White Coral Bells

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

2012-01-31T23:52:00.002-05:00

No post last Friday. Last week went all roller-coaster on me. I felt good at the beginning of it and did actually make some progress on both the laundry and the dishes, cleaned the litterboxes two days in a row (!) and managed to be at work on time and without forgetting anything. I even got some work done on the rag rug, albeit very little. I didn't manage to get 'round to plastering, but I was feelin' proud... and then my motivation left entirely and I started waking up congested and thought I was getting sick again! Thankfully thus far it seems to be just a reaction to the weather (which has also been roller-coaster-y).

Rick's without hours for a while because his company's client severed the contract without warning, which is really really annoying and a little disheartening. We were just starting to get ahead and now we're going to have to work to keep afloat again. We can't live on just my income! So that's now a worry, and my focus on the house and garden is out the window. He won't be out for long, I hope!

On the other hand, I did manage to work out a settlement payment on a longstanding overdue debt, which means there's one less credit card in my portfolio and one more "PAID IN FULL" being sent to the credit reporting agencies. I'm excited about this and grateful for my sister whose generosity is matched by her intelligence and beauty (ok, I'm sucking up a little, but she did send me the last bit I needed to pay the debt before the settlement offer expired, and I can't say "thank you" enough!

So anyway, after all the progress I made at the beginning of last week, by Sunday nothing was done again and I felt awful about it. I've been avoiding posting for two days now so that I can catch up again. I'm still not really caught up, but at least there's a load of laundry in the dryer and I managed to clear one side of the sink (the other side and the counter are still piled with cooking utensils and cutting boards and bowls, oh dear...).

Today was beautifully mild and very warm, but the wind is roaring out there tonight, and I think we're due for some more rain/snow. I can't wait for spring!

Forward-Thinking Friday #2: One Small Step...

2012-01-14T20:07:00.001-05:00

Hush, I know it's Saturday. I was miserably sick with a sinus infection on Thursday and Friday (I'm still sick, but - to quote the infamous Monty Python skit - I'm not dead yet! Actually, I'm getting better!)

Quick recap from last week: I've managed to keep a pretty good attitude despite being miserable due to this awful infection, which is nowhere near gone yet - I'm just grateful that I can breathe again! Picking out paint colors and working on a garden plan really helped this week, as did nabbing some sparkly pins from the clearance rack at work that will make my favorite black shawl a little more colorful! Getting things done is a good antidote for bad moods, and having color around the house is nice when it's grey outside. I'm looking forward to warmer weather, so we can open the windows and paint!

The garden planning is also working toward big goal #1: Enlarge the Garden!. I'm planning a second raised bed to match the first, and figuring out what I'll need for trellis and compost to put the pea bed up front this year. One step at a time, the front lawn is getting more productive and less ugly!

So here's the FTF for the upcoming week: Smaller goals to be finished by next Friday (hopefully!). I have Monday and Thursday off work plus a shorter shift on Sunday, so I'll have lots of time to get things done!

I've decided on two goals:
1. Fixing up the downstairs,
and
2. Keeping up on the chores! (Which is really a key component of getting anything else done around here, although it wasn't on the big list).

I'm going to keep up on the dishes, laundry, AND litterboxes this week (I can often manage to get one or two done every day, but not all three). This is really important, since not only am I trying to feel better about my homemaking skills but I'm really eager to get some actual WORK done on this house, and it'll be so much easier if we're not shuffling dishes around!

For the 'fixing up the downstairs' bit, I'm going to do two things. One is to continue work on a braided rag rug that I started the summer we moved in. The other is to get out the patching compound and patch some of the uneven and broken spots in the entry and living room walls. Doesn't that sound easy? It sounds easy to me. I'm so excited to get started!

I'm off to do the dishes - any suggestions for crops I should add to the garden this year? Leave 'em in the comments!

Forward-Thinking Friday #1: To Infinity, and Beyond!

2012-01-06T18:24:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year!

I figure it's about time this blog had some alliterative titling going for it. Lots of other bloggers I know do Wifey Wednesdays and Thankful/Thoughtful Thursdays and I'm sure someone somewhere does Mournful Mondays! Since this blog is mostly about my hopes and dreams of homesteading (and occasionally the progress I make in that area), I figured Forward-Thinking Fridays would be a good place to set out goals both large and small, and look to what's coming instead of reflecting on the past. I reflect way too much on what's been done and not enough on what needs doing!

(Which reminds me, I need to wash the dishes!)

Anyway, it's January and the weather's milder than January in Pittsburgh has a right to be. It's bringing to mind sweet spring breezes and planting layouts even though I know we're going to have a real nasty February ahead of us, and probably March too! Still, gardening is on my mind, and painting, and all the million and one warm-weather tasks that I'd love to get done this year (and probably won't because let's be honest - it's way more fun to plan them than to finish them all!). Therefore this first FF is going to be a nice tidy list of goals for the year. I didn't do New Years' resolutions, but I can do goals!

