OMG PEOPLE, SCHOOL HASN'T EVEN STARTED

What? Why, yes, I am screaming. Why am I screaming? Because I'm going to have a nervous breakdown, but the year hasn't even started yet. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot I am not amused.

I got an email earlier this summer than began, I know you don't like complaining parents...I don't know this parent and yet she knows I don't like complaining parents?? AND then proceeded to bitch about the photography company I hired this year. Really???

OK, so this summer there is construction work being done on the building. I knew there would be stress involved because the TV studio is being totally remodeled, and I was worried that the ceiling in my classroom was going to be lowered. I checked on the room Monday only to discover that they hadn't even started doing the work to my room. So it is currently empty. The back storage rooms are full. Full of yearbooks, full of computers that are in pieces and dismantled, full of boxes of new computers not assembled yet, and full, as in no room for

the stuff and people that usually do stuff there.

Room on the other hand, empty. Empty of the computers that need to be against the walls, desks that need to be organized, computers haven't been cleaned up, server isn't ready to go, templates not on the servers, instructions not put on the walls.

I'm working with the ads editor-in-chief who has informed me that although they usually have all of their ad pages completed when school starts, they haven't done one page so far because of problems with the programs we use. WTF

Oh, and yearbook sales have started. Luckily the PTA is in charge and it is done online. That is the good news. The bad news is that I usually let the girls buy their yearbooks separately for a lower price since they do the work that puts it together. It never fails, year after year, someone buys the yearbook online and then wants a refund of the discount. That is annoying to me because reimbursements are a great big pain in the butt and a lot of work for me. So, I always say, I'm sorry but no.

Please to follow the exchange below:

Note to parent who wrote requesting a reimbursement for her overpay

Dear Mom with Question, you will need to get a refund from The Diva.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Friendly Employee

_________________________________________________________________

Note mom sent to me because she apparently was unwilling to wait for a response. She sent me a note at 11:54am and I had responded within 20 minutes

Diva, FYI. My daughter received your text after I had paid for her yearbook. Not sure how I receive the credit back from you. . .

_____________________________________________________________

Note to mom sent from my iphone. Perhaps I didn't give enough detail, or sooth her heart enough or whatever.

Hi, I am sorry, but Because it would create a huge mess, I don't do refunds either. Once it is ordered online, it is ordered.

Sorry again,

Diva
Sent from my iPhone

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Mom response. Clearly unhappy helping to support the yearbook through her yearbook purchase contribution.

Diva, Sorry, your response is not acceptable to me. Last year someone sent out a form for us to fill out. Why was it not sent out this year? My daughter tried to contact you, and two other girls before I paid. Another student had also paid full price. I want to know who dropped the ball this year. Please submit the name of the person responsible for this. They should be responsible for the reimbursements. I am not the only parent that paid the full price. Thank you! Very unhappy and possibly strident mom

This is the email which will almost definitely get yours truly in trouble. The question? How long till it hits the fan, and whether I actually care. If it helps any, I've already scheduled an appt with a doctor so that I can start a prescription of something that might keep me from killing anyone in the first month of school. . . so, yes, I know I am already dangerously close to the edge. With that being said...

_____________________________________________________________________

Dear Mom of student who is very unhappy and possibly strident,

I am sorry that you are so upset. I understand your frustration. I am the person who dropped the ball. The building has practically been shut down all summer. I have had minimal access AT BEST to the building. We should have started preparing for the school year the first of this month. There are no computers set up, the server isn't ready, templates haven't been finalized and the ads managers are having trouble with their templates. The senior staff and I will not have access until August 16th. It is overwhelming what needs to be done to start the year.

All of this to say, in the interest of fairness, I am happy to tell all of the girls that there is no discount this year.

Thank you,

The Diva

_________________________________________________________________

She has since sent me ANOTHER email.

Then I suggest you give out vouchers for those who paid the full price to use next year and find a way to refund any seniors.

