F is for Fail

A few weeks ago I wrote a Grocery Store rant. I’m on a roll folks, today it’s a School rant.

Someone from the High School called me the other day. I didn’t realize it until later on when I turned my cell phone on and got the message. I think that the school thought I was getting divorced. The message was that they saw that I had taken my husband’s phone numbers off of all the school paperwork for the upcoming year and they wanted to check in to see if they understood that correctly.

Hell yes, you understood that correctly. And nope, it’s not anything going on with me, it’s what’s going on with you.

Let me explain: I have a home phone. I talk about it here: DO NOT Call Me!. When I’m home, my cell is off or charging and I take calls on the home phone. When I leave the house, I grab my cell and that’s when I turn it on. So every year I fill out the school paperwork explaining that they should always try the home phone first. If they don’t reach me they can move on to my cell next. They should get me at one of those two places. If they can’t, in case of emergency, they can then try my husband’s work and my husband’s cell.

And every time they call, they call either my cell, my husband’s work or my husband’s cell. Over the years I’ve put my request in capital letters, written it in red, circled the home phone number, talked to the office, emailed, talked to my son’s advisor, you get the idea. And they NEVER call my home phone.

Sometimes the school sends out automated alerts. This happens when there’s a snow day, a change in testing or scheduling, or in the event of a lockdown. When there’s a snow day what do they do? They email me, email my husband, call home, call my cell, call my husband’s work number AND call my husband’s cell. ‘Cause we need to know six ways to Sunday that the crawl at the bottom of the TV news is right and we’re having a snow day.

But when there was a shooting in a local school and my kids went into lockdown, do you know how I found out? My brother, 1500 miles away, saw it on the news and called me. The school opted to call NONE of our numbers.

When the school left the message on my cell the other day, I was home making dinner.

Teriyaki Wingettes

(pictured  on bottom)

When my son had his cell taken away in class, the Vice Principal called my husband’s cell phone. Rick was at work. In a meeting. He had to leave the meeting to take the call, then call me so I could deal with it. I was at home, a half mile from the school. Yes, I’m rolling my eyes.

So after four years we’ve had enough. No divorce, just take my husband off of your list. How much do you want to bet they keep calling him anyway? Think Vegas’ll give us the odds on that one?

And by the way, if my kids followed directions as well as their educators do, they’d get an “F”. And probably detention.

Done ranting. Thanks, I feel much better. Carry on, nothing to see here.

Teriyaki Wingettes

Ingredients:
1/2 cup Soy Sauce
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 TBSP molasses
1 clove minced garlic
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp dry mustard
Approximately 2 1/2 lbs of Chicken Wingettes 

Directions:

*Mix all marinade ingredients together. Pour over the wingettes and marinate overnight.
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
*Spray a rimmed baking sheet with no-stick spray.
*Take wingettes out of marinade and place on baking sheet so all of the wings are on the pan, none are on top of each other.
*Bake for 30 minutes, flip wings over to the other side and bake 30 more minutes.
*NOTE: I often make these ahead of time, baking 25 minutes per side and storing in the refrigerator. When I want to serve them, I heat them outside on the grill, but just a few minutes per side until hot. 

Take 2 – May Secret Subject Swap

Welcome to another Secret Subject Swap. This week, 11 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

Here are the links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup and check them all out. See you there.

Baking In A Tornado
The Insomniac's Dream
Dinosaur Superhero Mommy
The Pursuit of Normal
The Momisodes
Searching for Sanity
Black Sheep Mom
Moore Organized Mayhem
Daily Dose of Damn
Tiny Steps Mommy
Mom Rants and Comfy Pants

My subject is Do you play an instrument? If so what kind and how often? OR have you ever played? It was submitted  by: Moore Organized Mayhem.

Here goes:
When I was in Middle School, I learned to play the guitar. Well, barely. My Mom bought me a guitar and had a friend teach me to play. I couldn’t read music, but I learned chords and I could strum my way through a song or two. Aerosmith, Boston, J. Geils, none of them came calling. I never got over it.

So I decided that my kids would at least try playing an instrument, and while they were young. I wanted them to learn to read music and have some basic knowledge. So the first time that the public schools offered lessons, I took advantage of it. In third grade, the school offered Orchestra. Wouldn’t have been my choice of a place to start, but we went with it. I told my older son that I wanted him to give it a try for one year, then he could make his own decision.

I was really excited when the school called to say they had an instrument for us to rent. The rules were that the instrument went to school twice a week for lesson day, then came home in between for practice. Practice had to be at least 20 minutes a day and I had to sign off on each day. Cool. We could do that.

