I'm outta here!

Ok, I am so excited I can barely contain myself! Here's what happened when I got to work this morning. Principal calls me in to his office:

Principal: "(cautiously) I need to talk to you about something...how would you feel about attending a training in Seattle? It's for two days, you would have to stay in a hotel for possibly two or three nights."

Me: (OMG, stay calm, try to look professionally interested) "Hmm, when is it? I would have to check my calendar."

Principal: (still trying to sound enticing) It's in July...if you are feeling hesitant about traveling by yourself, maybe your husband could join you and you could make it a getaway for the both of you."

Me: (Try not to laugh out loud, bring my husband...esta loco?) "I don't mind traveling alone. I actually enjoy it sometimes."

So we wrap it up and I am beyond excited about having some time to myself and not having to constantly attend to others needs for a while...oh yeah and to be trained in something for the school, forgot what? ...anyways! I am already picturing myself drinking a cup of coffee, reading a magazine, window shopping, and oh yeah, and the whole training thing again...

Freak Magnet Friday! The history..where it all began, I think

Ok, so I was at a St. Patrick's Day party talking to a total stranger about my Freak magnet affliction. Being that she didn't even know me probably just made her think I was a freak, but that's OK!
Here is some of the beginnings that I remember:
When I was fifteen, I had a friend who would call me to just talk about random things and we would talk about mostly surface stuff, and one time in the middle of the conversation he started crying! It was strange to me because it wasn't like he was talking about early childhood memories, or his deepest darkest secrets...just talking! I asked him why he was crying and he said, "I don't know, but when I talk to you I feel like crying." Ok, now keep in mind I am also not talking about anything personal, just chit chat. So we continue to talk regularly and he continues to cry regularly, which kind of freaked me out. I asked him, "Why do you talk to me if it makes you cry all the time?" He said there was something about the way I talked that made him feel emotional and that even though he was crying, it helped him feel better, hmmm.
So then his mom gets wind of this and calls me! She says, "I wondered why he was crying every time he talked to you, but he says it helps him feel better, so what can I say?'
I really wasn't sure how to handle this, or what it meant? We stopped talking at some point, and some years later he passed away in a tragic car accident. That was just really sad.

When I was sixteen I met a guy at a party who I thought was a total loser, he was dating my friend and I didn't like him for her. I would see him at the parties she would have and once he cornered me at one of these gatherings and he spilled his guts to me. I realized that he was probably really mentally ill with everything he told me. Then he starts crying and leaves the party and everyone looked at me like, "What the Hell did you do to him?" Again, I was stunned with what had happened, I had no answers!

Another time when I was sixteen I was at a party where this weird guy kept hitting on me. He was really coming on strong and I was starting to feel uncomfortable. A friend of mine saw my distress and called for "back up" to help me. The back up was his brother who had to escort him out. I said to his brother and my friend, "What is his problem???" They both said they had never seen him act this way and they were stumped about his behavior, almost implying that I was responsible for his weird obsessiveness!

It was a this point that I slowly started to realize that I somehow bring out people's weirdest, freakish, behavior. Hmmm...so I started to become more aware, and more guarded about who I talk to and what I talk about. I started to fine tune my "radar" and later could see when this would start to happen. I know I mentioned only men, but it happened with women too!

So, cut to today, where I now get paid to deal with this side of myself. I became a counselor!
This was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Now I am in control of these situations and I actually feel honored, (and yes, sometimes freaked out) by allowing people to feel comfortable to let their freak flag fly!

So here is me. Happy Friday! Thanks for reading!

Short and sweet! The randomness of kids

Ok, so I go to do a presentation about a free gift giveaway to all the classrooms, k-5. I stand up in front of the classes, slowly and clearly tell them where it is, and what time to be there and that they just need their parents to be present with them. Then I ask if they have any questions. Here is a sample of what I got, from all levels:

Me to each class: "Any questions?"

Them:

"Do you know that my dad takes care of me?" (That's so nice)

"I like to go dancing!" (Ok, me too, but how is this related?)

"I have this cat and my grandma, my grandma, my grandma, she, she one time, she, my cat..." (uh huh, get back to me, sweetie)

"I get to go to the zoo on Saturday and then we're going to Chuck E. Cheese, cuz that's my favorite place! "(mmmhmmm, me? Not so much a fan).

"My brother lives with us." (Is that right?)

"I'm going to play PS3 when I get home!" (a good use of time!)

"I ride bikes with my dad and he, and he, and uh, uh, Oh! I forgot!" (Yeah, I hate that!)

"Where do we go? What time does it start? What day is it?" (I just told you, apparently you were busy doing something else, even though you were looking right at me!)