Goals for Dawn's Homestead:
1. Enlarge the garden!
Pretty self-explanatory, really. Last year's garden did ok, but I want bigger and better this year! And I need to find somewhere to put the peas, because the kitchen garden isn't cutting it. I think it'd work better as a pond, with all the water it collects anyway! (Shhh... don't encourage that idea!)

2. Finish fixing up the downstairs!
This is a HUGE multi-part project and isn't realistically going to be "done" until we can afford to rip out the entire kitchen and re-finish it, but I'd at least like to get the living room, entry, and dining room cleaned up, patched up, sanded, primed, painted, and trimmed out, and if not refinish the floors then have a solid plan of action for them and a budget so we can save up to do it next year.

3. Learn to preserve my harvest!
I have some of the knowhow already, but I've never bothered with it before because we never grew enough to be worth the trouble. This year I'm not only planning to grow more, I'm planning ahead for preserving!

4. Find a volunteer position (or better yet, a job) in community planning/development/urban ag.
There are a few nonprofits in the city doing some really great things, and I want to get in with them. I've been having a tough time with my current retail job and the ugly side of humanity it exposes (shopping never was my favorite activity, unless it was for garden supplies!), and the argument to go back to school and get a Master's degree is losing interest. It's time to quit -thinking- about finding a job and either find one, or make one. (Making my own path in life scares the bejeezus out of me, quite frankly, but I'm NOT happy where I am, and I figure it's about time I quit waiting for happiness!)

5. Be "happier" in general.
This is probably the hardest goal of all. I don't need to be cheerful 24/7 but I'm prone to mild depressive episodes and self-loathing which not only keep me from working on the things that are important to me, they make me feel like that work isn't worth doing. That's awful! So my goal for the year is to spend more time reflecting on the good things about myself (and how much I've done!) rather than imperfections and unfinished projects. Because I AM good, and I AM productive, and I AM a halfway decent gardener and homemaker, and I AM going to get BETTER!

I'm going to keep re-visiting these goals on Fridays (assuming I remember, because blogging isn't one of my main goals this year!). Next week I'll try to break down some of the bigger goals into smaller goals! This year is going to be a good one for the homestead. I can feel it!

Are you ready for the new year? Let me hear some of your resolutions/goals in the comments!

Parenting for Dummies

2011-12-12T11:39:00.002-05:00

This post was inspired by one of the ladies at work. We'll call her Joan, because I forget her real name anyway (Sorry, Joan!). Thankfully she only works with us during certain events, because if I had to be near her every day I think I'd quit in disgust.

Joan has a four-year-old boy. She and her husband love this kid, but they let him get away with being a brat because "everything he does is funny and he knows it". She laughs off his horrifying stories of misbehavior and seems to see no harm in letting him do as he pleases. I hate Joan's parenting. Even though I'm not a parent, I've worked with enough families to know where this is headed, and it's not going to be something Joan (or the rest of us) wants to deal with. At four it's cute, but his manipulative, spoiled-brat attitudes are not going to magically disappear. And at twenty, it's not cute at all.

When Joan started telling us stories of the hilariously bad things her son has done just in the last few weeks, I asked about time-out. She ignored the question, but she said something about how she puts her foot down while her husband is so nice all the time... so the kid sucks up to daddy (but still misbehaves) and is only horrible for her. The last punishment she inflicted was taking away a Christmas present every time he misbehaves. He's down to 0 presents, and at four he's probably still incapable of connecting cause (bad behavior) with the far-distant effect of getting no presents (to a four year old's mind, ten minutes is distant. Christmas is forever from now). I am also willing to bet she won't follow through and he'll have ALL the presents he wanted under the tree, despite the fact that his comment to her upon losing his last present was "How's Santa gonna fit his fat ass down the chimney anyway?".

This kid has zero respect for authority already and he isn't even pre-school age yet! AND he's been making racist remarks (he doesn't like black people because their skin is 'dirty', and his mother's "too embarrassed" to say anything to him about it!). I made a comment to her in the line of "he must be learning it from somewhere"... which I think made her even MORE uncomfortable. (Good! I want her to feel inadequate as a parent, so she might be open to learning!).

So thanks for preparing your son for the real world, Joan! I hope his teachers are capable of setting boundaries or they're never going to control him, and you'll probably wonder why...

There's actually a Parenting for Dummies... wonder if I should get it for her for Christmas?

2011-11-20T00:15:00.001-05:00

You know you've gotten into serious "I'm a crazy homesteader" territory when you find yourself standing at the stove after an eight hour day at work, happily stirring a new icing recipe on the stove while enjoying the smells of a fresh homemade pizza in the oven and a watching a nice white cake in the toaster oven.