Is she kidding me??? Can I tell you how desperately I want to respond. In a totally inappropriate fashion if you weren't certain. Probably should sit on this one.

Wacky parents (not mine)

So, inevitably each year, some wacked out parent gets a bee in the bonnet and sends a letter of complaint. Last year it was the mom upset that her son and his girlfriend weren't listed in the senior specialty section as "Wedding Bells" Oh, how they make me tired.

This year, wackadoodle #1 sent a letter to the superintendent of the district, the principal and the business manager of the district (I have no idea of why that poor woman got included in the line up). As an after thought, she copied me.

Dear Administration of XXXX,

I am looking at the High School yearbook and am very disappointed that there were no pages designated to the Arts. No pages designated to Choir, with pictures of the several different Choirs. No pages designated to the Band, with pictures of the two bands. Nothing for Orchestra, Belles or Cheerleaders either. Yet, I see several pages for every sport, with a picture of each team for that sport. I find this very sad, especially for all the kids that worked so hard this year to represent the High School with the talents they have.

I just can not believe that this was allowed to go to print! The editor has apparently never worked on a yearbook before. I myself have been the editor of several yearbooks, so I do know what I am talking about. The yearbook was also way too wordy. We want to see pictures and not read stuff that people didn't even really say. Both of my daughter's have quotes that they never said. One even was about her going to the Homecoming Dance, which she didn't do! The other was about herasking a girl to a dance! I'm sure someone was trying to be creative with the quotes and the seasons, but in my opinion it did not work.


I only hope that next year's yearbook will focus on all the kids at the school and not just the ones that play sports, or pay for an ad. Do you realize that nationally kids in band and choir score higher on the SAT and ACT, yet they don't even get recognized at your school. How sad is that.


Thank you for your time.

Mrs. Crazy Head

I can't even describe the many ways this woman shows she is crazy. Of course, I am forced to respond in a grown up manner. It hurts me people it really does, cause this is the letter that I wanted to send:

Dear Mrs. Nutjob,

First and foremost, when sending a letter condemning something, it is usually best to take a moment and proofread. Honesty, you sound like an idiot.

Second, give me all of your daughters homework from the last year, let me slap it together and print it for the world to see and then get back to me. Cause really, this is just one big ass class project with a lot of homework assignments. Done by teenagers for teenagers.

I'm not sure of what to think that you got so wound up over the yearbook you felt a need to send a letter to the superintendent. It is just a yearbook, lady.

You are correct the yearbook staff made the decision to keep the traditional sports spreads, and each sport has 1 spread. They chose to do a chronological book which did rearrange most of the spreads. Ironically, it actually meant that activities such as choir and band had better coverage than they did before. But I totally understand your desire to bitch than to be appreciative that these organizations got increased coverage.

Sure, if the index editors had done their job right and actually indexed all the effin activities like I told them to do, you would have been able to see the long row of pages following these organizations, but again, as long as the book is being created by 15 year olds doing class work, I'm pretty much screwed out of the perfect book.

I have no idea of why you think there are no group pictures in the book. If I get it, it is in the book. Have you considered having your eyes checked?

I don't know what to tell you about your daughter's quotes. They gave quotes, they signed the quote sheets, not sure where I can go with that. Although I think the one daughter went to a Halloween party with another girl, not homecoming. But again, let's not be bothered with facts if possible.

I don't know what to tell you about your daughters quotes. I have signatures. They gave a quote and signed the quote sheet.

Sincerely,

I don't give a flying F what you think Diva

Best part, my friend PR got a hold of my letter and shall we say "Massaged" it. Very polite and all. The mom responded - just to me of course that really I didn't need to respond, her daughters thought it was funny that they were misquoted and oh by the way no one likes to see the vacation pictures either.

NUT JOB. Honestly, the parents of the 120 kids I teach are fine, no problem, if we could only get the other 1700 kids parents under control that would be really swell.

