BerthaBlog

The Artist has finished his first week of college, and he’s loving it. I offered to give him a ride the first week, but he wanted to take the bus from day one. He wants to be as self-sufficient as possible. I can relate to that.

Yesterday I went in to Kelly (a temp agency, for those outside the US) and took a bunch of their skill assessment tests. They might have a bookkeeping job for me that uses Quickbooks, but I took all the tests they were willing to give me. I figured if I did poorly on them I just wouldn’t get jobs involving those skills. But I did reasonably well on all of them (and very well on some).

The Kelly rep gave me all the tax forms and such to fill out, and an employee handbook to look over. I take this as a good sign. Even if I don’t get this Quickbooks job, they might be able to find me something else. I hope.

Michelle Bachman, republican and champion of the religious right, has declared her position against the national health care proposal:

“That’s why people need to continue to go to the town halls, continue to melt the phone lines of their liberal members of Congress,” said Bachmann, “and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body and my health care decisions.”

…so, does this mean she’s pro-choice now?

Our school system has a web system that lets parents track their kids’ progress. This way we can check the kid’s grades online even if they don’t bring home their report cards or tell us how they’re doing on their assignments. They call it SPAN (Student Parent Access Network).

Last week in the mail I got a letter from The Director’s school with his class schedule and the login information for his SPAN account. I made a copy of his schedule so he’d have one and I’d have one, and then went to log in to his SPAN account.

Oops. That’s not my kid.

Looks like I got the SPAN information of the kid who’s right ahead of mine, alphabetically. So the family whose last name comes right after ours probably got my kid’s info, and so on.

I bet the poor SPAN administrator is swamped with e-mails. And he’s about to get another one.

Today I took The Artist to take his driver’s test and get his actual license. He was ready. He was eager.

He was uninsured.

We called our insurance company when he got his learner’s permit, and they said he was covered under our existing policy and didn’t need to be specifically named as a driver until he got the real license. However, it turns out the DMV won’t even let him test until he’s specifically named on our car insurance as a driver.

So we trudged back out of the DMV.

On the way home, I detoured into the mall. “We’ll assuage our disappointment with Orange Julius,” I told him.

“Assuage?”

“Mitigate. Smooth over,” I clarified. “Kiss it and make it better. The problem with having a writer for a mom is that I use words like assuage and ubiquitous in everyday conversation.”

“What’s ubiquitous?” he laughed.

“Means it’s everywhere.” I was getting out my cell phone.

“Oh, so God is ubiquitous.”

“Right.” I dialed Alpha Geek. “He couldn’t take the test today. We didn’t have our 27B/6 form.”

“What?” (I was surprised he missed the reference, but I learned later that he’d been busy rescuing the cat.)

“He has to be on our insurance before he can take the test. We’re going to Orange Julius, do you want anything?”

He didn’t. We got our Orange Julius drinks, and pretzels from the Pretzel Twister, and eventually we felt suitably assuaged and came home.

To be honest, I’m a bit relieved. Because as soon as he gets his license, you know which car he’ll be driving most? My baby.