I don’t want to cook lately. Nothing hot in the kitchen, please. Too. Hot. Too. Tired. I made a quick espresso and did it like a shot of tequila. Except espresso gives me a better buzz.

My sensitivity to smell has afforded me a heightened sense of scents, but that’s only because I’m legally blind. Since I can’t see very well, my olfactory sense is really very good. This is the argument I use when I buy lots of perfume and have bottles and sprays everywhere. My friends and people I work with know this about me and I’m known for my smell.

That sounded bad, but it’s not.

A long time ago while working in my classroom on a weekend, another young teacher came to find me because when she walked in the building she said she could smell my perfume.

Another time I let a girlfriend borrow a sweater which she took home with her. Later, when I was visiting her she returned it to me saying that she found it in her teenage daughter’s room and was told, “I wanted to sleep with it. It smells like Kelly.”

So, saying something smells like me is no big surprise.

Last weekend I had to visit the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a new license because I lost mine. Blame it on too much purse changing, but it was G-O-N-E and I can’t live without it. I’ve learned my lesson at the DMV and I’m not ashamed to say that I will wear my best push-up bra, put on makeup, and do my hair. There’s just no other way to get ahead with some of the cranky people who work there, so flirting is one of my options to getting good service.

I completely condone this.

I strutted my stuff all the way up to the counter only to find a woman working the desk.

So much for that plan.

She wasn’t smiling when I got there so I started in with “Hi! How are yoooouuuu?” in a sing-song voice. She wasn’t buying it. Damn. I sighed loudly and began taking out the requisite docutments to prove my identity. She waited patiently as I dug through my large bag and then she broke through the shuffling noises I was making by asking, “What are you wearing?”

I recall putting on lip gloss for the man-who-was-supposed-to-flirt-with-me so I could move along faster. Every other time I’ve been there, it’s been a male manning that first counter where I check in.

“Ummm… I’m wearing C.O. Bigelow mentha lip gloss. Is that what you smell?”

“Noooooo.” She joined in the sing-songiness of my voice and looked upward to think of a way to better describe the scent. “It’s not that. I don’t think.”

To be sure, I pulled it out of my bag and handed it over to her. As she pulled it near her nose to sniff, I heard the shuffling of feet behind me. Wonderful. We’ll get a line here in a minute and I’m still busy flirting with the woman-at-the-counter-who-was-supposed-to-be-a-man.

“Is it this?” I ask and pull out my Frozen Daiquiri spray. “That’s from Bath & Body Works.”

She takes the bottle from me in one hand and exchanges the lip gloss in another as I’m pulling every product from my purse. The counter at the DMV is beginning to look several teenage girls are getting ready for prom with all the stuff on it.

“No. That’s kind of fruity. This smell isn’t a fruity smell. It smells like….. like…. HEY! DO YOU KNOW THAT SALON DOWNTOWN? It’s on a corner?”

“Yeah. I used to go there. They sell all Aveda stuff.”

“THAT’S IT. YOU SMELL ALL AVEDA-Y.” She pronounced it uh-vay-duh-ee.

By this time, the line has 4-5 people behind me and I realize that I really need to haul ass to get my picture taken (since, you know, I got all dolled up for this) and get outta there before they realize that I drove illegally to get there.

DMV Chick does her tap-tap-tapping on the computer to finish my application and hands me a number to move along to the next place. This is the first time we’ve stopped talking about what I smell like and it’s totally silent. It’s got that awkward situation vibe to it, so I try to break the silence.

“Look. We’ve already moved way beyond “What’s Appropriate At The DMV. Would you like to smell my hair?”

I lean over the counter and offer my hair to her. She laughs and says, “Yep! That’s it. That’s the smell. What is it?”

“Confixor, a hair gel. Doesn’t it smell great?”

“Yeah. I gotta get some of that.”

I put my belongings back in my enormous bag and move along to the next counter where the guy gives me a can-I-smell-you-too? look.

It was the fastest, nicest visit to the DMV in my entire life. It wasn’t really how I looked, it was how I smelled.

I’m down to the end of my latest Peet’s coffee purchase so I combined Kenyan and Ethiopian blends to create a mellow yet complex flavor. It went down easily, but it sure packed a punch. People who ask me when school starts should be warned. I’m liking the word “punch” right now.

