Shoe fly, don't bother me...

I would be relieved about February being over if it didn't mean that we will now be stuck with March....

Okay, not that great a week. PMS and "periodicality" can be blamed for some of the glitches of this week, but not all of them. The disappearance of younger daughter's indoor shoes from her locker Wednesday morning, for example. Now, most schools in Canada are running on a shoestring budget anyway, so frills like music, arts, special education, and janitorial upkeep have been steadily trimmed away over the years. This means that parents must purchase two pairs of shoes for their offspring: "outdoor shoes" for coming, going, and recess, and "indoor shoes" for cutting back muck on the floor. Apparently, someone thought it would be a wonderful trick to stow younger daughter's shoes in an unoccupied locker a few doors down from her own. (This is a "caring school", as her principal puts it, so the lockers don't actually lock.) We think it was a prankster for two compelling reasons: younger daughter's EA (educational assistant) helped her suit up for school dismissal on Tuesday afternoon and is unlikely to have left her shoes lying in the hall; young classmate who suggested this aforementioned scenario had a smile on her face that made something in my tummy sink. Younger daughter spent part of the day in sock feet, the other part in boots, and was pretty damn miserable by the end of it. I had flagged down the vice-principal that morning after a fruitless search of the Lost and Found and informed her as lightly and non-paranoidically (probably not a word, but I'm periodical, so leave me alone) as I could, of my suspicions. A gallant member of the still-existing janitorial staff located the shoes just as the dismissal bell rang. Her name is Nicole if you want to add her to your prayers. This morning, the principal approached me to acknowledge my concerns. I felt very "managed", but that's his job, so I thanked him politely. On top of this, younger daughter is suffering from messy chapped lips due a combination of -20 wind chills and a subtly drippy nose, older daughter is contending with an emergency concerning an student living with Asperger's who has erupted all over her drama class (the one class where he feels accepted, apparently), resulting in Asperger's presentations presided over by supply teachers, and I am so sick of dumping...

So I was finished writing the August 2007 of my yearly rundown in my journal (one of the reasons I started this blog) in the coffee shop, and I found myself drawn to the dusty speaker perched high above the entrance of the hallway to the washrooms. Patrons squeezed by me as I strained to make out of the lyrics of a song that sounded so familiar, but that I just could not place. Grateful Dead? Maybe, kind of calypso-y for them, I thought. Just before the song ended, I manage to catch "it's time for him to take his children home", so I hurried up the street back to my house, hastily kicked my snow boots off and googled various combinations of the words I'd heard. It's Uncle John's Band, and I was right, it's the Grateful Dead and here they are singing it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EoQ3GkH4Zc
(One of these days, I'll figure out how to actually post videos here.) And then, joy of joys, I stumbled upon a fan-vid of my most favourite Marx Brothers film ever Monkey Business paired with my most favourite Great Big Sea song ever When I Am King: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cy2SxOUL7s
So, two of my sure-fire cures for the miseries, in one tidy package. Maybe the weekend will be okay....