my heavy heart...

Our city and our people were rocked on Monday, Patriot's Day by an unspeakable act.  It is so surreal. Growing up an hour out of Boston, there are just some things that are institutions...one of those being the Boston Marathon.  We saw the pictures, scrambled to check in with people we know who run or watch the marathon every year.  Everyone I know is alright but we are not alright.  In the past day I have been in disbelief, sadness and now I am just mad.  Who the fuck did this? Children dead or maimed.  Adults dead or maimed.  There is no way to make sense.  I pray for those injured.  The responders, the spectators. The horrors they saw and will live with.  I just don't know.

The terrible awful I did...

I pride myself as being a really smart woman until I do something really stupid.

Which is what I did tonight.

If you have read my blog, you know about my years of cub scout volunteering.

As you may also know, I am done with cub scouts as my boys are both boy scouts now. 

We do not have the best Boy Scout troop around, it is just a plain and simple fact.

We have a scoutmaster who has been running things for WAY TOO LONG!

He is controlling and set in his ways.  Our troop has lost many families because of it.

The troop is like a 'rogue' troop and he does not encourage or like when scouts do activities that are sponsored by counsel.  For those of you not in the scouting 'know', a counsel is in charge of all of the troops in an area.  There are about 10 towns in our counsel and our counsel plans activities for all of the troops to participate in.

Well my boys signed up for one such activity.  My youngest, who has been a boy scout for 5 weeks had to go and get a card signed off for by the scoutmaster and he sent him away without it! Now he signed off on the same card for my oldest scout last week.  When my oldest scout pointed this out, the scoutmaster dismissed him too.  

Evidently he is upset that boys in the troop are going on this activity, WTF??!! It isn't like they are organizing a trip to hang out in the sand pits and drink keg beer!  They are going to earn Merit badges!!

Well my boys came out to the car and told me what happened.

I simply lost it!

I have dealt with this tool for 5 years and because of my role in cub scouts always had to hold my tongue.  I could tell you story after story about all of the Ahole things he has done over the years.

Tonight was the straw that broke this camel's back and 5 years of frustration came pouring out.

I pointed out to him that it makes no sense to me why a scoutmaster would not want his scouts to experience all that the scouting world has to offer.  He offered lame excuses and your basic bullshit.

I would not back down, it was heated.  No f bombs(thankfully) flew.  However I did also have the opportunity to tell him exactly what I think about his 'white trash, idiot, couldn't hold a job at WalMart' wife.  I didn't use that description out loud, but I made my point.  My 15 year old summed it up as, "you looked really pissed mom!" The problem is that this was not how I wanted things to go down.  My 15 year old is fine with it, he deals with this man too so he kind of knows.  

Now for my 11 year old, not so much. Now he is worried that he will be treated differently in the troop and all the other things an 11 year worries about.  The boys want to stay with their friends in the troop so it isn't like we are going anywhere at this point.  

Now it is just me and my walk of shame over the terrible awful I did tonight.  He better hope I don't look up Minnie's recipe for pie, cause I am still pretty mad.

Lent and Crack...

Sometimes as a Catholic I feel I live a double life.

Don't worry, I'm not out there hitting the crack pipe or anything crazy like that.

I grew up Catholic but, we were a little laissez faire at times(which I still am).

I think it is a little crazy.  I teach Sunday school. I think to myself sometimes that I am the last person who should be educatin' these kids as to the ways of our religion.

I didn't believe in God for a very long time.

I still struggle with my beliefs... there I said it!

Anywho, I discussed with my Sunday school class before lent began what we should give up.  They are fifth graders and came up with totally lame ideas, things that really weren't a sacrifice.  

I tried to give them an example of what I might give up, but I hadn't really worked that out yet.  Truth be told I don't always give something up for lent.  I try to use it as a reminder to be a better person, ya know... a little less biotchy.  Believe me I can always use some reminding of that.