"I have a pet hamster, and his name is Fluffy, and he goes on his wheel, like this (gestures) and then he runs and runs and it's really funny (laughing)!" (I'm not really a fan of rodentia, but that's cool.)

"Are you married to Mr. G?" (uh, no but interesting that you would ask, hmmm)

You get the picture! They are too funny and cute, which is a good thing for their sake. My own kids do the same thing!

Freak Magnet Friday Part 2 More Euro weirdness!

A reminder to update you: My BFF and I just arrived in Paris, France.

We get to the hostel and it is crowded with people from all over the world. Side note: public nudity is NOT frowned up on Europe. There was more than one instance where I had a, "My eyes!" situation, but I digress. So as we are checking out the scene, we meet this guy from Eastern Europe. He is talking with us when we notice what looks like a bunch of duct or masking tape stuck to the back of his jean jacket. We get a closer look and realize that the "tape" is actually the dried skin from an actual iguana! Eeesh. He wore that jacket everyday that we were there. Weird.

We then meet these two guys from Algeria who were VERY interested in the fact that we were American girls. They wore the traditional garb, which we could only describe as "Jesus dresses" because that is exactly what they looked like. These guys decided one night to invite us to their "jam session" which took place in a mini-ampitheater. They were playing American songs on the guitar, and their grand finale was "Hotel Cawifonia." It was sweet, really. They were hoping we would be wooed by this. They also had a personal space distance of: too close! They would get really all up to our faces to talk and we were like, "get back!" We had to push them away several times. Oh, and as a farewell present and one last attempt to impress us, they gave us these handmade wool pillowcases and then said we must now give them something in return! So, being the classy gals that we were, we gave them some T-shirts we got at the London airport.

OK, so we get hungry whilst milling about Paris so we go into this cafe. Everything is cool, we try to order even though we don't speak any French and apparently the French DO NOT speak English. So it's time to order drinks and we order two cokes. You would have thought we ordered a cup of gerbil milk with the reaction we got from EVERYONE in the cafe! It became dead silent and everyone stared at us! WTH? We asked to everyone, "What???" Some patron leaned over and said to us, "We know you are Americans because only Americans order soda with their meals." Ok? so? That was just weird, and kind of an overdramatic reaction from the crowd I must say.

This was the summer of 1988, or in Paris, "The Summer to be extremely rude to Americans!"
No matter where we went the people refused to help us or even be courteous. This happened as we tried to navigate the metro system, stores, even the people who worked at the youth hostel! We renamed it Hostile.
The Hostile had a "chow hall" if you will, where we got "breakfast" every morning, in line with a tray. Our meal consisted of half a baguette and a bowl of warm chocolate milk for dipping in. All served by a very frazzled and cranky chef? Server? Not sure. We called him "Google" because of his eyes. Let me tell you, I went from, "Oooh, I love baguettes!" To, "If I see another piece of french bread I am going to be sick." Yes, it does get old when you eat one with every single meal!
Oh, and we did see all the major attractions, including the Eiffel tower where my BFF and some irritated Italian lady almost got into it getting into the elevator back down! Crazy...
The city is amazing and we didn't let the rudeness of the French folk taint our visit! But this is Freak Magnet Friday, so I had to post all the weird stuff! Happy Friday! Thanks for reading!

St. Patrick's Day Parade ends in chaos!

So, I decide to take Dear son, who is almost three, and dear daughter who is five to the St. Patrick's Day parade in Old Sacramento. The weather is beautiful and the kids are excited! The parade is great, bagpipes, Irish dancers, clowns, etc. Everything is perfect, the kids get candy, bead necklaces, and dear son is given a two-foot tall flag, good times.
Now it is time to leave. We start walking back to the car which includes a walk over the river and down a long path. Dear son decides to hold the flag at an angle that will impale anyone's calf who comes near him. I try to take it from him or at least have him hold it more upright, but he is not having any of it. He starts yelling, "My flag! It's my flag!" Ok, ok, so I try to leave him alone. There are a lot of people walking so I go to hold his hand but he is too cool to hold mommy's hand. I tell him he needs to walk faster and he responds by tripping and falling and getting a splinter in his hand! So now we are walking and he is crying and saying, " My hand has blood! I have blood!" (There is no blood, he is always exagherating like that!)
Now we are on the long path back to the car when dear daugher starts doing the pee pee dance and says, "We have to hurry! I have to go to the bathroom!" Oh no...I tell her we still have a ways and maybe she should just go behind a bush or something, but she is afraid of anyone seeing her so we try to keep going. We finally get to the car and it is obvious we are not going to make it in time. I put dear son in the car and tell her to just squat behind the car. She does, but manages to pee all over her pants, socks and shoes! So now, dear son is crying saying his hand hurts and dear daughter is now pulling off her wet clothes so we can get home.
We finally get moving and I am wondering the whole time how fast things can go wrong. I cursed dear hubs for the millionth time for working nights and just start trying to get to the house. The kids fight the whole way home and when we pull into the driveway, I asked the kids if they had fun, and they both shout, "Yeah!" So, that made it worth all the drama! Never a dull moment, I tell ya!

