MindSpinner

1) When school starts, life fragments - I am splintered into a half dozen additional roles, each with its own endless action list. Tomorrow the year’s task triage begins. Tomorrow the kids show. No more dilly-dallying with room organization or painting an ugly table or filling out forms or setting up voicemail (didn’t work, anyway). I think everything is ready except me (if you discount e-mail, my access to school admin. software, the non-existent replacement inkjet cartridge for the classroom printer, and my voicemail account). It’s like hearing the gun go off for the beginning of a race and realizing that you’re somehow turned around backward in the starting gate. Standard operating procedure, though, for a new start at a new school.

2) Three days I have weathered life with no Internet. No e-mailing friends. No blogs. No larks through cyberspace. No ready information at my fingertips. No completing a batch of online tasks. Aargh.

So good to be back.

3) The battery for the deaf dog’s anti-bark collar has expired, and I was not prepared. It turns out that these particular batteries are not readily available. So I can’t go pick one up at Wal-Mart or Kroger or Target. I ordered batteries over the Internet on Friday, having tried all three stores, but these batteries must wend their way through ordering and shipping. Today I check on Radio Shack.

In the meantime, I should buy ear plugs and hand them out to the neighbors. Saturday the dog barked all night. Every time I was conscious, he was barking, and I was conscious all too frequently. Last night, I woke twice when he was silent. So, I thought. Somebody’s killed him. Funny I didn’t hear the shot. Perhaps it was a bit of poisoned meat. Yet, this morning he lives. And barks.

Question: I’d have ethical qualms, I think, about debarking a hearing dog. But what about a deaf one? Would he know the difference? What if he’s not stone deaf? Maybe his own voice is the only thing he ever hears. Oh come, batteries, come. The neighbors are not deaf, and neither are we.