Friday Five Point Five

This week was a good one with Abby being here until late Tuesday. I still can´t believe how good the timing worked with the shower, UT´s fall break and Abby´s birthday.

1. On Monday, Abby got up and headed to her college, well, alma mater now, town of Oxford, Ohio. She met with some seven or eight friends who are still in Oxford or close enough to it to meet her there for a catch up. She was gone from the house for about twelve hours but she made it home eventually. On Tuesday, she and I ran a few errands together including getting one of her tires repaired. Her car, a Ford Bronco, is either new enough or fancy enough (but it´s a Ford Bronco?) to display the tires´ air level and one of her tires appeared to be slowly losing air pressure. We have a Tire Discounters in town and an employee of TD said to bring it on in when I called. They found a piece of a nail in the tire and were able to fix the tire. Yah! I had told her we´d purchase a new tire for her if she needed a new one (as a late birthday present that she didn´t know she almost needed, lol) so I was very happy with only paying for a repair :).

2. The teacher for whom I subbed four days last week sent me the sweetest text thanking me for subbing for her and leaving detailed notes and having all the paperwork organized for her. She also told me that she had given three students after school detentions! I had written down the names of three students who were disrespectful to me on the first day that I subbed (they did not stop talking after me asking them numerous times to stop). Their behavior improved over the course of the days and I contemplated crossing off the note that named them as disrespectful so they wouldn´t get in trouble and so that the teacher didn´t have to deal with disciplining them when she came back. But, ultimately, I decided to keep the information about them being disrespectful in my note to the teacher. (Look what being soft on crime has done to many cities in our nation- it has made them less safe and crime has soared. I´m not saying the students´ behavior was criminal or anything like that. But there are some parallels in terms of deciding to not have consequences for poor behavior- whether you´re talking about disciplining students or prosecuting criminals.  I don´t want my behavior in any way to mimic a soft on crime prosecutor so I decided to keep the students´ name on the list. I did indicate on a note that their behavior improved and the first day was by far the worst day for them behavior wise.)

As I said, the teacher texted me that she was giving them after school suspensions. She said the students owned up to their poor behavior, expressed remorse and allegedly (I don´t know if the teacher is saying this just to be nice to me...) the students said that they liked having me as a sub and they hoped their poor behavior wouldn´t deter me from subbing in that class again. Awww- isn´t that sweet??

3. Speaking of other sweet sub things, another teacher asked me if I´d sub for her for a few weeks. EEKS! I said said yes because I´ve subbed for this teacher this year and the day went really well. I hope I don´t regret it!!!! Anyway, the teacher responded so enthusiastically- you´d think I had agreed to give her a lung :). It made me feel good about myself... now I just need to pysch myself up over the job. It´s not starting for a few weeks which will give me time to get my ducks in a row in terms of being gone a good part of the day five days a week.

This cute display was in one of the rooms I subbed this week. So creative! I only worked 1.5 days this week. Friday the district doesn´t have classes so I subbed almost half of the available days :).

4. We had rain one day this week and it was so badly needed; it was wonderful. I tried to find out how much rain we got by googling it. Apparently, what areas got in the vicinity varied pretty widely. Now I feel like I could use a rain gauge so that anytime that it rains, I will know how much rain we received. It doesn´t really matter how much we get when it rains but I am interested to know and I don´t think rain gauges are huge investments so I think I´m going to get one (yes, there´s a chance that the ¨weather portion¨ of my blog will soon contain info about the amount of rain we´ve received (as if anyone but me cares!!)

5.  The day after it rained, I decided to pull some carrots from the garden. The moist soil would make digging them out easier. Indeed it did but I was dismayed at how much mud clung to the carrots. I hosed them off outside so that all that filth didn´t come inside the house. 

This is what they looked like after washing them outside and inside a few times. SO MUCH DIRT! It´s funny when you see the pristine looking carrots at the store. They did not start out looking like that. Lots of water was used to get them clean!!

All this green goodness went into the compost post...

5.5 I think I´ve mentioned on here before that when Abby was younger she planned on being in the WWE when she was older! I mean, she planned on going through the trying out process as soon as she became eighteen. She knew there wasn´t a guarantee that she´d make it, but she was going to give it everything she had. She loved the showmanship/acting of it. Having a background in dancing and gymnastics and loving to perform (and to not gratuitously brag but to be honest, she has a talent in performance) and loving everything about the WWE, made her someone who would at least, perhaps, get a shot at it. Well, then Covid came along and upended nearly everything including how the WWE shows were conducted (no longer in front of live audiences) and she lost her interest in pursuing it. She´d loved the WWE for so long, though, that the flame did not completely flicker out for her. (Though she has no plans to pursue trying out...) 

One of the popular WWE characters from when Abby was really into WWE (from about age 10 to 17) was a guy named Kane. He was a ¨bad¨ character in the WWE storylines. When the man whose character was Kane left the WWE, he ran for mayor of KNOX COUNTY, TN (and won!) and who should find herself living in Knox County but a former young lady who had at one time dreamed of being in the WWE! 

Abby heard that Kane, whose real name is Glenn Jacobs, was going to be speaking at a UT chapter of Turning Point USA meeting. Abby wasn´t sure if she should attend the meeting since she´s not a UT student. But non students weren´t forbidden to go and her new friends at UT think it´s funny that she likes WWE and wanted to be in it so they encouraged her to go. Anyway, she decided to go and at one point, she turned and there was Glenn Jacobs walking towards her.  She asked to get a picture taken with him. When Abby was home this past weekend, she was telling us about the upcoming event with Kane. She asked Donnie to send her the pictures he has on his phone of Abby as a child wearing a replica WWE Kane mask. When Abby met Glenn she told him that she had been a WWE fan for a long time and a fan of his (he was immensely popular in WWE) and she showed him the pictures of her with his mask on. He got a kick out of that. I love that Abby got to meet Kane and that he´s in politics now. According to what I read about him, some speculate that he´s going to run for governor of TN? I would never vote for a politician based on his or her entertainment past (not that I could vote for the governor of TN...) rather on the candidate ´s views on important policy topics.