Incompetent

Is it just me or do doctors and nurses try their best to make me feel incompetent on the rare occasion when I feel like I'm doing everything that I possibly can be doing?

I had to take Kendra to the doctor again today (Urgent Care, since it's Sunday), and the nurse was absolutely ridiculous! The first thing she does is weigh Kendra. The scale read 15 lb 1 oz, but she decides that Kendra's diaper "looks full," so she just writes down 14 lbs instead. A pound of urine in a diaper? (And just for the record, when the doctor actually took off her diaper, five minutes later, it was totally dry, so no I was not being neglectful!) How's that for sound medical practice? So then, while all this is going on, Kendra is getting fussy. That's not too surprising-- she's still getting over this virus and has suddenly developed a rash all over her face (at least the thrush has cleared up!) and her feeding had just been interrupted! So I apologetically explain to the nurse that she's in the middle of her meal and that's why she's a bit cranky, to which the nurse asks me what time she needed to eat and I say, "Now." So then she looks at me and says, "Well, why didn't you feed her before you came?"

Let's just think about that for a moment, shall we? I woke Kendra up from her very short nap so that we could leave the house at 9:45 in order to get to the Woodbridge medical center (the Manassas one doesn't have urgent care) in time for her 10:30 appointment and then sat waiting until 11:00. So at 11:00 she was hungry. Now, why on earth did it not occur to me to have my poor sick baby skip her morning nap entirely so that I could feed her two hours early??? What kind of a mother am I?

But of course, I didn't have time to explain that one to the nurse, she was off finding a room to shove us into before my brain could fully wrap itself around the ridiculousness of her question.

People!

Deep Thought

So does anyone else think that it's really weird that evil terrorist #1 is Osama bin Laden and his name sort of sounds like Obama & Joe Biden?

Seattle Mist

We are having perfect Seattle weather today. It was pouring earlier, but now it's just doing that lovely misting business where you can walk out in it and feel cooler and refreshed without actually getting all that wet. It's wonderful. I had to take out the trash, and there was enough of it to merit two trips to the dumpster and I have to admit, I was actually sort of glad since it gave me that much more time outside. (Now if I can just convince the kids to stop pooping, we'll have a trash-free home when Craig's aunt and uncle arrive this afternoon! Think it will work?)

Anyway, that's my sidenote for the day. I should get back to cleaning my house. Here's hoping that you're lucky enough to enjoy some gorgeous rain like this, too!

Sleeping Sickness (or something)

Maybe I'm just naive, but when Kendra slept nearly 17 hours last night (minus the time it took to squeeze in a couple of feedings), I just thought she was going through a growth-spurt or something. But then almost immediately after she was finally awake and fed, she began to get grumpy! That definitely had me perplexed. And then as I watched her fall asleep in my arms as I was rocking her, I began to suspect that all was not right with my little girl. Maybe you're one of those lucky people whose kids are cute enough to fall asleep in your arms, but that's definitely NOT how my kids operate. If anyone's around, they just want to watch that person the entire time and sleep goes out the window. They need alone time in their crib to fall asleep. So even though it was sort of fun watching Kendra's eyelids flutter as she tried (with not much success) to look into my eyes, I knew something was not quite right. I consulted with my Mom, and she also agreed that it all seemed wrong, so then I called the doctor and made an appointment for the afternoon.

Now, if I'd really been thinking at all, I would have dropped Bentley off at a friend's or something, but the thought didn't even occur to me, so the three of us went to see the doctor together. And let's just say that it made for a very long afternoon.

Two hours. We were there for two hours. Two hours of hauling a very cranky baby and a very much wanting to wander away from me toddler from the waiting room to the inside room (what do you call that room???), to the lab to sign up for a blood test and then to a different waiting room and then to the lab where they drew blood (my poor baby!) and then back to the original waiting room, back to the interior room, and then once more to the waiting room and back again-- this time because the lab is done with the bloodwork, so I can get the results ("very virus-y" were the doctor's exact words), then to the pharmacy to order a prescription (for thrush, actually; there's not much you can do to treat a virus), about thirty seconds spent in the pharmacy waiting room before I realized that there were way too many bottles of pills and stuff all within Bentley's reach, so back to the kid's waiting room again, then pick up the prescription, back to the nurse's once more so she could remove the urine bag they'd put on Kendra (ick, but whatever they were testing that for came back negative, so I guess that's good), and then finally I managed to haul everyone out to the car which was, naturally, parked way far away in the parking lot.