This is what I deal with

So, internet dating, eh? Lots of people are doing it, Oh, so and so met her husband through the internet, you should try it. And there are a ton of sites out there. A. Freaking. Ton.

So, perusing a site I found Mr. X. He is very specific about his dislikes. Here, let me show you:

VERY IMPORTANT: Might as well throw this in- Please do not email me if you have fake boobs. I really do not like them at all even if you went to the best doctor etc...

I know what I want and what I do not want, here is a list of the do not's... No fake boobs no matter what:) I do not see myself dating a woman who wears thongs, I know your reasons and I have to add that thongs do not fix your panty lines...I can still see a thong line going up the middle of your bottom.

Okay that sounded a bit negative, but you have not seen the winks and emails I have been getting. I would rather get ONE great email than 3200 mediocre ones.

Also I have two dogs so please be a dog lover too

Please reeview the following list, if any of these apply to you then emailing me is not the best use of your time.

Smokes even just a few :)
Fake boobs (covered this one already didn't we!)
Wears thongs (serious)
Not in shape
Catholic ( Yes I know you are a Christian but you will not get me into Mass...sorry)
Angry with men ( I know, you would think you would not be on Match right?)
Players ( Yes, woman on Match can be players just like the guys)
Pro Abortion (good for you but never would we get along)
Drinks daily
Drugs
If you do not attend church monthly

Hey, If you were offended by any of that look at this as a time saver... Good luck

Wow, you know he's a charmer. In fact, I have used this as an example for many of what wacka-freaking-doodles are on the internet.

I didn't include the first paragraph, but needless to say he starts with his zip code which is. . . drum roll . . . hp (of course) . I also think it is great that he writes a couple and then decides to summarize his checklist of love.

Technically I do not attend church monthly, I attend weekly. Do you think I'm out? What about the Catholic business? I mean, Episcopalian is Catholic light and all.

What if I go commando? As long as there is no panty line, can he fall in love?

These are complicated issues. Currently, I don't drink daily, but I'm fairly certain any amount of time with this guy, and I will be drinking daily. Not in shape. . . how serious is he about this one? We all know that there are many skinny girls that aren't in shape at all. Other girls might appear larger, but are totally in shape. So, is he after in shape or just hot bod? I think either way I'm still out.

And I'll admit, I read that and thought, wow, this guy could meet the girl of his dreams, smart, funny, interesting and for whatever reason crazy about him, but if she had breast cancer and subsequently a boob job, he wouldn't be interested in her. Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit, that's what I want.

Why am I forcing everyone to be a part of this? That's right, cause the putz emailed me and said he recognized me and wasn't I the yearbook adviser. Sigh. Yes. And no, I am not qualified to date your royal assness. Now go find some conservative, pro-life, granny panty wearing, droopy booby, bible thumping Baptist who doesn't drink, smoke, dance or like sex (sorry I added that for my own amusement.)

New Career? Perhaps not

Well, it was a bit of a cluster. Let's start with that.

I raced home after school to feed the dogs, grab my stuff and head back to school. We were told that there would be someone at school to do our hair and make-up, so I didn't have much make-up on at all, but I did bring my curling iron because I figured they would not be interested in curling my hair, but I could stand there and do it before they did anything else to my hair. As they say, I figgured wrong.

I am back to school before 5pm, in fact, I am the first girl back, so I start heating the curling iron and getting to work. Other people begin to arrive, and then the make-up lady arrives and starts setting up. She informs us that we were supposed to come already done up, and she was just adding a little umph. Ummm, come again? So, we are a little bent, but she starts getting defensive and repeating herself. We understood, but we also knew that about half of us arrived with NO freaking make-up on. Chit.

Apparently, about half of the girls were also told that jewelry would be provided. Turns out, not the case. So there are about 15 of us that need to have our make-up done. At some point one of the teachers got a piece of paper so that we could "sign" up to get faces done. Me, I might have thought we would do it in order of when we were going on. Apparently not, Or, maybe we would do it in order of when we got there, no, not doing it that way either. So, I don't sit down in the chair to get my make-up done until 3 minutes before we go on . . .did I mention I was SECOND to go on stage? Literally I have JUST SAT down in the stupid make-up ladies chair when they start yelling, we're about to go on. . . line up everybody. I don't even have the dress on yet.

