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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. |
| After much ponderous consideration, I've realized that snapshot definitions of myself would paint a strange and erratic sort of picture. I am the only person who has come to know Me across all the dimensions of time and space. The Me who can't figure out how to read a text message. The Me who grows petunias from seed. The Me who argues public policy with the Department of Public Welfare The Me who joins her friends for Friday night happy hour. The Me who takes care of a sick child. The Me who longs for a larger life. The Me who occasionally speaks of herself in the third person. I know the me that was, and the me I hope to be. I'm intimate with every incarnation and reinvention that could be me. And I'm the only one who is. Who I am depends on the role I've assumed for that moment. It sounds very inauthentic, but it works. I am oppositional to a fault, but I follow directions and play by the rules. I am cold and offish, but I'm nurturing and empathic. This is me: I am a mess of contradiction walking about with thesaurus. |
Prosperous Snow celebrating  's leading blog started off with a butterfly metaphor and went on to discuss how struggling is an essential piece of learning and growing.No arguments from me. I've been giving some thought lately to a particularly pernicious form of cracking open the chrysalis that plays out every day in our schools. It takes the form of "zero tolerance policies." Zero tolerance policies are usually well intentioned efforts to stamp out a particular problem. Drugs . . . Zero tolerance. Weapons . . . Zero tolerance. Violence . . . Zero tolerance. I believe that the most important goal of an education is to teach a child to learn and to think. Zero tolerance policies are the antithesis of thinking. The policies suggest that thinking is bad. It is subjective, and intrinsically unfair. Zero tolerance is fair. The teen who brings Midol to school because she is PMSing is every bit as culpable as the teen dealing heroine over his lunch hour. We want to teach our children that these two things are exactly the same because they both broke the rule. Except this isn't what I want my children to learn. I want them to struggle over the dilemma of the man who steals bread so his family can eat. I don't want them making a mental leap to zero tolerance. Zero tolerance is the same damn thing as intolerance. We should all be frightened that our schools are developing policies around intolerance! It is a slippery slope down from there. They had a recent incident at the local high school. A teenage girl and her boyfriend got into an argument. He ended it by punching her in the face in front of numerous witnesses. She hit him back. In the eyes of the school disciplinary code, in accordance with the zero tolerance policy on fighting, they were both equally guilty. Both students were suspended for fighting. What kind of a world are we preparing our children to live in? I'm stunned by this unconscionable policy. This could be my daughter at some point down the line. She has been involved in Martial Arts since the age of 7. She knows how and when to defend herself. She also knows how to consider her options and weigh the consequences, but I'm NOT going to tell her that she shouldn't stand up for herself in the face of a physical threat. The intent of these policies is to reduce violence, but I believe that is faulty, and short-sited thinking. I don't see violence going away. We live in a violent society, and zero tolerance is a bullshit way of sweeping it under the rug and pretending we have a handle on things. We don't, and the schools are now being patrolled by armed police officers! Mixed messages? Kids start working out issues with physical confrontation at a young age. And they learn a lot along the way. Don't provoke the big kid with the left hook. Stand up to the bully and he'll leave you alone. These are classic lessons that kids no longer have the opportunity to learn. Every time they start to get into it, the adults come running to punish or mediate them into submission. And kids don't learn a damn thing. And they need to learn these things while they are young because the stakes only go up. We live in a violent society. My husband was reading the book The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker, and the statistics are grim. I picked up the book and was confronted with the following statistic: "In (sad) fact, if a full jumbo jet crashed into a mountain killing everyone on board and that happened every month, month in and month out, the number of people killed still wouldn't equal the number of women murdered by their husbands and boyfriends each year." We live in a violent society. Our freedom was won, and has been preserved (though arguably) through military force. Given that, it rings hollow when we teach our children that any fighting, any violence, is intolerable. I do not claim to have the answers, but I suspect that if we search them out, they will be somewhere over in the reason, and logic section. That seems enough of a reason to promote the use of both, radical though that may seem! Let's let our children struggle with these concepts. There is much to be gained in struggling. Ask any butterfly. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** insert gratuitous picture of monarch |
