It's a Quarter to Three ...

but there are plenty of people in here besides ... well, me. I can go in fifteen or twenty minutes, but since the library stays open until 5:00 now under the watchful eye of a different staff member each day, we tend to fill up right after school. It's very nice, actually.

An odd day today; I am actually not tired, which doesn't happen all that often. I've even agreed to try walking one day after school each week with the Other Chai, starting next Tuesday. We'll see how that goes.

Strange event of the day today was that I decided to catch the kid who was drawing a penis on the lunchtime sign in sheet every day for the last week. It would certainly be a boy (because girls don't do that kind of thing), and most likely a freshman. Once the lunch period started, I casually strolled over to the sign in sheet every few minutes to see if it was clear, and then I saw two boys signing in and giggling. I checked the sheet and there it was, so I followed them over to the table where they had just sat and spread out their books. And I said firmly

"Now I am going to write up both of you for sexual harassment, unless one of you would like to claim responsibility for it. I want it to stop, and stop now."

One of the boys looked like a deer caught in the headlights, and the other one hung his head and said quietly, "It was me. I did it. I'm really, really sorry; I won't do it again." I said

"I know that at this particular time, this seems to you like an extremely clever and witty thing to do. It's not." He nodded. I said "And do you understand why it's sexual harassment? Do you understand that you force every girl who signs in after you to look at that?" He nodded again, head still low. I marched back to my desk, trying very hard not to start laughing until I was out of their line of sight. I think they were good boys who got caught up in doing a silly thing. So this was their warning. No more penis drawing in school!

The strange thing that came in the mail yesterday was an invitation to my nephew's "couples" shower. This is being thrown by the bride's mother, which I always thought was supposed to be gauche, but I guess times have changed. The kids didn't have an engagement party, so they're having this. Oh joy. My sister says she thinks that over a hundred people have been invited. What startled me was that, along with the professionally printed invitation -- to a wedding shower -- was a note asking people to send in recipes, which will be collected into a book, and to email them to ... me. So there was my email address, the one I use for family and other secure correspondents, sent out to over a hundred strangers, and my snail mail address. Which means ... I get to type some of these in myself?

Now, I did have some prior knowledge of this, but what I read in the invitation was not the level of involvement I thought I was having. I did discuss this with Wonderful Niece; it was her idea to do something like this, since I had done exactly this for her shower, but it seems that her brother's future mother-in-law had caught her off guard and she just gave out my information and the same plan as last time. I had thought that WN was doing all the typing and co-ordinating the recipes as they came in, and that I was doing the printing and binding into books. So I freaked a little, and K said now who was being the glass-half-empty sister (which I think was a bit harsh) but I did talk to my sister about it and she said a) if she herself thought I was typing all the recipes she wouldn't let me, and b) WN suddenly feels that she has no role in the project at all and would love to do all the typing. And when I called the Sibs this morning with a happy birthday call -- oy, my own sister is 60! -- she said she had indeed discussed it with WN and in a way so that she doesn't think she accidentally dumped this on me, because I don't want her to feel bad about it. [breathe] Anyway, we're working it all out, which is what counts, and I didn't hold it in and stew over it, which is also good. Won't my therapist be happy when I tell her?

Okay, so I'm home now -- it's actually after seven -- and I've got less than an hour left of Harry to hear, so I'm going to do that, and cry during the last battle because I love them all.



WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1754