Freak magnet Friday! Euro-freaks or culture clash?

So I was looking through some old stuff when I found a journal my BFF created to document our trip to Europe in 1988, the year I graduated High School. I will summarize the "freak" points of this journal for your reading pleasure!
We were there for three weeks and stayed in two different youth hostels. One in Holland and one in Paris, France. Yes, THE Paris! Not Hilton...so anyways, we had a variety of bizarre experiences while staying at these places.

We are in our room at our first hostel in Holland, it is like 3AM but we had just got there and we couldn't sleep. We had our window open because it was a summer night , we were on the third floor. As we are staring out the window, just kind of shocked that we are now in Europe when just a measly 16 hours ago we were in San Francisco, we hear a commotion! All of a sudden there is a group of both guys and girls who dive into our room through our window! WTH? We just looked at each other. There was about five of them. One of them said: You are the Americans? yes? We want to know all about the United States! Please tell us things about what it is like to live in America!

Well, that is not exactly an easy question to answer, but we just start chatting about how we feel we are superior to the rest of the world, everyone wants to be just like us, it's the U.S.'s world and everyone else just lives in it, you know very patriotic stuff...Then we hear more noise outside when yet another group of young dutch folk dive into our window! They then PHYSICALLY throw the other people out of our window and sat down like nothing happened! What's funny is that they asked us the exact same thing as the other people. WTH was all that? We asked them what their beef was with the other dutchies and one of the guys just made a dismissive motion with his hand and said, "Phht, they are farmers." Farmers? Yes, the cursed Farmer! Wait, what? We later figured that that was the American equivalent of "total loser."
Before these guys left, they broke out into a concert of impromptu fake flatulence, vomitting, and belching noises and then left just as suddenly as they came. Leaving us speechless.

Moving on...we hear there is a "Disco" in the hostel. It was 1988 so we were like, "Hee hee, Disco! (snort). But of course we went to check it out. This is the scene, young travelers, lots of smoking, Euro-Techno music blasting, and SCORE! We can drink here! We meet a very intoxicated young man named "Marlik". Marlik takes it upon himself to show us around. As he is doing this, he is leaving a trail of spilled beer from the glass he is holding. He is also so drunk, that we cannot understand a single word he is saying (picture Keith Richards talking). He then goes to the dance floor, starts to pass out standing up, and in the process burned a hole in the sweater of the girl in front of him with his cigarette! She turned around like, "Hey! Who is burning a hole in my sweater with a cigarette?" But Marlik was too obliviated to notice. Ok, that wasn't freak-like but I thought I would mention him anyways.

I am starting to think that this may turn into a two part post, hmmm. Ok, so then we head off to Paris! Yay! I thought to myself, Paris is the city of all cities to be in, right? I mean it's so glamorous and rich with history...and rich with weirdos, apparently. Let me just say that Paris is way different than Amsterdam, ok? I mean almost night and day with how things went for us.

Ok, now this post is too long! I will continue with our stories from France and how everyone was either weird or mean to us, next Friday! Thanks for reading!

P.S. I am half Dutch, my father was born and raised in Holland. Just wanted you to know!

We reward bullying!

You know, I was really thinking about the whole issue of bullying in schools. It has been happening since probably the beginning of time, it's a kind of social Darwinism. The presumed weakest get picked on, bossed around, even beaten up! There are several programs and campaigns marketed to schools to stop bullying. I am a school counselor, it is part of my job to curtail this behavior, but it will never go away completely. It's a part of human nature, just not a very pretty part.
The interesting thing here is this. We tend to reward this behavior in adults! Example: There is a parent at our school that gets her way by bullying other parents and teachers alike. When she doesn't get her way she goes straight to the district office to threaten and yell at them. This is how she gets what she wants. We have given in to her threats, demands, and outright tantrums just to get her to leave us alone! She has threatened lawsuits, grievances, you name it! The entire PTA is scared of her! Yet, she continues, and gets what she wants through bullying and intimadation. She is not an isolated case by any means. I bet any of us could think of someone that gets what they want by bullying.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for advocating for your rights, but it's how one goes about doing it that makes the difference. This just makes me wonder what kind of message are we sending? If you are under 12 years old here you get punished for this behavior, but as an adult you get rewarded, you get your way no matter who you've hurt or stepped on! Ugh! It just frustrates me! I'm sure some of these people are just misguided souls, but I think it's our job to guide them towards other ways to get you needs met, you know? Anyways, that is my Monday rant. Feel free to argue, agree, or add! Thanks for reading this!

