18 May 2026
Off topic, I think I will finish setting up a substack. That seems to be a trendy thing.
I only have six of you who read this, and one of you kindly called me on Sunday. I am fine, this is therapy and due to No Internet all weekend, you called me within an hour of getting it restored and I was still dysregulated. I am sorry I wasn't chattier. I love you.
Cabaret Senior cabaret was Friday. I still call it that even though I have no seniors. Technically, we inducted two seniors into Thespians, but one couldn't attend and the other had senior sunset and couldn't stay. Senior Sunset sounds like a dementia diagnosis. Isis was inducted but then left early to meet her ride. She is a great kid and I was happy to induct her, and Lanora works with my peer to peer kids and earned her spot, but had her brother's birthday party.
I made the theatre 2 kids write original mononologues based in a general theme. I pulled the themes from known work, like "The fragility of the American Dream" (Albee), "The Horrors of War" ( Hemingway) and "Does love have to kill you" (unsure where I got that) and "The importance of companionship" from Steinbeck. Seven kids wrote monologues, but one was absent the day we traded. So the six traded monologues and worked on performing someone else's monologue so the writer could hear their words and edit outside of a vacuum.
Two of them performed at the choir fundraiser two weeks ago, it was really impressive.
The writing itself is solid. J wrote a beautiful piece about loneliness after the death of a loved one. "Loneliness isn't about being alone, it's about not sharing your day with someone".
Then I made them stitch together the two monologues to create some kind of scene. L has an IEP and reads/writes at a sixth grade level, so her piece was a narrative "Once upon a time" love story. She paired it with K whose monologue started "I know I killed my husband, but I loved him. Don't judge me." J paired his with P who wrote a monologue with a twist about his true love, who dumped him to date someone else so he killed the someone else. Turns out they take "kill" seriously in this class. And D and E's pieces---separately about the horrors of war and the American Dream, more about its facade than its fragility---worked together. Theirs came out the best. It was a stellar unit lesson plan I made up ten minutes before class started.
Which is a central issue for me. I'm a 23 year veteran who does not value written, detailed lesson plans. You go to all of that trouble and ten minutes in, it's not working and you have to pivot. So why bother?
Different topic.
The kids were great. A bass solo, solos and duets and two established monologues--one Hamlet (the kid who was absent didn't get to do his own, so...) one Glass Menagerie and their "stitched scenes". We're setting the bar here in a way that I want. I don't want Thez Cabs to turn into mini choir concerts, which was happening at Littleton. I structured it this way at Hinkley as well.
I have PTSD with cabarets at Kennedy now, as my dad died while we were performing our first cabaret here on 28 Feb 2025. He died at home. He was not in the audience.
Just thought I'd clear that up.
AT&T When I got home from cab google fiber was having an outage, so we had no internet. Jim had been on the phone and was told it was a general outage. I'll address that in my next paragraph.
We were getting ready to leave to get lunch on Saturday when Harp decided to water board her phone. It recovered-ish--but we figured it had been heating up, and at two years old it was time. The phone is paid off, so we went to the Apple Store to get a new one. Only to discover AT&T thought we still owed $900.
At this point, I should catch you up. Harp wanted a new phone a year ago. We went to the AT&T store in Golden during a hail storm. That doesn't matter other than it was annyoing. She couldn't find the phone she wanted and let the sales person talk her into one she did not want. After getting home, she decided to return it. Which we did, but the sales person said she couldn't take it back, we had to mail it directly to the warehouse. She gave me a tracking number and (we assumed) removed the charge from the phone number.
Now you're caught up.
Guess what the Golden salesperson didn't do?
Without throwing judgement on the man who is paying our AT&T bill for not noticing he was paying for a phone we do not have, the fact remains that we were paying on a phone we do not have. Yes, we keep the kids on our plan. You do you, we'll do us.
So we found an AT&T store in Highlands Ranch to untangle the situation. I'll give you bullet points on our three hours at the store:
* Not all AT&T locations are corporate. Some are "third party". The Golden store fits the second category.
* Matt at the HR AT&T corporate store is The Bomb.
* Corporate HQ could track that the phone had been returned but the charges were not stopped AND they sold the phone to someone else. If you're following, that means they were recieving two payments from two different people on the same phone. They could track it once it was pointed out by Matt, but "were not aware" otherwise.
We went in panicked that we were going to have to pay off a phone we do not have, prove we returned the phone and a host of other Panic Button Issues. When Matt let us know we were in the clear AND it was all erased in the moment AND the money paid over the last year for the phone we do not have is now a credit---so we won't have a phone bill for a few months--we quietly reset and Harp said "This is such a win. I needed this. This sets the tone for the week." I appreciated that perspective.
I was prepared, before Matt returned after his first call to corporate, to go Full Karen if necessary. H and I were both calm af upon entry, that would have made it more dramatic when I Lost My Shit. Alas, I was not called upon to perform.
It was a quiet win. A reasonable untangling of a situation that one person in Golden caused and another in Highlands Ranch resolved. It was four hours of my Saturday, including the Apple store, which I did not love. But hey, wins require sacrifice.
Also I hate technology, and I hate corporations. So it was A Lot for me.
No Internet On Friday night, Jim said he called google fiber and the AI bot told him there was a google fiber outage. They just forced an "upgrade" and increased our bill (still less than Xfinity who are The Evil Empire) and it crashed. As expected. So Saturday I spent dealing with AT&T and getting H a new phone but by Sunday I decided I was done. Even though I hadn't been home, I was annoyed feeling cut off. No Scrubs reruns, which is how I manage my mental health issues. No Facebook which is how I receive mental health issues.
You see the issue.
I had no choice but to read a book.
But Sunday late afternoon, after schlepping to Starbucks to use their WiFi to get online and find a phone number to call the AI assistant bot at google fiber to find out there was still an outage I was done. I called the number. I told the AI assistant to go to hell and get me a human. The call dropped. Google Fiber texted me a survey asking how they did. I complied. The survey balked that it couldn't understand what I was saying. So I said it again. Then I got a text...from a human at google fiber. I could tell by her conversastion, trouble shooting and patience that she was she, not IT. After an hour texting back and forth, it turns out the outage actually flipped the jack off on the wall...I'm going with this, because the switch is difficult to reach at the bottom of the jack, which is covered by a plastic plate I had to unsnap to remove. There is no way the dog accidentally bumped it. So it's the outage that caused the physical switch to flip behind a plastic cover inside my house or I have a ghost.
So the outage tripped the switch.
Now we have internet.
Dead snake At some point on Sunday, while working in the yard, Jim noted a very large bullsnake dead on the sidewalk in front of the neighbor's house. He was at least four feet long. Parents, kids and dogs had been pausing all day, but nobody removed it ---including the homeowner. By five or six o'clock, the thing had begun to smell horribly. It died tragically, someone had cut off both its head and tail. Bullsnakes are good guys, but if you don't read and your parents never taught you consequences or kindness then this is what you do.
People Suck.
So when my friend from Canada called, Jim was out removing the snake from our neighbor's sidewalk. We decided to put it in an empty trash bin and leave it at the end of the street for pickup Tuesday. At least the smell would not permeate the neighborhood, and at least the poor snake was not displayed for all of Green Mountain to see.
Happy Monday.
Scene
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