Day Billion and 2

Unless you've been in a coma and not following your East Coast friends whining via FaceBook you might have realized I've been cooped up a bit.

BoyChild was starting to look shaggy and I happily pulled out the electric clippers as a new indoor activity I hadn't explored yet. After some soothing words about how a little hair in his eyes wouldn't kill him, he ran off tearing his shirt from his body and my first thought about his head was "mange". And then I only wanted to wish him well in the coal mines. With the right side a little closer to the skull and a cowlick that eluded the clippers, he's only a black smudge and hacking cough away from working the tunnels.

He's skillfully been eluding me since then. But that's OK since I've found "Hoarders" ON DEMAND. It's my new favorite show that makes me feel better about the state of my house. I've had to move on after exhausting Comcast's selections of "Cake Boss" and "How It's Made." "Ruby" was hitting a little too close to home.

Babycakes shoveled pretty fast today, I think to get me out of the house faster. I tried to kidnap my neighbor but she claimed her husband was "working". Riiiigggghhhhht...and I'm going out to get groooooceriiieeesss...

Dammit, don't they even think about MY feelings?!? Didn't they realize that I'd need a designated driver for my planned stop at La Tolteca for a Modelo Especial or five? I had to satisfy myself with an order of soft chimichangas that are now sitting quite heavily in my upper GI. So lonely without a Mexican beer to digest them.

Day Billion and One

My verbiage was getting too much for Facebook's limited space and my sister kept hinting that I should blog during my house arrest as determined by the Maryland Public School System, the Federal Government and Fat Bastard Winter (FBW).

In addition to completing a thorough investigation of my toenail cuticles, GirlChild and I explored our artistic side on her bedroom wall.

Her Lorax isn't half bad!




Under the butterflies, BoyChild added some wind, both artistically and literally (after consuming the dreaded Fiber Bar). The Fiber Bars are the weapon of choice during the confinement for their combination of lip-smacking tastiness and near-lethal gas producing qualities.

Babycakes sat with them in front of YouTube until GirlChild had THIS memorized. She chimes in with "nobody comes to visit me...in my little cloud" as she streaks past you leaving a wake of offensiveness.


On what felt like day 100,000 GirlChild created TentCity in our living room. Peering closely, under my didgeridoo, you'll find her wardrobe hanging on a novelty known as "hangers". Hidden in the underbelly of TentCity is "guest bedroom" and "pile where I put my dirty clothes".









BoyChild is so easy. World Of Warcraft. A billion and one days off of school. Bliss.

As for me, I finally took a look into my school bag that I abandoned on Day 1 of FBW. I unfortunately abandoned it with a banana sitting at the bottom that had nicely oozed all over my new gradebook. And some Algebra 2 homework. Oh well, I'm sure the kids will have forgotten they ever turned those in by the time we get back to school. Or better yet...

Alice: Class, your mastery of exponents is deplorable. After THOROUGHLY grading your last homework assignment I threw it all away in disgust after wiping the banana...er...stench of failure from my hands.

Stay Tuned for Day Billion and Two! Unless I get apathetic and watch M*A*S*H reruns all day.

Ahem...Not For You Dear...

Sorry about my blog header - it's all messed up and I need to get WebMaster Nick on the job. I've been silent far too long and the blog gods don't like that.

Anyhooo...I directed a few folks this way so I didn't get banned from FaceBook for showcasing pornographic material. Apparently GirlChild was rooting through my belongings and started a little chant about an old cake photo of mine that she found. I tuned her out as I was avidly searching the internet for cool ideas for math in the classroom and shirtless men.

The part of the tune that caught my ear was : "Long leggedy lady cake...with a bone behind her."

ARGHHHHHHHH........gimme that kid.....

Monkey Attacks and Electrocution Central American Style

Our first day of inland Belize adventure took us tubing through caves at Caves Branch which was fun for the portion of the trip where my ass wasn't being dragged across rocks.

I conveniently didn't bring my camera for that ... but was able to score a pic from the internet. I wasn't able to score a picture that simulated BoyChild walking through some ants while humping an innertube through the forest. Haha. Good times.

On the second day, we began by visiting the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich. You can see GirlChild approaching in her kickin' sun gear. The kids raced to the top (and I do mean the VERY TOP) on tilty, un-hand-railed steps, some of which had been plastered back together after an earthquake.

(dialogue at Xunantunich)

Alice: Hold my hand.

Alice: Put your back against the wall.

