Yet Another Only-In-Kim's-World Story Coming Soon
1 Comments Published by Kimmah on Wednesday, December 24, 2008 at 1:56 PM.
just have to get through the craziness that is Christmas Eve today :-).
As I get older and older and older and older...you get the idea that 40 is looming, yes?...I have a harder time trying to figure out what I need for Christmas. W. and I are not lavish gift givers--I usually buy my own gifts from him. We have never really felt the need to spend the big bucks and, for the past few years, we haven't had loads of extra money lying around come holiday time. He humors my annual jaunts to England or New York or Atlanta or Europe (I leave March 31 for a ten-day trip, woohoo!) and I go out in public with him when he wears overalls (handyman stores only. I have my standards). I do, however, have to cough up a list for my sister, my mom and MIL. This year's was particularly exciting--get ready:
1. an electric skillet. I had no idea I needed one until I realized that I didn't have one AND that I can't fry anything on my stove because one side of the pan is always hotter than the other.
2. a ginormous tote bag/purse/carry-on thing that I think will look tres chic in Paris and Rome and will probably only use on such trips. But it's really pretty.
3. a laptop case. Just because.
4. a new travel charger and a steamer
Try not to drool--it's a great list, I know. I also really need new kitchen towels and dishrags as well as all new baking sheets (I do actually cook, thankyouverymuch), but I'll just look for those when I shop a bit after the holidays. The list is pathetic, I know. I started to put some more exciting things on the list like perfume, but A. it's so damned expensive and B. I don't really NEED it. Thus my list is a yawn (better than W.'s which includes new overalls and something for his chainsaw) and that's depressing. I refuse to be depressed during the holidays--especially while there is vodka and my new obsession sugar free Red Bull in the house, so here is my Pretend Christmas List.
I need/want
1. a Scantron machine for grading bubble sheets. yeah, that's geeky gift, but it would be such a HUGE quality of life booster that I'm willing to be a geek for it.
2. a vacuum cleaner that doesn't require unwinding the cord in order to use the hose thingy. But it has to be a Dyson vacuum because I will never own another brand. Ever. They're that good.
3. something that will make my keys findable instantly when I am ready to leave the house. It's pathetic, really, that someone who has graduated from college not one, not two, but FOUR frigging times cannot keep up with keys. Or sunglasses, for that matter. If I was all absent-minded professory and lost in a fog of theorems and policy, that would be one thing, but the most pressing thing on my mind most days is "What should my facebook status update say?" or "Why can't I remember to put the tights that are too short for me in the trash when I take them off instead of putting them with the other ones and then wearing them to work yet again?". So you can see, my shortcomings are not even remotely quirky--just ridiculous. I need a smart person to configure such a device--the key thing, I mean, not something quirky.
4. a highlighting cap that doesn't take forever and a day to pull hair through AND also doesn't cause pain to the wearer. I'm bored with my hair and want to do blonder highlights, but I don't dare just brush them on because I'll end up with transparent chunks if past performance is any indicator. I'd also like a personal hair stylist to come do my hair color monthly, but that would be greedy. Plus, I'd have to clean my house before she came up.
5. my own bowling ball. There. I said it. Laugh, point, jeer. I don't care. Using a house ball is KILLING my old, arthritic hands and making teaching very difficult, not to mention making practicing impossible.
6. a self cleaning refrigerator. They can do this with ovens. Why not step it up and do it for fridges? I realize that ovens use heat for the process, BUT once upon a time, I thought that self-cleaning ovens had some sort of foam in them that you just pushed a button for like that EZ-Off stuff that you spray--you know the stuff. I was utterly shocked to find out that all the supposedly miraculous self-cleaning ovens just got really, really hot. So I'm thinking a fridge that has some sort of dispenser is totally doable...just get one of those professory types to work out all the details.
1. an electric skillet. I had no idea I needed one until I realized that I didn't have one AND that I can't fry anything on my stove because one side of the pan is always hotter than the other.
2. a ginormous tote bag/purse/carry-on thing that I think will look tres chic in Paris and Rome and will probably only use on such trips. But it's really pretty.
3. a laptop case. Just because.