I started thinking out loud to my class...hmm...what would really be a sacrifice.  I thought about shopping and didn't need to think much longer about what I needed to give up...

do you know of it?  It is a little paradise of products.

creams, lotions, polish, body wash, lip gloss...

I was dropping some serious cash there on a regular basis.

So I gave it up and gave it up good.  

I did go in there today to purchase conditioner, which was a necessity purchase

and exempt(I believe) from my Lenten sacrifice.

Then came the Crack...

yes, as the label says, it is a habit forming hair fix.  

There you have it.  I went from conditioner to Crack and I am trying 

to reign myself in at this point.  

My hairdresser used this stuff on my hair and I couldn't believe it. It held 

a style with minimal spray. It made my hair feel and look so good. 

I had to have it.  So I got it. Now I have some 'splainin to do.

I started talking to myself, as I usually do...
I guess I am just not the good Catholic I play on Sundays.

I still eat meat on Fridays I reminded myself.

Who do I really think I am?

I was then reminded of an incident when I was a kid.  No self-respecting Catholic would be short a good childhood story.  I think maybe this was the beginning for me

not taking lent as serious as I should.

Who remembers this?

ah yes Boo Berry... As a kid of the 1970's I lived on this stuff.
Especially on Friday nights during lent when it was either fish sticks or cereal.
Well, one ill-fated Friday evening during lent was
big doings for my small town.
An ice arena was opening that night and classes were starting.
We ate quick and got over to the arena.
All the kids were waiting off the ice to be called to their class.
As I was called, I guess I was nervous.  I stepped on
the ice and no sooner did my blade hit the ice but so did my dinner.
Yes, purple Boo Berry cereal all over the ice.
I was mortified.
 To this day do not believe
in cereal for dinner.
As for lent...there's always next year.


(I have not been paid to mention my shopping addiction to Sephora, 
my recent addiction to crack 
nor have I or will I seek recovery 
from the makers of BooBerry for the trauma experience those many years ago on the ice)

Let them eat cake!

My last Cub Scout cake...

A daunting task to get inspired,

I Just didn't have it in me this year.

It was an emotional time, saying good by to Cub Scouts.

It has been such a big part of our lives for 5 years.

I dug deep and got a little inspired, 

but not very original.

It didn't seem to matter, the boys all enjoyed it.

I have never made figures out of fondant. I was happy with the 

Tiger and the Bear for the Cub Scout side of the cake.

I felt like I took the easy way out copying 

a lot of the same style of decoration from my cake last year.

Oh well.

I am getting used to relaxing my standards.

It makes life a little easier and enjoyable.

My youngest is a Boy Scout now.

Now time for me to relax and enjoy some 

quiet time.

Clearly you do not know me...

I am noticing a trend.  I pretty much only instagram pictures of food and I have been only blogging about things that totally irritate and or infuriate me. So, why would this post be any different?

We have opened our home for 8 weeks to an exchange student from Korea.  He is a 15 year old boy.  I already have one of those(a 15 year old boy) so I don't know what I was thinking.  After the first few days and the novelty of a new place wore off, two 15 year old boys is not double the fun.  All of that is for another time.  My issue this evening is with the two women who came over from Korea with the group of students.   If I had a douche bag jar, these two twits would owe it and owe it big. 

My son put it best when he said, "they look at you and smile and say yes, but I really wonder what they are thinking in their head."  Well I will tell you what I think is in their head and it includes an 'F' and a 'U' and probably some other derogatory phrases.  

I will give a little background,  these biotches didn't get off on the best foot with me.  In the first week when we had our student, he had a cold.  He was taking LOTS of medicine from Korea.  The third evening he was with us, he passed out.  I called Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb and explained my concern for his medical status. They determined, over the phone that he was 'fine' meanwhile I am trying to care for this kid who is 'fine' but then informs me he is going to start vomiting.   I later spoke with a representative from the school who told me that they had a kid last year from Korea who had medicine from Korea and he was taking too much and not following the instructions on the label, which posed a problem.  

