2nd quarter grades at Our Lady of Good Counsel

Last Friday was the final day of the second quarter grading period here at Our Lady of Good Counsel Junior-Senior High School, just as it was in many of the other schools in the area.

This is the grading scale we use. I know it's a difficult one, but it's the one that I feel is the most realistic when transcripts are being reviewed by college admissions offices:
100% A+
99-96 A
95 A-
94 B+
93-86 B
85 B-
84 C+
83-76 C
75 C-
74 D+
73-66 D
65 D-

Meelyn

Spanish 89% B (92% B for the semester)
Biology 92% B (88% B for the semester)
Pre-Algebra 78% C (83% C for the semester)
Grammar 90% B (89% B for the semester)
Vocabulary 94% B+ (88% B for the semester)
British Literature 95% A- (96% A for the semester)
Speech 88% B (91% B for the semester - averaged with Composition)
Phys Ed 84% C+ (92% B for the semester)
Religion 97% A (98% A for the semester)

Semester GPA = 3.61 (determined by taking the semster grade percentage x 4 - ex: Spanish would be .92 x 4 + 3.68 and then averaged with all the other semester grades.)

Aisling

Spanish 88% B (89% B for the semester)
Pre-Algebra 84% C+ (85% B- for the semester)
Grammar 92% B (86% B for the semester)
Vocabulary 8 91% B (89% B for the semester)
British Literature 94% B+ (92% B for the semester)
Speech 90% B (92% B for the semester)
Phys Ed 94% B+ (94% B for the semester)
Religion 84% C+ (79% C for the semester)

Here's a link back to their first quarter grades.

I have a dream

I am very unpopular with my children today, the day on which our country celebrates the life and life's work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

You see, my feeling is that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an educated man, an activist, a worker, a man with a vision that went beyond his dream that his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their characters. I personally don't feel that the best way to honor Dr. King's memory is to have a vacation day. While sitting around watching Bravo and HGTV and fiddling around on the computer and playing cards might be fun, it's still not the way to honor a peaceful man who gave up his life to a bullet for the cause he believed in.

So, in spite of the fact that schools across the county have the day off tomorrow, my home schoolers will be hard at work, plowing through their usual day's work. They aren't very happy with me, but we've had school on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day for so many years now, they've stopped bugging me for a day off. I used to always reply, "Yes, and I bet all those people who weren't allowed to drink from the same drinking fountain would have liked a day off from doing that. And I bet all the people who were forced to sit in the back of the city buses would have liked a day off from that. And then there are those people who couldn't get served in certain restaurants or stay in certain motels or whatever...I bet they would have liked a day off from reading signs in windows that said 'Negroes not allowed,' and...."

The only difference is that, after lunch, we'll gather here at the computer and click on the link below, which will take us to YouTube. We'll be able to watch Dr. King speaking at the March on Washington, out in front of the Lincoln Memorial, on August 28, 1963.

From YouTube.com: I Have a Dream -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Excusez-moi?!?!

I found out yesterday evening before Mass that our parish will be breaking ground for our youth center, the first proposed building on new church's complex, next month. This building will be the place where the three weekend Masses, plus all the weekday Masses, will be held until the church, which is the second proposed building, is completed.

This will be very nice because the Sunday 10:30 Mass has grown far too large to accommodate the congregation that comes to worship, so it had to be moved to the theater of a nearby high school, which doesn't really answer. The Sunday 8:00 Mass and the Saturday vigil are getting pretty packed as well, and never was this more apparent than when I went forward to receive Communion yesterday.

Father likes two lines to form for Communion, feeling that this expedites the process of serving everyone before we all hyperventilate from singing the same hymn forty-two times through. So I got in the right hand line, falling in beside a large sort of man who was in the left line.

The pair of us must have made quite a sight, lumbering up the aisle like a couple of trained bears, our hands prayerfully folded at our midsections. Unfortunately, the man was a lot taller than I, even though his pumpkin shape was very similar to mine. This left him in the position to be able to jab his right elbow into my left boob as we got to a narrow place.

