You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way the Wind Blows

The forecasts were calling for 1" - 2" of snow. My kids were ready, my students were ready, I was ready. And then...............

we just got a dusting. Yep the slightest covering, but it does look good.

Now, we are all out of school today because of inclement weather and hazardous road conditions. That is nice. I do not mind having another day off. It does kinds mess up how I teach and my lesson plans, but I can deal with that.

Did it seem to snow more when we were little? For some reason I think it did, but I am not going to discuss global warming or anything. Where I grew up it was flat as a pancake. We did not have any hills to slid down. We had the neighborhood sled and my Daddy took turns riding the neighborhood kids around the streets in the snow. He had to pull it behind the jeep and later a 3-wheeler. It was a cool sled. He made it out of plywood and 2x4s, and it was painted red. We still have it.

I was hoping to use it today. Daddy told me where is was at our hunting camp. It would have brought back a flood of memories. Here are a few:

* Jose Cuervo (little sister) wearing ziploc bags over her gloves so her hands would not get wet. ( We always had a wet snow.)

* Our snowmen never had 3 sections, just kinda 1 big blob. He had stick arms and usually had a baseball cap on. An sometimes waved a flag.

* My mother would not let us play in the back yard, because she like seeing the yard snow untouched. It was pretty.

* The neighboorhood set of brothers who always had their hats pulled down over their eyes so that they had to lean their head back to see. It looked stupid.

* Turning on the patio light at night and watching the snow fall over the patio. Daddy would put a chair there for me to sit in - thus began my weather fascination.

* Coming in the house wet from snow and stripping down to our long underwear. All the out clothes went into the dryer to dry and the boots went in front of the fireplace to warm up. We would just run around the house in the long-johns and drink hot chocolate.

If anyone actually reads this blog, I would ask for your snow memories. If you do happen to come across me. I would love a snow story!

The shame, The embarrassment, the horror of it all.

I have no clue where this quote came from. My friends and I said it a lot in high school and even now. We would say it even when someone had committed the slighted faux pas. But now I just have to say it is for real.

It is truly amazing how low people can sink. Sometimes it is because they make bad choices and other times it is because they are just not cut out for the job and are sucking wind.

I go back to school yesterday in a good mood and realize that yet again, there has been a big communication break down and it is affecting a student greatly. Incompetence! Does it seem like the higher paying job you have they less you have to do and know one cares and you can just be an idiot?!?

Then I get an email reply because I had some concerns. The Head Cheese is now backtracking on her word ( that mind you I have in writing). She then goes on to make excuses as to why the custodial staff on my hall did not sweep the rooms before Christmas Break. Pathetic excuses. Lame and idiotic.

And then finally, the email from a BMOC. Posting a job opening for a position that became open because of the tragic death of a young teacher over the break. No email about her passing was sent out. No mention of how to make memorials or show respect.

It is most shameful and embarrassing.

Nightmare in My Closet

I can't believe It but it is 1:15 in the morning and I am up blogging. I just had a horrific nightmare and could not lie there and dwell - so here I am.

Why do we have nightmares or dreams for that matter? When we sleep we close our eyes to rest, but why does our mind keep going? Why can"t it go into sleep mode? Time to fire up the google engine and do a little research.

Why we dream - no one knows why, but there are 6 major theories.

Freud - Out of all theories before his, and all of those today, this is the one that stands out the most. He believed that a dream represented an ongoing wish along with the previous days activities. They may even portray wishes that have been inside us since early childhood. In fact, he believed, every dream is partially motivated by a childhood wish. Another interesting idea was that nothing is made up during a dream and that they are biologically determined, derived completely from instinctual needs and personal experiences. (copied and pasted)

I just don't think my nightmare I just had is any wish. Just saying.

Jung - Jung, disagreeing with Freud's theory, quickly developed his own which contradicted Freud's. Jung believed the most effective method for dream interpretation was the use of series correlation. Freud didn't even believe interpretation was possible by the dreamer and that dreams could only be interpreted by a trained psychologist. Jung was the one who gave hope to all dreamers who were looking for the meaning in our dreams without having to hire a "professional."

Cayce ( Edgar maybe?) - When it came to the idea of dreams having purpose, Cayce's theory was a bit different then the others. He believed dreaming to be the bodies way of "self edification," which is the building up of the mental, spiritual, and physical well-being. It was a way of quickening the dreamer to his/her own human potential. By getting a good nights sleep, any person could develop more mature values, stretch their thinking, and right one's self.

Evan's - According to Evans, every time we go to sleep our brain disengages from the external world and uses this time to sort through and organize all the information that was taken in throughout the day. Sleep, especially during REM sleep, is when the brain becomes isolated for the sensory and motor neural pathways. During this time our data banks and program files are opened and become available for modification on re-organization, based on what happened during the day.
In this theory, we are not aware of the full array of processing that occurs during REM sleep. While we dream the brain comes back on-line for a short period of time and the conscious mind is allowed to observe a small sample of the programs that are being run. The brain attempts to interpret this information in the same way it would during the wakeful state, what is created from these samples of information is a dream. In a nutshell, dreams are nothing more than a minute amount of the information that is being scanned and sorted during REM sleep. I agree with this one so far. - I has potentially explained bad dreams.

