Spamelicious.

Become a new man with us.

I would think this would be difficult, as I've never been an old man. Can I then, become a new man? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Sharing an office space.

I'm sitting in my little hovel of an office space this morning, trying to work on lesson plans, trying not to listen to my officemate's student conferences, when her student becomes increasingly agitated, his voice rising, and rising, and rising, as he exclaims "I don't understand! This is YOUR point of view! How can you argue this?!"
And she's replying, with something like okay, you need to calm down and then suddenly your writing is BAD! and I'm the one grading your paper, so you better listen to me! Yikes.
I'm over here, hunkering down behind my desk, gnawing on my chocolate bunny. His head is entirely gone and I'm working on the basketfull of eggs he was carrying.
Can I REALLY be expected to grade papers under these conditions? Methinks not.

Oh! the horror.

First your ears, next your perky little bunny face.

It may be wrong, but it's oh so delicious.

Cranes - Shining Road

Okay, here's the video. I figured it out! The amount of time I waste online when I should be grading papers is absolutely ridiculous.

Shining road.

Eliot has caught on to the basket dragging and it doesn't work to put him to sleep anymore. What does work, strangely enough, is listening to a band called the Cranes, and their album "Loved," which I used to listen to as a freshman in college. One day he crawled up to the stereo and by pushing random buttons, began to play their CD (and I still have no idea why it was in the stereo in the first place, as I swear I haven't listened to this album since 1998-ish). As the first track played, he crawled into my lap and burrowed his head against me. I started rocking him back and forth and he was asleep by track 3.

The next time he was grouchy and nothing would convince him to nap, I put on the album again and held him on my hip, bouncing. Halfway through the first song, he leaned his head down on my shoulder, and once again, by the third song or so, he was out.

He really likes this album; even when he isn't sleepy, he'll listen to it and start doing his head bobbing dance moves. But if he's close to ready for a nap, boom! Can't resist those Cranes. Their rhythmic tones lull him into slumberland every time.

And, thanks to this wondrous medium I lovingly call "Internet," I am able to bring you, dear readers, a sampling of said Cranes. Here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II-d0AI_jLw
Don't fall asleep!

Actually, I was going to embed it, but for some reason I can't get the whole code to copy and paste. Argh. Whatever.

So the point I'm so long in getting at is that it's crazy incongruous for me, rocking him to sleep along to this music. Music can be such a memory trigger, and this particular album evokes a whole other world for me. Sometimes it seems like my memories from those days aren't mine at all, but rather the actions and thoughts of some character in a movie I saw once that I can't quite remember fully. I never dreamt, the first time I fell in love with the Cranes, that one day I'd be rocking my son to sleep with their music. I wonder whether the person I was then would recognize the me I've become. So strange.

Okay, reading that back it sounds really cracked out. Perhaps someone just smoked a bit too much back in the day, huh?! That movie I was talking about must have been a bad after-school ABC special. Ew.

Hmm...this doesn’t look familiar.

Eli went to Walgreens on Saturday morning to pick up my prescription, only to find that the insurance company refuses to pay for it because they don’t approve of this particular medication or it wasn’t the first drug they would prescribe in my situation or some other such nonsense. Because, you know, my insurance company knows more about my illness and the proper method of treatment than my doctor. Duh.

Eli returns home with this explanation, “I didn’t get your medicine, and if your car smells like old lady, that’s because when I came back out, there was an old lady in the driver’s seat trying to fit her key in the ignition and take off.”

Say what?

Yeah. Some confused person was in my car, thinking it was hers. Eli tapped on the window and said, “Excuse me. You’re in my car.”

“What?”

“You’re. In. My. Car.”

She replied that she thought it looked different. And she couldn’t figure out what “all this stuff” was. Meaning the stick shift? Because her car is an automatic. Riiiiiiight…

So this doesn’t bother me right now, because I’m still medicated and all, but when my drugs wear off and Monday rolls around, and I’m able to get good and pissed off, I’m so going back up to Walgreens and kicking someone’s ass. I’ll try to remember to lock my car doors while I’m in there.

In the waiting room.

In the hospital waiting room this morning, we were seated next to a very large, very unkempt man wearing a dirty t-shirt that read (and I swear I'm not making this up) "Boobies make me happy."

And that's really all I've got to say about that.