Apples and Eggs

So, I would have posted the Pledge or something yesterday, but my computer refused to connect to the internet.

I would have posted about the Sunday Gospel reading on Monday, but my computer refused to connect to the internet, and I didn't want to keep the computer I stole for any longer than necessary.

I just realized there is a Texas pledge. I'm not sure how I feel about having to pledge allegiance to TX. I mean, I've come to like the place, and I assume I'm staying (God rarely lets me know what I'm doing more than a few months in advance; generally it's more on the level of number of days), but I haven't been here long enough to consider myself a Texan. Of course, at the moment it looks likely that I won't actually be in the classroom long enough to have to worry about it. Such is the life of a TA.

We received students today. Hand delivered, at that. I think fifth grade will be fun, and I'm somewhat disappointed that I won't be able to do any actual teaching or working with most of the students. I'm not disappointed that we won't have to wear the school shirt to work every day.

Actually, that's a funny story. So, see, the school got us shirts. They have our school name on them, and a little picture, and everything. I got a medium. Most people got mediums. Most people working at the school are women. The shirts don't seem to understand this, and presented themselves to us in the form of overly large men's shirts. By overly large, I mean that the men's medium, which normally should be somewhere in the vicinity of a useful length if a bit wide, came almost down to my knees. Luckily the shirt was 100% cotton, so I decided I could successfully shrink it and set about this endeavour. Unluckily (okay, so there might have been something more than just luck involved), I did not get home until around 10pm. Now keep in mind that I had to get up at 6am today.. 6:30 at the latest. Sometime after 10pm, I throw the shirt into the hottest wash possible and let it run. Sometime around 11pm, I empty out the dryer and throw the shirt into the hottest drying cycle possible, then see that the dryer thinks this cycle will take over an hour. Being used to washing shirts that don't wrinkle badly, and wanting to give this particular shirt every possible second in which to shrink, I leave it in the dryer and head off to bed.

Then morning arrives. A very early morning. Yes, I slept in until 6:30am. The drive to school, in little traffic, takes half an hour, and I have to be at work by 7:30am. Somewhere after 6:30 I wander downstairs in a sleepy haze to find my shirt sitting faithfully in the dryer, a completely solid ball of mushed up wrinkles. After untangling it, I discover that it is, however, successfully shrunken; it only comes about halfway down to my knees now. I spend five minutes wandering through the house in order to discover an ironing board and no iron, which is probably a good thing, as the most likely outcome would have been a beautiful unwrinkled shirt with an equally beautiful blackened burn in the middle. Naturally, my burn would have been beautiful, but probably not in the acceptable-business-wear sense of the word. (I didn't realize until too late that I do have access to a hair dryer, which does get hot, and which had I strategically wrapped a cloth around it... It's probably a good thing I didn't realize this, as it either wouldn't have worked, or still would have burnt the shirt.) The running-hot-water-in-a-shower thing has never worked real well for me, and takes way too long anyway. Option number three? Soak the thing and dry it again. At this point, it's somewhere between 6:40 and 6:45, about the time I ought to be leaving in case there are other people awake (and therefore traffic) at such an insane hour of the day. Ten minutes later, the shirt is warm and still undeniably wet - but wrinkle-free! I've got at least a half hour drive and TX isn't exactly cold, so I figure the remaining water will evaporate by the time I get to school. In another minute I discover that I may have too successfully shrunk the shirt, as I can't get one of the buttons undone, and others are also proving difficult. By the time I get the shirt on, it's wet and cold, which may be nice later on in the day but isn't at not-yet-7am. Given that it's overly large, I can't feel most of the shirt anyway and this doesn't make too big a difference.

Naturally, there is traffic, but only a little bit. During the drive I turn the heat on full blast to help the evaporation process. This lasts until I get off the highway and am almost at the school, at which point the heat is making me too sick to continue and I'm forced to turn it completely off. Around 3/4 of the shirt has dried at this point, I'm at the school only ten minutes late, and since we have extra staff on hand for the first day, all is well. Later on, I discover that somehow the washing/drying process left yellow stains on the front of the shirt, which no one else seems to notice or care about. I also discover that some people were much smarter than I, and wore the shirt over another, better fitting one, so they wouldn't have to worry about buttoning it and trying to make it look normal. Also, that one of my teachers didn't even wear the shirt.. and no one seemed to care.

And I think that's the only "first day" story I'm willing to share online. But a brilliant illustration of just how insane...err, resourceful... I can regularly be.