SHE GOT LEGS

My friend is in Puerto Rico for a wedding.  Today she sends a picture of her legs and feet, stretched out in a lounge chair on a sandy beach.  She’s entitled to a little downtime, but really.  Such taunting!

So we picture-recipients do whatever normal people probably would not do – we send her back pictures of our legs and feet.

One of the science teachers snaps a picture of her sneaker-clad feet up on a chair, just lounging around her empty classroom.  I snap a picture at home while wearing some slippers, a small palm plant in the background. 

While my friend tans on the coast, it snows a little here today, so cold and so raw. 

It’s not snowing in Puerto Rico, though.  It’s sunny and warm.  My friend and her legs will be going to a wedding, and then maybe, just maybe, she’ll bring a little sun back with her.

But if she brings a Nor’easter with her for Thanksgiving, my slippered feet and the science teacher’s sneakered feet might kick my friend’s bare feet right back to Puerto Rico.

Somehow, though, I doubt my sun-worshipping friend would mind.

MY COMPUTER EATS THINGS

Sometimes my computer eats things.

It hides important files and folders that I try to save.

It is especially aggravating after I have worked on

Documents for a while,

Then I save them,

Try to reopen them,

And they’re gone.

Poof.

Vanished.

It would be nice if something,

Anything at all,

Worked the way it is supposed to.

It’s bad enough when I yell at the copy machine because

Some random asshole in the building is “remote printing,”

Which kicks my current job to the curb.

But when my superior says it “pisses (her) off,” as well,

I know the world has gone to Hell in a hand basket.

So, when my computer gets hungry and eats my work,

It aggravates the shit out of me.

Regurgitate my damn work,

You dreaded, “intelligent” piece of technology!

It’s like feeding time at the zoo --

Except that the animal screeching

Is me.

FEELING HOT HOT HOT

Holy crap with the hot flashes already.  Honestly.  It’s getting ridiculous. 

On Tuesday I accompany a friend to Connecticut to retrieve a purse that got left behind at a deli after a family function.  Remarkably, the wallet is still intact, so it’s worth the drive down.  It may be a long ride, but we manage to have some fun on the way there and back, playing with phone apps, trying to prove we are smarter than grade schoolers while playing Brain Quest, and hitting a pub for lunch. 

The most fun, though, is when we are both having dueling hot flashes.  Thank goodness my friend’s SUV has different temperature zones because every time I have a hot flash, my friend doesn’t, then vice versa.  We are constantly turning the temperature up and down, turning the seat warmers on and off.  At one point, her side registers 71 degrees while my side at 59 degrees starts up the air conditioner.  Eventually we both settle at 68 degrees at the same time, and all is right with the world.

Wednesday I am again plagued by ill-timed hot flashes, as if there is ever a good time to have them.  Well, I suppose if I’m freezing on the Arctic tundra in my skivvies, a hot flash might be beneficial, which is ironic because when I have a hot flash, I wish to be on the Arctic tundra in my skivvies.  Wednesday is the day my boss stops by to do an impromptu observation.  All goes well until I get the report later that day:  “Everything was fine … except when the kids had their backs to you at one point while you were talking to them…”

Yes, it’s true.  I must hide behind the children while sitting in a chair directly in front of the fan.  After years of being in ice cold classrooms, I finally score the one where the heat blasts all day long, every single day of the year, even when it’s warm out.  Now that I am plagued with waves of hot flashes, the heaters are like curses, taunting me and laughing at me.  Wednesday right in the middle of my fifteen-minute observation, I get hit with a mega-hot flash, a sweat-out-of-my-pores hot flash, a face-and-chest-as-red-as-tomatoes hot flash.  I work my way to the back of the room, behind the kiddos and behind my boss, and do the best I can to teach through the dampening aggravation.  My boss is writing about how I am forcing the kids to turn backward if they want to see me, and I am dying for him to leave so I can dump the sweater I have on and turn the fan higher without a lot of histrionics.

Damn hot flashes that interfere with my daily life.  I know, I know.  I should be happy I’m young enough to still be having them.  I should be singing “I Enjoy Being a Girl” but all I can muster is some sad version of “Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot!”  I’ll gladly take a luke-warm observation report to avoid the embarrassment of having a hot flash in front of my students and, worse, my male boss.  There’s something comforting about paperwork in my forever-file that reads, “sat in back of room for a minute so students couldn’t see her…” rather than “Holy crap, she turned redder than a baboon’s butt…”

If only my classroom, like my friend’s SUV, had separate temperature controls.  Until then, I’ll continue to hide, turn on the fans I keep all year long, and do the sweater-on/sweater-off routine.  Honestly, it’s almost ridiculous.

WEATHER OR NOT ... AGAIN

Here it comes.  Well. Not quite yet, but in twenty-four hours.  Before tomorrow arrives, the Arctic Blast will pour in.  (A mini-one, anyway.)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I know.  Here I am picking on the weather again.  Truthfully, living in New England makes the weather a pretty easy mark. 

But here’s the thing – Are you ready?  -- Sit down and hold your arm rests because this is mind-blowing information I am about to share.  Maybe lean in a little closer to your computer screen so you don’t miss it.  Ready?

It gets cold in New England.