The Instrument? A String Bass. That thing was as tall as I am. And heavy. So twice a week I sent my kids out the front door and waved to them as they walked to school with the rest of the neighborhood kids. And then I got in the car to drive the Bass to school. OK, there is something seriously wrong with this picture.

Then later in the day, after lessons were over, I had to go back to the school and pick it up and drive it home so it would be there for practice. OMG, practice. That turned into a moral dilemma. Do I teach my young kids to cheat and lie? Or, as I’m in the kitchen making dinner, am I really going to listen to 2 notes played over and over for 20 minutes? Daily.

Homemade Marinara

The next year, when my other son was in third grade, the orchestra teacher called me. She wanted to let me know that she had gotten me a second String Bass so both boys could play and we could leave one at the school for classes and keep one at home for practice. Perfect. Good things come to those who wait, right?

Hell, no. I had promised my older son that he only had to play for one year and he made it clear that he was done. I ended up driving it again. ANOTHER whole year of waving to the kids, having to get fully dressed (cause you don’t just drive a String Bass to school and leave it in the parking lot). In the snow, the rain. . .

So the extent of the musical ability my family has is on nights where I serve Baked Beans with dinner and the boys treat me to this chant:

“Beans, beans, the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot.”

I think we’re going to have to chalk this one up to a Mom fail.

Homemade Marinara

Ingredients:

2 cans Stewed Tomatoes (must be stewed)

1 (6 oz) can tomato paste

3 TBSP olive oil

2 cloves minced garlic

1 tsp dried oregano

1 TBSP dried parsley

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1 cup frozen chopped onion

1/2 cup dry white wine

2 tsp brown sugar

Directions:

*Process stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, olive oil, garlic, oregano, parsley, salt, pepper and onion in a food processor until mostly smooth.

*Move to a large pan and add the wine and brown sugar.

*Bring just to a boil on medium heat, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Virginia is the new Furt

 *Please note that this post was edited to add an award. It's posted at the end.

We all know about food fads; those recipes or ingredients that everyone seems to be using and making all at the same time. Salted Caramel was one and Kale another. Like that song you liked until they played it every 5 minutes on the radio, you get to the point where you’ve had enough for a while. There’s nothing wrong with those recipes, in fact, they’re great. I’m just not going to make one every day.

Well, in the humor blogging world there are fads as well; those subjects that everyone seems to be addressing. The first one I was really cognizant of was . . . umm . . . let’s just say the never-ending discussion of odiferous “furts”.

It seemed everyone had something to say about furts. I read about baby’s furts, dog’s furts, husband’s furts. People shared deliberate furts and accidental, clean furts and dirty, private furts and public. Blogs, FB, Twitter, it was all furts all the time. Front door, back door, here a furt, there a furt, EVERYWHERE a furt, furt.

I went to college and I never knew that there was that much to know about furts. I’m sure there was a class. I must have missed it.

But look out furts, “virginia” has come to the blogging world and she’s quickly become the center of attention. We’ve gone from barely hearing about her (thank you for that, by the way) to being unable to escape her (ouch). She is, without a doubt, the new “Miss Popularity”.

Now I have, and still do, read about the occasional “sticks and stones”, mostly in posts about baby boys, but nothing like this current obsession with virginias. I’m reading about their size (pre and post birth), shapes and habits, their exercise regimen, their grooming options and haircuts, their clothing choices and jewelry too. About 95% of the bloggers I read have a virginia and lately so many are letting them all hang out (yikes).

Hell, I never EVER thought I would, and  I’ve just written a whole post on furts and virginias.

But in the name of full exposure disclosure, I just want to apologize in advance. If “virginia” is the new “furt” and we’re heading into the summer of the virginia, then all of my friends with vlogs (video blogs), I’m sorry. But that’s a place where this girl is just not gonna go.

*There’s no recipe here today. I tried but really, what exactly goes with furts and virginias?




 
Addendum to this post:
My friend The Insomniac's Dream created a new award and bestowed the honor upon me. She assigned a prompt and asks that I:
*write about the prompt
*link back to the blog that assigned me the prompt
*pick 5 new recipients and assign them a prompt of my choice
*be sure the blogger who presented me with this award is given a link to this post to see what I did with her prompt

What I was assigned to discuss is: "Original ideas: are there any more?"  Quite honestly, this post is exactly how I would approach that subject, so I'm calling it accomplished.

The prompt I'm assigning is: If you could take over any blog for one day, what  one would you choose and why?
The bloggers I'm nominating are: 
The Insomniac's Dream yes, she said I could!
The Pursuit of Normal
Daily Dose of Damn
Evil Joy Speaks 
Mom Rants and Comfy Pants
as I always say with these things, awards are about recognition, not obligation. I hope you decide to play, but the choice is yours.