I'm amazed we survived at all.

And the best part? In my rush to get out the door, I'd grabbed a pair of shorts for Bentley that were too big and kept falling down, so in addition to all of that, I also had to stoop and pull his shorts back up every few steps!

Let me tell you, I am such a good mother, I can hardly stand it. I bet all of you reading this think you should be taking notes so you can be a totally awesome mommy just like me!

In my defense, I did finally figure out that rolling the elastic inward once kept the shorts up a lot better, so that helped. Bentley looked ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as he looked with his shorts wrapped around his ankles. (At least he's not old enough to be embarrassed by that yet-- he just couldn't figure out how to walk that way!) And I have to give Bentley credit for being remarkably good-natured throughout the whole ordeal, especially since he had to have been pretty hungry by the time it was all over. Kendra should get some credit for doing pretty well, too, all things considered.

Once we were home, I changed her diaper and put her right back to bed. She's woken up once to eat, that's it. Isn't it weird how you can't enjoy something like your kid being unconscious for most of the day? That's just not what mothering is about, I guess. Instead, you have to worry about it the entire time and disrupt the poor kid's sleep with long visits to the doctor, complete with needles and urine bags. Life can be tough when you're six months old.

Take Another Little Piece of My Heart Now Baby

So Bentley's newest game is all about leaving me. Gripping teddy and sucking on his binky, he cheerfully waves and hollers "Buh-bye!" at me, and then walks away. My job, of course, is to be very sad and call desperately after him, "No, Bentley, don't leave me! Come back!" And then he'll very generously come back for the sole purpose of repeating the leaving process again. When he's feeling kind he'll make a kiss-noise towards me, but more often than not, the kisses go to Kendra, and I just get a wave. Ah, the rewards of motherhood!

Colors

So we finally bought paint for our kitchen! After feeling like we weren't making a whole lot of progress, today was a good working day for the house: Craig and his Dad finished re-tiling the shower wall that they'd taken apart and we've put primer on about two-thirds of the kitchen. Donna and I spent a lot of time sponging down walls and getting things ready (and I have to give Donna credit: she has spent days sanding all those cupboards!). Just when we were getting close to being done, Bentley needed to go home for naptime, so when I came back much later, everyone had started painting the primer on.

So then tonight, after dinner, Craig and I finally chose the colors we wanted for the kitchen, and then Craig ran out and actually bought them and I am just so excited for it all! The names of the colors don't tell you much, but in case you're curious, the cupboards themselves will be ultra-fine white, with a dark blue trim (the blue was called "Teeny Bikini"-- whatever that means; I almost chose the one called "Starry night" just because I liked the name!). Then the walls are a very pale, you can hardly tell there's any color there, beige. That one is called Heavy Cream. And then the ceiling is just barely off-white ("Cookie Crumb"). I'm telling you-- in my next life, I want to be someone who comes up with names for all these paints! I really think these people must have fun!

It's Sweeter on the Right

So did the title of my post fool you? Did you think it was a political commentary? Or did you think it was my own take on the Church's CTR theme? Huh? Because it's neither of those!!! Bwa ha ha! I'm actually referring to the fact that approximately 66% of mosquitoes prefer my right leg to my left! I don't know what the difference is, but there are enough bites on both legs to support this claim. I think my poll is more in-depth than your average political poll. I could probably pass as a leper. It's so gross. I've even started putting cover-up on the bites before church in hopes that my Laurel class won't be so distracted with my disgusting legs that they don't hear a word I'm saying. (Yes, yes, I suppose I could just wear nylons, but it's Virginia, it's hot and it's humid. And besides, I think nylons were invented by Satan.) Every time we go to the new house, I end up with at least one more bite. Yesterday, we just stopped by for two minutes so Craig could figure out how many new tiles we needed to buy for the bathroom (98, + 17 border tiles) and as I was climbing back into the car, there was a mosquito on my (right) leg! Ergh! How are they that fast and that sneaky?

But now the real question is: where do you think I could get some black market DDT??? California condors be darned-- somehow I will find a way to kill off those mosquitoes before I move in to my new home!

* * * * *

So on a more serious note: I just did a google search on DDT, and found a page for African American Environmentalist Association working to lift the ban on DDT because it would help save millions of Africans who die of malaria. That's something I never thought about before... I wonder who your average liberal would be rooting for on this one: an African child or a bald eagle? Someone should ask Angelina Jolie what she thinks!