| Well the bed project is complete. I am utterly convinced that the person who designed this ready to assemble master piece was, in fact, criminally insane. Who in the hell puts factory fitted plastic plugs into the screw holes for the headboard bracket! I looked at the instruction and there was a picture of the little plug above the hole separated by a dotted line and an up arrow, but there were no specifics on how to accomplish this feat Seriously, those little gray plugs took an average of 20 minutes each to remove. First, I had to work around the flanged rim of the plug, leveraging the plug up a fraction. Then, I pushed from below with a screwdriver. Finally, I took the itty bitty wrench and pressed it into service as an itty bitty lever. There were 4 of the cursed little plugs.  But now that I had the headboard bracket attached to the bed, I realized none of the holes lined up with the headboard. in fact, the holes on the headboard were a good four inches too low. I called the 1-800 customer service number and listened to hold music for 20 minutes, I was able to quickly explain my problem to Walter. After gathering all the information about model numbers, date, and location of purchase, Walter said "I think I know the problem ma'am. Are the legs of the headboard sitting on the floor?" No Walter, it's levitating. "Yes." "Alright, well I'm looking at a picture of the product and the legs of the headboard aren't suppose to rest on the floor. Looks like they might be about 4 - 6 inches up. Just lift the headboard until the holes line up and then screw it together." "Lift and screw? But that doesn't make any sense! The first step was to add the legs to the headboard . . . and I did that . . . and . . . who the hell designs legs that stop four inches above the floor?" "I don't know ma'am, but I'm looking at the picture and that is what it shows." "That's not what is shows in the directions!" "Do the holes line up once you properly position the headboard." So now I'm clutching the phone between my shoulder and ear, holding the headboard 4 inches off the floor and insert screws into the now aligned holes. "Yeah, they seem to line up," I report back to Walter. "Good. Is there anything else I can do for you tonight?" I swear I could hear him smiling. Bastard!  |
| Most of the employers I've worked for provide training in a flavor of the month type of style. When I was working at the hospital many years ago, they had a huge customer service training initiative going. I specifically remember the phone training. "When you answer the phone, remember to smile. The person on the other end can hear you smiling." Following the training, we would get a periodic test call to see if we were answering the phone properly. We usually did okay on the "how may I help you" part, but the smiling shit kept biting us in the ass. "I can't hear you smiling. Next time, remember to smile." "Can you hear me giving you the finger?" She probably could. Smiling takes so little effort, I don't know why we resist it so fiercely. There is a gal who sits in the cubicle just across from my office. She is quick to smile, and acknowledges me with a "good morning" every day when I walk into the office. I love her for that, but not everyone does. We can't please everyone. "Happiness is like peeing your pants. Everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth."  |
| My son's new bed came today and of course, it required some assembly. I spent way to much of the evening trying to get pre-drilled holes to line up when tightening bolts with the little bitty assembling wrench. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** I took a picture of the wrench in my hand to give a sense of scale. It is just a wee wrench and my fingers are feeling quite raw from using it. Not that they weren't already raw from a weekend of gardening. The whole assembling process was punctuated by my son popping into my room to ask "am I going to have to sleep on the floor tonight?" Well it didn't come to that. He is sleeping quite well in the bed, I just didn't get the headboard attached. I was going to, but then I realized that I would have to undo steps 4-6 to attach it, and that would involve using the itty bitty wrench to remove some of those bolts. The underbed storage drawers will also wait until tomorrow! |
| I'm feeling quite opinionated about parents and children at the moment, and not because it is Mother's day. I generally manage to refrain from stating unsolicited opinions about offspring, and my opinions are rarely solicited. Still, I'd like to say it once for the record: I don't care how many kids you have. Have as few or as many as you'd like. Make babies to your hearts delight. Really. Just do the world a favor and PARENT the ones you have! We have a new neighbor. I haven't actually seen the adults of the household, but according to the kids running around, their Grandma lives there. These children look to all be school aged children, but there is no sign of any of them attending school. They run about the neighborhood, from dawn to dusk, with no apparent adult intervention. Last