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 |  Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket? |
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Fair Warning: I've upped the rating on this blog. It is now set at GC. |
Check out this link for a great gift idea for that "hard to shop for" person on your Christmas list.  http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/superpiipii.html I've been rather out of sorts, and that's been keeping me away from the site. The short days and cold temps tend to drag me down, and I've been swinging between bitchy and teary, and fighting to keep it all reined in. I know from past experience what happens when I let the negativity flow! I'm doing better now though things still seem to require more effort than they should. I guess that means I'm . . . what? . . . "in sorts?" |
| An open letter to Frenzied Parents who are stressed out about Christmas shopping . . . Dear Parent / Consumer: "Life is disappointment" Remember that line? I believe I'm quoting it correctly. "Life is disappointment, your Highness. Anyone says differently is trying to sell you something." It comes from the outstanding 80's movie "The Princess Bride," and was said to Buttercup by the Dread Pirate Roberts before he revealed himself to be her true love Wesley. "Life is disappointment." Ah . . . truer words . . . The quote came to mind today as I was reading the Sunday paper which I'd bought specifically - and as it turns out, ironically - for the store ads. As I was reading I saw this headline: "Meltdown Fallout: Some parents re-think toy buying." The article talks about a letter-writing initiative based out of Boston called "Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood." The group is writing toy companies and asking them to stop marketing their toys directly at children. Why? Because it is cruel. We are in the midst of a recession, and parents need to cut back on spending, but how can we do this when the advertisers are force feeding our children a steady diet of "must-have toys?" I've gotta be honest. I don't think the problem lies with the advertisers. Don't get me wrong, I find them loathsome, and contemptible, but I think we as parents need to share some responsibility. First of all, kids see commercials on TV, and it is up to us as parents to monitor how much TV the kids are watching. Second (and the reason, the first idea won't work) is that parents need to learn to say "no." In an extreme example, the article quotes an elementary school social worker in North Carolina as saying "I had one parent who said she'd prostitute herself to get what her child wants."  What is it so important about children getting their heart's desire? When did we lose sight of what really makes us happy. Stuff doesn't make us happy, so why do we think the formula will work on our children. It isn't about the toy. That much seems to be a point of almost universal agreement. This is about what toy represents. Fulfilling a child's Christmas dream makes up for all of our remembered disappointments. It means I am a good parent. It means my child will be happy and accepted by his or her peers. All of which is a bunch of crap! The opposite of disappointment is NOT joy, it is indulgence, and the child who is over-indulged will eventually become spoiled and unappreciative. We condemn the advertisers for teaching our children rampant consumerism, when we ourselves are willing to trade our last dollar, or barring that, ourselves, or the life of a fellow human being in the pursuit of more stuff. The article ended with a quote from Richard Gottlieb, who is a consultant to the toy industry. He says "Delivering disappointment goes with the job of parenting." I couldn't agree more. Parents, we need to say "No!" Shopping shouldn't be motivated by guilt or feelings of inadequacy. Give the kid a game that the two of you can play together, and take the time to play with them. Your child might just turn out to be a better adjusted person than you've become. Sincerely, Kay Now, time to thumb through those glossy ads.  |
| "I want your recipe for pumpkin roll." "Buy a can of Libby Pumpkin, peel the label off, and follow the directions printed on the back of the label." I tell people this all the time, but no one really believes me. "I want your recipe!" "That is my recipe." "But what do you do to make it taste so good." "I follow the recipe." I'm not much of a cook. I don't experiment, but I'm very good at following directions. I'll be heading down to my Mother-in-Laws for Thanksgiving dinner shortly. Apparently my Brother-in-law will be cooking the turkey. He's going to deep fry it. It's okay though, because he is a fireman.  I've been baking my pumpkin rolls, and scanning the Black Friday adds trying to determine how much madness I can tolerate in the spirit of bargain hunting. As for what I'm thankful for, the list is long and my time is short, but health, friends, and family are all on there somewhere. Some are just higher up the list than others.  Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! |
| We've been having server problems at work, and connectivity has been spotty. Mid-morning, the Boss-man sent his administrative assistant down the hall to see if I was having any better luck than he was. "Are you in the Client Information System?" "Yep, I've been in all morning. "I guess it's just the Boss-man then." "He can't get in?" "He's been trying, but he can't even get it up." Much hilarity ensued. Some days, it is almost worth the price of admission. In other news, coming off the heels of the William Penn, poster making, fire-setting project, my daughter is now pulling me into her latest research project. It is an oral history project, and she chose my father as the subject. It is bittersweet. It is wonderful to have her taking an interest in her Grandpa's life, but it is sad to realize her memories of him are faint and fading . . . especially since she is the oldest of the grandkids. Answering her questions, and remembering the stories has been fun. I might even jot some of them down while they are fresh in my mind. Since Christmas is now a month away, I've added all my Christmas music to the iPod. I'm not ready to listen to it yet, but I feel more prepared knowing that it is there. |
| Things I accomplished this weekend: 1. I started my Christmas shopping, and since the store was offering complimentary gift wrapping, the presents are already wrapped. 2. I caught a cold. So far I'm at the sneezy, itchy eyes, sore throat stage, but I'm looking forward to lots of snot and congestion. 3. Zack and I finished the William Penn project. I had to go out and replace the ruined paper. I bought manila so it would be pre-yellowed, and the boy-child and I had fun setting it on fire and then blowing it out. The charred edges give it an authentic look in spite of the crayoned letters. 4. I reopened my quiz contest. Now it is a HOLIDAY quiz contest.
