Kimikaze and the Abundance of Marshmallows

It was a day like any other at school. In the half hour before school started I was in and out of my classroom several times in preparation for the day. Upon returning to my classroom one of those times, I found this on my desk.

It's not easy to make out what lies in that murky water, but I will tell you they are fish. Whole, dead, stinky fish. Creepy eyes included. And someone was nice enough to lovingly write "You Stink!" on the lid.

Immediately I suspected Kimikaze, the most evil of our science teachers, so I marched down to her room to confront her about the fish.

"What's the big idea leaving the stinky fish on my desk, Sister?" I interrogated her.

"What? I don't know what you're talking about, but I wish it were me," she smiled sheepishly.

She's such a lying lier. I don't trust her one little bit.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about, and right now I'm scared that you can lie so convincingly. You must be a sociopath!" I accused her.

"No. It wasn't me," she innocently declared.

"Humph," I exhaled and marched out.

After interrogating a few students that were hanging out in my classroom when the fish was planted, I had the name of the accomplice that delivered the fish. I was sure Kimikaze had put the student up to it. In middle school, the kids are generally very happy to get involved with trickery.

I set out in search of the accomplice in the halls and was able to extract a confession with some dirty tricks of my own. I cornered the suspected student and immediately he threw his hands up in the air, as if to proclaim his innocence, and he swore it wasn't him. I told him to knock off the act, I had him on camera. That caught him off guard and then he became flustered and started apologizing.

I didn't really have him on camera, but he didn't know that. Sometimes I lie.

Anyway, long story short, he sang like a canary and it was on with Kimikaze and I. This was in January, and we spent the rest of the school year pranking each other.

I went home that night and started a secret Pinterest board for all the tricks I was going to play on that little rat fink.

I began my semester of epic revenge with the following gift.

I prepared a jar of candy for Kimikaze that had a core of Skittles surrounded by M&M's. While Skittles and M&M's are yummy, it's disturbing when you eat an M&M and find out it's really a Skittle or the other way around.

After that, Kimikaze snuck into my room and turned all the student desks to face the back of the room. And since she had other evil science teachers assist her with that trick, they were then subject to my revenge.

Much to their surprise.

Mrs. Odell is deathly afraid of spiders, so this is what I did for her. Just in case you can't read the writing, it says "If you set it free, be ready to kill it. Just saying."

And let me just ask, what kind of science teacher is afraid of spiders? I think there must be a rule against that or something.

Kimikaze had to come and retrieve the spider set-up. There wasn't really a spider, but the students warned them to "make sure to look inside the cup in case it was hiding." Bless them.

I also planted plastic spiders strategically throughout the room and she would find them periodically and give herself little mini heart attacks.

At one point this little Pheasant showed up in my room. He's not creepy at all which means that this totally backfired on the evil science teachers because I really dig him. In fact, I named him Phil the Pheasant on account of he has a face that makes you just want to unload all your problems. He was a pretty good listener during his brief stay with me, but I had to give him back because he was starting to make me itch.

I think he had fleas.

I also planted a remote control fart machine in Kimikaze's room, but she wasn't phased a bit. A few of her students were probably embarrassed when she gave them the hairy eyeball for farting so excellently though.

I also planted a noisemaker in Mr. Walsh's room that was supposed to provide chirping cricket sounds and drive him over the edge. However, in my panic of setting it up, I accidentally moved the switch to the cell phone on vibrate noise. According to my spies, he asked his students several times to turn off their cell phone before they alerted him to the fact that it was him.

I had adhesive dotted the device underneath his desk.

Ten minutes into the period my door opened and he just gave me the hairy eyeball and adhesive dotted it to the inside of my door.

I guess he wasn't impressed.

 

He left me these freeze dried science ickies. The one on the left is a bat, and the one of the right is Toothless the Dragon.

This was my attempt at making a glitter bomb. I made one for Kimikaze and one for Mrs. Odell.

Sadly, neither one of them fell for it.

I was forced to resort to ordering the spring loaded glitter bomb online. It cost me twenty-five big ones and it was worth every penny.

Kimikaze didn't want to break a nail trying to open it so she used her mouth.

Yes she did.