P.S. I disabled the 'word verification' feature. This should make it way easier to post a comment!

Freak Magnet Friday! Mystery guest post!

Today I have a mystery guest who had something so bizarre happen in his presence that I insisted he let me blog his story for Freak Magnet Friday! When I asked him if I could tell his tale he enthusiastically replied, "I guess." What a great supporter of my blog he is!

Here is his story:
His Fantasy Football draft was to take place at a popular, uh, restaurant called Hooters. I know, I know! Groans and eyerolls and tsk, tsk! But anyways...He was sitting at the bar having a beer with some other guys when he sees these two Tweaker chicks run in to the restaurant and straight to the bathroom. (Tweaker=probable Meth user).

He said they seemed out of place, but didn't give them a further thought. After a few minutes the girls come out of the bathroom and start making moves on all the guys at the bar! He said they were rubbing the other guys arms, asking things like, "So, do you think I'm hot?" Or, "What's your name? Are you married?" Things of that nature. My mystery guest said all the men were feeling a little uncomfortable, but were still being polite (such gentlemen!).

Then one of the girls shouts to the patrons, "Hey! You guys wanna watch us dance?" What's key here is that there is NO MUSIC playing, just TV's with sports on! So these two ladies start bumping and grinding on each other like two crazed weasels, gross! Apparently this gets boring for the girls so one of them goes, "My (boobs) are better than any of the waitresses here! You guys want to see?!" And then flashes them to everyone at the bar!

At this point all the guys are just catching flies with their mouths open like, "WTF?"
The manager now steps in and demands that the girls leave immediately, which they do after much cussing and complaining. So, drama over, everyone back to whatever they were doing, right? Wrong!

The manager, who is a young lady, starts apologizing to everyone at the bar for the disturbance and is in the middle of offering to buy them all a round of drinks when she stops in mid-sentence and says, "What the-?" Then yells at a bartender to call the police. She is facing the window to the street. Everyone turns to see what she is looking at and they see one of the tweaker chicks squatting outside the entrance and she is PEEING! Eewww! So they chase them off again and they ran off for good that time. When it was all over everyone looked at each other stunned. One guy asked the others, "Did anyone get a picture of that? Because NO ONE is going to believe this just happened!"

The moral of this story is that you should always have your Fantasy Football drafts take place somewhere more appropriate, like Spaghetti Factory or Mimi's Cafe.

Creative ways to deal with telemarketers!

You'd think with caller ID that telemarketing would cease to exist, but it seems worse than ever at my house! So, I felt inspired to share some ideas of how to deal with telemarketers after reading Mainly a Midwife's blog. I will expand on my comment to her post.

Methods (try at own risk of purchasing something you don't need or want):

Boring: This involves just letting the phone ring and ring until they give up and hang up.

Domestic Disturbance: Timing is everything with this one. Your kids or pets, must be involved in a loud conflict of some sort when the telemarketer strikes. However, in my house there is a pretty high probability of this happening at any given time. You hear the phone ring and at the crescendo of their fight, you answer the phone, hold it near the noise and shout, a la Adam Sandler style, "Welcome to my world!!" and then hang up.

Extreme interest: When the salesperson gets into their script, say things in a very dramatic fashion like, "You have got to be kidding me!! Only nineteen dollars a month for twenty years??? How can this be???" Or, "Get out! You're telling me that I can buy EXTRA PROTECTION for my credit card over the phone??? That is just insane!!!" And so on.

TMI: The telemarketer always first makes an attempt at politeness, like asking a question such as, "How are you this evening?" You then answer with exactly how you are this evening. Example, "Well since you asked, I just got back from the Doctor and he finally explained that festering growth I have on my foot, he says a fungicide should take care of it..." Or you could keep it short and just say, "I'm drunk."

Confusion (or, Hannibal Lecter-esque mind game): In plain English say, "I'm sorry, but I don't speak English." That one should really have them questioning their career choice! If they try to argue explaining that you just did, you can go on to say, "Maybe you didn't understand me because of the language barrier and all, but I must reiterate that I don't speak English, have a good night, telemarketer!"

This has been a public service announcement, thank you.