He tried to pretend he didn't know he'd elbowed me -- and in the boob at that -- but he knew that I knew that he knew, the big boob poker. You'd think he would have offered a humble, "I beg your pardon," but no, he did not. He simply proceeded forward, looking neither left nor right, maybe aiming for the change to nudge me again.

I will be very happy when we have a larger building with a larger center aisle.

Hello, my deer

We left Pat and Angie's house after eleven o'clock last night, driving home in a strong wind that was blowing flurries practically horizontally across the snowy roads.

"We'd better be getting home," my husband and I told them nervously. "Your roads out here in the country are so bad and it's so...dark. And....and....windy. And snowy." It was very scary for us city dwellers, living in a place where every road's surface has been as dry as a spinster's kiss for the past week.

Pat and Angie, at hearing that their plowed and salted roads rated as "bad" to us, nearly jackknifed themselves laughing. "Bad?" Pat said incredulously. "Bad? You've got to be joking. You don't know bad until you've driven home from work on an unplowed road where the snow is up to the windows and you have a preschooler in the back seat screaming that she has to peepee and then you realize what you thought was the road was actually the neighbors' koi pond. Bad...geeez, you big babies."

We departed with our dignity trailing behind us like toilet paper on the sole of a shoe and got in the van. "We're not babies," I stoutly assured my husband. "We're just cautious."

"Yeah! Cautious! And careful!"

"Yes, we're very careful. We are very carefully careful and considerate, too. We would never drive in the neighbors' koi pond, thinking it was the road."

"You got that right," said my husband fervently, gripping the wheel with both hands and pushing gingerly on the accelerator. The needle on the speedometer shot up to forty miles per hour and hung there breathlessly.

I was watching the road, noting with alarm the two and three inch snowdrifts all pushed up against people's mailboxes, when all of a sudden, a very large buck stepped out in front of the van, giving us a haughty glare as my husband began to brake. His branched antlers crowned his proud head and I was beginning to think that they'd look nice mounted on my living room wall. That is, until I summoned some crazy reserve of nervous energy from the depths of my being and screamed as loud as I could, pointing at the buck through the windshield as we rolled to an easy halt.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" I shrieked. "A DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRR!!!!"

My husband was very startled and jumped so high, I practically saw light between him and the seat. Meelyn and Aisling, who had been relaxing in drowsy contentment, bolted straight upright yelling, "What? How? When? Who?" Even the buck appeared to be startled and gave us a contemptuous look before sauntering to the edge of the road and disappearing into the trees.

"What is wrong with you?" my husband asked indignantly, turning to look at me with a gaze that was only slightly less disgusted than the buck's. "You scared me worse than the stupid deer did. Did you not notice that we were already stopped?"

"I'm sorry," I apologized, abashed. "I don't know why I did that. I didn't even know I could scream like that."

"A hidden talent," said my husband huffily. "A scream like that could get you jobs doing voice-overs for horror films."

"Sorry, dear," I said, suddenly overcome with laughter at my own bad joke. "Get it? Dear -- deer? Hahahahahahahaaaa..."

"Ha ha," he said sourly.

"Yeah, ha ha," said Meelyn.

Aisling was convulsed. "Dear -- dear," she gurgled helplessly, "dear -- dear....that is so funny..."

"Thank you," I said. "It's nice to be appreciated, DEAR."

Rock on

This performance of Bon Jovi's rock and roll anthem "Dead or Alive" is one of those things that brings back so many memories, I just about get tearful whenever I see it. I am automatically reminded of long summer evenings in Beth's cute apartment where the central air was either roasting us or freezing us ("You have no homeostasis!" Beth would scold us, throwing around some of her fancy nursing terminology; "Oh, yeah? Well, you're an oxymoron!" I would offer as a rejoinder) as Hoot, Julie and I ate potato chips and drank Bartles and James wine coolers. We had a particular fondness for the fuzzy navel flavor except for Hoot, who declared that wine coolers were sissy drinks and had beer instead.

From YouTube.com -- Richie and Jon at the 1989 MTV Music Awards.