Crick and Mitchinson - Crick and Mitchinson base their theory on the fact that the cortex, unlike other parts of the brain, is made up of richly interconnected neuronal networks in which each cell has the capacity to excite it's neighbors. It is believed that memories are encoded in these networks and when one point of the web is excited a pulse travels through the network prompting recall. The problem with such network systems is that they malfunction when there is an over load of incoming information. Too many memories in one network may produce either bizarre associations to a stimulus, which creates our fantasies, the same response whatever the stimulus, creating obsessions, or associations triggered without any stimulus, which creates hallucinations.
To deal with information overload, the brain needs a mechanism to debug and tune the network. This debugging mechanism would work best when the system was isolated from external inputs and it would have to have a way of randomly activating the network in order to eliminate spurious connections. This method, they say, is REM sleep and that the hallucinatory quality of dreams is nothing more than the random neural firing needed for the daily cleanup of the network.
According to this theory, these signals somehow erase the spurious memory associations formed during the previous day and we wake up with the network cleaned up. They believe that people remembering their dreams could help retain patterns of thought which are better forgotten, the same patterns that your system has attempted to clean out. This is why, they say, if you don't write down your dreams they will be forgotten because your brain is still working to clear these memories out.

C & M just expand on Evan's ideas and get pretty sciencey. Since I teach that I can appreciate it. And right now in my post nightmare alertness it makes me see where the dream came from. My brain was defragging - pretty cool. I guess I had not properly dealt with this issue and I slipped up on in accidentally in my sleep.

The title of this post comes from a book my brother had. It is about a little boy who really does have a nightmare in his closet. In the end, he is ok with that. I guess I am too now.

Night -Night.

Tiptoe Part 2

I have been digging through the Internet. I did find Tiny Tim and Miss Viki's daughter Tulip. But not much else. She has apparently not in show business or music business.

Tulip's last name is Stewart now. She is 38 and lives in Pennsylvania. That's it. All I found. Not very exciting for the blog, but I said I would do it.

I also found some very disturbing information about Tiny Tim. He was often described as a novelty act. His life was novel too. Late in life he just took to wearing Depends as underwear because they were more sanitary that regular underwear. I think he was turning into Howard Hughes.

Let's talk about Howard Hughes. I think it would be funny for Scout to dress up as Mr. Hughes for Halloween this year. I can find a long awful wig, fake beard. He can wear his bathrobe and Kleenex boxes on his feet. Supposedly that is what looked like shortly before his death. Howard was a nice looking man.

Now this makes me think of Kleenex. Do you call all facial tissue Kleenex? I do. I never say please pick up some facial tissue at Wal-Mart. It is all called Kleenex - whether it is Kleenex, Puffs or generic. We can even go back to Halloween with Kleenex by itself. I have tried to get Eminem to be a box of Kleenex for Halloween the past 2 years. I have lost this battle to the pink fairy princess and the glamor witch.

Kleenex was originally called "cellucotton" and it was used in gas masked during WWI. Kleenex was not marketed in the US until the 1930's. I have to say that Kleenex is a whole lot more sanitary that caring a handkerchief.

Wonder what Tiny Tim thought of Kleenex.

Feeling (not) Groovey

Not sure why the blue funk has hit me today. I would like to say it is because it is my last day of Christmas Holidays - gotta go to school tomorrow. But that would just mean that I was not being quite honest with myself.

I am pretty sure it is what happened at church and Sunday School. The early service in and of itself was just fine. Scout got to acolyte for the first time. He even had to do communion. So it was not the service, I think it was Sunday school. And I don't even think it was the topic of the lesson. It was the off topic.

Sunday school lessons always go off topic at some point. Not to worldly things but to just another point of Christianity. Our lesson was on how to make love last. It was mostly situated on couples and married life. Love with respect, love with understanding, and a Christ like love. I have no clue how we got to the off topic deep discussion, but it came just the same.

Now, here is where Strike gets vague. I can't tell you what the topic is. That is too much about me and I don't do that here. This blog is my anonymous outlet. But for the past 20 months I have been dealing with some heavy crap. H-E-A-V-Y ! If anyone reads this and knows me then you know what I speak of.

Now, back to present. Today was the 1st time that our family has been to church in possibly 9 months. I have been angry, sad, distraught, lost, and in hinding. Scout's acolyting duties are what forced us to church and so I thought with a new year, and all my resolution making of being over it that I could start putting my over-itness into practice. And guess what - I sucked. I failed and I feel it. Deep down in my soul.

The Sunday School off topic could have been someone basically just using my problem in detail and discussing it. I chimed in a little. Just wanting to agree, but ended up crying. I tried not to, but I did. And I am still crying now as I type. I am angry with myself for being weak, and not being a big girl.

