Lunch was nice.

Just got back.

It has been a poor morning, starting from getting home last night. Middle Girl had a poster to do for science, and, of course, she waited until last night after church to begin getting it onto posterboard.

The topic of interest was “Sleep and Nutrition for Maximum Academic Performance”—pretty heady stuff, eh? Especially considering just how well we follow the advice of learned academicians on the subject.

Basically though, she just had to write down some facts and find some charts or something, but she had done a pitiful bit of looking in the encyclopedia and had only a scatterdash handful of mess to show for her effort. Tuesday evening I printed her off some stuff from the Internet, but she said that pictures of Jane Russell did not count, so I got her some MORE stuff on diet and sleep. Which she more or less ignored.

Last night, we got in and set to work. I had already given her a few huge-amount-of-my-folks’-money-spent-on-architecture-school tips about laying out her board with the information. Which she more or less ignored.

She had started writing all over the board, and as with EVERY OTHER SINGLE POSTER I’ve ever helped her with, I told her to do it l i g h t l y in pencil first. Which meant big thick hard lines and letters that were going everywhere and then all squinched up on one end. STOP! the presses.

“What?”

“Well honey, you need to draw some lines to help you keep the letters straight, and you need to do it REALLY light and then go back over it in marker, and you need to get all of the words centered up…here, give me your pencil, and go get me a straightedge.” Famous last words.

So, I lined everything up, and lightly put in the title in pencil, and gave her a marker.

“Esssssss. Elllllllllll—oops! Is that bad, Daddy?”

“Just be exCEEDINGLY careful, sugar—that’s INK you know.”

“What does ‘axxeatingly’ mean?”

“Here, give me the marker.”

I did the top line, then she did the other line, and then it came time to lay down some factitude. But something still wasn’t quite right with the layout—AHH, a border.

“Here, let’s put a border around the outside to make it pop a bit.” Other famous last words.

I whipped a hardedge pencil line around everything then made a text box on each side for our stunning collection of facts, then gave her a marker.

“Oops. I got off over here, Daddy!”

“That’s okay, give me the marker.”

I expertly free-handed over the guideline all around—one of the few remaining things which produces a sense of wonderment in my older kids. “How do you keep it so straight! I can’t do that!”

Actually, you can. Just concentrate on making it from one end to the other without picking up the pen. Don’t sit there and scratch, scratch, scratch all the way down to the end of the line—just one smooth stroke. It’ll be a bit wavy, but it’ll be straight enough to do the job without looking too hard-edged. (That right there was a whole quarter’s worth of tuition value you just got—just send my mom a check.)

After that, she was more or less on her own. I made her pick about six facts on each topic and write them down on the poster—which she was finally able to do without leaving dents the size of the Grand Canyon in the posterboard—and I proofed them. I gave her an idea for some little pie-charty type things to put on there to take up some white space, and voila, we get in bed past midnight.

In order to try to regain a bit of my sleep deficit, I set my clock for a little AFTER five…and worried about it the rest of the night—dreaming that I had overslept, WAKE!, dreaming that it had gone off, WAKE!, dreaming I got up and turned it off, WAKE!

Did you know that the normal adult needs at least 8 hours of sleep a night? Did you know that not getting that much makes you abnormal?

Well, it does.

So, up at five:eleven, watch a little of the early local news, fall out of bed, crawl to the shower, finally wake up, sit and shave a while, brush teeth, wake the big kids and herd Cat to the potty (she has—cross your fingers, now—not wet the bed in over a month), get dressed, wake the big kids up AGAIN, get Cat dressed, wake the big kids up AGAIN, fix a large, traditional Southern breakfast of store-bought frozen waffles—two per child, mind you!!—round ‘em up and head out the door.

And then I got here. Meeting first thing for an hour and a half, then come in and sit down to do my real work and get blindsided by an irate developer on the phone complaining about his project getting stopped. Long story, but basically he had not done a complete accounting of all of the work he actually intended to do on his building, which according to the permit application was just a little painting and repair. And which turned out to be a complete renovation. So, he got stopped, because he never got a design review approval (my little part of paradise), and the permit guys were also taken by surprise by the actual amount of work being done. So, here he comes, both barrels blazing.

I pick up the phone, and he’s in full battle mode. I let him vent, every once in a while stopping him to explain the process, and finally figure out the thing he’s most mad about is that his DRYWALL CONTRACTOR (what about THAT for a coincidence—just this week I posted on getting plastered!) was standing around not doing anything (how he could tell any difference, I don’t know) because the job was shut down.

I finally talked him in off the ledge by letting him know that our particular branding iron had nothing to do with inside work, and that I would call the inspector and let him know it was okay for him to proceed with the sheetrock. That seemed to pacify him for the most part, but I still got to hear all about the lesser part. Whatever. He still gets to come see us in a couple of weeks for the exterior stuff.