I asked TD and TD what is in the medicine the kid is taking.  I explained that I will need to tell an EMT if I have to call an ambulance.  I also explained that I have friends with small children and I have a dog, what if one of them were to get into this medicine? I need to know what it is.  Most of all, I wanted to know what it was because it is my house and out of respect for our home I felt we simply had the right to know.  Guess what?  After numerous requests and 8 weeks later, I still have no effing idea what the medication is.

While we have had this student we have completely changed our schedule.  He has after school tutoring everyday.  That means a later pick up for him.  We have been available to bring him anywhere he has needed to be.  We have celebrated his birthday with him and Korean New Year.  We have brought him to museums and snow tubing.  It was my youngest son's birthday yesterday.  He goes to a different school so he has been on vacation.  He wanted to go into Boston.  I thought that would be great and we could get our exchange student into the city too.  As a result, he missed his after school tutoring.  

Now my kids never miss school.  Maybe one or two days a year.  Because of all of the weekend snowstorms we have had while we have had our student, many of the things we wanted to do were cancelled.  We decided that Friday, after lunch we would dismiss both 15 year old boys from school for the last museum we wanted to bring our student to and my son who is on vacation wanted to go to as part of his school vacation.

Well I see TD and TD tonight.  They say to me, "We know you want to take Ahn to a museum on Friday but we don't think so." They go on to say "he has missed tutoring twice so he can't go."  Now this kid came half way across the world.  I feel like an afternoon at a living museum(Old Sturbridge Village) would be a great way to round out his stay here in the states.  So this is where the title of this blog comes in 'cause clearly TD and TD do not know me.  So I say, "Well then you won't mind keeping him with you until 8pm when we get home that night."(they are usually done with the students at 4pm) Then, ever so politely, they start speaking Korean to each other right in front of me!  Like I wasn't even there!  I think they were maybe saying, "What the eff, how are we going to be able to go out to have fun for our last Friday night in the states if we are stuck with this kid?" 

Shockingly they thought that it would be a good idea for him to go after all.  I felt like saying, "Excuse me? What? Oh your an idiot? That's what I thought you said." Obviously I did not go on a rant, I kept it under control and polite, but Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb, clearly you do not know me, but I know you.  I have your number.

I will be honest, I don't really feel this experience has done much to endear me to these people.  Maybe I will feel different in the weeks after our student is gone, but for now I just don't know.  I would love to hear other peoples' experiences with exchange students.

really, it's you, not me...

I have a friend.

We run a cub scout pack together. It is a big pack, 80 boys. It is a lot of work.

You may think this volunteer job would be very glamorous.  

I hate to break it to you, it is not.

My relationship with my friend who I do this crazy work with has developed and evolved. It has been good and it has been not so good. Now enter a few glasses of wine, and here I find myself at my computer ready to let it rip.  At first I was not going to.  Then I was reminded by a very special blogger that this is my space.  I have some shit to yak about and I'm gonna yak.

I am done with cub scouts in a week.(yippeee...tear...happy dance...tissues...tears...bigger happy dance)

I want to go out like a lamb, so to speak, as I did come in like a lion 5 years ago.  Back then it was a different time and the lion was needed to get the program running, solvent and on to the business of teaching boys to be scouts.  Now things run smoothly for the most part.

In the past years working with my friend, she has made good decisions and not such good decisions.  When the bad decisions came, there was clean up to be done, which I would do.  Whatever... 

It hasn't necessarily been the bad decisions but her actions around them.  She avoids, is suddenly too busy to even pick up the phone.  Fucking Really? is about all I have to say.

Here we are one more week to go and she makes a banner decision.  I am in charge of the pack, she is the assistant.  She 'goes rougue' making a very dumb decision.  The person taking my place agrees she has eff'ed up.  Whatever... I want to fix the problem, not dwell on it and she can't even pick up the eff'ing phone to try to problem solve and fix.  On top of it, I work full time.  She is a stay home mom with 2 kids in school.  I make time for her if I am working or home at night.  Now, she can't even find a minute.  

Bitches these days is 'bout all I can say....