Good lord, I’m on the other side of the pond, so to speak, and we’re having the ssme exact weather!
Encountered someone who wrote that “if [x factor] then [y situation] is mute.” After a moment of 
I got it.
Moot. MOOT point! It’s a ***mooooooooot ***point, people! pant
That sounds delicious! steals recipe
happy dance
throws confetti
I’ve been following this saga, just so you know that I know the context for your “Fuck them” x infinity.
My 9 year old daughter went to bed as happy as a clam. No indication of the hell that was to come.
At 10:30pm she stumbles upstairs, her right hand side covered in slime. “I threw up,” she said. I quickly toss her in the shower with instructions to wash and go to check out the damage.
She sleeps in the top bunk of a bunk bed where the bottom is a double and the top is a single and she is surrounded by a sea of plush friends ranging from 2 inches of fluff to 2 ft of furry fun. Vomit is everywhere. She must have been channeling Regan from the Exorcist. Every one of her 100s of stuffed animals is coated, a puddle is soaking through the sheets to the mattress pad and, being the top bunk and her having a fat, out of shape father, everything is a pain to grab.
She spends the entire time in the shower having fun as I strip the toxic waste from her bedroom and spray febreeze in a vain attempt to remove the foul stench. After 15 minutes her mom grabs her from the shower and dries her hair while I clean the accumulated crap of a 9 year old’s life from the bottom bunk and spread towels in a vain attempt to contain the mess should disaster strike twice. She is put to bed and falls asleep as I start the 3 loads of laundry that now must be done before I get to bed.
Six hours of sleep is just not enough to face the day.
I hope I tasted like dung to that unidentified bug, Lacunae! But the Benadryl is working, thank heavens.
I was being a lazy gardener last weekend, and took the strimmer to the front lawn (it’s tiny) rather than carry the lawnmower all the way through the house to mow it.
The strimmer kept acting up, so after half an hour of unpicking excess cable it had decided to wind around its innards rather than actually cut grass, I gave up, took it back through the house to the shed in the back garden, and hauled the heavy lawnmower through the house like I should have in the first place.
Before starting to mow, I cleared some debris off the lawn, including a metal spring, so it wouldn’t chew the mowers innards and chucked it in our general waste bin.
It’s now the night before bin collection and I’ve realised why the strimmer cable kept unwinding and wrapping itself round the shaft annoyingly. It’s missing the spring that keeps it taut and in place.
Anyone want to help me reach down to the bottom of a 5 foot tall dumpster style wheelie-bin, past two lawns worth of cuttings and a weeks worth of household rubbish to try and find this sodding spring?
I should have clarified that it was station policy rather than any kind of regulation. There was a station around here that did the ‘never talk over the music’ promo too.
Point one: I hope your little girl is feeling better right quick.
Point two: May today be light on demands made of your physical and mental reserves.
Point three: I would estimate that my nineteen-year old still has 95% of all the stuffed animals that she accumulated as a small one. This might be your chance to nip THAT tendency in the bud…
Yikes, that sounds like a nightmare. Do you have a really strong magnet that you could attach to a broomstick?* If you have a stereo with free-standing speakers, you might be able to borrow one from one of those.**
Alternatively, is it possible to contact the manufacturer and obtain a replacement spring?
OTOH, if the spring popped out, there’s a decent chance that whatever had been holding it in place has broken, rendering the strimmer unrepairable.
Hope you’re able to get it resolved quickly and at minimal expense. 
*“Sure, doesn’t everyone?”
** j/k Do not disassemble your stereo speaker to obtain a magnet.
OK, I broke down and googled "strimmer. As I guessed, it is another name for a weed-whacker. Never heard strimmer before!
Good point. I figured that it was a UK thing, but it never occurred to me to wonder if “spring” means the same thing over there as it does here…
She is. It kind of makes it worse somehow. At least if she was really ill I’d feel like there was a good reason I was cleaning up puke until all hours.
So far, so good.
