Too School For Cool

School is back.

What the hell?

Didn't summer just start?   Here in NY, it didn't even get moving until mid-July and just when I started enjoying it, BAM!  School.

Allie will be in Pre-K this year.  Her last year before her formal education begins.  The last year that she probably will enjoy the entire day of school.  After this there is homework.  Yes, Kindergarten has homework.

What the hell?  Again!

What happened to half days of Kindergarten where you fought over all of the germy toys, took naps, and ran around like lunatics?  Now they are full days of school, and the toys and running around are limited.  And no freakin' nap! 

The nap has officially been removed from the curriculum.  This, my friend, is where the nap went to die.  I had hoped that the other grades would catch on to the handiness of the nap and then eventually this would evolve into a mandatory daily work event.  When you're five, you don't want to nap!  It's when you're 35 that you need a siesta!

Think about it.... 2pm in the middle of the day, you bust out your comfy pillow and favorite woobie and take a snoozle.  25 minutes later, you wake up refreshed and ready to move on.  It would BEHOOVE companies to have a mandatory nap time.  

Also, rumor has it that kids should be reading in Kindergarten.  When I was in Kindergarten, there were two kids who knew how to read.  And they were shipped off to sit with the 2nd graders for a bit during the morning for some sort of kiddie book club.  And those kids really wanted to just stay in the classroom and play with the germy toys, take a nap, and run around.  You were a freak if you knew how to read at that age.  Now it's no biggie.  My mother can no longer puff up with pride when she tells people that I was one of those two reading freaks.  Parents these days are probably thinking "Big whoop.  All kindergarteners can read now.  Get over yourself."

Speaking of reading, I thought I'd clarify a little something. 

As I mentioned last time, yes I am writing a book.  I will not tell you what the book is about yet, but I can confirm that it is NOT a memoir or about a certain scandalous company that I used to work for.  Are we clear on that?  All of the people from my past do not need to worry.  I'm not going to share deep, dark secrets about past relationships, so you can chill out.  

Now, in regards to that aforementioned scandalous company, should someone come into a little cashola and want to pay me to gather info and write a book, then I'm available and I'm talkin'!  We all spent our years at that place saying, "I could totally write a book about this place.  The shit that happens here is craaaaaaaazy!"  You know who you all are!  If you're up for it, I'm game!

It's a fiction novel and I'm 1/3 done.  I'm doing research and whatnot now before continuing but I'm very excited about doing it.  November is National Novel Writing Month and I'm hoping to finish the next third of the book as I join the other NaNoWriMos (yes, this is an actual organization) in the commitment to write 50,000 words of my novel.

Anyway, back to school......

Tomorrow is orientation for Allie's school and Friday will be her first day back to school.  I will be taking the obligatory "First Day of Pre-K" photo and I might even post it on Facebook or Instagram like the rest of the parental population.  I'm sure the people without little deductions roll their eyes and groan when school begins as we parents clog up their social media with photos of kids they don't care about.  I'm pretty sure I was an eye roller before Allie.  But throughout the flurry of photos, someone posted this and I can't believe it took so long for someone to come up with this witty little snapshot:

Well done, KC Walsh!  Well done!

And while I'm complaining, does anyone know who the fucker was that decided all swimming pools should close on Labor Day?  Who was that rotten bastard?  And why Labor Day?  Every year, it's blazing freakin' hot the week of Labor Day and I stand there, sweating, on my front lawn, ogling the pool across the street that's completely full of water and totally operational..... but padlocked.  

I hate them.  They should be sent to Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, forced it sit in the sun and stare at a refreshing body of water for just as long as I have to sweat outside and gawk at my pool.  It's just plain wrong.   At least drain the damn thing so I don't have to look at it, and be tortured by the memories of the cool refreshing water that I submerged my body into on those dreadfully hot sunny days.

And with that, I must leave you to put my little human, and my big self,  into bed.  After all, it's a pre-school night!

Toodles!

xoxox

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New Stuff I Got Goin On

Well, I'd say that was quite a sabbatical!  I didn't know I'd be gone for so long.  It was an extended blog nap, I suppose.

To follow up with my last post......  we didn't get shit.

I shouldn't say that.  We did have some sort of progress but not in how we expected.

After the last meeting we discovered that Justin's lawyer was a moron.  I'm sure he had plenty of good qualities, but helping us was not one of them.  The least worrisome of his moronic behavior was his inability to call us back with information we needed..... until we fired him.  Then he knew our phone number really well!  He could dial those digits lickety-split.

