Does Anyone Out There Know How to Graph a Parabola?

I have eaten everything I can get my hands on: ice cream, sour dough bread, mashed potatoes, leftover Halloween candy, a box of gobstoppers left over form Madagascar 2...And none of it has helped me calm my anxiety, ease my ulcer or teach me how to graph a parabola. I do however know all the components and utilizations of y=mx+b, could tell you the probability of of drawing two diamonds in a row out of a deck of cards and could remind you to not dangle participles. Yes, the day has come. Tomorrow I take the single most important (and longest) test of my life since my SAT: the WEST-B entrance exam into the teaching program at UW. I'd love to say go Dawgs but I should probably wait for my test results...Now that I think of it what 1st grade teacher needs to graph a parabola anyway?

Holy Crap!

Last week we had the opportunity to explain the proverbial expression of, “our ox is in the mire,” to our children. More correctly our ox would have been in the crap, but we explained the adage to the boys nonetheless. Last Sunday as we should have been getting ready for Stake conference I sent my little one down stairs to put away some empty canning jars. He stood at the top of the stairs and declared, “Look Mom, a river.” At first I thought my washing machine had a leak but with closer inspection that would have been the preferred scenario.
What we found was that our septic tank had clogged producing a geyser of poo in our basement that then created a river of human refuse inches deep in our basement. I seem to remember just such a river in Dante’s Inferno. At least I wasn’t hanging upside down in excrement, just wading through it. Luckily my inability to keep up on the family laundry saved a large section of our basement from fecal contamination. It turns out four loads of laundry is just enough to dam up a stream of steaming sewage. See! Being bad at housekeeping can have its benefits!
So in nine hours we had our guest bed and bathroom completely gutted. We removed drywall, flooring, furniture and vanities. We scooped with shovels and scrubbed with bleach until the inside of my nose burned. Our neighbor came over to lend a hand, just one hand mind you, and he brought his teenage son. They even had the us over for a poop free dinner and the boys stayed for a movie as Job and I returned to our nightmare of a basement. The next day we used a machine that sucked all oxygen out of our house in order to remove the odd nursing home smell.
I surprisingly remained calm through the poopy debacle, and couldn’t help remembering my dad who once told me, after I wrecked a car, “sh*#@ happens!”