5. I baked brownies. Mmmmmm brownies.  I accomplish a lot more during four-day-weekends. |
| I have big plans for the weekend. Turns out my son has a William Penn Project due on Tuesday. Zack is supposed to make a poster and it is supposed to look like an OLD poster. The directions suggest dying the paper with tea, and holding it over an open flame. Cool! I always like it when the school projects manage to incorporate elements of danger. Since Zack and I both lack depth perception (one of the joys of monocular vision) we're sure to have a great time with our paper singeing activities. You know it's too close when it bursts into flames! Much later . . . Turns out to that when you soak the paper in tea it disintegrates into soggy little yellow bits that are not suitable for burning. |
| Who needs reality television when this reality stuff is happening all around us, day and night? The stuff I see around me and read about in the local paper is way stranger than fiction. Fictional characters are constrained by things like motive and plausibility. Not so in reality. Not so at all. So here are some of my favorite bits and pieces of real life melodrama. 1. An 85 year old woman in Point Marion, PA is awakened when a 17 year old would-be burglar breaks into her home. The woman then confronts the burglar with her .22 caliber revolver. Unconfirmed sources quote her asking the young man "Who's the bitch now? " as she forced the young man to call 9-1-1. She still had the little bastard at gunpoint when police arrived. 2. A woman was arrested for driving under the influence when she stopped at a McDonald's drive thru window for snacks. Apparently the quick thinking cashier told the obviously wasted woman that there would be a wait for the fries. She asked the woman to pull in to a parking space and promised to bring the fries out when they were ready. Instead, she called the police who arrived on the scene and arrested the driver after she failed the field sobriety test. 3. Closer to home, and yet so much further away, we had an interesting chapter added on to an already weird tale. In a June blog entry, "Invalid Entry"  , I talked about the very unfortunate circumstances of a couple of clients we served.Well, we thought we'd heard the last of them once they'd moved back to San Diego, but we were mistaken. The good part is that they happily and successfully relocated. The caseworker packed up their meager belongings along with their collection of porn, and shipped them off to San Diego. Yep, we used tax payer money to ship boxes of porn cross-country. Apparently we also used tax payer money to INSURE the porn. Everyone knows that when you ship porn, you have to insure it, right? Shenanigans ensued, and the shipment arrived in San Diego minus one very important box. And all the tracking numbers in the world could not turn up the missing box-o'-porn. Theft was suspected and the whole thing turned into a police investigation. Suddenly, we had to explain to the police in San Diego why a county social service agency in PA was dabbling in interstate porn shipments. Topping it off, since we had purchased the insurance, they wanted to pay us the claim for the porn insurance.  . . . We begged them to turn the funds over to the couple. We really didn't want to explain the porn windfall to our CFO. Although the couple never recovered the porn, they did get the insurance money, and can start a new collection to go along with their new lives. So there ya go. Life is weird. For those who enjoyed the Place the States geography challenge, I wanted to point out that they have one for Europe also. I only got a 78% on the first try. There are a lot of little tiny nations in Europe! Give it a try . . . http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Europe/Eur_G2_1280_800.html |
| Yesterday was parent/teacher conference day at my son's school. I scheduled the conferences so that my son's primary teacher, his classroom aide, and his learning support teacher would all be available. It was the most amazing conference I've ever been a part of. My son has had a handful of educators in his life who really seem to grasp what he needs, and this lady is right on target. She gets it! I'll try not to gush on and on about all the things that are working this year, but the end result is that Zack is calm, happy and productive. As a result, he is able to make some real academic strides. He still has trouble with reading assignments because they require him to "connect" with the characters in a way that he is not able to, but the teacher has strategies for working with that, and it seems to be working. And then there is math! Now, math has always been an area of strength for Zack. Maybe it is the order and precision of numbers, but whatever the case, math comes easy for him. Even as a toddler struggling with language, he was able to identify, name and sequence numbers. By the time he was 18 months old, he could count objects up to 10. He would take all the videos out of there boxes and line the tapes up end for end in columns of 10 on the living room floor. It was one of those "typically autistic" behaviors that caused me enough concern that I forgot to marvel at the achievements of his amazing mind. Well, now he is a 4th grader, and according to his teacher, his beginning of the year assessments showed he had already mastered advanced fourth grade math. Amazingly, math is the one subject area in which Zack is pulled out of the regular classroom. The curriculum the school uses in general education is based on "Investigations." It is one of those "new math" things where instead of teaching the kids math skill, they provide activities