"I gotta go count my balloons..."

So sorry I have been MIA lately. Finishing the special edition of my asylums book has essentially taken over my life. And if I wasn't fit for commitment to one of those places before, I sure as hell am now. However, you'll all be happy to know that I have not been neglecting my memoirs. Ok, maybe I have been. But that doesn't mean I won't get them done! I did, after all, give up procrastinating for Lent. Although, I did move that to my To Do list for tomorrow....

Anyway, for the first time in my life yesterday I put down a book and refused to finish it. Now, I rarely (never) do that. I always finish a book, even if it's slow going and doesn't seem to have much to say because, hey, I'm an author and I wouldn't want anyone chucking my book in the bin before they've read my tear jerker of an epilogue! However, "Mr. Instability" by Tom Elsa is, in a word, unreadable. I bought the book off of Amazon thinking it would be a humorous account of a man who has had more job changes than I have (an impressive feat all its own). However, the moment I cracked this messterpiece I was immediately turned off by the lousy grammar, terrible spelling, and generally crappy writing. He professes in the opening pages that at his first job the trailer he had to work in was "hot as Haiti's". Come on, really? And while he freely admits he never did well in school and "sucks and grammar", I found that to be no excuse for poor writing. Mr. Elsa, as a fellow self-published author I urge, please don't ever EVER put pen to paper ever again. Or if you do, call me first. I'll edit it for you so that those of us with a higher than 3rd grade education can actually enjoy what you have to say.

Other than that the school year is winding down. Book Fair is next week which of course I'm excited about (no one's surprised about that) then two weeks of standardized testing in which I get to watch my 5th graders turn into pickled vegetables right before my eyes! I expect lots of whining, perhaps a few tears, and a LOT of crankiness. However, it's spring and we've moved on to writing in our English class which of course makes me quite happy.

What would make me even happier is the disappearance of Justin Bieber, followed by the eventual discovery of his shorn locks in a dumpster outside of Brooklyn. I finally had to outlaw all things Justin Bieber in my class after a cat fight erupted in the 6th grade on the day of the young star's birthday. Three of the 6th grade girls came to class wearing star shaped PostIt notes that read "Future Mrs. Bieber" on them. Yes, I threw up a little. So the thing they call Bieber is no longer allowed in my room. Those who utter his name are automatically scorned. That in mind, one of the 6th grade girls made a CD for the classroom. She brought it in and asked if I could play it while they were writing. She then apologized, saying that she made the CD before I outlawed Bieber Fever in my room so there were indeed two Justin Bieber "songs" (I use the term loosely) on the CD but we could just skip those. Damn right we could skip those. I pop the CD in and wait for it to start up, given that we use the DVD player and TV to play music as I don't have CD player. We make it through a portion of the first track when we hear this pop, followed by a fizz, followed by what appears to be, upon further inspection, the sudden and untimely death of the TV.

My response? "See! Justin Bieber broke my TV!"