everybody hates thirty...still...

okay, church is over, i've fed myself, and am here again before i have to grade papers and get lesson plans ready for tomorrow.  i'm taking life one day at a time, especially now since i'm older.  i've got a random, yet very prominent graying hair on my chin...front and center.  when my hair goes gray, something strange happens.  it turns a reddish hue first, stays that way for a bit, then poof...white as snow.  i want to yank it out so badly, but what the hell...

so anyway, school life is different this year.  last year THE fourth grade team consisted of cece, trip, harvey, and me.  we had a lot of ups and a HELL of a lot of downs.  we spent more time down than up.  this year, harvey has moved up to be with the fif grade (if you knew who was on the fif grade team, you would know that "fif" is the best way to spell it).  unfortunately for him, that means that he's had to deal with the same monkey ball sh*t from last year, including, but not limited to...anpanman and his old ugly b*tch arse mama.  i've made a bet with...myself...to try and piss her off in a very inconspicuous and covert way so that she knows what's going on, but can't prove it at all.  then i can swoop in and go in on her, making her out to be the crazy definition of ugliness that she is.  so far it's going well.  i'm even involving the kids, although they don't know...nor will they ever...

anyway, i digress.  trip, as we all know, has moved to another school, which is literally down the street ("skreet" as harvey would say) and around the corner from the school.  the two of them have been replaced by wreck and maybelline.  the team is very different from last year.  of course, cece and i are the returning cast of characters, while harvey maintains a recurring role.  trip has been downgraded to more of a guest star, as he shows up on occasion.  luby is somewhere in between harvey and trip, though i can't really define it.  most importantly...she is still the same "take control of everything and leave you wondering what the hell you were doing in the first place" sister.  i really like this new team, even though the dynamic is different.  at first i thought it was going to be weird or boring, but i was (for once in my life) proven wrong.  the new THE fourth grade team is still the best team in the school.

hmm...what else?  lot of stories on the kids to come.

my berfday weekend was last week, and boy did i have a great time...and a terrible time.  i refer to it as the best worst berfday ever.  the official party was lunch at gloria's and fun at six flags.  when i tell you it should have just been gloria's...

gloria's was a lot of fun.  first of all, let me start by emphasizing that i absolutely HATE mexican, salvadorian, cuban, spanish, whatever...i don't care for hispanic food...at all.  i chose gloria's because they make a kick ass margarita, and i'm apparently a people pleaser.  i like to think that the things i like are so eclectic and idiosyncratic that nobody else likes them.  that's why i keep them to myself.  anyway, a lot of good friends showed up.  the biggest surprise was harvey.  i just didn't think he would come.  trip and luby showed up, although i have the strangest feeling that she would rather have been shopping for her kids.  anybody who was anybody was there.

 

 if we can't do anything else, we can have a good arse time.  and i think gloria's was a great time.  it had to be, because i think i keep writing the same thing over and over again, that it was a great time.  well...afterwards, four of us went on to six flags.  it was x, seefuzz, big daddy, and me.  that was when the fun started to deteriorate...

from left and then clockwise...me, x, seefuzz, big daddy...not pictured: fun

the first thing that put me off was the fact that we had to park in the next city because everybody wanted to celebrate my berfday along with me.  it was a good mile from the car to the park.  fortunately for six flags, we parked in the green lantern section, who everybody knows is my favorite superhero.

i can't begin to go on about how many people think that batman and even iron man are superheroes.  if i really sit down and think about it, i can say that yes, they are assets to the justice league, and they have credible reasons to be there i suppose.  but i will stick to my guns that neither of them are true superheroes.  they're heroes, i'll admit, but not superheroes.  iron man is a wisecracking dying guy with a lot of money and something to prove.  batman is a unhealthily grieving guy with a lot of money and a chip on his shoulder.  without the gadgets they are just ordinary people.  i still posit that the wonder twins could take them out.

my kids at school are always talking about batman and iron man and how they're their favorite superheroes.  i keep going on and on and on about how they are so in the wrong about that.  finally, after ten weeks of drilling it into them, they are finally out of that mindset that batman and iron man are superheroes, and have come into the truth that they're heroes with brains and money.

i digress...anyway...the first ride we decided to get on was called pandemonium.  it wasn't the most thrilling ride, but i wanted to ride it, and well, it was my berfday.  we waited in line for literally two hours before the girl got on the speaker and announced that we were going to have to wait a bit longer.  apparently, somebody threw up...on the whole damn roller coaster.  it took a good forty-five minutes for them to clean it up.  so we finally get to be on deck, and by "on deck" i mean we were next to being next to ride.  the same girl then announced that the ride was shut down due to technical difficulties.

excuse me?  what the hell kind of monkey ball sh*t is this?