The whole thing at this point is just a cluster. Totally and completely.

One of the teachers in the show is a short, bitter, cranky woman that has been teaching at the HS for a long, long time. As you might guess, we don't get along. She, at some point as we were getting ready, starts curling her hair with my curling iron. I look at her as she's curling my hair, and she just looks back, no acknowledgment of the fact she has used my curling iron.

Meanwhile, another 'model' looks around and asks if there is a curling iron she could use. . . The short, bitter, cranky woman looks at her and says, yes, she can use this curling iron. . . OMG are you freaking kidding me? Bitch uses my curling iron and then offers it up to others??? I nearly lost my freaking mind.

Then the teacher in charge of the club brings out these lovely bags of 'gifts' from Saks Fifth Ave (the store that provided all of the clothes.) They are all a little different, so, of course, I get the hand lotion that smells like a 90 year old woman. (I know this makes me ungrateful and an alcoholic but I seriously needed a freaking drink at that point because I just wanted to throw the lotion against the wall. . . Like I really needed to get home and take a shower because I put the stupid lotion on my hands and it smelled AWFUL.

I suppose it all turned out ok. I did not fall. (That was my primary goal.) I did not trip (almost did that.) I did ok. And the dress rocked! (The photo does NOT do it justice!)

Taking no chances

After yesterday's near miss, I thought it would be prudent to go ahead and blog now, rather than later.

At the moment I am on hold for GoDaddy because my log in for my soon to be cool website isn't working.

I'm not twittering too much because Betwittered this fun gadget on my igoogle page isn't working properly. Apparently Twitter thinks that Be twittered is one person posting a whole hellofalot rather than a bazillion people twittering through this application.

The fax machine is on the fritz but I can't just buy a new one because we are upgrading the school phone system and it seems not all fax machines will work properly with the new system.

The people that know and love me sit through long periods of silence on the phone waiting for me to realize I've (once again) put them on hold with an ear that operates independently.

Remind me of how great all this crap is.

Decisions

I'm going to need to decide if I'm going to blog from the phone or twitter. My afternoon class is HTML/dreamweaver. The sorry bugger teaching took control of our computers so I can't play. Sooo annoying.

--
==================================================================
This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T

Manners

I realize that if I keep posting about things that irritate me (aka poor manners), I'll have a lot of blogging opportunities, and my friends on the web will truly be able to see how uptight I am. Does that slow me down? Nope, not a bit.

Tonight I shall reflect on time. Not being on time, I think I've made my feelings clear on that topic, although I might return to it at a later time. Tonight is all about appropriate times to call people. The magic hours are 9-9. And I might even reduce it further to 10-9 just to be safe. Say, if you are calling someone you don't know at all.

Why would you ever call someone you don't know very well outside of those hours? Lack of manners? Totally unaware of common courtesy? What is up with that?

Sure I have a list (admittedly a short list) of people that I know I can call at the crack of freaking dawn and it's ok 'cause not only are they up, but they are cheerful . . . well, mostly.

I also have a list of people I know I can call fairly late in the evening. My favorite, of course, is when I can't sleep at night and I think who can I possibly call to entertain me? I call my cousin in California, because, yes, even at midnight it is only 10 there, and I know he is still awake. (Well, on weekends, I wouldn't call him that late on a weeknight, just in case.)

It sets any hope of a future relationship with a person on shaky ground when their first move is to call my ass after 9pm. Sooooooo annoying.

Doing School

I have a confession to make. Our administration decided we would have book studies this year. The book is Doing School. (No you can't click to look inside, I snagged the image from Amazon.com ) I haven't read it. We are having a book study 7th period.