week they were amusing themselves by building a fire in a hibachi grill out on Grandma's deck. They were burning scraps of paper and toying with lighter fluid. As the story goes, they managed to create a rather spectacular fireball. Two neighbors came running with fire extinguishers and managed to douse the flames before the decking caught fire. A third neighbor called 9-1-1 and Grandma got a visit from the police. The little darlings spent yesterday riding up and down the street on their bikes. No helmets, and no sense about cars or anything else. I was working in the garden and as the children rode past, they ran through their repertoire of profanity to see if they could elicit a reaction. Another favorite game is a strange version of 'chicken' in which they ride the bikes down hill at a good clip headed directly for our drainage ditch. Just before getting there, they jump off the bike and let it crash into the water. Again . . . no helmets . . . no sense . . . no supervision. I find myself being very careful about putting away all my garden implements. I shudder to think what they might do if they found my ax! ***** As for my own children, it has been a great Mother's day. Zack gave me a tea cup shaped card that he made at school. It had a tea bag attached to it. When I thanked him, he asked, "Did you see what was with the card?" "I saw it had a tea bag." "Yes!" he said, "And it is full of tea seeds that you can grow in your garden" I hate to think how disappointed he'll be when I can't get any tea plants to sprout. And then there is my sweet Kate. She'll turn 13 tomorrow. Yesterday I saw her poetry project laying in the living room and I started flipping through the poems she'd written. Towards the back, I saw a poem I knew, one that I had written. I had a quick flash of dread. Would she take something I had written and pass it off as her own? No. As part of the assignment she had to pick her favorite poem and then write a paragraph explaining why she liked it, and what it meant to her. I can't tell you what it meant that she picked a poem of mine. Reading the paragraph she'd written about the poem brought tears to my eyes. It was the best Mother's day gift she could have given me.  Thanks to everyone who sent Mother's day wishes and CNotes, and I hope you all had a wonderful day. |
| At least, I don't have the type of space dementia that comes from being adrift in the vastness of deep dark space, cut off from humanity and suddenly confronted with a profound sense of my own insignificance. No, I have my own special brand of space dementia. My space dementia could more accurately be described as lack-of-space dementia. It comes from being smunched into the confinement of tight, airless space. Submersed in the constant hum of humanity, and suddenly confronted with a profound sense of my own insignificance. I have a smallish house. It isn't teeny tiny, but most of the space is taken up by the kitchen and living room. The bedrooms are very small. 10X10 small. Prison cells aren't much smaller. The two primary symptoms of my space dementia seem to be: 1. Impaired judgement 2. A sense of invulnerability I try to fight the lack of judgment with the cold hard reality of a steel tape measure. But, the tape measure only really answers one question, "will it fit?" It doesn't get at the bigger questions like "will I bang my shin on it every time I walk into the room?" That's the judgment part. When that dementia kicks in, 24" of clearance suddenly seems more than adequate. The invulnerability part gets a little tricker to tease out because it is so twined up in that lack of judgment stuff. I feel a whole lot more capable when I am in the throws of dementia. I suddenly think it'll be, not only doable, but easy to mount cabinets and shelves to the walls. I think I'll be capable of performing basic acts of carpentry, like using a level and a stud finder. I am not. It was the dementia that inspires me to buy a truck load of ready-to-assemble furniture that will be delivered in about 14-18 days. That's six pieces of furniture, each with elaborate, wordless diagrams and two inch Allen wrenches. Each with approximately 138 screws that look a lot a like, but which differ by degrees of subtlety that are both crucial and painful. Yeah, and the space saving loft bed that I ordered will need to be customized because it is too tall for her room, but that shouldn't be a problem, right? I mean, how hard can it really be to cut down the legs? It's only tubular steel after all. Yeah, I can do this. I am invincible. And in space, no one will hear me scream. |