I think that ship has sailed and Grammie is the main instigator. I’ve resigned myself to a sea of plush in the house. We are cutting down on the number allowed in the bed though.
There are efforts being made to recall the school board and vote in another group of people. While I appreciate the vote of confidence, I’m not sure I would want to work with our local superintendent. She was just awful last night.
They actually held a hearing that was made public on the firing and their proposed reasons behind it. This was done in accordance with regulations that allow for such hearings to be held in front of the public. The principal spoke for half an hour. She was eloquent. She talked about changes that she has made such as an effort to help fifth and sixth graders make the difficult transition to middle school, efforts to increase classroom instruction time and provide teachers with the opportunity to help shore up their knowledge in areas where they felt in need of help such as with the use of technology. I was impressed with her passion, devotion to the school and insight. Test scores are UP so I don’t see how anyone can argue with the results.
The last time I worked with her was earlier in the year when my eldest child was told she did not make the gifted and talented program despite extremely high test scores and very good grades. The principal helped us file an appeal because she agree with us that the decision was not quite in the best interests of my eldest daughter. She was placed in that program and has continued to do well – she’ll be in the gifted program in both math and reading when she enters junior high school in the fall. I’ve also worked with her indirectly when my youngest daughter was judged to have special needs. Again, the principal was also quite helpful in helping us fully understand all the steps involved in the process.
Meanwhile criticism was made of the principal (and not by the superintendent herself but by an outside party who was very rude to people attending the meeting – repeatedly telling us to sit down and be quiet as the decision was the board members not ours) that I found petty such as her taking too long to provide certain written evaluations, failure to comply with minor regulations once or twice and other matters that I felt were not particularly valid. We’ll see what happens as the situation continues to unfold but I’m not at all happy now. We have no idea who is going to replace the principal at all. I do not appreciate being kept in the dark or made to feel as if I am part of a mob because I dare speak out politely at a school board meeting. They brought in three police officers to the meeting who forcibly removed several people after they made comments the board members did not like.
All in all, not a good night for democracy. Or our children.
I learned the word “strimmer” in a British “Whose Line” episode.
(This is referring to some discussion on the previous page, by the way. It’s not a rant. 
)
This must have hit the news, either of you got a link?
Got a link?
But having been there, they likely have a reason they arent telling you. It could be a really good reason like kiddy prn found on a computer- it could be a horrible reason like the Super hates the new principal or for even reasons like she’s the wrong religion for them.
Note that the Supe is a elected official too, I bet. There’s also the State Board which oversees them to a extent. Complaints should be made to them.
From context I got “string trimmer” out of it.
From a lucky American who has no lawn at all. One of the perks of living in San Francisco.
Summary can be found at the Facebook page of a local area news website here. The end of the principal’s speech can be seen and heard here. It’s a very small school district. Which makes the huge parental support for the principal all the more impressive.
Bizarrely enough, I do have a broomstick that’s no longer attached to a broom (you’d think they’d do a better job of joining these things) and an incredibly strong fridge magnet that’s been known to weld itself to the cupboard door-handle next to the fridge if I make the mistake of opening them both at the same time.
This could be embarrassing, but still a lot less so than emptying the bin in front of the passing schoolkids tomorrow morning!
Thank you! 
I googled “strimmer” to see if it would translate, but without knowing the US name for it, didn’t realise there *was *a language barrier.
Hey, jerkassess, yesterday before I ordered $2,000 worth of landscape rock I made it abundantly clear that I needed it first thing in the morning or not at all. You “called your dispatcher” and assured me it would be here “first thing in the morning” so I placed the order. I’ve rented equipment and set everything up and it’s STILL NOT HERE. It’s neither FIRST THING nor is it MORNING. My rental equipment needs to be back soon and I have to go to work tomorrow. Now I’m going to have to spend hundreds of dollars extending my rentals and miss work tomorrow so I don’t subject my neighbors to a mountain of rock in the middle of the street for an entire week. FUCK YOU LYING DICKS