Mystery

So previously I talked about how I've come to think of the cars in the parking lots as having their own personalities. Recently I've become concerned with one of my automobiliar friends. It started a couple weeks ago when I noticed that there was a sedan with the license plate 4JOYJEN. 4JOYJEN was a Jeep in the parking lot, so how did she suddenly become a sedan??? I wondered if maybe they'd bought a new car but managed to keep the old license plate? Is that even possible? But then yesterday I saw the Jeep with 4JOYJEN plates again, so then I was really confused. And then last night when I was taking out the garbage, the car was parked in a completely different place (most people just park in front of where they live, so that's a bit strange, really) and I realized that between the two cars, they've covered three of the four sides of the giant square that makes up the Orchid Court parking lot!

What's the deal? Are they doing something illegal with their cars or with their license plates? The taxes here are crazy high for cars-- you have to pay state tax AND county tax-- so I wonder if they're somehow trying to not pay or something... Weird, huh?

And yes, if you're thinking, "That's all fine and good, Alanna, but you should probably consider getting a life," I totally agree. Maybe next year.

Of Sneezes and Daddies

Last night as Craig and I were going to bed, Kendra began waking up. This is a very common occurrence, as she sleeps at the foot of our bed (one of the things I'm most looking forward to when we move is Kendra getting her own room!), and Craig and I can never just go to sleep without at least a few minutes of chatting. It always happens the same way, too-- we'll be whispering as quietly as we can and then we'll hear the thumping of Kendra's legs as she kicks against her mattress. That's our signal to hurriedly end the conversation before she can completely wake up.

I guess we pushed our luck last night, though, because she woke up enough to start babbling-- we suddenly heard a very charming, "A da da da da da...." followed by some more kicks. I figured we were doomed and I'd have to feed her. (Not that feeding the baby is such a terrible thing, but it was 11:30 and I was really tired.) So I did what any really tired person would do and laid there with my eyes half-closed waiting to see what Kendra would do next. She repeated her "da da da" once more and then sneezed-- a really wet cartoony sounding sneeze, if the truth be known-- and suddenly she was asleep again! Craig and I gave each other a questioning "Did she just fall asleep after sneezing?" look, sighed with relief, and went to sleep ourselves. She slept until 7:00am.

Cicadas

So I just have to admit that I love the sound of cicadas. During these hot summer months they are a constant noise-maker here and I just think it's hilarious. Not in a laugh-out-loud sort of way, but in a "What is the deal with these freakishly noisy bugs" sort of way.

I'd never even heard one (or was even quite sure how to pronounce the word) until my mission in Japan. They blew me away that one summer I was there! There was one time when one was buzzing away so loudly right outside the church window that we had to close the window in order to teach our discussion! Now that is some impressive breath support or something...! I even tried to tape record one once to prove to my parents how crazy these bugs were. And then, all of a sudden, they were gone. It happened so subtly that it was hard to notice at all, but with the cool fall weather, no more buzzing trees everywhere. It was a bit sad and eerie, like the silence meant the coming of winter (keep in mind that I served up north where we were referred to as the "frozen chosen" and also keep in mind that I HATE being cold, so winter coming was most decidedly not something to look forward to).

Someone told me-- and I have no idea if this is true-- that they live underground maturing for seven years and then crawl out of the ground and sing for two weeks before they die. What a life! Whoever told me this commented that for all that practicing, you'd think they be able to sing Phantom of the Opera or sound at least remotely good. Alas, this is not the case. They just sound loud and sort of like they're buzzing, but in a sort of rhythmic way. Still, it really is a sound that I love-- doesn't it just feel like you should be floating down the Amazon River or something, with a noise like that? The only other thing that might add to that feeling would probably be howler monkeys or something, I guess, but monkeys are scary, so I'll stick with the cicadas for now. They're probably scary-looking, too, but at least they keep hidden in the trees so you never really know!

Rent

I've decided that I have a love-hate relationship with renting. With all the beatings our carpets take (spit up is a daily occurrence, to say the least), our standard phrase has become, "That's why we're renting!" And in the last couple weeks, both our garbage disposal AND our washing machine broke, and management fixed them within a day or two of my calling in! It's like magic! Not to mention free!

But then this morning, as I was reading to Bentley, I suddenly looked out the back of our apartment to find two men I've never seen before setting a huge ladder against our building and climbing up it, which I have to admit is a bit disconcerting... I was glad I wasn't feeding the baby, at least!

So while part of me is scared at the prospect of being a homeowner (who do you call when things break???), a bigger part of me is really excited to not have strange men roaming around in my backyard anymore... Weird changes in store!

