Preludes And Nocturnes

I’m in a mood. It is 2:26am and Mal has just woken me up and I can’t get back to sleep.  It is a neighbour situation (not the baby) that has me peeved.

There are four parking spots in the back. Two are mine, two are the next house’s.  Our places are the same, but we’re not a complex or condos or whatever. We own the land outright and we own the spots out back.  I park in one of my spots and my downstairs person gets the other. Downstairs is hardly ever here as they live in Kelowna (1hr away) and just use the apartment for late night/early morning as their daughter does her professional very high-end olympic-bound swim lessons here and they want the place for when the roads get worse and when they have late-night lessons. This means they sometimes show up late after practice, sometimes the next morning really early before lessons, etc.  But in all, they’re not here much.

Last weekend someone was parked in their spot (they weren’t here). I went to the next-door downstairs people and knocked, and sure enough it was a friend visiting there.  I was miffed as the dude was all “oh, do you need to park there?” and I was just “you need to move, that isn’t free parking”.  It is my property. It is like parking in someone driveway.  They were told clearly by the woman who owns the house next door (Leanne) that they get one spot out back. Her brother Clint uses the other. My neighbour, herself, is out of town for the summer and her brother lives there.

So yesterday I see a truck there again in my 2nd spot.  I am heading out for an appt. so I don’t have time to take care of it, and it is gone when I get home.  Last night it is there again - at 10pm.  All I can think is that Sat can be a lesson day and I don’t want my tenants showing up at 5am without a spot (and their only entrance is back there so it would mean parking out front and walking the unlit path between the homes).  I see the brother is home, and go over to ask if he knows who it is in my spot.

All in all, it was someone with the brother. I don’t know who. I had to tell him that he can’t park there.  No sorry from them, no “oh yeah, I thought nobody parked there” or anything. Just “oh. I’ll move.”

I am pissed because Clint KNOWS I have renters. He is not some unaware tenant or something. He knows where the property lines are.  Seriously, what the fuck? Who does that? Who tells their guest ‘oh yeah, just park in her spot - just park in her driveway’?!  Can you imagine him getting home and me having a guest parked in his spot.  I would never do that.

So in all, this means that I’m steaming. I don’t want to have some weird thing with Leanne about a stupid parking spot - but I’m totally pissed.  And all this does in snowball into other things I’m pissed about - ie: the fence. The fence between our houses is not in the right spot, it is over too far and actually cuts into my property. Her brother put it up. Other brother. BLAH!  I’m thinking I’ll just need to hire someone to put it up properly as I worry that fair use stuff could just end up re-establishing the property lines.  And I feel petty as we’re talking about 1 foot. But when your property is only 25 feet wide, each foot counts!

I hate blogging at 2am. It is never a fun blog.

I thought that made a nice title, but really it is a bit more complex.  First, malcolm care.  It seems to be working out as we decided this week to start using the homecare lady from the summer on Wednesday mornings.  So Malcolm is there right now from 8:30-12:30.

With Jim gone from Monday afternoon until Thursday night, I just need a bit of extra help at home.  We have the woman coming in when I to go teach, but that is for teaching only. And my very wise little sister Julia suggsted that 1- teachers have a whole lot more to do than just that stand-in-front-of-the-class thing *and* 2 - I could also just use the mornings to be Jenn the Person rather than Jenn the Mom or Jenn the Instructor or Jenn the Homeowner.  (This was after I worried about doing something other than caring for Malcolm, marking/prep, or working on various chores.)  So, this morning I went to Group Power (weight lifting class) and Zumba.  I am firmly into week three of working out and my body is FINALLY starting to respond.

Praise the sweet baby jesus.

Now I’m blogging and will have a shower and go pick up the little guy.  We might stick to just mornings or we might do some full days when heavy marking comes in, but right now it is nice to have a little break just to be all self-absorbed.  Thanks to my sisters, mom, husband, and friends for reminding me that I would give the save advice to someone else. It is just hard to do it myself.

Next good thing - my classes are going well. These are keen students.  They are all showing up (never happens), and nobody is sleeping at the back.  I firmly believe in handing out the grades they make, so this might be a term with very few lower marks.  Good for them, fun for me to teach to, but killer in terms of people accusing me of grade inflation.

Ah well, good thing I couldn’t really care about all that, eh?

This term has been tough so far, but here’s hoping it is hitting its stride.  The complab is straightened out, but this week I spent way too much time with a mucked up quiz via the library and a key handful of students not following instructions (pick one story from each reader… no, not pick two stories from ONE reader).  It was an online group sign-up and yesterday I spent about two hours trying to take people out of multiple groups, out of the wrong time-period (I teach two classes and the 8ams were signing up in the 9:30am’s spots, etc).

Have you ever tried to herd chickens?

In the process of deleting the one person signed up for four groups, I deleted a whole thread. Now I have to do a backup recovery and, you know, I’m just thinking of pitching the whole technology end of things.  Blah.

Other bump lately, Malcolm is not doing as well with the sleeping.  He’s been waking around 3/4 for more foods and won’t settle until he’s has milk.  And then he’s been waking up FOR GOOD at 6am.  My mornings I’m getting ready this is deadly.  Mornings like today it is just sad.  It is saturday. Jim and I stayed up to watch Milk (excellent film). I wanted my sleep.  After just over an hour and a half and many tears, I think he’s back asleep now at 6am.  But, I find it darned-near impossible to get back to sleep.