Justin, the good egg that he is, didn't want to fire him.  He felt bad that this man put 5 years of work into our case and we were going to give him the boot.  But, as I told him, it was five SHITTY years of work.  He was horrible!  No one could believe that this case wasn't settled and at the last meeting, Justin was told that there were two more doctors that needed to give depositions and then....blah blah blah blah blah.  My theory?  "This jerk isn't going to be sending us Christmas Cards and checking in after this is over!  He's gonna take his cut and run.  He doesn't give a rat's ass about us.  Who cares about him?!"

We were directed to a different firm through this wonderful person at Allstate who helped me grow up and pay attention to my meager investments (I thought the money would do better if I just ignored it and let it do its thing....okay, so investment-wise I'm as much of a moron as that lawyer we fired).  Here's what happened next:

Lawyer called us back in 24 hours
They got all of the records from the moron lawyer
Shit is happening!   Be still my heart.

Who knows what's going to happen.  At this point, I've relegated myself to "financially screwed for eternity" until someone tells me that there's a position opening up in the "show me the money" department.   Keep your fingers crossed for us, 'kay?

Speaking of my husband.... you know how they say "You know who your true friends are when your life isn't going well?"  Well, he is a living testament to that statement.  Totally true story.

When I met him, he had a bunch of friends that he hung out with.  Some separately.  Some in a group.  Every time one of these people needed help.... like their tv broke, or their heat went at their business, or they wanted something he had that was super expensive so they asked if they could make payments and take it now.....he was there.  Need money?  He'd lend it.  I never had a friend give me a vehicle and let me pay them off.... whenever I could.  Those people did though!  He was a gem of a friend!

Do you know where those people are now that we don't have cash with spare to share?  Me neither.

I think about it and I'm disgusted by how friendly they were when they had their hands out, but once we were in a bad spot, NOT ONE OF THEM has called to see how he is or if he needed anything.  I shouldn't be surprised.  They're probably afraid he'd ask them for something, much like they did to him for years.  The sad part is that Justin feels bad about it.  The only good part is that it weeded them out.   I swear if we are ever in that financial position again, they will never see a red cent.  Bad bad bad karma!!

I'm done venting.  I really had no intention of going through all of that when I sat down here.

If anyone is on a tear with books and looking for some gooders to read, let me know!  I've been ripping thru them on audio since Christmas.  I've been working a lot and when I work a lot, I miss Allie.  And when I miss Allie, I get depressed.  And when I get depressed, I eat a lot of crap.  So, audio books distract me from how much I miss my little peanut, therefore I don't eat.

Speaking of books....

I'm writing one.

Oh yes indeed.  It's true.  Aren't I just fancy?

About 8 years ago, I was dating a guy who dumped my sorry ass.  I was pathetic.  I remember feeling like Monica from "Friends" when she and Richard broke up.

I was living by myself and I would drive the 5 blocks to my dad's house and sit and cry on his shoulder (literally!  he watched tv and I just cried.)

One night, as I sat with my head on Dad's shoulder and my big box of tissues on my lap, I realized I had two different shoes on.  I scanned upward and noticed that my sweatpants had a hole in the crotch and my flannel shirt was totally buttoned wrong.  To top it off, I hadn't even combed out my hair when I got out of the shower that morning.  I went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and said to myself, "Self, you need to get a grip!"

I went to my therapist and he advised me to do two things..... pick up a hobby and move around whenever I started thinking about my now ex-boyfriend.

So, I did two things.  I took my dog for a walk every time I got weepy (he was the happiest he had ever been!) and I decided to write a book.  I know.... it's a big hobby, but I'm notorious for biting off more than I can potentially chew (literally AND figuratively, as now I also have TMJ)  I sat down and began to write.  And write.  And walk the dog.  And write.  I learned that when I'm miserable, I'm a committed writer!

Unfortunately, a few months later, my husband swept me off of my feet and I stopped writing.  I learned then that when I'm deliriously in love, I'm a crappy writer.

And so sat my little novel.  For eight years.

While listening to one of the audio books on tape a month ago

the rest of the story hit me like a ton of bricks right in the brain, right out of nowhere!  The book was sitting behind some door in my brain that was overlooked time and time again.  Suddenly, it burst through the door, ready to come out and be seen

And I gotta tell ya', writing a book is no easy task.  I thought it would be like blogging, but it's not!  There's a whole lot of prep work if you're serious about it.   And I'm serious.  The truth is that I've wanted to be a writer my whole life.  I was writing stories when I was a youngin'.  There are piles of them in notebooks in my mom's garage.  (Not mine, because ours is a complete disaster of hoarding proportions)

With that all being said, I must depart and get my silly self to bed.  The brain needs to recharge or I spend valuable time every day writing drivel that makes me angry when I proof read it later.  I will tend to my blog more often, because I still have lots of ridiculousness to report and insanity to complain about.  I need you.

Totally true story!

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