit him into this one - booyah) but the point of the matter is that without an education there are no guarantees in life.  So don’t tell me that your child is going to miss the entire week leading up to AP review for a volleyball tournament or that their travel glee club trip is more important that studying for my test. Because if you do I am going to have to tell you that attending Stargate Cons is more important that grading your kid’s papers, which, if we are really going apples to apple here, if that’s your attitude, it kinda is.

Step 8: Read what comes home.  I don’t like writing those notes anymore than you like reading them, but I’m trying to keep you informed here.  Read them, please, pretty please with a cherry on top. Because nothing says good parenting like an end of the year return call wondering why your child is failing.  Who are you? Wait, is THIS the real person attached to that voicemail that never returns my calls? 

Step 9:  Can’t find me? I might be in a meeting. Again? I’m probably in a meeting. Still can’t find me? I’m mostly likely in a meeting. Hello? Yeah, you’re lucky you caught me because I am probably am supposed to be in a meeting right now. 

Step 10: Drink coffee. Yeah, you heard me, coffee.  I’m not giving up on the wine, but at this point you might as well hook up an IV to me and your kid’s other teachers 9 months out of the year. You can have wine, but just don’t look at us funny when we show up to happy hour on Friday.  After all, it’s better to be blitzed before we crawl back into the ceilings. 

How to Write a Paper

How to Write a Paper

Subtitle: I am your Spanish teacher, your SPANISH teacher, why am I showing you this?!!?

Step 1: Write a paper.  A really bad paper.  Add in lot of quotes and other things from that sample packet the librarian gave you that really taught you nothing other than plagiarism is akin to selling your soul to Lucifer or drowning a puppy. Use ‘I’ a lot in your paper and tell your audience about every opinion you have on the topic in the first person with no support. Proudly turn it in.  

Step 2: Get paper back.  Your teacher/instructor/professor has most likely bled all over it, unless you go to one of those stupid schools where everyone gets a trophy and red pens are not allowed because they might hurt your little feelings.  In which case, before moving onto step three please get a red pen out, break it in half and pour over your paper.  And suck it up!

Step 3:  At this point in time you are ready to listen.  First, you need to understand what a paper is.  A paper is an argument.  You’ve had one of those, haven’t you? When your husband left the trash in kitchen and the cat tore it open? When your best friend looked at your man? (Which this should not bother you - please see my entry on man-neediness) When that moron that had been tailgating you for miles finally rammed into your bumper and is now acting like you stopped and got hit on purpose? That is what a paper is a fight, just one with smart words and no swearing.  Unless you are clever, then you can work those bad boys in all over the place.  But that takes mad skills. You are not there yet my young Padawan.  

Step 4: Figure out what you are going to write about.  Make it provocative. Make it risk- kay.  You gotta get your blood boiling to write well. You will notice that my funnier blogs are when something drives me bat-crap crazy or is something I am passionate about (Like my love for Michael Shanks - you didn’t think I’d get him in this one, did you? Well, that will teach you to underestimate my true obsessive nature.).  This may not help you in all essays, but try.  Because even ‘Compare and Contrast the Hundred Years War to the War of the Roses” can be interesting if you keep in mind that the royal families of France and England alone did more disgusting crap than every soap that has ever aired on TV. 

Step 5: Research. Not on Wikipedia.  Do you know WHY you do not research on Wikipedia? Because Wikipedia is what smart people do when they are drunk. I am not kidding; nerds get blitzed in small groups watching “Game of Thrones” and change Wikipedia.  I know this to be FACT.  You think I am kidding? Try it sometime. But if you are not nerdy, they catch on pretty fast, so you must be clever and master writing, much in the way you did to include swear words in your paper, to make those changes stick.  (My hubby just asked “Wikipedia has administrators?” to which I replied, “Yes honey, Wikipedia has an entire crew of readers that try to protect lazy high school students from drunk nerds.” ) 

Step 6: Write.  Now, this can be hard, so I will put it in everyday terms.  Please excuse the course language, but as they say, that’s how dem kids speak.  

Introduction: SCARY FACT OR QUOTE.  That’s scary huh? Well, bee-achesz, if you don’t do X,Y, Z shiznit’s about to get real scary.  (That was your thesis. A thesis says here are 2-5 reasons I am going to win this argument buttface, here they come) 

Paragraph One: I am right about X.  Here is some crap that some smart people said that agree with me.  See, I am right.  You are stupid.  Now I am going to talk about thing number two. And not Dr. Seuss thing number two.  

Paragraph Two: Y is also true. I am a genius.  And remember this guy from paragraph 1, yeah him? also a genius? On page (insert page ## here) he agreed with me too. In YO face! You think that’s all I got? Buckle up bitchez....

Paragraph Three: And as if you did not think I was the next coming of Christ, here is Z.  Yes!! Z!!! And because of this book and that book and this scholarly journal.  That’s right cuz, I whupped out the scholarly journal on you!! Do you know what those are? I thought not! And they more than PROVE I’ve got this. 

Conclusion: So, basically, if you ain’t figured it out by now, I’m right. I mean really if X,Y and Z didn’t do it for you, well, you’re hopeless.  So, here’s another quote or something that since you didn’t understand the rest of the reason that I am a god that you won’t understand but it makes me sound all smart like.  Oh yeah, and the end.  

See, not so bad right? 

Step 7: Revise.  Please, get a friend that is smarter than you to do this. Or at least better educated/knowledgeable of current rules regarding paper writing. We all have those people in our lives that, well, you know, just aren’t.  Don’t let them see your paper. They may make comments like “Well, you sounded like you didn’t feel it,” or, better yet, “I didn’t see your opinion in there, you know ‘I’ think.”  Little do these people know that there is a secret little committee of dwarves that live deep underneath the bowels of Harvard University that determine what is correct in paper writing today.  These dwarves are thousands of years old and probably whupped out some clausal errors on Moses.  They like to change the rules.  What your mom wrote for a paper in school in her day will not cut it, because as soon as those dwarves get bored or someone smuggles them in a bag of Skittles, BOOM! they change all of these rules! FOR NO GOOD REASON! Make sure your proof reader knows these rules and/or has an established relationship with said dwarves.  

Step 8:  Turn that bad boy in.  Yeah, waltz yourself right up to the desk (even do this virtually if you are turning in the paper online, walk about 5 feet away and sashay your self over to the computer and dramatically click submit.) 

Step 9: Pray, meditate, contemplate, send positive vibes or whatever you do to ask a higher power to help you out.  Paper writing is subjective and sometimes the mood of your teacher can determine your grade.  You may have written the greatest masterpiece of all time but your prof just got dumped by his live in girlfriend and you get an F (True story people - happened to me - took a LOT of butt kissing to salvage that one). So, if you have followed all of my steps above, you should be ok, in theory, Provided no one as slipped any dwarves sugary treats.  In that case, dude, you’re on your own...

Step 10: Get paper back.  Earn an A.  Graduate with honors. Remember that quirky little blogger that helped get you there. Because she had two kids to put through college.  And became a teacher.  You know where this is leading, hopefully :-)