One of the things I love about my current home is that "porcupine quills" really are one of their major exports. You can get them on ashtrays and bowls and nicknacks. It's great!
But for the last week I feel like Amanda and I have been juggling live, hyperactive porcupines. Suddenly I am not just a professor and father and husband. I've had to learn to fix computers, calm the nerves of two college visitors and one mother-in-law, practice my pediatric dental expertise by reassuring my wife that that our son is fine even though it appears that he will be getting forty-seven teeth in at the same time (it's like he's getting multi-row shark teeth or something). I'm also becoming an expert packer/mover/papershredder. It's a good thing that my car's odometer doesn't work because I've been making runs all over town. Today is the first day I've been in the office in a week.
So what I want to hear is your most stressed out, porcupine juggling story. I'd tag some people but I'm too busy. I figure it'll be good for me to hear somebody else's stories. Revisit that time in the airport, snowstorm or being locked in your grandmother's bathroom...
Anybody can juggle chainsaws. Let's see Sheri Storer do this.
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Here's our stressful airport story . . . we had a 24 hour layover in Poland on our way home from Ukraine. We had a nice evening and morning visiting Warsaw. We were advised by to be at the Frederic Chopin Airport early because the concepts of lines at the check-in counters hadn't really made it's way over to Eastern Europe yet, I guess. So we could expect lots of people pushing without logic or reason. We arrived 3 hours before our flight and took our place in the sea of people waiting to check in at the check in desk, being manned by one small, unconcerned airline worker. This mass of people had no qualities akin to a line and began bulking up at the sides, but never really moving. We had also been told our flight was severely overbooked and no one wanted to be the one told, "sorry, no more boarding passes." The 15 of us on the trip decided make a wide flank of us so we could push up to the front somehow. (Otherwise we would have been pushed back into the coutry of Ukraine by other stressed out passengers.) Two hours into the fun, we find out most of the people we're pushing and becoming way too intimate with are waiting for flights to New York which are now 4 hours delayed. About this time our hardy flank makes it to the check-in counter. We wait another hour for boarding passes, two more for all our flight's passengers to squeeze through the sea, delaying our flight by only 5 hours. We weren't really juggling porcupines. . . but it would have been good entertainment or a time waster in that crazy "line" we were in for 3+ hours.
p.s. What do you mean by, "Russian Soul," in your "about-me-box?"
The Russian soul, according to The Penguin Dictionary of English Idioms - a book sitting on my bathroom shelf, is "a vague, unfulfilled yearning for a better, spiritual life which would bring consolation and relief to the suffering masses."
What makes it all the worse is that the answer is available to anyone who seeks it.
What makes it bearable is that the answer is available to anyone who seeks it.
Okay, you probably don't know me, but I think I was a freshman at Campus House the year you left, or something like that...
I help direct a high school play, and this past spring the town newspaper either forgot or neglected to even mention our play in the community events, but gave a full-color spread of the other high school's play. (Yes, we had previously sent info., an article, and even pictures to the paper). Then, our lead character was accidentally punched in the nose during a fight scene the eve before opening night. He fell to the ground, there was blood everywhere, and this big and tough high school senior wanted us to call his mom. In the meantime, our rental costumes had not yet shown up even though the rental company had assured us they would ship them overnight three days ago. And then, the next day, when they did show up, they reeked of alcohol. Our lead did end up having a broken nose, was exhausted and in pain, but did the performance anyway in the midst of kids in rank costumes in front of an audience that was there to see if our lead would make it through or would curl up in agony. And, in the meantime, I was having my worst teaching week of all year, a mother had called me a horrible, heartless teacher, and I was fighting back tears through every class. AGH!
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