Julie is married to Jack now and lives in Beech Grove. Hoot lives in Indy and is divorced, sharing custody of his daughter (who is probably Meelyn's age) with his ex-wife. Beth is married to Jim, of course, and lives in New Castle with a stepdaughter at IU and two kids still at home. And you know about me, if you read this blog.

We were all very young then, in our early twenties. Jon and Richie were famous and so cool and the first time our quartet of un-famous friends saw this unplugged version of "Dead or Alive," it was rock-n-roll magic.

The clip starts at 2:29 -- hope you enjoy it!

A pain-free life

I'm feeling very much better now and I thank those of you who emailed me for your kind thoughts, prayers and insistence that I avoid Kayte's blog's message to GET RUM since I also GOT VICODIN. The two would not make a pretty combination, you all assured me. And I listened.

So instead of lying unconscious on my bedroom floor in a puddle of my own vomit à la Spinal Tap, I am downstairs in Pat and Angie's den, typing this post and kind of half watching a fierce table tennis tournament over my right shoulder and a fierce Wii tournament over my left. My husband keeps taunting Aisling for hitting the ping-pong ball "like a girl" and Dayden keeps telling Kieren that his Wii character "sucks." Kiersi, whose third birthday is being celebrated with this family get together, keeps insisting that various people push her around the room in a wheeled office chair.

Dayden just yelled, "I'm SMOKING you!!! You're goin' DOWN!!!" so loudly that Louey, the beagle, just ran upstairs with his tail tucked between the legs, evidently thinking that Dayden was saying (in the obviously difficult and confusing human language), "I saw you POOP ON THE FLOOR!!!! You're going OUT TO YOUR CRATE!!!"

Kiersi got lots of clothes, a really cool Barbie wardrobe kit that I actually kind of wanted for myself, some big girl panties with princesses on them and a pretty little tote bag full of hair do-dads from us.

Oops. Everyone has abruptly decided to go upstairs, so I think I need to log off because I don't want to be down here all by myself because if I know Pat, the minute he finds out I'm alone, he will turn out the lights and take great pleasure in my shrieks of terror. Brothers are just that way.

Completely traumatized

Had bad wisdom tooth pulled today. Am sitting here at desk with huge, bowling ball-sized wad of cotton batting (feels like) in mouth. Completely numb on right side of face. Thoughts veering around wildly; wish head were also numb. Could not possibly have happened at a worse time. Hurts -- mouth, head, neck, whole works. Really want my mom something fierce, but she is in Colorado. Consoled only by thought that at least she is still alive and could still have her; matter of car journey or plane trip out west. Maybe will call on phone when can speak without drooling blood down shirt front.

Can't believe people used to have this done by the village blacksmith. On the other hand, the village blacksmith probably would have accepted a chicken and a bottle of homemade apple brandy as payment, whereas this dentist wanted much more than that. For the first time in life was saddened that I've grown to be fat and middle-aged so that I couldn't offer him my virtue in exchange for extraction. Just kidding about that. I think. Never fully appreciated the powerful commodity of good looks while still had them. Figures. On the other hand, teeth were pleased at being healthy and doing their job without complaint when self was aged twenty or thereabouts, at height of cuteness with streaky Early Madonna hair, great suntan, etc.

Must go take Vicodin and have a nice little sleep. Perhaps will feel better when wake up.

Should have gotten wisdom teeth taken out YEARS AGO as Dr. Jim Myers scolded self to do.

Is this....a sign?

I was just over at Kayte's blog a few minutes ago, Grandma's Kitchen Table, posting a comment. Her blog is set up at TypePad, and when you comment there, you have to type up one of those little codes websites use to keep automated whatsis-whosits from doing something-or-other, don't ask me, it's just some kind of security feature and I just do it. I don't have to understand it to do it. Mine is not to reason why, etc. etc.

Wellanyway, when the little code comes up, it usually comes up as totally randomized sets of letters and numbers such as DL62YB or 47J9L. There....I typed both of those with my eyes shut to illustrate the randomy randomness of those codes so that what I am about to relate will both surprise and astound you.