...ok, I may have over-cooked the cake a teensy bit, but the frosting turned out pretty damn good for a first try! (The pizza was amazing as always, but that's a given because Rick did the toppings, and I did the crust, and we are an awesome pizza-making machine!)

Next up, making a batch of cupcakes so I can use the rest of the frosting, and putting together some good recipe-in-a-jar ideas for Christmas gifts! :) It's going to be a mostly homemade Christmas this year.

Here's the frosting recipe, if you're curious: German Chocolate Cake Frosting II. Despite the title, it is not in fact chocolate at all. It is however delicious and coconut-y, which is Rick's favorite. ;)

A Reflection on The True Meaning of Christmas (Shopping)

2011-09-24T11:13:00.000-04:00

Oh wow, Blogger's new layout is CLEAN!

K, now that I've said that, here's the update for which you've been waiting breathlessly: I got a promotion!

...it's more like a "promotion". My hours are cut but my commission goes up by a whole fat 1%. I'm off the 'flex team' and on as a part-time permanent position in Men's Fragrances. I have a home department! I don't have to worry about picking up hours... mostly because I'm going to be scheduled a paltry 25-28 hours a week (if that!). Hopefully though, it'll pick up a little around Xmas.

And here's some reflection:

For retailers, the next 3.5 months (October through December) are expected to be the busiest of the year. Christmas housewares are already on display; ornaments are being set out and the holiday fragrance gift sets are coming in. We get more every day. And people are already buying them, even if they cost more than they want to spend, because it's a "gift set", and we tell them it's a "good deal". Funny how people will buy something bigger to save a little bit more.

Funny how people will buy a lot of things, really. I've heard hundreds of shoppers declining to use credit cards and paying in cash instead: "I'm dangerous with a credit card". "If I shop with a card, my accountant yells at me". "I closed all my cards". Our credit crisis clearly hit home. The on-again-off-again (if you listened to the 'experts' anyway) recession lowered consumer spending except in the upper-middle-class and upper-class markets. And yet, we all shop! I still go shopping, and I'm on a budget! I have more clothes to wear to work than one person really needs but I'm always looking for another cute, warm sweater - especially if it's on sale!

Why do we buy? Giving gifts is a social contract thing, yadda yadda... but why do we feel compelled to go out and spend thousands of dollars? (and I've SEEN the evidence of that spending. Our store's holiday kickback program nets you 10% back on purchases, and after the holidays, people bring in their gift cards with that 10%, and the gift card totals are $300-$400. Which means they spent $3-4,000 in just our store last retail season.)

As much as I appreciate shoppers (since I get commission on what they buy!) I always have to stop and wonder how many people really need what we're selling. Sure, consumer spending drives the economy, and we've all been told that the economy needs to be healthy (lots of spending!) to make us all healthier and happier. What if that's not true? What if cutting our spending and letting capitalism take a hit is actually better for us? Nothing can grow forever. Even the oldest living things on earth (either single plants or plant colonies, depending who you're asking) have experienced die-offs. Ecosystems sometimes require a forest fire or flood to restore balance. Humans have even taken to doing controlled burns in areas where we can't risk the natural wildfire cycle (eg in areas where residential properties have taken over what used to be wildfire zones). So why is a controlled burn in our man-made systems so difficult?

I think it's because even though we are urged to do it in other parts of our lives (tossing old stuff, "de-cluttering" our address books, our desks, and our calendars, letting go of old emotional hang-ups) to make room for growth, no one has ever told us to let go of our consumerism. "Simplify your life!" shouts a guru. "Buy my book!". "De-stress! De-clutter your mind and open yourself to happiness!" advertises a domestic diva. "Pick up my dvd series!".

It's easy to toss out half your closet. There's plenty more clothing available when you want it. It's a lot harder to toss out your spending habits, especially when you "need" the things you buy - toiletries and brand-name foods, gifts for friends and family, clothing for work. We all justify purchases that way. We "need" it. We can't make it at home - we don't have the skills to support us that way.

That's why I'm a proponent of learning basic skills like cooking and sewing - the stuff our great-grandmothers learned as kids because that's what their parents thought an adult should know. Those skills make good sense. I can cut my spending (even if the economists in Washington, D.C. tell me I shouldn't) by making my own frozen stir-fry mix with fresh garden veggies and rice purchased in bulk instead of buying a pre-made single-serving meal at the grocery store. I can make my own gifts for friends, rather than buying them useless trinkets. And I can bake a cake when I get a craving, and know exactly what goes into it. I think we'd all be healthier and happier with more personal growth rather than more economic growth, and I think we know it, inside, but we aren't sure how to start.

Well, here's my suggestion: Learn a skill you've always wanted to learn, and let your interests guide you into a healthier lifestyle. :) I'm working on my kitchen skills, especially bread-making. What about you?

Are you a Christian?