OK, being a fairly quick reader I made it half-way through the book. It has 5 studies of individual students and what school is like for each. I read 3 of the 5. Probably didn't matter because
a. the principal, leader of our book study, was sick 6th and went home.
b. I was in a room with 7 coaches and a special ed teacher. 6 of the coaches clearly hadn't read, and that left the special ed teacher and me. . .
c. One of the coaches (had read) volunteered to lead the discussion for the p. The rest of the coaches basically said nothing. The p's assistant came by and said something to the effect of not taking attendance. One of the coaches IMMEDIATELY stood up to leave.

I totally get not wanting to read the book or not having time or feeling pressure to do too much . . ..like soooo many of the kids, but this was pathetic. Book studies are about intelligent discussion, the exchange of ideas, learning from colleagues. NOT sitting with a bunch of jerks who can't be bothered to even discuss what the book was about whether or not they had read it. Un freaking believeable.

Why color doesn't matter . . .

being being annoying or stupid does. So for years I have held firmly to the belief that knocking someone for their religious beliefs or color is liking knocking someone for having red hair. . . totally meaningless as far as why that person is annoying and/or painfully stupid. Mainly because I think people are stupid and annoying because they are stupid and annoying not because of color or gender or any other damn thing. I went to a blog that I enjoy and found an even better recitation of why Racism is meaningless. Made me laugh . . .so I pass it along for you to enjoy.

The tech people left to torture me

Some of you may recall that CHUCK one of my favorite people in the world happened to work at the high school for many years. I loved Chuck. He had a naughty sense of humor. He was fun to make fix wires under the desks because he had a cute hiney. AND HE WAS SMART. Not run of the mill smart, but computer smart. In addition, he didn't like it when he didn't know things. So if he had to fix a problem but discovered he didn't know the answer. He would hit the internet and start researching. He was very good at his job, but a bit of a scamp, so his boss would become very frustrated and unhappy. Sadly, Chuck is now helping other people in the world.

What he left behind was a decided mess. (A request for clarification has been made. He left behind a mess because he left. It was great when he was here. But then he left. And then it was a mess. Hope that helps) Sigh. I try not to hold that against him because as afore mentioned he is a sweetie.

Please note the two people that I shall refer to as Frick and Frack. Working hard. Testing the interactive Promethean Board that wasn't working properly earlier this week. Great right? Hmmm, not so much. So, I have a problem with my promethean board. Actually, I usually have problems any time I go to use it these days. There were many frustrations with it earlier in the yearbook, but we won't focus on that.

So, I am sitting quietly in my office during 7th (working on the computer as the number of blog posts today can attest) when I realized F and F were across the room at the two computers you see in the distance. The left computer is connected to the projection system.

(As Frack has worked on the projection system in the past I would expect her to know that but it turns out she has a strange and bizarre illness. Something is growing inside of her. Word on the street is that in 9 months (well, less than that now) she will recover, but in the meantime that is the explanation given for ANY STUPIDITY she shows. Sorry, I digress.

They are working on the right computer. Hmm, I think to myself. Should I tell them they are on the wrong computer? No, (Cause I'm mean like that) I think I'll just see how long they sit there. About 10 15 minutes later I hear "Oh, it's actually connected to the other computer" sigh. NO FREAKING DUH.

The next thing I see they have disconnected the left computer (computer especially set up to be the projection system computer) and connected the right computer (especially set up to be the ID machine computer). I see red. I mean I am fired up and unhappy.

I hop up, head out to see them working on the board at the front of the room. I say, " You realize the board needs to be connected to the left computer right?" silence. "You need to put it back the way it was." silence. Back to my office.

Few minutes later, both computers shut down, and Frick and Frack are gone.

They catch our campus IT girl, Shelly, in the hallway and say I'm mad, but they left because I was upset, but golly they couldn't figure out how to fix the problem"

THIS IS WHY I DON'T OWN A GUN. OK, there is also the complete lack of coordination I have that coudl likely land me with a shot foot, but this is at least one of the reasons.