Klowns in my Koffee

Daily Kup (My Life wondering who exactly needs Special Ed)
Our neighboring school district was closed again but we bundled against the freezing temperatures and made the journey to school. The kids enjoyed being driven for a change since I had an 8 AM appointment with the "Child Study Team" to agree on a recommendation to evaluate my son for Special Education. Heavy stuff. I tried to curb my verbosity but we still exceeded the allotted half hour. Attendees were a classroom teacher, an ELL teacher, a speech pathologist, a special ed teacher, a social worker, the nurse, the principal, a phy ed teacher, and a hyphenated psychologist. And a partridge in a pear tree. The psychologist/team leader was proficient but always spoke to me as though ... I ... was... very.. slow .. in that voice that Marilyn Monroe used to sing "Happy Birthday" to John Kennedy. I half expected to hear, "Do ... you ... have ... any ... further ... questions, ... Mr. President?"

Most classroom teachers whom I have encountered are creative, caring, and competent. I have less faith as one goes further into administration. I like and appreciate our school's current principal but she seems to be the exception rather than the rule. The Peter Principle, which states that employees are promoted to and stay at the level at which their incompetence prevents them from further promotion, takes to the public school system like gas station rest room samples to a petri dish. One positive to the schizophrenic and fickle finger of fate approach to staff reduction used by Porkus is that turnover and renewal occurs quite organically, unless you are a relative or fellow cult member.

I have mixed feelings about progressing to Special Ed interventions. Attila the Son is quite bright and is capable when he wishes to be. And I don't have the cultural context to know what the appropriate measured response should be when kids come up to you, call you a racist name, and spit on you. On the other side of the coin, when a kid writes and spells a word out loud fifty to one hundred times, he ought to know the word the next day. Particularly when we've been doing this for three years.

I agreed to let them test him fifty ways to sundown and, if we don't like the direction that it's going, I guess we'll revoke the permission to go further. I know this is my right because I read it in the outdated rights statement that they gave me that included only the odd-numbered pages.

Special Recipe
A natural follow-up to mentions of the volatile Attila the Son, administrative meetings with a cast of thousands, and the pile of steaming contradictions that is Porkus is a wonderful email that I received from a Porkus Pal. There really were some wonderful people there and I cherish about 50% of those that I worked with. (The balance would look good under my bumper, but I digress.)

I'm not much of a drinker and my cup of tea is actually ... tea, so this is very much tongue-in-cheek. On the other hand, if you work at Porkus long enough, this type of intervention is an idea that starts to spark.

Like any content that is not homegrown, I researched to make sure that there were no copyright issues and actually found this recipe posted on food.com with the 'real' recipes. It got 5 stars (that look like 10 stars if you've attempted the recipe.) Thank you for the laugh to a Porkus Pal whom I'll simply call "Jack Daniels."

Jose Cuervo Christmas Cookies

1 cup of water
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup or brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 cup nuts
2 cups of dried fruit
1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequila

Sample the Cuervo to check quality first.

Take a large bowl, check the Cuervo again to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink. Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter until large in a fluffy bowl. Add one peastoon of sugar. Beat again.

At this point it's best to make sure the Cuervo is still ok, so try another cup just in case. Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit. Pick the dried fruit off the floor.

Mix on the turner. If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaters just pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsisticity. Next, sift two cups of salt, or something. Greash a sookie cheet and check the Jose Cuervo.

Now shift the brown nuts and stirrup the sugar.

Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find. Greash
the oven. Turn the cake 360 degrees and try not to fall over. Don't forget to burn off the oven turner. Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish the Cose Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the wishdasher.

Cherry Mistmas!

Stirring the Pot
Tomorrow, a real and really easy cookie recipe from My Mom's Recipe Cards.