2011-09-13T13:10:00.002-04:00

My friend Nicole, who blogs at A Reader's Rumination, once again linked me to a meditation on Boundless that reminded me of something I wanted to share.

Disclaimer: While I'm hardly the best example of living a Christ-filled life, I do try to be a good person, and I do think that behavior is the best witness of all if you want to share Christ (or anything else) with someone. Being at peace will draw others who naturally want to know how you manage it. I find my strength in my husband and my friends more than in God directly, but I appreciate His work in others' lives and I wanted to share how my own experience with finding joy fed into someone else's interpretation of me (and made me an inadvertent witness to the gospel):

I had a horrible headache the other day. My sinus headaches come and go, and they're not so much painful as disorienting, making it harder to focus and making my entire head feel stuffy. But I was at work, and work is customer service - focusing on someone else's needs, doing what I can to make them happy. I tried my best to get through the day with a smile for my own sake as well as everyone else's.

It surprised me that I managed it at all, and I was worried that I was coming across as fake, too cheerful or too forced at times because it was all I could do to keep smiling if I stopped to think about my headache. I found two things: first, if I focused on the customer and not on the pounding in my head, the pain wasn't so bad. Second, if I stopped complaining and started focusing on little joys, like making a good connection with someone, finding the perfect shade of lipstick for her to wear at a wedding or successfully teaching a new makeup technique, I didn't seem fake at all. Even if my smile felt forced to me, the women I waited on saw someone genuinely focused on their needs. They smiled more, too. They complimented my customer service. It didn't take away the pain of the headache but it did reinforce that my attitude was more important than my physical presence. Anyone could have helped them pick a lipstick, but not everyone could have done it with a good attitude.

The last compliment I got was from a profusely thankful woman who told me that I was not only a good salesperson but clearly a good person overall, and as I was closing the sale she leaned over the counter and asked conspiratorially: "Are you a Christian?". She took me by surprise. I didn't think I gave off a Christian vibe, with my bright purple nail polish and complete lack of religious jewelry... but I guess it was my attitude that she found Christian-like.

I'm not sure if I lied when I said "yes". I don't read the Bible much and I don't fear God (I do love our creator, whether he/she/it is the ideal of a Christian god or not). I don't attend a Christian church (or any church at all). I have friends who do those things, which might make me a Christian by association if nothing else. But I think in the larger sense of the word - a "follower of Christ", not someone who attends a certain church or reads a certain book - that I am in fact Christian. I try to live by a moral code which includes many of Christ's teachings - love and kindness toward others, appreciation of the many good things I am given, and reflection on the nature of God and the lessons of the Bible. I appreciate Christ's story for what it tells us about Him and about ourselves. And I'm trying to live up to His example not because I'm told to but because it's a good example for everyone, Christian or not. I don't think Christ complained much, and He kept working even if people didn't always show appreciation for His work.

Compliments are rare in the service industries and it's easy to get bitter and gripe and moan about your headache, the poor pay, the long hours on your feet and the seemingly distant attitudes of management. Co-workers often feed into the negativity, supporting complaints with listening ears and complaints of their own. I know a few who are so negative that you can almost see the cloud they've hung over their heads like a warning sign: There's no sunshine in my life! Stay away!. Most of them claim to be Christians. Few of them realize what their poor attitude says about their commitment to Christ. I think my customer was one of the few who understood what an attitude can say.

I probably wouldn't have lost the sale if I had said "No." She might have been surprised, but I don't think it would have caused an uproar. It isn't very Christ-like to lie, even when you're unsure of the answer. I could have said "I'm not sure." I don't think I would have offended her. I don't know why I said "yes". Maybe to feel like I belonged to her group of "good people", maybe because sharing religious beliefs is not something I expected to be doing between sales on a very busy day. It was easier to say yes than explain my complicated stance on religion and religious labels.

Looking back, I think that if she takes away my behavior as a good example of what Christian behavior should be, it won't have done any harm. After all, aren't we supposed to find joy in life? Aren't we supposed to celebrate our being and the little miracles and accomplishments of each day? If Christians are supposed to follow Christ's example, we need to be doing a lot more loving and a lot less declaring of war. Christ never led nor fought in a holy war even against the least of his enemies. Even the money-lenders and vendors in the temple were not hated, only admonished and the animals driven out*. He did not complain about them later to his friends. He did not let his suffering get in the way of his love, his joy, his peace. Neither should we.

Question of the day: Are you a Christian? Or are you Christ-like?

