wondering

I took the big butt van in for an oil change today. Was to be $4. $4 because I had a coupon for a "free" oil change, but because the big butt van takes heavier oil than what was offered for free, it was to be a $4 oil change.

I left about $500+ lighter. *SIGH*

This service place I take our vehicles. It's conveniently located, the service people are nice, waiting area's clean, blah, blah, blah... but every time I take it there, it seems, for some routine oil change, they find something else needs fixing.

Today it was the front brake pads and the rear differential fluid. They wanted to do ball joints too, but my joints were all balled out at that point, so I passed on that.

Every time they call me and are all, "Abby, the technician found a few things while doing your oil change...", then I'm all "oh crap, here we go again". Thing is, I don't know if the claims are legitimate and it's better to fix them now rather than have it worse later, or are they just PLAYIN' me?!

And I don't even prefer driving or vehicle ownership. I coulda bought a(nother) bike with that money.
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the weekend

It was a dark Monday morning. Just when I was getting used to having it light in the morning, it's that whole daylight savings thing. *yaaaaaaawn*

But it was a nice weekend. It finally snowed on Saturday which was good because the state was on fire. And one of my two sets of in-laws came to visit. This time, it was the paternal side - FIL and his wife.

I've mentioned my strange in-laws here before I think. I suppose they're not all that strange in general, just strange to us, which strikes me as strange. Strange because this is my husband's family, yet they are so different from him.

Their differences are only exacerbated by the riff raff he married.

Magnum and I have much in common. Political views, opinions on raising kids, financial considerations, thoughts on religion, interests in general - those compatability things that can probably make or break a marriage. So... by default... I have virtually nothing in common with anyone in his family. Other than him.

So these visits are always an adventure. Or I guess that's how I try to look at them. It's like having aliens visit from another galaxy.

And we all survived. I think they've come to terms with the fact that we aren't interested in becoming carbon copies of them, although they probably can't understand why not.
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Silver Lining Saturday, part XXIX

It's snowing! After a couple weeks of spring-like weather, people around here will probably freak out.

I, however, will see the silver lining in this. It's been really dry. We need the moisture. The area's been on high fire alert off and on for the last month. High fire alert in February? Let it snow!

I'm busy this week with "Run With Lumber" activity. All the behind-the-scenes stuff. It all happens in one day, coming up in April, but there's lots to do between now and then, so I'm chipping away at it. Each year, I think, "this year will be my last of chairing this event". But then I admit, it does have its fun aspects. And when the teachers see me in the workroom with all the stuff in various stages of readiness, they get all, "Ooooh! Run with Lumber!" And I know the kids enjoy it.

Uhm, I did get a new bicycle this week. Oh, she is muy fun and muy rapido. Because of the nice weather, before the snow today, I was able to go on a couple of bike rides this week. Wind hampered us a little bit, but not enough to hide the noticeable differences between a road bike and a mountain bike. I've named her Tessa for "vitesse" - Italian for "speed". Bella remains aloof, but she'll come around - tough, big-boned girl that she is.

On that note, I'm thankful for my husband's gainful employment and our responsible handling of our finances that allows me to work part-time and do school volunteering as well as support my bicycling habit. That was a long sentence.
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he was probably bored

It's party time in our school district. For the students anyways. It's that time of year for standardized assessment testing. Time for the teachers and administrators to stress out and the students to whoop it up because everything stops for assessment testing.

No homework.

No other tests.

Plenty of recess.

I'm remembering assessment test time a couple of years ago when I was a part-time special ed. teacher's aid at the elementary school. I was assigned to proctor tests for a few of the students who got special accommodations.

One kid was a 4th grade student I tutored for special ed. math. As far as I know, he didn't actually have any diagnosed learning disability. He just didn't particularly care about grades and all. But I liked him, and he had what I felt was an above average creative imagination.

So I proctored his assessment test apart from the rest of his class as he was given an accommodation for reading - meaning he had someone (me) read the test instructions to him. I could tell, as we went through the various tests, that he could read his own instructions just fine, but based on his classroom performance, he was "accommodated".