Glitter bomb delivered straight to the face and right down the cleavage. High five!

Her husband thanked me for the gift.

Even though the other science teachers were brought into our little war, they also proved to be most helpful in providing me with assistance at times.

Somewhere along the way I was provided with the knowledge that Kimikaze was deathly afraid of snakes.

Again, what kind of science teacher is afraid of snakes?!

I don't know where they are finding these science teachers, but I believe we are faced with an educational crisis here.

Anyway, Kimi was so on edge about the possibility of me planting a snake in her classroom, that she was freaking herself out with the anticipation.

No lie. She was walking into school one day and she saw a dirty shoe lace on the ground and jumped back because she thought it was a snake that I planted for her.

A shoe lace.

And she gave me a tongue lashing for it too. I told her that I did not plant the shoe lace snake for her, but I was ecstatic that she was scaring herself and saving me the extra trouble.

Since that went over so well, I did plant a rubber snake in her science supply room and it disappeared. It was very Twilight Zone, but she never found it.

Maybe I'll get lucky and she'll find it this next year and it can be the gift that keeps on giving.

Kimikaze has a Diet Coke habit so I bought this just for her.

. . . and I spiked it with an old packet of soy sauce and an old packet of hot sauce that I found deep in the back of my desk drawer. Those things don't have expiration dates on them, do they?

Anyway, the last week of school I got it smuggled into her refrigerator stash of sodas and because I must be the luckiest person on Earth, she popped that puppy open on day one.

Mrs. Morgan shared with me how it all played out. Kimikaze cracked it open and took a swig and immediately knew something was wrong. It didn't taste right and it had little floaties in it. She dang near threw up, so maybe this trick was going a little too far.

What the heck, high five anyway!

After that I'm pretty sure I deserved to have my car keyed or something, but that would be pretty pointless because I drive a minivan. I'd be all "So? It can't really get any worse that what it is already. Ha. Ha. Good one?"

Kimi did have plans for me, and she got me good, although not without a little backfiring of her own.

It all played out on the last day of school. Generally I'm at school at least fifteen minutes early every day, but on the last day of school I wasn't feeling it, so I sauntered in ten minutes late. And instead of going straight to my classroom, I stopped by the office to buy a yearbook on account of I wanted to have memories and all.

Little did I know that Kimikaze and the rest of the science meanies had been hiding out in the room across from mine for the last half hour just so they could see my reaction to the havoc they wreaked on my room.

Kimi was having the stress sweats because I didn't show up and she thought maybe I was going to have a sub on the last day. She called the office inquiring where I was and she was basically FUH-reaking out.

So I got a little revenge before having this little mess delivered to me on a platter.

I walked in and was greeted by the creepy life-sized, cardboard Harry Potter. He has been in my room on several occasions since this Prank-A-Palooza started, so it's practically an announcement of mischief at play.

Some ridiculous nonsense message on my board stating how much more I love science than math or whatever. As if.

My whole room toilet papered. Is this where my tax dollars are being spent?

As I'm walking into this mess my phone starts ringing, so I walked over to pick it up.

Oh yes she did.

And that's not all.

Every. Single. Drawer, including my nine filing cabinet drawers, were filled to the brim with every size and type of marshmallow on the planet. Also, my refrigerator and freezer. No space was left unfilled.

All the marshmallows in the world were in my room.

So myself and several students filled every container I had with marshmallows, several times, and delivered them back to Kimikaze.

She gave me a fat lip when she threw a frozen marshmallow at my face. Can you believe that?

These are the pictures that the evil science teachers posted on Facebook implicating themselves.

They think they're so funny.

Okay, they are. They got me pretty good.

Ha ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

I like to have the last word though, so that science teacher you see in the back there? That's Mr. Walsh. He's the one that started this whole thing because the fish belong to him.

Naturally, he was also responsible for finishing it. With my help, of course.

He brought the fish back to me for the last hurrah.

I left a little note. Not that it was necessary with the stench.

And I set the fishies free.

I almost hurled even with the rubber gloves. The fish were rubbery.

Good thing I'm not a science teacher.

Kimi laughed and started putting the school of fish away.

Maybe after a little snack.