*Here's a good reference with a discussion of the Cleansing of the Temple and its symbolic language, which indicates less violence than readers might originally see in the story: Christian Think Tank

On "Self-sufficiency" and trade skills

2011-08-18T13:18:00.002-04:00

Looking for second jobs today (I want to get my foot in the door with the nonprofit world and entry level's usually part time, so I'm not quitting my day job), I found one that seemed promising. It's a counselor position at a private school for troubled teens. Their website boasts of their success stories, their ability to instill work ethic and self-confidence in their students, and the fact that they treat these "problem kids" as real gentlemen and ladies. It's a tempting environment for kids who otherwise would be left 2-3 grades behind and struggling with the public school system. I thought to myself: Wow, this place looks good! I'd love to be a part of it!

And then I looked a little closer at what they do, which includes boosting confidence and offering job training through the following courses:

Carpentry
Cosmetology
Custodial Maintenance
Electrical Wiring
Food Service
Optical Lab Training
Screen-Printing
Structural Repair (Painting, Dry-Walling, Flooring, etc.)
Woodworking

They say this about the programs:
"This component of our students’ rehabilitation teaches them basic trade skills, instills a solid and positive work ethic, and paves the way to a means of self-sufficiency and independence."

And I realized: something bothers me about the school's emphasis on trade skills. They are not going to provide self-sufficiency and independence. Anyone who had done a trade-skills kind of job will vouch for the utter lack of self-sufficiency one feels when one is living paycheck-to-paycheck because the minimum wage doesn't cover such necessities as real food and gas for the broken-down car that's all you can afford to drive.

We don't have a good place for people with hands-on skills any more. Carpentry is seasonal, not a steady job in most places. Food service is minimum-wage, often part time work. Don't get me started on cosmetology. They are great things to tackle as hobbies or just to be "well-rounded". They are good for teaching self-confidence and a positive attitude and instilling work ethic in kids. They are not good careers. They are useful skills and I would mourn a society without them but they do not pay. There are exceptions to this rule, of course. We all know someone who built up a trade-based business through hard work and is putting his kids through college with said hard work... but those people are fewer and farther between these days, and there's certainly no guarantee of success.

This academy is a feel-good place but do kids really get the tools they need to be successful in the ways that our nation currently defines success? If we want our kids to succeed, shouldn't we be teaching them how to manage on Wall Street or campaign for a political position? Health care would be a more impressive field for student achievement; health care jobs are draining and entry level positions have a high turnover rate, but there's never a shortage of work especially as our baby boomers age. And most nurses can afford to eat even if they don't have the time. Teaching, too, could use some more accolades. Teachers may struggle with loan repayment but they rarely starve, at least not as badly as food service workers!

Our economy is no longer designed to support blue-collar workers. They aren't getting paid what they used to; the job security that our grandfathers had at the mill or the factory isn't there. We are a society of intellectuals now. We produce services rather than goods, and if we want to prepare our young kids for the future we need to train them to take advantage of any opportunity with a general skill set that includes the ability to self-teach and make good decisions rather than weighing them down with under-appreciated trade skills. As much as it pains me to admit that good physical labor isn't appreciated any more... it's true. So why are "troubled" youth still engaged in that kind of training, unless it's designed to keep them in the same socioeconomic slot? They deserve better.

It would be different if they were also learning other self-sufficiency skills: picking up information on gardening and preserving food as well as prepping it in a commercial kitchen, learning to budget and organize, maybe even sewing. Being able to cook for yourself, to grow part of your own meals and fix a fallen hemline in your only pair of work pants and budget your minimum wage income so that you manage to save a little bit toward a better life... that's real self-sufficiency. Knowing how to build a bookcase is not enough on its own.

I guess I'm going to keep looking for jobs... and be thankful I have skills that allow me to seek out a wide variety of career options.

Surprises

2011-08-04T09:17:00.000-04:00

When I got up this morning, I was grumpy. I was itchy (note to self: update blog on the flea wars), I was over-tired (poor sleep patterns lately), and I did NOT want to go to work. I dragged myself out of bed and grumbled my way to the shower, where I stood under the hot water and hoped that it would somehow magically turn me into steam or provide time for someone to accidentally drive a vehicle into the store or set off a plague of locusts, so I could have a viable reason for missing work.

Hot water always makes me feel a little better, so I grouched a little quieter on the way down the stairs to get breakfast... got distracted by the siren-song of my computer and went to turn it on when I realized there was a new book sitting in my chair. A gardening book. Where did it come from? Who cared? Books are a good surprise!

So I read a few pages, reveling in the break from routine, and then went to the kitchen... where a tarnished pair of gold-colored metal goblets was sitting on the counter, with little bits of masking tape stuck to them. '13-' read the tape strips, in blue sharpie, and I thought "AHA! A YARD SALE!". ...when did Rick go to a yard sale?

And then it hit me. Last night, in conversation before I went to bed, he asked casually if he could put bull horns on the jeep. I thought he'd seen a stupid picture somewhere and gotten the idea, told him 'no' and went to sleep. This morning after finding the goblets I got suspicious. Sure enough, on the writing desk in the entry was a huge mounted set of horns, the kind with the curved tips that you see on Spanish fighting bulls and Texas Longhorns fans. They too had a yard-sale masking tape sticker.

