Fun Day

Guess who wrote to me today? Dr. Sheldon, my old physics professor! Remember him? He married Kim in the admissions office. I worked with him on DuPont Research with him one summer and we used to go out to eat Chinese food back when I could REALLY put it away.

Anyway, he says he's coming to LA in March. He's coming for a conference and to do a quick presentation for the local alumnae chapter. He's bringing one of those annoying Jamaican girls with him. I really didn't like that clique. Never were there ruder, more isolated students on our campus. Kakenya hated them, too, so it's not a race thing.

Oh, and just so you know how SPECIAL I am, Dr. Sheldon says that I can call him Peter now. Oooooohhhhh. Hi Peter. He used to always joke about setting me up with his dad (British guy, professor at Harvard, now resident in London) and even gave me his dad's phone number and address in England when I went to Reading. He said that his dad, 60+, LOVES younger women. Isn't that sick? Dr. Sheldon wanted to pimp me to his dad. I did talk to his dad once on the phone, but it was just to organize a prank against Dr. Sheldon, which actually worked. I got him to call the physics lab in the middle of our end-of-term lectures. When he called he interrupted Kate Winton's presentation, which made it a smashing success to begin with, and then Dr. Sheldon nearly pissed himself when Kate answered the phone and said, "It's for you. It's your dad!" We had heard plenty about his dad because Dr. Sheldon used to tease me relentlessly about "secretly dating him" when I was in England the year before.

It should be fun to see him again. He's a funny guy.

I taught my kids to say "echo" when someone is reading or answering a question and they can't hear what it is they're saying. Well, of course they've gone nuts with it and they say it all the time. But now it does seem to be calmer and the weak, whispery kids are cranking up the volume. One of my troublesome ones, Carlos, nearly killed me yesterday. We're reading a story aloud called "All American Slurp". It's about a Chinese family that moves to America and all of their embarassing interactions with food at social functions. Anyway, everyone had a book, everyone was reading, and people were reading aloud audibly. Except Carlos. He's turned around, facing the class, eyes nowhere near the page. "Carlos! Get it together, babe! Read along with the story!" He looks at me, dead serious, and says, "I'm gettin' ready to say echo."

His entire focus was preparing to jump on the next kid he couldn't hear. You really had to be there, but his sincerity and incapacity to see the problem with his stance made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

My kids are funny. They make work a joy when they aren't trying to give me a heart attack.

Oh, and today I accidentally said shit. I am CERTAIN I'm going to hear about that from admin tomorrow. It was completely an accident. I hope they understand that...

This afternoon I went to my dermatologist and had another SmoothBeam laser for the acne scarring on my chin. First, they smear numbing cream on your face. Then you sit there in a little room for 15 minutes with other people with the same goop all over their faces. Then you wash it off. Then you go to the laser room, lay down on the paper on the table, put on protective goggles, and let nurse Myra zap you with the laser. She is so sweet, even if she does make me want to rip that agonizing laser out of her hand and poke her in the eye with it. She only lasers where there are scars, so it doesn't take very long. She started lasering and it didn't hurt as much as I was anticipating, so she asked me if I could go a little higher. Sure. So she said, "Let's take it to 10 out of 13." Umm, OK. PAIN. PAIN. PAIN. "OOooohh," she said, "You're going nice and pink, that's a good thing!" OK. I didn't mind that it was up high and hurting, though, because I want to get my money's worth out of it. When I left the office, I got in my car and glanced in the rearview mirror. Holy Jesus. My chin was SO pink. It looked sunburned. Thank God it's calmed down now, though. I think I see some improvement in the scarring since the last treatment, too.

And on the guy-at-the-party front, that teacher at school wants me to go out with him on Friday with her and her husband. I had to lie and say that I'm going to Irvine. I don't know what to do now, because that guy likes me a lot more than I like him, but I don't want my relationship with this cool teacher to go all funny. I don't want to be the bitch...

Tomorrow is Hector's funeral, and I'm pretty sure I'm going. I have to go go find something suitable and black now...