| The other day Tony mentioned an ex-girlfriend of his. That is exactly how he referred to her. "Remember my ex-girlfriend Joan the geologist?" "Of course I do, but you shouldn't still be calling her your ex-girlfriend." I know it is crazy, but it seems like their should be a statute of limitations on the ex-girlfriend thing. The term seems too solid, as though the relationship still exists on some level. "What should I call her?" "After twelve years of marriage? You can call her 'a girl I once dated.' I can live with that." "After how many years?" he asked with a sly smile. Shit! I forgot. Turns out we'll be married for 14 years as of July. How is that possible? Where did the years go? Fourteen years of marriage and we still play these silly games. The other day I came home from work late. Tony had beat me home and when I walked into the living room and noticed that the vacuum was out, and the children looked unhappy. I quickly surmised that he'd made them pick up the room so he could run the vacuum. I got my Diet Coke, and sat down to look through the mail and do my "unwinding from work" routine. Tony made a big show of coiling up the cord on the vacuum. Housework is not something either of us enjoy. I do it because it has to be done. Tony does it and expects me to fall and his feet in gratitude. Well, I'm tired of it, and I did not want to play his game. By that, what I really mean is that I had my own game in mind. So, while he waited for me to acknowledge his awesome display of vacuuming prowess, I ignored him, and waited to see how long he could hold out without calling attention to the dog-hair-free carpet. "Has the dog been walked?" I asked. "Katie took him out about an hour ago." "You've been home that long?" "Yeah." "Any thoughts about dinner?" The air was prickling with tension, and his eyes bored into mine with their silent demand, "PRAISE ME, DAMN IT!" It was like a Mexican Standoff without the gritty music. "No, I haven't thought about dinner yet. I've been busy." "I think there's chicken in the fridge. We could throw it on the grill." "I vacuumed the living room." He blurted the words out as though another second of delay might have triggered an explosion. "So you did, but how does the chicken sound?" YES!!!!  It's silly. I know. But, I clean all the time. Okay, not all the time, but I try. The point is that housework is a thankless job, and after twelve almost fourteen years of marriage, he should be warming up to this concept. |
| Well, we made it to the end of the week. Better yet, we are wrapping up compliance monitoring at work. It is going better than I would have expected. Now granted, at this point it looks like it will be a clean sweep and we are not going to achieve full compliance in any of the 23 categories. Our documentation is lacking. The cool thing though is that the folks doing the monitoring have been complimentary. There observation is that while the paperwork might be lacking, the commitment to serving folks is very apparent. I know that the Feds like paperwork, and we really need to be better about it, but at the end of the day, I think the paperwork matters a whole lot less than the caring and commitment that our staff shows on a daily basis. Without wanting to sound patronizing in anyway, I'm very proud of them. I work with some great people. I sat in on an interview yesterday for a new caseworker. We interviewed a man who seemed to have all the right answers, and came with a solid, and relevant work history. His training and experience seemed to make him an easy choice, and he interviewed very well. When asked what his strengths were, the first thing he said was that he is a very moral person, and that he thinks this is something uncommon these days. Today, we found out that his resume was bogus, and he'd falsified his past work experience. And people wonder why I'm so jaded. |
| Since I don't really have anything interesting to talk about today, I thought I'd take zwisis lead and blog about secrets. I remember being in my Junior year of high school. I was taking Senior Composition at the time, and we were doing small group editing. My group moved off to the side of the classroom, and I was sitting on the table that ran along the wall beneath the bulletin board. As I was sitting there, I was reading the student poetry tacked on the wall. I read something then that I've carried with me ever since. It said "Loneliness is a secret, and no one to share it with, and no one to keep it from." It struck me as profoundly sad. I'm lucky. I know this now because I have people that I keep stuff from. So here are some silly and trivial little secrets about me just for fun . . . 1. I really miss the light brown M&Ms 2. When I eat M&Ms I sort them by color. I eat the browns first, then red, then orange, then yellow, then green, then blue, because that is the proper and logical order based on the color wheel. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** 3. When I was a teen, my friend used to have a jar full of green M&Ms. I helped her save them in hopes that they really were an aphrodisiac. I didn't yet understand that teenage boys are perpetually aroused and have no need for aphrodisiacs. 4. At Valentine's Day, I saw that the grocery store was selling bags of green M&Ms, and I bought three of them. Those were the last three bags they had. 5. I am eating M&Ms as I type this, but I'm down to just the yellow, green and blue. I want to eat the green pile next so I will have just the yellow and the blue. Yellow and blue is my favorite color combination. I won't though, because that would be wrong. Here are some blues and yellows out in the garden . . . ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** The dandelions are blooming among the forget-me-nots. I pull them, but I almost hate to do it. They are so pretty and sunny against the sky blue flowers. |
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