I think I started grinning about the time I saw them on the table. Even in a bad mood a mounted set of bull horns is ridiculous, and it's just like Rick to come home and leave them there for me to find, saying nothing about it. He was already in bed when I got out of the shower, so I hauled them up the stairs (they're surprisingly light) and demanded through giggles to know where he found a yard sale. I didn't get a straight answer, but he giggled too, and then we both kind of fell over laughing when the dog came up wide-eyed, sniffed one of the horns, and licked it veeeery carefully. You could just see her confusion.

The horns are currently residing on the top of my wardrobe, where they look rather out of place among the blankets and stuffed animals. The dog has already forgotten the horns (or is biding her time) and has moved on to the next order of business: sleeping in funny positions. I still don't really want to go to work but at least I feel a lot less grumpy.

Re: Tantrums in Public

2011-06-22T21:37:00.000-04:00

Any time a child has a tantrum in public I am reminded of this: An Open Letter to Anyone Who Has Experienced My Son's Meltdowns (McSweenys.net). It rings true. Anyone who has lived with a child who has autism knows what meltdowns can be like and knows that you're lucky if you know what causes them, let alone how to keep them from happening in the middle of the store.

Now, I'm not one to outright go after a parent in public for their child's behavior issues but I admit at times I have glared at the parent/child in question and wondered why the child wasn't kept under control. What helps is that I remember how I would want to be judged, and how I -was- judged when I'd go into a store with an autistic child and her parent in tow. We went out because it was good for building coping skills, social skills, and awareness of the world. A child who never leaves home never learns to look before crossing the street. But because she didn't -look- like there was something wrong with her, her behaviors must have seemed pretty odd to all the "normal" shoppers in the store.

Remember: What we see, the person's behavior at any point in time, is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a giant submerged part full of history, education, medical diagnoses and situational cues that are all too easy to overlook. We assess the person separate from his environment: "He jumped in the pool with his clothes on! What a weirdo!" Yet if we are judged we're quick to point to situational reasons for our behavior: "It was hot, so I jumped in the pool with my clothes on!"

Assignment for the week: Next time someone cuts you off in traffic, or ignores her screaming toddler at the grocery checkout, or doesn't respond to your polite "hello" when passing on the sidewalk... imagine what reasons YOU would have for doing those things, and what reasons they might have (He's late for his friend's wedding, she just told the kid 'no candy' for the fourth time, he's worrying about keeping his job). If you take the time to think about the WHY of behavior, you'll be less stressed, less angry/confused by someone else's behavior, and less prone to giving stupid advice to strangers. I think we could all use less stupid advice, don't you?

Perspective

2011-05-04T19:34:00.000-04:00

Have you ever been working on something big, working for a long time, working really hard... and maybe there was a little detail you couldn't get right, or some part of the whole that took longer to finish, and you stop finally to take a breath or get a drink or take a day off and you realize at that moment that you had lost sight of what you were working toward? That the whole world had narrowed down to one little problem, one little bit of work that you had to do, and that everything else was lost in the effort to finish that little bit?

How do you move toward completion if that little bit's still not done? How do you regain perspective?

I have been putting a lot of effort into one part of my life, and I'm failing. And I can not live with failure, but I don't know how to succeed or even how to let it go and work on something else for a while. Suggestions?

Garden pictures!

2011-04-20T20:16:00.001-04:00

It's my day off this week, so naturally I wasted a lot of time relaxing - sleeping in, lounging in front of my computer, on the couch with a book, and now back to the computer again. I did get a few things done, however!

In the past week I've pretty well finalized my garden plans for the summer, purchased and planted a lavender seedling and a peppermint seedling (I am ashamed that as a gardener I can NOT get those two plants to grow from seed), and finally got those pictures onto Rick's laptop. As I type this, they're being uploaded to Gmail, so I can email them to myself and show off my awesome accomplishments!

I also planted strawberries today. This is the third or fourth time I've tried to grow strawberries with those little "grow your own" kits. You know the kind: the cute decorative container, the inadequate amounts of fluffy potting soil, and the sad dessicated remains of several strawberry plants which are supposed to magically come back to life when you put them in dirt and add fertilizer. What can I say? The pot was one of those classy glazed ceramic ones with holes in the sides so you can have strawberries coming out all over the place, and the kit was cheap. Cheaper than buying strawberries shipped in from California all summer long, and much cheaper than buying the live, healthy seedlings (some already setting flowers) from the outdoor nursery at a certain large home improvement store. If they fail to grow this year, though, I'm going to spring for pre-started seedlings next spring. There are a lot of plants I might give up on growing, but I will not give up on strawberries!

And now, to make up for the last post's dire lack of pictures, I present to you my very own chunk of Pittsburgh soil!