"but feel free to ride any of our other rides, and as always, thank you for coming to six flags," she said.  nothing steamed my piece like that did.  i was not right for the rest of the night, and even though i paid sixty dollars to wait in line just to watch the damn sun go down, i just wanted nothing more at that point than to go home and salvage what was left of the day.

i was in a pretty bad mood for quite a while, and i'm sure it got through to the others.  so what?  it was my berfday, and if i wanted to feel sh*tty, i should have that right.  things eventually got better, though.  we rode the teacups, and the sombrero, two rides that were not quite as thrilling as...say...superman or the texas giant, but it was something.  i also got a caricature: 

my eyes are beautiful, aren't they?  and to think that i paid sixty dollars just so i could wait for an hour to pay twenty-five dollars for this picture.  i mean, who wouldn't call that a great time?  big daddy made the teacups worth riding with all his hoopin' and hollerin' and rantin' and ravin'.  he truly is fun bobby.  if he doesn't have anything to drink, he's as boring as the day is long.  but give him even an ounce of something and he's almost as funny as me.  i just lol-ed.

oh well, i need to stop now and get some work done it just doesn't get done.  i'm older now, so i'll try to blawg more.  after all, trip has been putting up posts of his own left and right...meaning once a month or so, so i can't let his dumb arse get ahead of me.  he's younger, so i think technically he never will.

monkey ball sh*t is my new favorite thing to say,

-w

everybody hates thirty...

well, here i am...officially a year older.  i know there have been a few discrepancies in the past about my age, so i'm gonna clear up any confusion that there may have been up to this point.  i don't know exactly how it got started, nor do i know exactly who started it.  as i think more about it...i think the government may be to blame; they may have made a mistake on my birth certificate.  at any rate...i am now officially old.  thirty years' worth of old, to be exact.  i've been asked how it feels to be in my thirties many a time.  well...i feel...old.  it wasn't too far from midnight on 29 october when my back mysteriously started hurting, a couple more beard hairs turned gray, and another centimeter of hairline decided to recede.  damn...what the hell does forty have in store for me...death?  i'm telling you...after you hit thirty, it's just the loss of one bodily function after another...on your slow march towards death.

i kid, of course.  sometimes the losses come in bundles, not always one at a time.

meanwhile, so much has happened since the last blawg.  for one thing, school has started.  the tenth week of school has just ended, which leaves about twenty-six of them left.  if we survive, then we'll be alright.  the board of education in this godforsaken school district is determined to exterminate the passion of every teacher within a seventy-five mile radius of the administration building.  i don't want to go too far into the details, but it sucks butt.  our workday has been extended, which is weird because the kids still come and go for the same amount of time.  the extension is for teachers only.  what do we do with all this extra time?  meetings.  an infinite amount of meetings, all day, everyday.  i'm like...what the hell could we possibly have to talk about every day for the next one hundred eighty days?  oh well, we have to take the bumps along with the bruises.  i don't think i used that one correctly.

teachers complain all the time, and i'm not really one to complain publicly.  i figure...pretend to be happy, then complain to anyone who'll listen.  that's always been a thing of mine.

also, i found out that i've actually got people who have been eagerly waiting to read my next blawg.  wow, that makes me feel coveted, even in my old age.  so, shout out to a woman i will call "rapunzel."  she's a fellow writer, and works at the school as well.  she's a little more of a real writer than i am, but i ain't no punk when it comes to putting words on some paper.  anyway, rapunzel, this one's for you...

school so far has been...different.  trip, luby, and i are no longer the close siblings we once were.  maybe we got used to each other and the newness wore off.  maybe it's because trip was shipped off to a different school.  maybe it's because we stay so damn busy we just have no more time for each other.  things are too different this year.  we don't hang out like we did in the past.  in addition, there's no real turnover in this school.  i think i've mentioned this before, but a good percentage of the teachers at the school have taught for at least thirty years, which is coincidentally my age.  they have been teaching for as long as i have been alive.

the newest addition to our staff that is remotely close to our age (and by "our age" i mean trip, luby, and me) is "dj."  what to say about him?  he's the new coach, and well...more on him later.  i don't really know him that well yet, but he seems to have me pinned down as the one at school who is "the clown."  me a clown?  that's impossible.  i'm too serious of a person to even be considered a clown.

the kids this year have been one hundred thousand times better than them sh*ts we had to deal with last year.  they're also much smaller on average.  last year there were kids who wore a size twelve in men's shoes.  not boy's shoes...MEN'S shoes.  what?  i don't wear that big of a shoe, and i'm an old ass man.  one kid, "bundt," has freakishly small feet.  one of our two new teammates, "maybelline," commented on bundt's feet: "one day he gon' tip over and fall if he keeps jumping up and down like that."

oh yeah, we have a new team this year.  cece and i are still there.  it's like a new season with a couple returning characters and some new ones.  maybelline is one.  the other we'll call "wreck."  the best thing about wreck is that he doesn't need that.  by "that" i mean pretty much anything...especially a microphone.  he has a very booming voice that can carry across the ocean if he wanted.  in our many meetings, whenever he has something to say someone will pass him the microphone, to which he will always reply, "oh i don't need that."  it's hilarious.  and his voice reminds me of paul lynde, the original center square on "hollywood squares."  i can completely imagine wreck saying any of the following:

 

the resemblance is uncanny between their voices.  i can't really explain it, but if you ever heard wreck talk, you'd wholeheartedly agree.  too bad paul lynde never said "oh i don't need that."  or least not on camera...

oh bother, i gotta go get ready for church...this blawg really has no beginning, nor does it have a real end, so i feel comfortable stopping here and continuing later when i get back home.

here's to the dirtiest of thirties,

-w