I remember we got to a writing section. The writing prompt was something like this:

"Imagine that one day you wake up and you are a kangaroo. Describe your day".

I thought, oh, this is right up his alley. He'll come up with something really good! The following is basically what he wrote. I don't remember word-for-word. It took him all of about 7 minutes.

"One day I woke up and I was a kangaroo. Then I had breakfast and watched cartoons. Then I ate lunch and played video games and jumped on the trampoline. Then I ate dinner. Then I took a bath. Then I went to bed."

I looked at what he'd written, holding back my comments (no comments for assessment testing!). Then I thought, yeah, that was just like him. He did exactly what was asked, no more. He's pure rebel.

I think he's a genius.
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threesome?

It's not like I was unhappy. Not necessarily. It's just.... after so many years of the same thing, same thing... I guess it was more that I was... curious. Yeah, I was curious.

But curiosity strikes occassionally and then passes, hardly even noticed. Then there are the instances where curiosity hangs around. And gets bigger, and there's this pink elephant in the room that just goes unmentioned.

It's not like I was unhappy, I was just curious.

It's not that I don't appreciate and find attraction to the rugged, the tough, the dirt-under-the-nails. There was something inside of me, though, that wanted to see how the other half lived. Wanted to experience something more sensitive, more graceful. I admit, I was greedy. I wanted the best of BOTH worlds.

It became almost all consuming, this curiosity. When no one was looking, I'd crawl around the internet, looking to satisfy it. I'd scan the want ads. Even made e-mail contact a couple of times, but none of that panned out. I'd talk myself out of it and not go through.

But then today, it happened. I don't know, I guess I'd been thinking about it too much. Maybe I had a little too much time on my hands. I found myself on that slippery slope, then over the edge.

Today, I hooked up with a road bike. A sleek, responsive, skinny-tired, speedy, graceful, sweet, loving, sensitive, road bike.

And it was GOOOOOOOOOOOD.

Don't tell Bella. Not yet.

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burning bridges

I've got a rug burn. On my forehead. I wonder, what IS the shelf life of a rug burn?! It's been there for two weeks!

Okay, get your minds out of the gutters and I'll give an explanation of how I came to have a rugburn. On my forehead.

There's this little neck and back and overall strengthening/loosening exercise I do regularly. It's called a back bridge and it involves resting one's forehead on the ground.



<---Somebody, but not me, performing the back bridge. Note the proper use of the mat...


I've been doing this for years and credit it with saving me many the chiropractic dollar after being annoyed by a chronically stiff neck. Anyway, normally I do it with a bandana wrapped around my head or with a yoga mat on the floor, but a couple of weeks ago I just went for it on the rug. Full frontal, unprotected back bridging it was.

And now here I am. Two weeks later, still with the rug burn. At first it was just kind of pink, like a patch of sunburn. Then it got more red. Now, it looks darker, like a smudge of dirt. It's becoming more apparent as it ages.

And to top it off, I need a haircut. I'll probably just end up trimming my hair myself. Or I could go and let the stylist wonder all sorts of ways a person could get a rug burn. On her forehead.
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Silver Lining S-day, part XXVIII

My cup runneth over! (Really, I just spilt a bit of coffee on the pants...)

And it's time for another episode of Silver Liningness. It's been a good productive week that went by fast. March? Already?

Work was pretty busy this week, I'm learning new stuff. Yesterday, I took a test so that I could teach new stuff. Don't know yet if I qualified, but I know I'm getting there. I used my lucky pencil.

Don't want to sound like a broken record, but we had some good weather days again. It's nice to be able to get out and play in the middle of "winter", minivan moms and all.

Ever get into one of those cleaning moods? I got into one and took advantage of it. You should see the upstairs shower and tub!

Got a letter from my mom yesterday - yes we still communicate by pen on paper, weird! She says my dad's getting the internet. WHAT?!?
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