X-Man

When Rachael left DC, she left behind some towels and sheets for us to keep, which was super nice of her. And, added bonus, the towels even matched our bathroom colors pretty well, so I was excited to have them. Unfortunately, after just a few day's use, I noticed that Craig's towel had become discolored. It looked like I had spilled bleach on it or something, with big yellow blotches in the middle of the aqua. But I knew it had been just fine when I took it out of the wash, so it was just weird. And then, to make matters worse, the bleached look has been slowly creeping up along the towel!

So the other day as Craig and I were speculating as to what we've done to that poor towel, he noticed that one of the bleach stains perfectly matches the shape of his hands. He looked at me in wonder and announced, "My hands are poison!"

So now we've decided that the only explanation is that Craig has the incredible superpower ability to bleach things with his bare hands. He's one of the x-men.

Lady-like

I already wrote once about how Kendra was developing her own form of being delicate, so I hope I'm not beating a dead horse by writing about this one, but it did manage to make me laugh. So I just finished feeding her solids for the first time (!), but in the middle of it all, Bentley started crying, so I went upstairs to take care of him. When I came back down the stairs, Kendra had somehow managed to wipe her face clean! I know it was just by luck as she tried to chew on her bib, but it still seemed quite remarkable to leave her covered in rice cereal and find her suddenly clean without my doing anything!



Anyway, she seemed to take to the rice cereal pretty well. Mostly this just means that at her 6-month checkup tomorrow I can tell the doctor that Yes, I've been giving her solids. Maybe this way the doctor won't make me think I'm a horrible mother, although I sort of doubt it-- I don't think I've ever come away from those appointments without feeling guilty about SOMEthing! The worst was probably after Bentley's six or four month checkup (I can't remember which) when the doctor actually added a note about "tummy time is a good thing" because he wasn't rolling over yet. Ouch!

But back to the point of this post (if there ever was one), it was time to get the solids going with Kendra, I suppose, especially now that I don't have the teaching gig as an excuse not to. So I'm glad I finally got around to it and that it went fairly well.

By the way, I do have to brag that those are some pretty decent pictures considering I was both taking the pictures AND feeding the baby. Hope you're impressed!

Pastimes

So Bentley has some new favorite games. The first is to point at the place in the bathroom where he fell off the counter and say "Fall!" Thanks, Bentley. Just twist that knife a little more, why don't you?

The next one is his duck stuffed animal that does (get this) the chicken dance. He suddenly LOVES turning it on and flapping his arms along with it. Occasionally he gets more creative and does things such as shoving pennies into the duck's beak. Poor duck!

He also enjoys hiding. As I was typing this he managed to cram himself behind the couch and where we keep the TV. (He got stuck, actually, so that tells you how hard it was to get back there.) Closets and behind furniture are all fair game, as is underneath the crib. Fortunately when I pull him out from under the crib he's very good about keeping his head down... He also tries to hide behind the vertical blinds over the sliding door-- not one of his more successful places to hide, but I give him points for creativity!

And finally, he's figured out how to buckle things, so whenever he notices anything that has somehow been left unbuckled, he needs to stand there and buckle it. This includes his highchair, Kendra's swing, and Kendra's carrier. Then, once he's finished, he will point to it and proudly announce, "Buckie!" When I'm feeling generous, I'll go and unbuckle them all so he can have the pleasure of doing it again. Bentley enjoys life!

Agony

So Wednesday was one of those days. It had been going all right. We were working on the house and getting stuff done, you know? So finally after dinner Craig decides to go back and get a few more things done and he leaves me in charge of putting the kids to bed. This shouldn't be a big deal since I've done that plenty of times, but you can probably already hear the eerie, something-bad-is-coming music playing...

I decided that Bentley needed a bath, and so after putting Kendra down, I got ready for this endeavor. You have to keep in mind that I have not given Bentley a bath since I was pregnant with Kendra and got too big to bend over the tub. So it's probably been nine months or so since I've done this. (Don't worry-- Craig has faithfully picked up the slack; we haven't just let him sit around getting dirty all this time!) So I gave Bentley his bath and it actually went just fine. I was thinking to myself, "Hey, maybe I should stop making Craig do this all the time for me!" (Here is where the eerie music should be getting louder.)

