I know you've missed me. I've missed me, too, but as you must surely know by now, love called me out of town and to a cabin in the woods near a major metropolitan area. Fortunately, I remembered to buy a round-trip ticket and I'm back again, though not in Baby's arms, you might notice. I made Baby choose between the Harley and me, and thanks be to God, the Harley won.
It wasn't fun any more. We had arrived at that juncture, that quiet place in the relationship at which it could take a turn for the deeper still and we could start remodeling the kitchen, or love could find its way back home. It was so odd, so grown-up and without remordimiento, and Baby was so relieved that the sea foam green kitchen counters would be there another ten years.
So put me back on the invitation list, unless, of course, you are preparing that squished sandwich roll thing. Holiday food, you may have noticed, is generally awful -- bad wine, different colored cookies that all taste the same, fruit cake (yecch!), air cheese spattered onto air crackers, thawed and room-temped antojitos assembled in the last century in Omaha, and those durned sandwich rolls.
I digress. Let's get on with the business at hand.

LAWSUIT MATERIAL:
POT CALLS KETTLE BLACK
Now and again, LISD's old guard rears its ugly head and you hear of something so incredibly despicable that you do not believe it. Then someone leaves the supporting document on your porch and reading is pretty close to believing.
This mini-super, not to be confused with BMW's smart and handsome road devil the Mini Cooper, has generated an official fact-finding document of such inflammatory and damning content that it has sent folks running for cover from the wholesale application of venom stated not as possibilities but as facts -- details of personal lives summed up as an "affair" when in fact the two consenting parties are single adults in a mature relationship, allegations of sexual harrasment, and a whole bunch of tattletale minutiae that won't bear out under scrutiny.
The subtext to the document, which delivers information to the superintendent in very sure-footed statements of findings about a host of school district personnel, is the writer's unspoken but all too apparent assertion of dominion over the fates of those she chose to malign. The document actually reads as though the writer is addressing her bidder, the one for whom she did this mandado. It has a check-list organization to its points, mimicking not uncoincidentally a teacher who spoke at a recent LISD board meeting.
The writer of the memorandum is certainly entitled to her opinion, and professionally she is probably duty-bound to deliver a well-written assessment of her findings. That she offers them so concretely as truth and with such heavy-handed certainty begs the question: how does this woman wield this kind of power and what lapse of judgement in school district management has placed this type of individual in a position of such responsibility?
If you were a school district employee simply going about the business of education, how might you feel if a confidential memo circulated to your superiors about something as outrageous and perhaps as unfounded as: you hired your beautician as a teacher aide so that you could get your hairdo done at school? Your second in command picks up your kids at their school on school district time and takes them to their after-school activities? Or, another teacher aide collects your real estate rents for you?
Are those things true? I don't know, but they sure are ugly speculations and would certainly impugn and harm, however unfounded, if presented as certainties in an official school district document.

Twyla Zone, that's what they're calling this Screaming Mimi at the oldest campus in town. She can't seem to contain her rages. If I wasn't an authority myself on the pause that does not refresh, I would not speculate as to what might be fueling the highly audible dress-downs.
Manita, I was chocked at the pot cache the chotas allegedly found at the home of a former Webb County commissioner.