I finished my message, clicked "Publish Post" and the little code came up and -- get this -- it read:

G E T R U M

Is it a message? A sign that I should get a little Captain in me? Well, I mean, that sounded kind of bad, but you've seen those commercials for Captain Morgan rum, right? Should I buy a case of Coke or rent Pirates of the Carribean ("The RUM is gone? What do you mean, the RUM is GONE?") or maybe make a pilgrimage to a ski lodge, where I can partake of the hot buttered variety while sitting by a fire with Carol and Susie? I know those lushes would jump at the chance to drink some rum, especially if they got to do it at a ski lodge.

Or maybe it just means that the girls and I are going to be spending a lot of time in the house over the next few days as the Alberta Clipper moves in, and I'm going to need a great big bottle of something to help me slide effortlessly all those endless arguments beginning with, "Why did you turn the curling iron OFF when you knew I'd just turned it ON? Is it because you feel like you wanted to hurt my feelings because you heard Mommy say that I got a C on my Algebra test?" and ending in tears, slammed doors and bitter recriminations. And if you think that's bad, you should see the way the girls act.

I am a firm believer that there are. No. Coincidences.

Get rum.

I have been told.

I don't know what to make of this

During the heavy snow today, Aisling stuck out her tongue to catch a falling flake in the approved Charlie-Brown-Christmas manner (you know what they say about those January snowflakes) and promptly choked, coughing and gasping and staggering around the yard.

I just don't know what to think. She says she choked on the snowflake. But...how? How can you choke on something that would probably melt the second it touched your warm tongue? Or are they making snowflakes out of composted leaves these days?

Laws-a-mercy, as my great-grandma would have said.

Let it snow!

The weather outside is frightful, but fortunately, we've been able to stay inside all day and we've been treated to the sight of big, fat, fluffy snowflakes coming down from the clouds like goose down falling out of a pillowcase.

I've been going out every few hours and sweeping the front porch, the front steps and walkway and the back steps and walkway. I feel a little strange out there with a broom, but the snow is so pouffy that it's really no problem to just brush it out of the way in an energetic back-and-forth style -- whisk, whisk! whisk, whisk! -- as Wimzie leaps and prances about like a foolish puppy, wearing her warmest winter jacket. Hershey prefers to stay indoors and watch her giddy pirouettes from his warm and comfortable position on the couch.

"What's wrong with you two dopes?" he seems to say as we come in, panting and stamping and breathless from the cold. "It's best to stay in here." And then he yawns widely like a crocodile and snuggles more deeply into his blanket. The girls coo over him and give him a pillow for his head. Hershey allows his eyes to fall shut slo-o-o-o-o-owly. Wimzie throws him a look of slitty-eyed contempt.

The Alberta Clipper is due in tomorrow and the high temperature for the day is supposed to be five degrees. FIVE DEGREES. I can practically guarantee that the water trap on the washing machine is going to freeze up, so I'm thinking I may want to start a load of laundry as I'm making the spaghetti sauce for dinner tonight.

Tomorrow, I think we'll all be like Hershey and sprawl on the couch and let the snowflakes fall where they may.

Dressing the part

Over the past couple of months, I've taken over the job of going out with Wimzie and Hershey in the mornings, to spare my poor husband, who has walked them every single morning that we've lived in this neighborhood, which is going on four years.

I can't walk them myself because they're too strong for me. Well, Wimzie isn't, but Hershey is a medium-sized dog in the prime of his health and fitness and he is one strong boy, particularly because he refuses to walk like a gentleman dog and insists on trying to dislocate your shoulder. Plus, I'd have to carry the pooper-scooper, which, how am I supposed to do that in the absence of a third arm?

My schtick is to let them out of their crates at about 10:30 a.m., which they both seem to vastly prefer to their former wake-up call of 7:00 a.m. My husband used to open Wimzie's cage door and have to coax her to come out, but at 10:30, she leaps out with a happy bound and jumps around doing figure eights. I then take them out the front door to the yard and let them do their business. They both mind me very well and will stop in mid-stride at the sound of my Queen of the Underworld snarl if they start to go after a pedestrian or the occasional squirrel.