And then came time to brush his teeth. I did it the way Craig always does it, which is to stand Bentley up on the counter wrapped in his towel, brush his teeth for him and then let him brush them himself. That was going just fine, too, until Bentley grabbed his sippy cup, which didn't have a lid on it, and wanted to pour the water all over himself (the same way he does during his bath!). As I struggled to keep the sippy cup out of his hands long enough to get a lid on it, Bentley scooted back and fell right off of the counter.

There were several thumps as he crashed down, hitting his face on the counter, and bouncing back only to topple over the toilet and land head-down with his feet up on the toilet. As you can probably imagine, lots of crying and bleeding ensued. After about five minutes, though, the bleeding had slowed down and Bentley was calming down as well. I figured I ought to get the kid in a diaper, at least, since he was still wrapped up in a towel, and as I layed him down to do that, I realized that one of his front teeth was missing!

What kind of a mother manages to knock out her kid's tooth??? All that time I'd thought he bit his tongue or something and wasn't too worried, but somehow a big gap in his teeth seemed about twenty times worse than a bit tongue.

Anyway, we took him to urgent care that night, and it sure made for a long and miserable experience. (In case you wondered what happened to Kendra, who was already asleep by this time, Tom and Donna were wonderful and stayed home with her; she didn't wake up once!) Bentley seems to be recovering nicely, but my idea of myself as a half-way decent mom may be damaged beyond repair (no, that's not meant to be a plea for people to tell me I'm a good Mom, so don't feel the need to leave comments soothing my ego).

Most moms I've talked to seem to have similar stories, which does make me feel as though I'm not the only one who's managed to do this, but it does bring on another question-- how has the human race survived as well as it has??? Makes you wonder, huh? And if you ever wondered why we had to start out with baby teeth before moving on to the permanent ones, well, wonder no more. I'm beginning to think it's one of our best features!

Home

So today is our anniversary-- three whole years! We didn't celebrate in our usual way: no cards, no presents, no fancy dinner. Instead, we bought a house.

That's right! We closed on our home today! As of today, we are officially homeowners. How crazy is that? So this picture (in case it's too small to tell) is us jingling our new keys as we stand in front of our new home.

Just because it's fun to take a little inventory, here's a synopsis of the many highlights from the last three years: we've earned one bachelor's degree and one and a half master's degrees; we've moved across the country and Craig embarked on a new career; we've had two children; we've bought one car, acquired another one, and gotten rid of the two we had before; and now this-- we've bought a home. Life has been very good to us.

And last but not least...

I liked having a Daddy-daughter shot. Kendra looks like she has about five chins, but she also looks happy to be with her Daddy.






And Bentley, meanwhile, was busy discovering my shoes! He actually did pretty well with them, considering how klutzy I am in any sort of heel at all... But Craig didn't seem impressed that his little boy was good at wearing heels, somehow! I can't imagine why not... Jealous, maybe? ;)

Picture Time

Family nap time. It's a beautiful thing.








Favorite Aunt Tracy with Bentley and Kendra. Bentley has this new thing where when I ask him to smile, this is what he does. Sigh.







Kendra enjoys smiling at herself in the mirror. This is how Mommy keeps her happy so Mommy can get ready for church!





Okay, so I'm admitting how dorky I am, but I really love it when my family is all color-coordinated for church! This was pretty much accidental-- the finishing touch was when Kendra sucked on Craig's tie, forcing him to change it. Realizing the red theme that was going on, I selected the one you see now just for the occasion. (I was wearing green, so that's part of the reason I'm not in the picture. The other reason is because, obviously, SOMEone had to take the picture!)



And finally, Bentley likes to take the couch cushions off-- usually so that he can roll cars down them-- which makes my living room look even messier than it actually is. And then sometimes he sits IN the couch. What a nut!

Paperwork

Can I just say that I HATE paperwork?

We're trying to get everything ready so we can close on this house (TOMORROW!!!!!!!!), and it's amazing to me how many little stupid things there are to get done-- termite inspections; home inspections; home appraisals; getting the water, gas and electricity turned on; fixing stuff in the house so that it appraises just fine; homeowners insurance; mortgage company stuff; title company stuff... The list just goes on and on. I've been busy teaching, so I've let Craig do pretty much all of it, but even just hearing about it tends to stress me out.

I don't know how so many people have managed to buy homes! And I guess they all managed to do this stuff, so maybe I'm just dumb for thinking it's complicated, but yeeesh! Kudos to all you homeowners out there! I don't know how you all managed to do this without going crazy. I'm just barely holding on as it is!