BUT, for those of you in similar circumstances, fed up with governmental idiocy and ready to chew someone a new one, a few tips—

1--I know I’m you’re employee. I understand you pay my salary. Fair enough. But the job you hired me to do is what I’m doing, just like when a cop stops you for speeding.

2--Although you may be frustrated at your treatment so far at the rough hands of others, I really am looking for a way to accommodate both you AND my other 242, 819 bosses, if you will just hush for a minute and let me.

3--I really could not care less a) how much money you have, b) how much you spend in taxes, b) how much money you bring in, c) who you have lunch with, d) what civic groups you belong to and schmooze with, e) who you know—even if it’s my boss, f) what you think of government, g) how much it’s going to cost you because you were delayed because you got caught doing something that looked suspiciously like unpermitted work, h) how much money you have, i) how long you’ve been in business, j) how stupid I am, k) how many people worship the very pot you crap in, l) how much money you have, or m) who you know—even if it’s my boss’s boss; because the job you’re paying me to do requires me to be impartial and treat you just like the poor joe with no money and no connections.

Even if you weren’t paying me to do that, I’d do it anyway. So back off.

4--Realize that not all government workers are crazed, stupid idiots. According to the latest statistics, only about 96.6% of us are, so when you find someone on the phone who wants to help you, who is trying hard to be accommodating, and who has actually been in your shoes trying to deal with a mindless bureaucracy, and who sounds like a reasonably intelligent person and is not prone to making chittering sounds like a chimp, it might be best to realize that person can be a great ally to you and not do all in your power to alienate him.

Off to lunch, then—Miss Reba and I have been economizing of late by bringing our lunch instead of eating out every day, but I have just about had my fill of tiny little bits of cardboard and plastic film, so we had a date today. Beautiful day downtown—cool and clear, and a new bootleg fruit vendor! Right across the street from the Trust Jesus Guy—made me feel all cool and urbaney. We had decided to go to Quiznos, so I got there and made a quick dash for the john—needs cleaning, guys. Although it does have an interesting closet—a small partitioned-off dead space that backs up to the original building wall—that’s some real bricks and timber!

Back out to stand in line, and who do I see? Well, this being the Week of Past Brushes With Celebrities, it was George W. Bush! There’s a lawyer-type who works down the block who looks startlingly like Bar’s boy. I imagine he probably gets a lot of people who say he looks just like Laura’s husband, so I told him, “Hey, you look just like Wesley Clark!” Not really. I just stood in line.

BUT, it was a good place to stand. There was a tall girl in front of me who looked like she had just stepped out of LIFE magazine, circa April, 1962. Demure floral print dress, little white flats, neat platinum hair pulled back with a cloth band—she looked like a six-foot-tall cross between Sandra Dee, Grace Kelly, and more disturbingly, a bit like Mo Collins’ character of Trina on MADtv. I believe she was probably left here by an advanced civilization of alien Amazons to conduct observations of Earth life, and all they had to go on for costuming was a 1960 Sears catalog. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.

Reba finally got there and we had a good lunch—lots of beef and cheese and onions—and then it was time to head back. Blah.

The one bright spot was that on the way back I did a quick tour of the park, where the EMA folks were still hanging out. The one nice thing about it is that events like this tend to displace the bums urban campers from the park, and today was no exception. Except for the guys who were hard-core sleepers who managed to curl up while scads of school kids threw mini-Frisbees and slung water at each other out of the fountain.

Several of the booths had those ‘tornado in a bottle’ things, but you know, once you’ve seen one…

I figured I would see if there were any more celebrities to stalk—Channel 42 had Bonnie McLaughlin at a table with all sorts of weather information about what to do in case of a tornado (panic), but I didn’t stop because there were too many people around and it didn’t look like she had any photos. The ABC 33/40 booth was empty, although it did have several helpful brochures about what to do during a tornado (take cover, panic), and crayon-coloring sheets with the amazing heroic cartoon meteorologist character, James Spann. Finally got around to the FOX6 booth, hoping against hope the lovely Miss Preede would be about (yes, I’m still stalking her, too) but it was just a bunch of dumb ol’ weather guys—including the Professor:

“Oh, and in case you're wondering... The “K” stands for Klimasewski, and ironically, the “Klima” in his name means “climate!”

Yes, the bitter, bitter, mocking irony of it all. And there was Fred Hunter, a really decent sort of weatherguy, and the king of all weathermen and keeper of the FOX6 Live VIPIR! Radar, renowned Gadsdenian, the very imitatably-voiced David Neal. Dave looks a whole lot like Reba’s older brother (who is married and lives in New Jersey, so no requests for addresses, please) and we sometimes joke about her brother doing the weather. So, I got Mr. Neal to sign a photo to Reba. I know she will get a kick out of it—“Hi Reba! Thanks for watching, David Neal.”

And then I waded through more kids and came here and wrote this, and now it’s time to go home and get Bec all fixed up for soccer practice, where I intend to crawl on top of a set of bleachers and sleep.

Not really. They’re too uncomfortable.
posted by Terry at 4:51:00 PM