Best Laid Plans

I am making a list, and checking it twice. A list of things I would like to accomplish this week. Which doesn't mean I will do even one of them, but still, it's nice to have a list, just in case I get really motivated. In no particular order, my list:

sort through clothes and make a trip to Goodwill
clean bathrooms
get rid of clutter in kitchen
clean out office in basement lair
go see Ratatouille
get haircuts for both boys
make doctor and dentist appointments for boys
finish library books which are due Thursday
put tax deduction info to date in order
block out info I must teach this year
make semester and quarterly lesson plans/tests
meet a teaching buddy for a trivia lunch

Hey! That's more than two items per day. I am working myself too hard. I need to rest already. And then there's that pesky "three meals a day" crap that my children clamor for, and the neverending laundry, and the weekly excursion to The Devil's Playground, and, well, I must have time to watch TV and talk on the phone. I might need to hire an assistant. Only I don't want to get one like Kathy Griffin, because now she has three assistants, and none of them seem to do much of anything besides laugh at her. Oh, don't go feeling sorry for Kathy Griffin. She's a comedian, you know, and likes people to laugh at her. I don't need an assistant for that. People laugh at me all the time, and I'm not even a comedian.

Which reminds me of a story from college, graduate school, in fact, when a lady raised her hand in class and said, "What if you get bruises on your arms and you don't even play volleyball?" She was so earnest in her questioning that I couldn't help but feel a laugh building up deep inside my very core. A supressed laugh that made me shake a bit, and try not to look anywhere but my pen, but as luck would have it, I caught the eye of a newfound crony, and we got the giggles that can't be stopped. So bad was our affliction that the attention turned from the looney toon Bruiser, who, one minute earlier, people had been glancing sideways at each other making the twirling finger-by-the-ear crazy sign behind her back, to us. Only they didn't make the crazy sign at us, they kind of glared, even though we didn't make any mention of mysterious subcutaneous blood-seeping, and were trying our best to maintain composure. The teacher-lady was not amused either, but then, she never emitted a scrap of emotion about anything except the AIDS drug, AZT, which she must have been doing some research about, because she tried to work it into every lecture, even though the class was Physical Education for the Exceptional Student, which meant 'Adapted PE', to teach us about those with certain metabolic disorders, or the differently-abled ones, to teach us how to teach them without hurting them and possibly even helping them.

But getting back to Ms. Crabby Pants, who had been Ms. NoEmotion Pants until that day...she kind of frowned at us, when she really should have been glaring at the Blood-Leaker, who is truly the one who interrupted our lecture prematurely, before we could hear some more about AZT. Which took me about a week to figure out, by the way, because the teacher was from India, and had a thick accent like Apu from the Quickee Mart, and she said 'Azydee', which was really AZT. And she had a little red dot on her forehead, too, which kind of mesmerized me, what with wondering whether it was a birthmark like that guy Mark that I went to school with had on his head, or if she used makeup to draw it there every day. And if she maybe left it on overnight, or how did she know the exact spot to draw it in every morning. Which perhaps makes me sound not-tolerant of other cultures, but as my old driving buddy, Paul, would say right before he ripped someone a new one, 'I mean her no harm'. But that professor looked like she meant us some harm. Jeez, Louise! Can't people laugh uncontrollably during class if they are not disturbing anyone? It's not like I raised my hand, and said, "What if I fell down in the road last summer when I stepped off a curb down by Hammons Center during my five-mile run before my Beginning Swimming class that I had to take for the second time for no credit in order to graduate because the teacher cut me a break, and I got gravel under the skin of my left kneecap, and just last week, a small rock came out of the skin down at the bottom of my knee?" M-O-O-N. That spells, "It must have been some kind of freakish medical miracle, but I didn't take up class time to ask about such an unrelated topic. Earnestly." Which is really neither here nor there. There are no medical miracles or red dots on my list for the week.

Sweet Gummi Mary! How did we get to a classroom in Springfield when just a few moments ago we were discussing my to-do list? It's a wonder I ever graduated from graduate school, methinks.


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In other news, the stores are ready for voting at Diva's writing contest. You have until Wednesday to read all two of them and place a vote. It's your civic duty.