4. a new travel charger and a steamer
Try not to drool--it's a great list, I know. I also really need new kitchen towels and dishrags as well as all new baking sheets (I do actually cook, thankyouverymuch), but I'll just look for those when I shop a bit after the holidays. The list is pathetic, I know. I started to put some more exciting things on the list like perfume, but A. it's so damned expensive and B. I don't really NEED it. Thus my list is a yawn (better than W.'s which includes new overalls and something for his chainsaw) and that's depressing. I refuse to be depressed during the holidays--especially while there is vodka and my new obsession sugar free Red Bull in the house, so here is my Pretend Christmas List.
I need/want
1. a Scantron machine for grading bubble sheets. yeah, that's geeky gift, but it would be such a HUGE quality of life booster that I'm willing to be a geek for it.
2. a vacuum cleaner that doesn't require unwinding the cord in order to use the hose thingy. But it has to be a Dyson vacuum because I will never own another brand. Ever. They're that good.
3. something that will make my keys findable instantly when I am ready to leave the house. It's pathetic, really, that someone who has graduated from college not one, not two, but FOUR frigging times cannot keep up with keys. Or sunglasses, for that matter. If I was all absent-minded professory and lost in a fog of theorems and policy, that would be one thing, but the most pressing thing on my mind most days is "What should my facebook status update say?" or "Why can't I remember to put the tights that are too short for me in the trash when I take them off instead of putting them with the other ones and then wearing them to work yet again?". So you can see, my shortcomings are not even remotely quirky--just ridiculous. I need a smart person to configure such a device--the key thing, I mean, not something quirky.
4. a highlighting cap that doesn't take forever and a day to pull hair through AND also doesn't cause pain to the wearer. I'm bored with my hair and want to do blonder highlights, but I don't dare just brush them on because I'll end up with transparent chunks if past performance is any indicator. I'd also like a personal hair stylist to come do my hair color monthly, but that would be greedy. Plus, I'd have to clean my house before she came up.
5. my own bowling ball. There. I said it. Laugh, point, jeer. I don't care. Using a house ball is KILLING my old, arthritic hands and making teaching very difficult, not to mention making practicing impossible.
6. a self cleaning refrigerator. They can do this with ovens. Why not step it up and do it for fridges? I realize that ovens use heat for the process, BUT once upon a time, I thought that self-cleaning ovens had some sort of foam in them that you just pushed a button for like that EZ-Off stuff that you spray--you know the stuff. I was utterly shocked to find out that all the supposedly miraculous self-cleaning ovens just got really, really hot. So I'm thinking a fridge that has some sort of dispenser is totally doable...just get one of those professory types to work out all the details.
Labels: copying dweeze and just making up new tags, getting old, materialism
To say I've been in something of a mental rut lately would be an understatement...I've been bordering on batshit crazy. It finally dawned on me today that a great deal of my problem is my abandonment of productive things that I enjoy such as blogging, working out, reading in lieu of total wastes of time like playing Mafia Wars or reading umpteen million political blogs and assessments. So, I've made my resolutions for 2009 and number one on the list is, really, blogging.
I've blogged for years--way back when no one knew what a blog was or how to blog there was Kim, blathering away. And then I got lazy. Lately I've been totally uninspired. Nothing particularly interesting has happened since my unfortunate encounter with the catheter bag in the parking lot last summer, but by golly, I'm going to try to find humor in the mundane. It's what I used to be able to do. Yes? Well, of course it is--my life is the personification of mundane.
I think perhaps that part of my mental overload must be attributed to my most recent teaching adventure: my role as the varsity bowling coach. Yes, I, Kimmah the Uncoordinated, She Whose Only Sport is Fantasty Football, is coaching a sport that she cannot play. Funny how life works that way, isn't it? They needed a coach and Five wanted to bowl, so I thought, "What the hell?". What the hell, indeed.
First of all, I knew nothing--NOTHING--about bowling. I didn't know, for example, that you don't actually aim for the front pin aka the head pin. Who knew? And that you are supposed to spin the ball. Had no idea about scoring, either. Or that it was actually interesting to watch. I'm not ashamed to say that I have now become a high school bowling junkie. This is a good thing since it has engulfed my life this fall. Despite being an unpaid coach, I found myself at the bowling alley three or four times a week. Ostensibly to 'coach', but really just to supervise and be there for moral support. See, our team sort of sucked a bit. Not through much fault of their own--they have had no actual coaching in two years--lots of bad habits, sloppy execution and total cluelessness. Slowly but surely, I've prodded them into shape and encouraged/threatened them to improve. One advantage to being a female coach in a sport coached almost exclusively by bowling league men is being able to play the clueless card. I've had three different coaches from other teams offer to help my boys. We've gotten a coaching clinic lined up for next week to get them ready for the district tournament in January because they know I'm totally in over my head technique-wise.