Why did it have to be this topic - Why! Why did God place that there in front of me today - Why! Why could I not hold it together - Why! Why does God not give me any reasons - Why! What did I do to deserve this? I tried to stop it. I played the bad guy in the family to stop it. Does God want to torture me? If he wants me to learn something, then can't he send me a letter and make it all plain as day and just say hey, I think you need to work on this!

Oh, the pain I feel. Hearthbreaking agony.

Sorry, this is such a sad, sorrowful post. I can't help it. I just had to get it out and no one else listens.

I promise that tomorrow will be a better topic. You can still make of this what you want. Insane ramblings of a lost soul. A cry for help. Pathetic-ness on a never before seen level. It's all there.

Tiptoe Through the Tulips With Me!

This is a rather silly song, but I love it anyway. I am pretty sure that one of my high school friends would go all out with it. In case you do not know about this song, it was sung by Tiny Tim - not the Scrooge one.

Why am I bringing this up? I thought about him as I paid for gas at the Texaco today. There close to the check out were some "Miss Vickie's" potato chips. Don't know who Miss Vicki is? That was Tiny Tim's wife, and it made me wonder.

What happened to the real Miss Vicki and the daughter she had with Tiny Tim - and yes the child's name was Tulip. Was she called Tulip Tim or did she go by Tiny Tim's real last name Khaury. FYI, Tiny Tim's real first name was Herbert.

So, of course I googled Miss Vicki and found an entry on her at Wikipedia. Miss Vicki and Tiny Tim met in early 1969 and later married on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson - December 17, 1969. Miss Vicki was 17. Her parents had to agree to this! anyway, an estimated 40 million people tuned in. The newlyweds had a 7 ft tall wedding cake decorated with - guess what - tulips!



The couple had a daughter, Tulip Victoria, born May 10, 1971. (She is exactly one month older than me). I am going to find her next.

Miss Vicki and Mr. Tim's marriage did not last long because she went into modeling - against his wishes. Miss Vicki filed for divorce in 1972 and the divorce was final in 1977. During the separation years, Miss Vicki did some questionable modeling.

She ended up running a boutique in New Jersey in the 1990's and has now married her high school sweetheart ( in 2006) and they live in Savannah, TN. Which incidentally is not but about 3 hours from me.

Weird.

You Say You Want A Resolution!

Happy New Year to my 2 people who read my blog. I have had a great year so far. i have tidied up the house and crafted a bit. We will not get into the crafting yet - another day another blog. It is time to resolve! ( no I am not cleaning the carpet.)

Why do people make resolutions? Do we really have it in us to change? Can anybody change? Hmm - I think everone has the capacity to change, but one really has to dig deep to change.

So I could make the same resolution that other make like this: I resolve to be a better: wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, teacher, get closer to God, etc. Or I could say that I was going to try to: eat more fruits and veggies, drink more water, exercise, lose weight, not eat cookies! By why be like everyone else. Now, I am not saying that these are not worthy goals. I really do need to work on everyone of these. These can just be things that I should do everyday. And I will work on them.

But, I am going to quote a friend of a friend, SPQ Jill, and say that need to "Be Particular." Why do I feel the need to stand out and be different - I think deep down somewhere that is my inate ability. I can get weird and peculiar with the best of them. Now, Jill could have ment "Be Chosey", "Don't Settle", "Go for the Gusto." Since I do not know her personally, so I am just guessing. I am going to be very particular about resolving this year.

I have issues - we all do, but this year they will all be resolved. So here it is (PG-13 Rating here). I Striker, being of sound mind and fat body, do hereby resolve to do the following in 2010: Come hell or high water, I am going to kick ass and take names! Not literally, I am a non-violent type. I am going to kick all my issues in the ass and strike their names off the issue list.

This is mainly dealing with old, hurtful issues - I'M OVER IT! MOVING ON! There is another thing to add to my this resolution. If any persons act like idiots and are disagreeable with the majority, try to bully others, or are just out right rude - your name get immediately put on the top of the list and I will deal with you immediately.

And you are now you are wondering if I have a plan of action. Oh yes. I plan and make lists. Back story, about a year ago I decided to stop coloring my hair. I am only 38, but I got the gray. I am embracing it. Now, my train of though goes on to people who are totally gray - older ladies and gentlemen. Now people with gray hair are wise and very truthful. They also can get away with saying whatever they feel. So, I am embracing their attitude and persona.

Why not? I have gray hair and I am kicking ass this year. Be a completely new person - I think it will be like secretly being a super hero. Clark Kent could hear cries for help and become his alter ego Superman. Striker is going to stop the adult bullies and rude idiots of the world and become an alter ego. Not going to blow it off - going to deal with the situation right there and then. Gonna tell them like it is and if they do not like it - that is their problem. Not having issues anymore.

Senior citizens can say stuff and it is ok, so I am too. Why do I have to sit back and take it and let people run me and others over. Ain't gonna happen this year.

I sound angry, don't I? I am not - just fired up like Julia Sugerbaker.

Now, off to bed. Eminem is tired and needs a hug and kiss!