So the dogs are fine. We've developed a very nice routine. The only fly in my jam is that I feel it is incumbent upon me, as an upstanding citizen and a member of the historical neighborhood society, to not step outside where half the city can see me (we live on a busy corner) wearing pajama bottoms stuffed into my snow boots, one of my husband's sweatshirts and Aisling's sherbet colored cloche.

No, instead, I have to wearily drape my nice scarf in the approved fashion around my neck, put on my nice black coat and my nice black gloves and make sure I'm wearing something respectable on my legs and feet. I don't want to look like a big lump of fashion distress while I'm standing in the snow, waiting for the dogs to finish their business.

It seems weird and complicated to have to dress up in order to watch a couple of dogs poop and pee, and sometimes I wish I weren't such a compulsive fussbudget. I make myself tired.

Fashion statements

Apparently, the Golden Globe Awards were held last night, and in a moment of weakness, I was drawn into an online slideshow of Best and Worst Dressed red-carpet-walkers. Going through the fifty photos (twenty-five of each category), I realized that I do not and never will understand what causes reviewers to gush over one designer gown, while treating another like its something they'd use to wash the car with.

Click on these links to look for yourselves: Best Dressed at the Golden Globes and Worst Dressed at the Golden Globes

Actress Salma Hayek (photo #17, Worst Dressed) was completely panned for the glamorous pale taupe Dior gown she wore, complete with fabulous earrings, an enviable bosom and an elegant updo, while Angelina Jolie (photo #3, Best Dressed) was lauded to the heavens for appearing in a baggy silver Versace hot mess with hair that looked like a houseful of toddlers had styled it with with egg beaters and toy garden rakes.

Drew Barrymore (photo #8, Best Dressed) appeared in a lovely pale blue Galliano for Dior gown, but with a hairdo (called "flirty" by the reviewer?) that looked absolutely mad and uncombed and absurdly bouffant, not to mention unbecomingly dark at the roots. That hair, plus her smearily be-kohled eyes, gave the uncomfortable impression that drink had been taken before her appearance on the red carpet.

Compare that horrible hair to Renee Zellweger's (photo #1, Worst Dressed), which was referred to as an "unsightly updo" by the reviewer, but which I actually thought was very cute. Renee was dressed, however, in an absolutely unspeakable Carolina Herrera weird black filmy, trainy getup that might possibly once have been Morticia Adams' wedding dress, or maybe her drawing room curtains, so I admit that the hideousness of the gown might have detracted from Renee's head, which was a very small part of the entire ensemble. It just goes to show that you can have bad hair and a good frock or good hair and a bad frock and people will always look at the dress first and then be either nice or mean about your hair in accordance to their opinion of your dress.


To back up this theory, take a look at the young actress Anne Hathaway (photo #7, Worst Dressed) who wore a breathtakingly beautiful midnight blue Armani Prive gown with Swarovski crystals cascading down the bodice to her hips (okay, maybe a bit to crystally, but very old Hollywood and glam, nonetheless). Anne's hair doesn't match the dress at all; it is scraped back from her face in a way that makes her ears look like jug handles. And mercy...the girl is as white as salt. She could do with less eyebrows, too, because with those heavy brows and her dark eyes, she looks a bit like someone who could turn you into a piece of granite with one glance. She makes me want to do the evil eye sign and spit through my fingers. Or maybe hold up a crucifix and a necklace made of garlic bulbs. Yikes.

But maybe I'm wrong, because Jennifer Lopez (photo #4, Best Dressed) was caught wearing an ugly, hyper-revealing are-you-ready-for-your-mammogram Marchesa dress that also displayed her great and profound need to get over herself, yet her hair was dragged back off her face to the point where from the neck up, she looked ready to go clean the toilets and scour the kitchen tiles on hands and knees. Yet the reviewer totally love-bombed that tacky dress. What do I know?