My boys only won two matches this year, but they were competitive in five other matches. The scoring in bowling is a bit misleading--you get points for head-to-head matches as well as total pin count. We get killed in pin count even when we tie in head-to-heads. You have six bowlers at a time in a match and we cannot seem to get six guys on their game at a time. My top guy, A., is the top bowler in the district--he had a 300 game two weeks ago--so he's not a problem. My other seven starters, though, have been all over the place. Had a kid bowl a 109 one game and a 199 the next. Ugh. Over the season, though, we've had MAJOR improvement and I think next year we will see a great improvement. I've got guys averaging 170 in matches where they used to average 120 or 130. If only we can get all of them on the same page.
My girls' team is much, MUCH weaker than my boys'. They've been savaged in almost every match, blesstheirhearts. I've focused on the boys' team and my assistant/helping coach/assistant principal has been with them during matches. I'm going to be working with them a lot between this season and next to try and get them straightened out. The good thing about them not being as good as the boys is that I can actually teach them and help them--they're not all hook shot and backspin. I've taken a coaching class, so I can help them fix their problems. Maybe.
This has no humor whatsoever, lmao, but at least I've written more than a line or two about how I never blog. It's a start, no?
I've blogged for years--way back when no one knew what a blog was or how to blog there was Kim, blathering away. And then I got lazy. Lately I've been totally uninspired. Nothing particularly interesting has happened since my unfortunate encounter with the catheter bag in the parking lot last summer, but by golly, I'm going to try to find humor in the mundane. It's what I used to be able to do. Yes? Well, of course it is--my life is the personification of mundane.
I think perhaps that part of my mental overload must be attributed to my most recent teaching adventure: my role as the varsity bowling coach. Yes, I, Kimmah the Uncoordinated, She Whose Only Sport is Fantasty Football, is coaching a sport that she cannot play. Funny how life works that way, isn't it? They needed a coach and Five wanted to bowl, so I thought, "What the hell?". What the hell, indeed.
First of all, I knew nothing--NOTHING--about bowling. I didn't know, for example, that you don't actually aim for the front pin aka the head pin. Who knew? And that you are supposed to spin the ball. Had no idea about scoring, either. Or that it was actually interesting to watch. I'm not ashamed to say that I have now become a high school bowling junkie. This is a good thing since it has engulfed my life this fall. Despite being an unpaid coach, I found myself at the bowling alley three or four times a week. Ostensibly to 'coach', but really just to supervise and be there for moral support. See, our team sort of sucked a bit. Not through much fault of their own--they have had no actual coaching in two years--lots of bad habits, sloppy execution and total cluelessness. Slowly but surely, I've prodded them into shape and encouraged/threatened them to improve. One advantage to being a female coach in a sport coached almost exclusively by bowling league men is being able to play the clueless card. I've had three different coaches from other teams offer to help my boys. We've gotten a coaching clinic lined up for next week to get them ready for the district tournament in January because they know I'm totally in over my head technique-wise.
My boys only won two matches this year, but they were competitive in five other matches. The scoring in bowling is a bit misleading--you get points for head-to-head matches as well as total pin count. We get killed in pin count even when we tie in head-to-heads. You have six bowlers at a time in a match and we cannot seem to get six guys on their game at a time. My top guy, A., is the top bowler in the district--he had a 300 game two weeks ago--so he's not a problem. My other seven starters, though, have been all over the place. Had a kid bowl a 109 one game and a 199 the next. Ugh. Over the season, though, we've had MAJOR improvement and I think next year we will see a great improvement. I've got guys averaging 170 in matches where they used to average 120 or 130. If only we can get all of them on the same page.
My girls' team is much, MUCH weaker than my boys'. They've been savaged in almost every match, blesstheirhearts. I've focused on the boys' team and my assistant/helping coach/assistant principal has been with them during matches. I'm going to be working with them a lot between this season and next to try and get them straightened out. The good thing about them not being as good as the boys is that I can actually teach them and help them--they're not all hook shot and backspin. I've taken a coaching class, so I can help them fix their problems. Maybe.
This has no humor whatsoever, lmao, but at least I've written more than a line or two about how I never blog. It's a start, no?