Or a kiss.

Kimi was a good sport throughout, and we all had so much fun pranking each other. I know I'm forgetting some of our pranks, but these were the highlights.

At our last faculty meeting there was some mention of all the locks being changed so I couldn't get back in to continue the terror.

However, I recently accepted a job as a Math Specialist in our district, which means I'll be in and out of the schools frequently, perhaps even stationed in the same building as Kimikaze, and the terror will continue.

Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Sweet Summertime

Hello Friends! I have no excuse for letting two weeks go by without a blog post, but I promise I've been thinking about doing a blog post. I just didn't feel like it.

I am into my seventh week of summer vacation and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Not to brag, but I actually have a headache today because I got too much sleep last night. How often does that happen?

The very attractive picture you see above is from the 4th of July when we rode our bikes down to the river. We were all sweaty and we had hat head from our helmets, but it was an awesome day.

This is my gratuitous Zoe Bug picture. I don't want her complaining that all my posts are about Annie and never her or her horses. By the way, Gunny is one of her horses. Neigh.

As you may have noticed, Stinky got a haircut. She is very much against all things girly and this is a haircut that she can wash and wear, no combing necessary. As you might guess, she is frequently mistaken for a boy which, believe it or not, doesn't bother her a bit.

Shortly after getting her short hair cut, we were at Texas Roadhouse and a boy followed her into the women's restroom. After looking around he became immediately alarmed and turned to her and exclaimed "We're not supposed to be in here!" 

I didn't have the pleasure of witnessing her response, but I'm almost certain she turned to him and gave him her "Ya think?" look and embarrassed him further. She's thoughtful like that.

Even though Stinky is not bothered by people assuming she's a boy, it kind of bothers me, so I made this shirt for her to wear on the first day of school. It will be her first day of middle school and I think it's important to just get it out there on day one.

See. She's fine with it.

Gratuitous Zoe Bug picture.

So, I made up this rule for summer that the girls can't have any screen time whatsoever until 5:00 p.m. every day. I, of course, am exempt from this ridiculous rule, but it is working out quite nicely for me. They have been reading, doing puzzles, cooking, playing with the dog, and playing with their friends.

Lately, however, Zoe has been spending most days right here on the couch, then at 4:59 she shoots up and runs downstairs, where she is in the process of working her way through every episode of the eight seasons of "Horses in Love," or something horsey like that, on Netflix.

Since I've spent most of the summer with the assumption that I could be going to work at any moment, I've been chipping away pretty steadily at my list and getting lots done.

First up, check out my new roof! It's pretty sexy isn't it? Really, I can't take any credit for this. All I did for this one was make a phone call and write a couple checks. I'm claiming it though, because I made it happen.

I've done some decrapifying, but not nearly on the scale that I need to. It's my least favorite thing to do. I know it's super satisfying and all that, but it's mentally exhausting making so many decisions about every little thing. Yawn.

Towards my efforts at going paperless, I made a good start on scanning. It's another one of those things that I can't just sit and power through because there's just so much of it. And it's B-O-R-I-N-G. I've decided that it's going to be a work in progress, and I'm okay with it.

I'm proud to say that I've been working out like a maniac, although I have not lost one ounce. I'm not going to lie, it makes me cranky, but I have yet to commit to a big enough change in my eating habits to make a difference. I'll get there.

As I always do in the summer, I'm reading a lot more and I love that. I also recently discovered Audible and I've been listening to audio books while tackling unpleasant chores. It has made such a big difference in how much I get done.

I've been wanting to rip the carpet off our stairs for literally years. I'm sure it was the original carpet which means that it was 21 years old. Isn't that nasty? Trust me, it was.

It was an unpleasant, sweaty job that I tackled during the hottest part of the summer. It took me a few days because I could only commit to a couple hours at a time because it sucked so much, but man did it ever feel good to have it done.

They will remain bare like this until I repaint the walls on either side.

And finish refinishing this railing.

And repainting up above, including the ceiling and that scary wall. Can I just tell you how much I am not looking forward to that?

So much that I tackled another project in order to avoid starting this one.

