My faucet is doing a pour job

It was a Sunday morning.

Early.

Rattle. Rattle. Tap. Tap. Pound. Pound. Wiggle Wiggle. Mutter. Mutter. Muffled curse.

I squinted at the clock.

6:50.

A.M.

Tantrum-kicking the blankets entangling my legs off, I stormed into the next room.

"What are you doing?" I croaked, my voice raspy with repressed rage and furious fatigue. 

Clad in his boxers, my husband was sawing away at the drywall inside our tall kitchen closet. Tools littered the floor. The interior items in the closet were strewn all OVER.

"You know how every time you turn on the shower, you pull up the little knob and ALSO yank out the entire faucet?" he began..."Well, I'm replacing it with a sturdier one."

I think this was my cue to say "Thank you," but I decided to let it slide in the face of such early-morning accusatory aggression.  I hesitated, wondering what my role was here. "Since you're just standing there anyway, can you get me a ruler?" Brad asked, somewhat peevishly in my opinion. "Could I suggest something more in means of a shirt or, dare I suggest, pants?" I spat back. Ask me for a ruler in my classroom and BOOM! I'd have it for you, lickety-split. At home, however, I do not find myself in frequent need of a measurement tool. I know EXACTLY how long the important things in my life are. 

For some reason, the only ruler that I could unearth was a wobbly one. I handed it to my husband while simultaneously aiming the flashlight at the wrong area. Grasping the limp tool in his hand, he glared at me before flinging it over his shoulder where it flopped uselessly on the cluttered kitchen floor.  "Why do they even make those?" I asked, watching him snap a meter stick in half. "To wrap around cylindrical objects for diameter," he grunted, successfully cutting the drywall in a straight line. I eyed up the discarded ruler, "Huh," I said softly. He wrestled the drywall out. "Don't even think about it," he growled.

"Put your fingers here and hold the pipe in place," he told me next, ignoring my immature giggling as he entered the bathroom to mount the new fixture. "Come here and try it out," he called after a few minutes. "No," I told him, "I don't want to get wet." There was a long pause before I finally heard him jump in and turn on the water. "How's it doing?" I asked, now fully invested in this project. Wary, Brad answered cautiously, "Looks good," he summarized, weighing his words. "That's great!" I told him, "Maybe next time we'll work on the head." 

I snickered as I headed back to bed to bury myself under the covers. "You could have been a plumber," my husband hollered," You have such a potty mouth!"

 

The 4th grade team was all shook up this October

 There have been some changes to my grade level team this year. My friend, Rachel, moved onto an administrative post and my friend, Geri, retired. They had very clearly defined roles on the team. Rachel acted as a gentle, diplomatic braking system for my  outrageous, unreasonable, impossible, and labor-intensive ideas. Geri was the punch-to-the-face mechanism that would stop any "Bigger than Broadway" suggestions in their tracks. But they're gone now and let's just say that the train has left the station. Katriel courageously donned her engineer's cap and, as co-team representative, has her hand firmly on the throttle, battling to avoid an inevitable wreck while veteran member, Kelly, is conducting the caboose, shouting directions when she sees we're getting too far off course. Marissa, Alison, Paula, and Roxanne are busy clearing the tracks so no one gets run over and we don't get derailed. 

Halloween Week, of course, was the perfect storm. Coordinated costumes. Choreographed dance. An assembly. No problem. Easy-breezy-lemon-squeezy. But while I may strike you as an impulsive, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of gal, I abhor walking into a situation where I (or the people I'm grouped with) appear unintentionally ridiculous or unprofessional. I prefer to plan my ridiculousness and unprofessionalism to the T. 

This will probably be the only year that I will get away with this...I struck while the iron was hot. At our very first meeting in AUGUST, I presented my brand new team with my idea of the Evolution of Elvis for Halloween. "Does anyone else have some suggestions for Halloween?" I asked, knowing full-well that NO ONE comes to the first team meeting of the year planning for October. Before they knew what hit them, I had ordered enough Elvis wigs to accommodate a soccer team. 

Our fourth grade Halloween "flash-mob" tradition had begun, over the past few years, to reflect our costume theme so it was easy ("Easy," I can hear Geri snorting now.) to plan the choreography from there. 

Whoever (cough...Rachel) schedules a character-building assembly the week of Halloween AND assigns the 4th grade (and those poor honeys on the 1st grade team) to planning it, should be tied to the train tracks, Snidely Whiplash-style. But what's done is done so, with murderous plots aside, we had to organize an entertaining and meaningful assembly for an auditorium full of kids coming out of a candy-coma. Naturally, it included a magic trick, a full-cast costume change, a rousing game of invisible frisbee, and a "Bigger-Than-Broadway" video. Inspiration had stuck in the wee hours of the morning and, four hours later, I met my tech-friend Eric at his classroom door. Explaining my plan, I said the words I ALWAYS say to Eric, "Is it possible to...?" and he gently but truthfully replied, "It IS possible...for those with video-editing know-how." And then we smile awkwardly at one another until one of us reluctantly agrees with my unreasonable plan to film a 24-second segment that will take 18 hours to edit. 