Right?  This is news?  I’m serious.  All over the television channels the weather people are spreading word that doom, destruction, and the degradation of the citizens will occur starting Thursday because … gasp … a cold front is moving in.

Yes, it’s November, and it’s going to get cold.  Hard to believe.  I mean, we’ve already had a storm dump almost two feet of snow in the northern regions of Maine.  It’s not like we haven’t had really cold Novembers (some with snow and some without) before this.

The problem isn’t with the weather nor with the people who live here in New England.  After all, no one forces grown adults to live anywhere in particular, especially here.  The problem is with the news stations that screech and cry and speak in strained whispers when telling New Englanders what we already know, meaning, “Hey, it’s going to snow!  Yippppeeeee!”

Some of us get excited when a blizzard approaches.  My skin doesn’t like the cold weather, but my eyes and brain love the icy, frosty, snowy New England winters.  Seriously, people, this is New England. 

I’ll say it again because our news stations and weather forecasters don’t seem to understand that we are not Southern California, and it’s not always going to be sunny and 70 degrees.

This IS New England.  Stop your histrionics and get with the program.  Shut up and put on a sweatshirt.  Or move; that’s always a choice, too.

SILENT, SIMPLE SENTIMENTS

I do not have anything profound to say today, nothing sassy to complain about, and no funny misadventure to recount.  It's Veterans Day.  I have a memory to share and some gratitude to extend.

Growing up, my parents, especially my father, would implore us kiddos to practice for Armistice Day.  Armistice Day is the day that is the Veterans Day's precursor.   It was (and is still) a day for silent reverie and reflection, and we children were expected to show some respect... SILENTLY, of course.

I am the daughter of a retired Army serviceman.  My father was a cryptographer in the European theater of World War II.  His brother, my uncle, served in Korea via the Army.  My grandfather was Army.  My brother-in-law is retired Air Force, and his daughter (my niece) is a Marine.  I have a couple of friends who are Vietnam War veterans. 

Apologies to those I've left out.  However, my sentiments are simple today:

Thank you for your service.

TEA TIME

My teammates at work spoil me.

When we have team meetings, one of the women with whom I work makes us all tea and hot chocolate.  One of the other women on my team has a drawer in her kitchen that is filled with all kinds of exotic teas, and she brings some of that tea in for me to add to our school tea collection.  I keep sugar and honey in my classroom, as well.  Between us, we have some great meetings – tea to calm us down when needed, caffeine to ramp us up when needed.

I decide that I should probably contribute more than the usual standard tea bags, so I dig through my stash.  I have various English and Irish teas, and I also have a bunch of other kinds.  I try to decide which ones I might want to keep here at home and which ones I might want to contribute to the team stash.

 After vacillating over my decision, I suddenly have a brainstorm.  I grab three mugs from the shelf.  I decide to make three kinds of tea:  Earl Grey, pumpkin spice chai, and Christmas tea.  I’ve tried each of these numerous times before, but I cannot remember much about them other than I enjoy them enough to keep the tea bags.  The only way to decide this conundrum is to have a tea taste-off. 

After boiling a full point of water, I set up my tasting station along the counter.  I drink my tea black with one sugar, so I set up each cup with a different tea bag and with a spoonful of sugar.  I don’t wait for the whistle of the tea pot this time.  As soon as I see the steam wafting out, I start filling the mugs.

The smell is instantaneous.  My kitchen is suddenly filled with the aromatic scent of steeping tea.  I stir each mug slightly then leave them all for two minutes to do what tea bags do.  By the time I come back to the counter, I still haven’t decided which tea to sample first.  I eeny-meeny-miney-mo the cups and get down to business.

First up is the pumpkin spice chai.  Being a pumpkin spice fan, I like the tea, but I’m not a huge chai fan, at least not in a traditional sense.  I always understood chai to be a milk-based tea, but I never put milk in my tea and consider it a bit of a sacrilege.  The tea is just fine by itself; its smooth taste is almost flat but not unpleasant.  It smells peppery with its combination of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice.  Oh, and pumpkin spice.  After all, it is pumpkin spice chai.

The second mug is full of steaming Christmas tea, which might sound like peppermint and candy canes, but it’s actually spicy, with cinnamon and cloves.  It reminds me a little bit of my tooth extraction because the socket got infected, and I had a pack of clove oil stuck in it for a week.  I breathed cloves for days, even after the packet came out.  The Christmas tea smells like regular tea but tastes mild with a spicy kick.

The last one I try is one of my favorites, the Earl Grey.  Sure, it’s a classic tea with its own legend, but it’s not quite plain old regular tea.  It has the bite that a good black tea should have, a little kick in the pants both aromatically and tastefully.  It has a hint of bergamont flavoring, an orange extract made to imitate more expensive Chinese teas.  I hold the mug in my hands for long moments while sipping.

I feel like Goldilocks, trying out the three teas to see which one I will finish and which I will donate to Team Tea Time.  One tea is a little flat.  Another is sort of peppery.  But the Earl Grey is just right. 

I’ll bring the tea bags to school with me and share them.  I know my team spoils me, but maybe I can spread a little of the love with the fancy teas.  After all, if I love them all enough to try out three teas at once here at home, I surely love them enough to share the experience with them at work.