Alice: Go down those steps on your butt.

Alice: Omigod I'm going to die.

We somehow left the ruins (not dead) for a leisurely canoe trip into Barton's Creek Cave. On the way to our canoe, we found a friendly spider monkey - who took a shine to GirlChild's headband. GirlChild lost.

.

Here you can see the friendly canoes. Bear in mind that we're about to enter a DARK cave. GirlChild has already screamed her way through dark caves on an inner tube so I'm concerned.

Luis comes back with what looks like a small car battery and thunks it into the watery bottom of the canoe, hands us a huge spot light and then says we'll need to attach it to the battery when we get into the cave.

Alice: Ummm..isn't that dangerous?! (Holy ACDelco, I'm going to be electrocuted!)

Luis: It's only 12 volts.

Alice: Omigod, I'm going to die. (I have no concept of what kind of impact a 'volt' has on a body.)

Luis get Babycakes, BoyChild and their own killer battery settled into another canoe and gives them the keys. Babycakes isn't really an outdoorsy type of guy so I was kinda curious as to how his canoe/spotlight handling would be. Turns out he and BoyChild survived.

At least Luis was in charge of the gals and I was pretty sure he could save us if GirlChild decided to drop the spotlight into the water.

In order to get into the cave, you have to sort of hump your canoe between the cave wall and a rock that sits right in your way. It's not really a fast process, I'm sitting in the front, and I notice a fist-sized spider on the cave wall about 5 inches from my personal space.

I'm silently freaking out because the last thing I want to do is alert GirlChild to the fact that this Godzilla Spider is hanging around and start her screaming before we even hit the cave.

I move my body right as far as I can. Luis yells something lame about tipping the canoe. And I finally manage to splash enough water around the spider so that he disappears.

Luis gets us over the rock and into the actual cave, we hook up the Battery-Of-Death and experience an absolutely gorgeous cave ... right up until GirlChild says, "Mom...there's a spider on your back."

And the first thing that comes to mind is the tunnel scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. And I wonder if it's that evil spider from the front of the cave. And now I don't care if I tip the canoe as I start flapping my arms randomly around my shoulders since I can't even really reach my back. At some point, GirlChild says the spider is gone. I can only guess that he fell into the water in the bottom of the canoe and eletrocuted himself.

South of the Border (the RIGHT way!) - Pt. 1

This is how you do South-of-the-Border the sad way.

Doing South-of-the-Border the RIGHT way involves a big dent in the bank account, but was ohhhhh so worth it. Let's get y'all back up to speed.

Freeing myself from the shackles of high school was nice and ended on a pretty cool note. I've housed a TV in my room for the whole year and it's only collected dust since math videos are either


a) lame

b) retarded

or

c) 25 years old.


Well, one of my favorite students and his circle of hooligans brought in Guitar Hero and hooked it up to that there TV. I don't know that anyone else has had such a fantastic last day. I demurred when they asked me to play. I mean really - they had every song on uber-expert-devil-hard. How would I have looked slogging through "Eye of the Tiger" on medium difficulty?


I packed up my crap and labelled all my desks in an effort to stop other teachers from swiping mine during the summer. Although I plan to do exactly that when the opportunity presents itself. No one wants to sit in my one desk abomination with the seat that tilts forward at a 45 degree angle.

Annndddd after packing up the classroom, I packed up 20 bottles of bug spray, a few bathing suits and some sunblock so we could head on down to the REAL south of the border.


Flying to Cancun was uneventful, and from there we hired a van to drive us to the town of Chetumal, just north of the Belizean border. I discovered that when poking around a town that speaks Spanish, I'm suddenly a master of Swahili. Even GirlChild knew more Spanish from Dora the Explorer - her favorite thing to say being "Ayudenme!".


We spent the night in Chetumal and visited their very excellent Museo de la Cultura Maya. Being the culturally sensitive Americans that we are, we took pictures of the kids picking the nose of a giant monolithic face. And had to read OVER and OVER again how Mayan men would pierce their wieners with stingray spines. (Wieners being our word, not theirs.)


We were picked up the next day and driven to our beautiful stay in inland Belize via these guys, who we'll highly recommend if you need to be carted around the area and I can't say enough good things about our stay at the Jungle Dome.

Here's a view from our porch. *sigh* I miss it already.


I'll end on this note. Hoping to fit in the GirlChild-Monkey-Attack and Spider-The-Size-Of-My-Fist story...next time!