The kids, of course, were delighted. My idea was to film a side-by-side re-enactment of Forrest Gump boarding the school bus for the first time and encountering Jenny. Left split-screen, the actual movie. Right split-screen, our moment-by-moment, perfectly captured simulation. We diligently studied the scene, taking note of costumes, body movement, facial expressions, and background. I ordered a bus. "What...like a McDonald's Happy Meal?" a 4th grader asked, incredulous that one could make such a request. My students began planning our next movie to include a hot air balloon and camels. We boarded our rented movie set and, like promised, I screamed at my kids for 45 minutes as we tried to imitate the 22 camera angle shifts that occurred in the 24-second shot. "Cherub #14!" I yelled, "You are supposed to be chewing your cuticles!" "I've about chewed them all off," he yelled back, "I'm down to bloody stumps!" 

My 9-year-old bus driver kept trying to interrupt my directorial genius by talking about the radio chatter. "Ignore it," I kept snapping at her, "It doesn't concern us." "But they're talking about YOU, Mrs. Mosiman!" she persisted, "They want to know why you've hijacked a field trip bus." Startled, I looked around. There was another bus parked ahead of us. With a certified driver. CLEARLY, that was the field trip bus. I snatched up the radio speaker-thingie and pushed the button, suddenly grateful for all those years invested in watching "BJ and the Bear" (Sigh...Greg Evigan)..."Breaker, 1-9," I shouted, "This here is Amy Mosiman, aboard a preapproved blinkin' winkin', bring it back. Over." There was a long pause before a confused voice from the bus garage (obviously impressed by my CB lingo) confirmed my presence, followed by the voice of my exasperated secretary telling me to stop pretending that I'm on "Smokey and the Bandit" (Sigh...Burt Reynolds) and get off the radio. "That's a big 10-4," I answered. "Amy, out."

At long last...the 4th grade team made it, staggering, over the October finish line. "Thank goodness, THAT'S over," we sighed, exhausted. 

"Wait. What?" Rachel signed the Elvises (Elvi?) up for a Christmas program performance? Katriel walked determinedly into my classroom the next day. "Tell me we are just lip-syncing Blue Christmas," she said firmly. I rolled my chair towards her, "Hear me out..."

 

Playing pranks never grows mold

For a whole host of reasons, teachers routinely discuss hazardous pay. Rarely does the conversation touch on toxic mold exposure.  But recently, as I was cleaning out my hallway cubbies (Otherwise known as retrieving all the pencils stolen from me), I discovered a questionable container hidden in the far-reaches of one of the alcoves. Cautiously, I drew it out, not wanting to disrupt what I initially took to be an incubating baby koala. Closer inspection revealed, not a marsupial but, a small mountain of mold. A less dramatic person would simply have disposed of this unintentional science experiment. A more mature person would have let it end right there. A productive person with a ton of correcting and lesson plans that needed to be written would have quickly dismissed the subject from her mind. Naturally, I felt compelled to stomp around the building, interrupting everyone else's productivity to share this obnoxious anomaly.

Educators are inquisitive by nature. After the initial reactions of disgust, the scientific method was immediately employed including origination and duration. The clear container was examined from all angles. The brown liquid bile contained bits of something. Popular hypothesis included onion and lettuce. "What kid brings a lunch containing onions?" one pseudo-scientist challenged. The incubating koala was determined to be either grapes or cherry tomatoes but no one was brave enough to actually crack the container to confirm our speculative guesses. Fear of the odor restrained further analysis. 

At this point, you'd think I'd be done. I'd wasted sufficient time. Interrupted enough colleagues. Put off plenty of work. But no...I wasn't quite finished.

Aware that I often flee the building with my classroom looking like a train-wreck, I try to leave the occasional gift of apology to the poor soul assigned to my corridor. Having known me for close to two decades,  George is always thrilled on the years he is stuck with me.  I decided, on this particular day, to leave him a special treat. 

If you read my note carefully, you will see an arrow directing George to look at the opposite side of the paper where I tell him NOT to even open the container. So I was somewhat surprised by the restrained tone of George's shockingly polite message back to me. But, caught up as I am, in my own busy little life, I dismissed it as a failed caper...looking only to the future. 

I disposed of the petri dish, trusting that fate would send me another fun-filled distraction soon.

Turns out, though, that there was more to the story. George, who doesn't have time for shenanigans and is on a busy schedule, apparently didn't have time to read my note carefully. As it was Halloween, he surmised that I could be creative enough to actually concoct a confection that was themed for the holiday. The only thing that may have saved George was my not having provided a utensil. That, and the fact that I am unable to keep a secret to save my life. Giggling manically, I had shared my nefarious plan with my friend Cindy which got back to George during his break, precipitating the writing of ANOTHER message.

IF I were capable of learning a lesson...it would be:

•  If it takes a dissertation to explain the prank...it may not be a good prank.
•  If the prank has the potential to incapacitate a person with noxious fumes or gastric distress...it may not be a good prank. 
• When it comes to disgusting mold, it might be better just to let sleeping koalas lie.