It doesn't look like much, but this is the future site of the city's best edible landscape! Visible on the edges are the garlic bed and newly planted nasturtiums (on the far end), and on the right side is the porch wall where my tomatoes and beans will be trellised this summer.

My garlic, planted last November. It's coming up healthy and strong at the front of the yard, and I'm -very- excited!

The kitchen garden, with my salvage-built cold frame and a new bed for the peas. In back are sugar snap, in front, heirloom "Little Marvel" bush peas. In the cold frame are "Black-seeded Simpson" lettuce, "Cherry Belle" radishes, and Cherriette radishes. Spinach was on the menu but I didn't have seeds, so I'll be planting that after the first crop of radishes come out.

There you have it - the beginnings of a great year of urban gardening!

I need a new camera.

2011-04-11T23:13:00.000-04:00

I did stuff today. It was my only day off after a 7-day work week that started at 8am last Monday, and tomorrow another 7-day work week starts with another 8am meeting. I am not happy with this arrangement.

But even though it was my only day off, which means that I will have no time to just lay around the rest of the week because there is SO MUCH to keep up with around here, I did stuff today. I gardened, mostly. I took advantage of a 30-day trial of the Mother Earth News garden planner to plan my front-yard garden. I cleared out the front beds, added new fertilizer, aerated and pulled dandelions. I planted more radishes, the seedling sugar snap peas and bush peas (an heirloom variety called "Little Marvel" that dad sent to me last year) and the nasturtiums (including an heirloom called "Empress of India" that has gorgeous purplish foliage and promises deep red blossoms). I took pictures of everything - the seed flats full of gorgeous little seedlings prior to planting, the new garden bed and the cold frame I promised to get pictures of last month, and the porch with our patio table finally on it, ready for spring.

But I can't get the pictures uploaded. The camera's CF card works with the printer, but the printer doesn't have any clue how to find my computer to save the pictures. The computer can see the printer, but I can't figure out how to manually access the CF card and the documentation for Ubuntu, while comprehensive, was not written to the standards of simple.wikipedia.org, and is therefore useless to me. I think we have a portable card reader somewhere, but I don't know where (and I may have dreamed up its existence). And the camera's USB connector is missing, presumed buried under something.

So there are no pictures of the garden, and I have concluded that rather than waste my time trying to find the camera connector, the card reader, or another program that will let the desktop interface with the printer, I'm just going to add "camera" to my wish list. Or maybe I'll bother Rick until HE uploads the pictures. I think he knows how.

What do I want to do?

2011-03-15T23:32:00.000-04:00

So much for updating regularly, eh?

Tonight I'm looking for answers, although why I think posting a blog entry for 3 people will give me answers, I don't know. I'm frustrated. I was actually surprised to find, after being hired at a large department store last fall, that I -liked- retail, or at least most of it. A lot had to do with my co-workers, who are friendly people (of course, that kind of job self-selects for that kind of personality). They made me feel at home. My manager was nice, and everything was going smoothly, and there was even a chance I could get a little promotion to part-time commissioned work! I stuck around after the holidays because of an offhand job offer by my manager. That job offer never materialized.

I'm now stuck in a job I don't like quite so much, and that "not liking so much" is quickly turning into "not liking at all", and that's never good for job performance. Not that my manager has been communicating about such tawdry details as job performance. She's avoiding me, and THAT is also not good. Leaving out all the details of what's gone on the last few months, let me just state that if it continues into April/May, I'm going to hand in my 2 weeks' notice and take my chances with unemployment.

I'd rather not, though, which has led me back into job searching... and the inevitable question: What do I even want to do?

Well, it's easy: I want to homestead. That doesn't pay too well, though.

I don't even know where to start looking for a job that I'd fit into! I have a lot of skills, but most of them (writing, basic farm skills, baking) are either underpaid or not in demand, and the rest are underdeveloped (I don't have the "3-5 years experience" preferred for most jobs in my areas of interest). We need money; I can't go back to volunteering no matter how much I'd love to toss my wallet out the window and spend another summer turning compost at the urban farm. I keep tossing around the idea that happiness is worth so much more than money... but then I turn around and look at my beat-up shoes, the ones that I have worn out because I have to be on my feet all day, and I remember how painful being on one's feet all day is when one doesn't have new footwear regularly, and I think "I'd be happier if I had the money for new shoes!", and you can see where that leads.

Maybe it's time to get my act together and start my own damn business. I keep thinking how great it would be to run a camp... but that's the kind of thing that doesn't happen overnight and I'd need a ton of sponsors to get started, and even then - I'm great in a supporting role, but I don't so so well in the lead. I'd rather work as a (well-paid) camp counselor and let someone else deal with the paperwork! :(

The Internet Never Forgets

2011-02-21T00:43:00.000-05:00

Found this post made in 2005 shortly after Katrina and the mess she made in New Orleans. I couldn't help but read 2/3 of the comments, too... and then added my own.