This was my kitchen table a couple weeks ago. We've only had the table about seven years, but the finish started cracking and peeling. Plus there was that time when Gunny was a puppy and he gnawed on one of the legs.

I spent most of last week stripping, sanding, staining, and sealing it with fifteen or so coats of polycrylic. I'm very happy with how it turned out.

I still have six chairs to do, but I'm not going to tackle those just yet. Plus, I want to paint those in funky colors.

As you can see, I've been keeping myself busy. I want to leave you today with a little video of Zoe Bug (gratuitous) jumping Gunny as if he were a horse. Peanut Head got tired of her dragging the wood pile and all of the patio furniture out into the yard to create jumps for Gunny to leap over, so he taught her how to make her own set of adjustable jumps. Poor Gunny Bun Bun. Thankfully he's too dumb to know any better. He just loves any attention he can get.

I don't know how to make it so that my video is the only one connected to this post, so just be sure that if you want to watch it a second time, you press the replay button, which is the arrow going in a circular motion. Otherwise if you just click on the video it will pull up some other random video. For me it was pulling up Eddie Murphy, and although I quite like him, he has a potty mouth. You especially don't want to be watching that business at work.

The Faces of Peanut Head

Excuse the mess around here. I don't know how long my blog header has been missing, but yesterday I noticed that my header and sidebar were both missing. Rather than go to the trouble and expense of hiring someone to fix the whole shebang, I'm just going to do it myself as I have time.

I started over with a blogger template and I put together a very simple header so that you'll know you're in the right place when you land here.  I still have a lot of the sidebar to reconstruct, and none of my nav bar buttons are working yet, so don't fret if you click on one of them and it sends you out into the abyss.

Since Zoe saw me tinkering on my blog, she got to reading some of my posts and she had some very special blogging advice to gift me with.

"Mom, the people that are reading your blog are probably getting really sick of reading about teaching and how you're going to leave, blah, blah, blah. You need to write about something else not so boring."

Well okay. I guess she has a point.

Oh, but she wasn't done. "And how come you are always writing about Annie? You never write about me and horses. You need to write about me."

Seriously, I thought I was doing her a favor. I haven't posted that picture of her in forever, but I don't want her to feel left out, so here it is.

My sweet Zoe Bug.

As I told Zoe, I'm always writing about Annie because she's weird and she gives me good material. Zoe is sweet and practically perfect, and I don't know how I got so lucky to be the parent of such a sweet heart.

And thank goodness she can comb her own ding dang hair now, because ain't nobody got time for that mess.

Changing the subject, I didn't come here tonight to tell you about my children. I came to talk about Peanut Head's many faceted personality. He's practically a kaleidoscope.

Way back in February, Peanut Head was telling me that his friend told him that people at work find him intimidating. Naturally, I had to laugh hysterically because, YES.

Peanut Head is very intimidating. He has even been referred to as "gruff" in formal employee evaluations. To which I also say, YES.

I feel validated when I hear such things.

Peanut Head has this look which my Mama Llama quite aptly labeled as non-emotive. With his pushy genes, he has passed this unfortunate trait down to Stinkerbell as well. Sometimes my child looks at me like she's trying to set me on fire. It's awkwardly uncomfortable.

I'm not ashamed to say that I did a Facebook status update about this very thing, and there was quite a bit of bantering back and forth about Peanut Head's all-encompassing stare. In that thread, it was requested that I make a "Faces of Peanut Head" poster, sort of as a public service announcement to help his co-workers decode his non-emotive facade. So, here it is.

Now, I'd like to test you with a little practical application. Before I show you the picture, I would like to caution you that context clues may not always be relied upon when decoding one of Peanut Head's faces.

Give it a try though.

Is this

a) perplexed

b) amused,

c) optimistic, or 

d) none of the above?

Did you resist using the Valentine heart as a context clue?

I will tell you, Peanut Head did not give that scrumptious box of chocolates to his one and only true love. In fact, that box of chocolates was given to Zoe by a boy on Valentine's Day.

The horror. I'll be honest with you, an 8 x 10 poster is not big enough for an accurate representation of all of Peanut Head's faces. I'm going to go with d) and say that this face is his "I am going to hunt you down and kill you" face.

I hope this clears things up somewhat.