Since the school year in Illinois is roughly 185 days for teachers who work an 8-hour day it’s safe to compare that number to the 250 days of work that year-round people work. That means teachers work 74% of the time compared to the YR folks. Don’t forget the extra duty and coaching and clubs they sponsor. Practice time notwithstanding, they also attend the sporting events and musical programs students perform in even if they don’t sponsor them. They go because they support their students.

This translates to much less than the working person, but the average salary of teachers divided by number of days worked equates to about $243.24 per day which is less than a person who stays home to babysit other people’s kids. Does the government require that those babyitters meet standards and benchmarks of educational proportions? No. If they did, I’d hope more students would come to school with phonemic awareness and able to rhyme so we wouldn’t start behind already. In fact, we educators aren’t leaving children behind, they’re coming to us that way.

Here’s a good sampling of what teachers do during their summers “off.”

Pay for and take classes to move up on the pay scale.

Read lots of books they’re interested in as well as professional books to help students with disabilities and problems (e.g. autism, ADD/ADHD, dyslexia) so those students can experience a measure of success when school starts.

Attend the school supply sales for their own children and pick up “just a couple things” for the poverty students in their own classrooms. This, for me, comes to no less than $500. Each year.

Lunch with girlfriends at mediocre restaurants trying not to recall the shitty school lunches and having to beg for an extra cup of cheese for that lame-ass taco they serve 5 times a month.

Check out their slimming profiles in the mirror from lack of said cheese and pray they don’t put on the weight again in the Fall. Usually, this is a failure for me.

Get relief from all the students selling them crap to benefit their school and take home stickers with Hello Kitty! on them and use for love notes for their own children.

Pretend to be a SAHM (or SAHD) and get all their errands during the day and try to fit in all the time they didn’t get all the attention they needed during the school year while their parent was taking care of other people’s children.

Shower love on their own children both because they want to and because their children have to attend school events with their teacher-mother.

Drive their own children to camps and programs and the library so they can be enriched during the summer.

Get their teaching license renewed OR pay for another set of transcripts to be paid for those summer graduate classes.

Keep an eye on Police Beat in the newspaper and pray none of their students are in trouble or dead.

Revel in delicious freshly-ground coffee and save money on all that drive-through coffee.

Find and write grants so they can get money to help pay for classroom things like chalk, markers, and whiteboards. Technology would be nice, but it takes a backseat to those other necessities.

Wake early because their spouse still needs to wake up and go off to work.

Rent all the movies they missed during the school year.

Plan the scope and sequence for the new textbooks so the curriculum for the state in which they live matches that of the district in which they work.

Take an emotional break from caring for the 600 or so students in their school.

Take a physical break from stopping fist-fights in the hallways or on the playgrounds.

Lift weights at the gym so they are able to restrain students bigger than they are during those fights, all the while remembering that the law tells us we’re only able to “cover our heads and protect ourselves, but not get involved.”

Pick up extra clothes at Goodwill and The Salvation Army for students who don’t have decent clothing. Also, they save their own children’s clothes to take to school and keep in a closet for the occasional accident a student has.

Beg every friend who has a pool if our “kids can get together”.

NOT get called a “ho” or “bitch” once a week. Monthly is fine by me.

Remember why they went into education.

Get called and emailed by administrators asking to come in and work on things that flew to the wayside during the school year.

Drink a glass of wine nightly without worry of a headache coupled with loud students the next day.

Escape parents who blame us for everything from failing to teach mulitplication facts to challenging their “gifted” student to calling the parent if their child scraped their elbow on the desk because they were chasing another student with a pencil.

Download music and watch videos to be aware of the influences they deal with daily. Also, so we know that when they call us a “biznatch” it’s really the same thing as being called a “bitch”.

Miss our students and worry about the ones we know haven’t eaten a full meal since school was in session.

Defend ourselves passionately for the time we get off remembering that the archaic 9-month school year was a benefit to farmers and is really no longer compulsory.

Chicory is strong, but good stuff. Since it’s another scorcher today I French Pressed it and added an equal amount of skim milk for a cold cuppa. It’s almost too hot to breathe today. Could you hold your breath, please? Thanks.