Friday, October 10, 2008

Black Magic Marker - or pantless?

To cap off my week of work insanity and general turbulence, I had to be prepared to have one of my classes observed. If you do not work in the teaching industry, let me just say this: being observed is terrible. You can really prepare for it because, duh, it's just the same job you always do and the real wild card is the students - who on any given day are in any given mood and always surprise you, whether you have a colleague sitting in the back of the room watching your every move or not.

So yesterday, since I was just about driven out of my wits by the extent of the work piling up around me, I tried to beg out of the observation by sending a polite email explaining that blah blah can we just do this next week? His answer: no. His schedule was fixed and blah blah see you tomorrow.

Well, well, well. ___________.

So I worked and worked and worked yesterday and did not stop until it was whenever, and I have no idea when I went to bed but I awakened at 5am after several surreal nightmares. I showered and picked through my laundry bag looking for something suitable to wear during my observation.

It was then that I observed, to my horror, that half my laundry was not in the bag - and since this were true, the other half of my laundry had to be downstairs in a dryer. For the past 48 hours.

So I ran downstairs at 5 in the morning, braless, barefoot, and a degree of unhappy just one degree shy of the degree of unhappy I achieved when I discovered that some unkind person had taken my laundry from the dryer and tossed it into a cart with someone else's wet laundry - and that the entire mixture had become sour with mildew in the interim.

The concequences of this laundry error were dire.

I had two choices of things to wear that would be acceptable: one, the suit I wore to my father's funeral, which had been crumpled into the bottom of a plastic bag for weeks, since I advertantly set my handbag down on some recently disgarded chewing gum , and without realizing it, lifted my handbag into my lap, ruining the pants of the suit with a splotch of gum the size of a sand dollar. In order to wear this suit, I would have to shake the wrinkles out of it, pretend it was not covered in cat hair, and use a black magic marker to disguise the gum. (I know most people would not consider this an option. Sadly, I would).

The second item I could potentially wear was a pair of buff colored linen pants with a pale pink shell with similarly colored sandals. Perhaps a bit summery for the time of year, but presentable. But this second choice had it's own issue: the near see-throughness of the pants. Only by wearing absolutely no underwear - MAYBE a flesh colored thong - could one ever wear these pants out of the house. I quickly realized that since I own no flesh colored thong and certainly would not spend the entire day I was to be put through teaching observation hell with a thong up my crack - even if I did happen to possess such a garment, the only way to make it out of the house in this outfit was to go commando.

Those were my options. I had no others. Knowing me so well as you do, what do you think I did? (I'll tell you tomorrow).

Love,
Nina

11 comments:

Avitable said...

Ha - you went commando!

P said...

You wore the black outfit and knitted a spot cozy to cover the gum?

Tracy Lynn said...

Dude. There is no good answer. And that is why I find it karmically palatable to fold whoever's clothes were left in the dryer and stack them on the table.

Of course, I also curse them under my breath, because I am not very nice.

Kate P said...

Ugh, sorry about the mildew. If you had an ice cube, you could freeze the gum and scrape it off the suit pants.

Hope everything went well in spite of the wardrobe malfunction--I was observed last week, so I totally sympathize.

Mrs. Who said...

Commando...who knows, it might help the observation, if said observer is really appreciative of that sort of thing.

Catherine said...

I'm stumped!

gfhgvj said...

Going commando was totally awesome. You are officially the most bad ass woman of the day.

Anonymous said...

I think you used a black marker, do I win a prize if I am right :-)?
I know you got through it all like a trooper. XOXO
P.S. I think I would have called in sick...

sybil law said...

Commando. Totally.
Or I would've.

ByJane said...

well, I would have gotten out the old black magic marker. If the slacks were that see-through, then they surely would glorify the pubic area of a brunette. But then, you're a blonde, aren't you....

Maggie said...

These are the kind of problems you will no longer have when you move into Newsy's parents' house. Private laundry is such a blessing...