I’m just glad Jim is home so at 9am when I start to crash, I can have a nap!

I don’t want to go to bed. I have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning, it is 11:14pm, and I’m stalling.  Jim is away at his job, Malcolm is sleeping, kitties are being kitties.. and I’m feeling sorry for myself.  I don’t want to go to work tomorrow. I had horrible teaching dreams last night in which I couldn’t get control of the class and I was trying to talk louder and louder to get them to pay attention and everything went wrong.  I’ve had a horrible weekend with their access codes not working for their online assessment composition lab and having to troubleshoot and recreate and eventually finding out it was an error in what they were shipped for a log-in (not my class I created or anything like that).

So I’m feeling like I lost some power and prestige with them this weekend and I hate that happening this early on in the term.  They’ve met me once - and then the weekend of boondoggles and emails.  It is now fixed, but I’m wiped out.  Wiped. Out.

But yes, I’ll head off to bed.  And I’ll go in tomorrow.  And I’m sure it will be better after that is done.

Holy dinah, you should see this schedule I’m working on right now.  Between me work, jim work, babysitter, jim out of town half the week, my exercise goals - six classes/week and a hike, my crafting timelines, “date night” (shaddup, it is a euphemism and my husband is out of town three nights/four days a week and we have a 16 month old who only naps once a day), marking, and writing - well, I think I might break out a computer program to start tracking things because my little calendar on the fridge is getting dragged down in ink.

So then today when I sat down and started listing the dates/times of my tv shows - I knew I had to share my insanity with all of you. I like sharing this part of me with my various blogging friends. You know all this and you still love me.  Shows on my list so far: Amazing Race, Top Chef, Glee, Numb3rs, Castle, Bones.

Removed from the list: Vampire Diaries. Holy lame writing, batman!  Glee is on warning for as menley aptly pointed out “over production”.

Am I missing anything? Er, tv shows that is.

So my first day of classes today and I don’t want to show up with facial hair, right?  So last night I get out my stuff that takes care of any little issues like that, apply it.. and something goes wrong.  I have used this product for YEARS and YEARS.  It just kinda burns off the hair. Only last night it burned my face.  Oh yes. So I showed up for classes today with burns all over my cheeks, lips, and jaw.  Puffy red burns that make-up could not cover.

I don’t know if I gapped out and left it on too long, if I’m just reacting to it for some reason, or what.  I have gotten a bit red before and that is why I always do it at night so I’m fine by the next day.

All in all, I got to learn one of those life lessons today about having to not really care about how I look.  And I think I learned some other stupid lessons too, I don’t know. I just know that I still look like Samantha in that episode of SATC when she gets a bad chemical peel.

*blah*

I thought the whole love affair we all had with Glee was the real singing.  If I wanted a bunch of studio recorded soundtracks I’d watch, um, well something else.  I like singing, not top 40 pretend singing.

BLAH!

ETA: okay, so it was alright. But do you know what I mean? The singing wasn’t as ahhhhh this time. Or was I just in a grumpy mood?

Dear me,

Please put on workout clothes and get to zumba class - it starts in 20min, Jim is home today, and it is necessary for that whole ‘butt reduction plan’ we designed.

Signed,

Yeah yeah, we’re tired, suck it up princess.

Er yes, I did just finish up classes two weeks ago.. but still - a new school year so I bought pencil crayons!  (Those lovely pre-sharpened ones!!)

My syllabus is prep’d and uploaded, webCT shell created and has the basics ready to go, my ’semester at a glance’ roughed out with the big events, and my compLab shell created.

The kicker, I use a compLab provided by my textbook company and it has grammar diagnostics and whatnot. I’ve tended to have them complete a standard 10 diagonstics as their participation in that area and they can do more if they like. I then use the grades from the 10 assigned grammar sections.

They’ve changed it this year. There are no 10 diagnostics.  ACK!  I have to read througt it more, and it is probably better.. but right now it seems to be about 50+ different modules with all sorts of random good things to know.. but no easy 10 things that cover the overall questions I want.  Now it is “comma splices exercises, discussions, quiz” and “sentence frangments” and  so on.

Gah!  More work than I had counted on.  Booo!

Baby crying, must run!

So there is this blog I got to reading.. I don’t know how. But all in all it was a nice group of mom writers and it was about mom stuff.  Now, I actually want to powerbarf over the whole “mom” thing at times.  Especially as I’m sitting here with my newly coloured dark brown, blond, red, light brown rocker hair-do trying to figure out another tattoo and listening to martha wainwright.

Mom-schmom helmut head pleated pants and ugly shoes!  Take that.

But, I kinda like tips and reading things and whatever.. I had them in my google-reader line-up.  Someone posted a stupid entry about praying a few weeks ago (what to do when your baby won’t stop crying), but I figure it was fine, I’ll skip it and keep reading about tips for playground bullies.

Last week I won a sling from them - woohoo!!

This week they announced they are going to have devotionals each monday.

Eh, fuckwhat?

Since they are all Christian and since G-dawg informs all their decisions…

Since then three of their entries have included loads of church, pray, whatever.

So, yeah. I’m outta there. But I have this crazy desire to TELL them why I’m out of there.  And this is something I think is useless. Why tell them?  What good does that do?

Thoughts?