Fairy Lights

So when I took Rachael home today, I had to swing by the house and look at it again (it's completely out of the way, but Rachael was nice about it). We stood in the backyard so Rachael could see it and admire the fact that it's decent-sized and has woods in the back, and GUESS WHAT WE SAW??? FIREFLIES!!! How cool is that? I was really excited.

The first time I ever saw fireflies (and they're the same thing as lightning bugs, right?) was when I was on Long Island ten years ago for Leah's wedding. Of course I'd heard of them, and I think they had them in the Disney cartoon of Robin Hood so I thought I had a pretty good idea of what they looked like. Boy, was I wrong. Because in the cartoon, they were just these little floating lights. But in reality, they turn off and on as they fly around, so you just catch these glimpses of light here and there as they fly about and it is absolutely enchanting. It really is. I've been a huge fan of them ever since!

Vacation

So I have to admit-- this has been a stressful summer for me. This whole teaching gig seemed like a great idea when I agreed to do it, but it turns out that preparing seven hours of lectures a week while simultaneously trying to run a house that includes two children under the age of two is very time-consuming! Craig has been wonderful about helping out, but he's been very busy with his family in town and his master's degree and working... So let's just say that the three loads of laundry waiting to be folded upstairs has been the norm this summer, and that occasionally drives me nuts.

But yesterday was different. Yesterday actually felt like summer vacation. Craig's parents had offered to take us to SplashDown, the water park here in Manassas, which was really sweet of them-- I hadn't been able to go when Jason and Jeni and their girls were here, so it was nice of them to "make it up" to me. So we got there when the water park opened and figured we'd stay until the kids went into meltdown mode. And wonder of wonders, they actually did pretty well!

The water park is pretty small, which for our purposes was actually really nice-- it means that there are hardly any of the "older" teenagers and young adults that tend to make everything crowded and scary feeling. You know what I mean, right? The type that stands around swearing a lot so that you're left trying to decide if you should ask them to stop or just cover up your toddler's ears and hope that they'll notice. Anyway, the park is too small and probably doesn't have scary enough water slides to attract that type, which was fine by me! And Bentley has just in the last week or so discovered that water is fun and not scary (when I took him to Lake Anna with Craig's family, he never touched the sand a single time and it took Jason fifteen minutes to get him to even be happy in the water!). So with him actually going down some of the kiddy slides and Craig's parents who were willing to hold Kendra so we could go on the big slides now and then, it was just a really great day.

We stayed until close to five, which really surprised me-- I never would have guessed that Bentley would last that long! He even stayed awake for the drive home, and then, when Craig opened the door to get him out, his eyes suddenly fluttered and he began to doze off! So Craig hurried him inside and got him changed out of his swimsuit and just put him to bed and he slept thirteen hours! Of course, if you've been paying attention, that means he woke up at 6:00 in the morning. But we figured he was probably just hungry, so Craig gave him a big bowl of oatmeal and some fruit and we put him right back to bed and then he slept until 9:30. Now THAT'S what I call a vacation! It was one of those rare times when you can really enjoy yourself and even notice while it's going on that this is turning out to be a really nice day. I love that!

Timing

Yesterday I had to let my students fill out teaching evaluation forms. I've had just enough bad experiences with students evaluating me to make me dread this. These kids all act polite and nice to you, but let them fill out something anonymous and it's scary to see how much they don't actually like you. And depressing. Not that I think I'm best friends with my students or anything, but geez! I had one time where a student lied on her form and said that I'd cancelled class because I'd gotten engaged and no REAL professor would do that (the reason I'd cancelled was because my Grandma turned 90; and ironically enough, all of my (real) professors had ALSO cancelled class for that same day!) and that I'd forgotten to bring my slides to class once (the computer was broken so I couldn't access my slides, so I ran to another building and emailed them all to myself, and then when THAT didn't work, I broke down the powerpoint slide into three smaller slides and emailed them AGAIN; and with all that running around, I only started five minutes late; I thought it was one of my finer moments!).

So yeah, with a history like that, it's hard to get excited about these things. Last Tuesday was a test day, so there was no WAY I was letting them evaluate me after taking a test. So I figured I probably needed to do it Thursday (yesterday), before the administration got after me or something. But I made a mental note to myself that I would NOT give them back their tests (with a few not-so-impressive scores) till after they'd done the evals... I'd planned it as well as I could. So go figure-- my two top students were both gone! They probably would have been the nicest to me! One of them even told me she was impressed that I'd managed to cover so much information so fast without making it completely confusing! AARGH! So once again I'm back to dreading what they'll say about me. Sometimes it's a hard-knock life!