to help them "discover" math concepts. It was decided WAY back in first grade that a curriculum like that would be detrimental to Zack, who needs things to be concrete and linear. So, he was pulled into learning support to work on an alternative curriculum. He used to receive small group instruction, but he was moving too fast for the other kids. At this point, he is receiving one on one math instruction, and the learning support teacher is allowing Zack to move at his own pace. The learning support teacher is scrambling to find out how high the current curriculum goes because Zack is just zipping along. I'm being a boastful Mom, and I know it, but I can't help myself. All of the stress and anxiety that have gone into the whole educational process are almost worthwhile when I see him where he is right now. Well . . . maybe not right now . . . because right now he's plopped down in front of the television watching Cartoon Network. |
| . . . I believe that booze might be the answer. First, let us take a look at the problem. Consumers are spending less money creating a short-fall in sales tax, and corporate tax revenues. Without the tax revenue, the state does not have the funds to meet the current expenses. In the first quarter of the fiscal year (which started in July) PA racked up a $250,000,000 deficit. Even more frightening . . . in the fourth month alone, we dropped another $250,000,000 in the hole. That's a 500,000,000 deficit, and given the state of the economy, that is expected to increase to 2 Billion before the year is through. Since Pennsylvania can not carry debt, the papers are saying that there are only two painfully familiar options left the the Rendell Administration: 1. Raise taxes 2. Cut spending Well the spending cuts are well underway, and they've cut large chunks out of programs that are intended to shore up Pennsylvania's most vulnerable residents. A tax increase on top of these cuts would spell doom for many, so I propose an alternative. I propose that the state of Pennsylvania privatize the State-run liquor stores, AND rewrite the the rules for the Liquor Control Board to allow grocery stores to sell wine and beer. Yep, The Pennsylvania state government is in the business of selling wine and liquor. All liquor store clerks are state employees with state employee benefits, and state employee pension plans. Not that the state employees benefits are all that wonderful at this point. Far better to be a county employee. What about beer? Currently you can only buy beer in PA by going to a licensed beer distributor and purchasing by the case, or you can go to a bar or restaurant to purchase beer by the six pack. A store can not sell beer unless they have a separate entrance, and separate check-out for the sale of beer. They must also provide seating for something like 20-40 people to allow the beer to be consumed on site. That last part always amazed me. Rather than encouraging people to take their beer home and drink it, we need to assure they have the option of first drinking it, and then driving home. A couple of local grocery stores have started to get around the regulations by adding little side shops with the requisite seating areas so they may sell beer. The Liquor Control Board, as it currently functions in Pennsylvania, is archaic and pointless. It also happens to be a huge source of potential revenue. I say we sell off the stores and use the money to back-fill revenue needed to meet our financial commitments. Those commitments would INCLUDE restoring all the money that was cut out of the Governors budget for the funding of Drug and Alcohol treatment and counseling. Anything above and beyond should then be invested in infrastructure projects that have the most potential to stimulate economic growth and development and ultimately create jobs. Now, if someone would just listen to me. "To Alcohol! The cause of, and solution to all of our problems." ~Homer Simpson |
| Friday morning, I slipped going down the basement stairs. Luckily, I caught my balance because I was still holding on to the door handle. Unfortunately, the hand holding the handle was reaching back. It wrenched up my neck and shoulder, and I'm just now getting to where I can tolerate typing on the computer again. NaNo is over for me. I've been so ambivalent about the project that it's probably just as well. I am becoming increasingly aware that my blog is approaching its ultimate conclusion. A couple months back, I thought I would be able to end it with the year and start a new blog with the new year. Then I got busy. Then I had nothing to say for a bit. Now, there aren't enough days left in the year for that to even be possible. Still, I wanted to end this blog on a date of some significance. Having titled it "Marking Time," it seems only right that it should conclude with an event. A BANG even. Back when I was approaching the old 500 entry limit, I thought maybe It'd be a personal turning point, but now I'm setting my sites on something bigger than my own uneventful life. I'm going to try to end this blog with the Bush Administration, and start the new blog with the new President. Why not? The problem that I'm having at this moment though, is that I'm feeling a bit tapped out, and I'm not sure what the heck I'm going to write about for another 55 entries. Help me out folks! What do you want to read about? Are there burning questions I've left unanswered? Are you eager to hear my opinions on matters of . . . of . . . yeah, I didn't think so. Maybe something interesting will happen. "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." -Dorothy Parker |
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