Of Bears and Such

Good Morning! I'm doing things a bit differently - time wise - today. Normally, my routine is to first, get my coffee (of course Priority #1 there) and then, sit down at the computer, clean out my e-mail inbox, read the morning newspaper from State College online and then, head over to read my favorite blogs which may or may not, depending on the topics there, give me some fodder to think over to post something to my blog that day. And, I sort of followed that order today - I've now had two cups of coffee, cleared my e-mail, read the paper and started to read my favorite blogs but I haven't completed that task as yet.

Some things happened that brought to mind some things my ex-husband used to say. Wordsmith that he was, he did have some interesting little adages he liked to banty about frequently. Things like "Slicker than snot on a doorknob" or "Hornier than a three-peckered billy goat" was another wonderful quote of his. But one he used frequently - still does too - is this: "Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you and sometimes you both go hungry."

It's the last one there that I'm going to discuss this morning in maybe a bit of a round-about method - an analogy of sorts.

I've been meaning for a couple of weeks now to call my friend, Nila, and get an appointment to get my hair cut and permed and today, since Mandy doesn't have work and I can come and go as I please, I decided to give her a call and see if she can work me in. I know right now she has a lot on her plate as her Dad's sister, who just turned 98 in December, is in the hospital right now, congestive heart failure (again) and Nila, being very close to that aunt, is on alert at the moment. But I took a chance, called and she said she could work me in at 12:30 this afternoon.

Great! I headed off to the bathroom to shower and get dressed. Figure the least I could do was show up there in clean clothes, clean body too, ya know. I stripped down, leaned over into the tub and turned the water on and boy, did I get a surprise.

We have one of those shower heads on a hose type set up which is supposed to be "anchored" to a little clip thing and hang down then over the middle of the tub. But apparently someone else in the house had taken it off that and left the shower head dangling at the side of the shower wall and it was aimed directly at me as I learned when I turned the water on and got hit, full force with a blast of cold water! Now the fact I was naked and had been planning on getting my whole body wet very shortly didn't do any harm to me other than a little unexpected chilly jolt to my system. But it sure as heck did make a nice wet mess on the bathroom floor and THAT didn't do a whole heck of a lot to keep me in a good mood at that point in time.

I don't know which one of the geniuses who share the house with me pulled that stunt but I'm sure it was either my daughter, Mandy, or her stepdaughter, Kate. My son-in-law NEVER takes the shower head and removes it from its anchor position so he is off the hook completely, as are Miss Maya and little Kurtis simply because neither of them is of a size and age where they can manipulate anything like that!

And that inspired this mini-rant today.

Which leads me to my second mini-rant of the day. This pertains to the 15-year-old in residence and her base attitude to several issues.

Currently, she is involved in the Drama Club at school and also, just went out for the girl's softball team - both of which carry a requirement that she be getting passing grades in ALL subjects. That's a school rule - not just one initiated by her Dad and my daughter. But somehow she conveniently forgets about grades being a very important part of the school's curriculum. Actually, how to get semi-decent grades seems to elude her because each fall when school resumes, the kids are given these things, called textbooks, which the rest of us (called taxpayers) pay for and expect that they will at some point in time over the school year, the student will actually OPEN the book, read and study just a little bit anyway.

Not so with this kid! Try as I may, I have yet to convince her that those books are given out for a reason -like to be read! The only textbook that ever comes home is her Algebra book and judging by her grades in that class, she does the bare minimum amount of perusing that puppy too. But the class currently at issue right now is General Science and that textbook, she freely admits, she has never opened, never read a thing in it! Why then does she think the school and teacher believe it is a necessity? She just shrugs her shoulders and says "Well, the teacher never tells us to read anything there." Say what? Give me a break! I doubt very seriously the teacher doesn't give any assignment to read even a page here and there and most likely, the kids are supposed to be following along in each chapter as they cover various aspects of science in class.

Now, a phone call yesterday and another this morning from her science teacher to my daughter about the kid's grades kind of proves my point here I think. Seems Miss Kate is failing science now - there's a big surprise, huh? And I'm thinking too had she just done a little tiny bit of work (another word relatively foreign to her vocabulary) and read just a little bit here and there, studied just a tad too, she would or could be the one who today would be "eating the bear."

But instead, that big old bear is gonna land full force on her tonight when she gets home and it is going to eat her alive I fear. She's running a big, big risk of getting booted out of the Drama Club and out of this year's production of "West Side Story" in which she has a fairly lengthy role too. Plus, she's going to get bounced off the softball team and finally, if the grade doesn't come up to passing -if she doesn't start doing some "WORK" in class, she's also going to lose out and not be allowed to go on the school's class trip to Hershey Park in June nor is the spring fling dance going to be an option for her either. That bear can be mighty, mighty hungry!

All this on top of the major lecture and fight last night about some of her other actions - like persisting in wearing my daughter's good sneakers to school although she has been told repeatedly that she is not to be "borrowing" those items or other clothing items either for that matter that belong to my daughter. I can't for the life of me understand why she insists on wearing my daughters shoes considering the fact they are a full size and a half SMALLER than the size She wears! To me, that is making both her and my daughter go hungry in the bear anaology thing here, isn't it?

And as my friend Sandy points out with her word for today on her blog, a little deference there would really go a long, long way!

But then too, I have to think back to when Mandy was in junior and senior high school and we had a constant battle, month after month, year in and year out about her use of the telephone. Not that I was banning her from using the phone, just trying to get her to stop making long distance phone calls on it and then, thinking by hiding the phone bill when it arrived, it would just make it all go away. One month, when she was about 13-14, she had over $90 in toll calls on that puppy and needless to say, coughing up that unexpected $90 to cover those calls was no easy task for me to do. And even today, she still seems to have a penchant for running up toll calls on the phone bill so I guess I never got my message across to her there and why then should I expect another 15-year-old to see logic in reading textbooks, studying, not wearing her stepmother's shoes, etc.

Yep -my ex-husband was right after all wasn't he. Sometimes you DO eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you and sometimes you both go hungry.

And now - the bushism for the day:
"I don't have to accept their tenants. I was trying to convince those college students to accept my tenants. And I reject any labeling me because I happened to go to the university." - On NBC'S Today show; February 23, 2000.

Seems to me DUBYA has some issues too with the bear and who is eating who and who is going hungry.