Being Poor.

Being poor means passing up the $0.99/lb apples because you can only afford two of them, and that dollar could buy three boxes of ez-mac.

Being poor means fighting with your parents over pre-sliced cheese because it's what all the other kids get in their sandwiches, and you're sick of PBJ.

Being poor means writing "thank-you" letters to six estates which donated to your local scholarship fund, because being thankful is a requirement for getting the money that pays for your college education.

Being poor means watching your amazing, bright, talented sister become an egg donor and put herself at risk for terrible side effects, because it pays $5000 and she can use that to finish college.

Being poor means saving pennies until you can afford one month's rent because you can't give in and live in your car no matter how much more frugal it is, and then crying every month the week before rent is due because you can't imagine how you're going to pay it.

Being poor means hiding it, and then being frowned at for trying to look good or take care of yourself, as though poverty should mean visible suffering - as though the invisible suffering you experience every day isn't enough.

Being poor means making the clothes, the glasses, and the tank of gas you already have last just a -little- bit longer.

Being poor means not wanting to ask for favors, because you're afraid you'll ask one too many times.

Being poor means feeling guilty about taking people up on the offer to "get you something" from a store or food stall, because you know you'll never return the favor.

Being poor means taking less than you could at the staff luncheon so no one will suspect that the pizza is the only meal you'll have today.

Being less poor means even after you have a house and a car with no payments, you take tylenol and ignore the worsening toothaches because you can't afford the dentist yet.

Being less poor means finally owning enough clearance-rack clothing to put together three outfits for work, but not having the money to buy the $100 shoes that would keep your feet from hurting.

Being less poor means skipping the drink when you buy lunch somewhere, and telling yourself that it's because you -chose- to use the water fountain instead.

And being less poor means feeling guilty when someone poorer than you needs something and you can't afford to help, and promising yourself that some day you'll have enough to help everyone...

The comments on the blog post would take a long time to read entirely, but suffice to say: The post was never intended as a "poorer-than-thou" competition - it's a reflection on how poverty strikes in the US, in a country which is often thought to be the richest in the world and is certainly one of the most decadent. It's an attempt to show people who have never experienced poverty what it can look like, and how the "little things" - a vehicle inspection, a nagging cough - can turn into insurmountable obstacles when you don't have the money for a new set of tires, or a doctor, or medicine. It's to get you to remember this above all else: Being poor is not about being lazy or dirty or unmotivated. Being poor is about being ignored, treated like dirt, unable to feed yourself sometimes and yet making too much for food stamps a week later, and through it all trying to keep your chin held high because hope is the only thing they haven't figured out how to package and sell yet (but they're getting close).

Being poor is working retail, hearing numbers like "fifty thousand dollars" being used to refer to daily sales, worrying about your $30 makeup while selling $500 creams to middle-aged women and chatting about their cruise plans. Being poor is coming home to a bowl of ramen.

Aw.

2011-02-15T23:01:00.000-05:00

I was all cranky today, because I had a rough day at work, developed a headache during the last hour there, got home to a cold, dark house (naturally, The Man was asleep), and found the cat inexplicably locked in the closed-off guest room. It was not a good ending to the day and I didn't feel like cooking, let alone like figuring out what to cook.

But then I went to the cupboard to find something quick to heat and eat, and there on the shelf was the can of organic ravioli he saw at the grocery store last week and brought home for me. There is nothing that says "I Love You" like anticipating someone's needs before they even know them. I am the luckiest woman alive.

On the Eve of This Most Auspicious Holiday:

2010-12-24T20:07:00.000-05:00

Yarn Harlot shares some thoughts we should all be thinking.

And remember - whatever your beliefs regarding Christmas, take the time to celebrate the fact that winter is half over (even if it doesn't seem like it quite yet), that you have people around you who love and appreciate you (even if they sometimes don't show it in ways you expect), and that every day is a new day and a new chance for you to make your world and yourself better.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Mmm, Economics.

2010-12-10T21:23:00.001-05:00

Farmers get farm subsidies - they are paid to grow certain crops (like corn) and they are sometimes paid not to grow anything at all. This has massively screwed with farm production, skewing it heavily toward subsidized crops (which has far-reaching repercussions beyond a surplus of corn and unused farmland), and has made it difficult for farmers who want to diversify their crops to do so without losing money.

I realized today that unemployment benefits can be described as a work subsidy. We're paying people not to do anything, and we're paying them enough that getting back into the workforce at minimum wage means taking a pay cut, rather like farming eggplant instead of corn means taking a pay cut on the farm. Our system is broken. So how do we fix it? Simply raising the minimum wage won't work, clearly - it will only cause price inflation of basic goods and services (since McD's has to pay you more, their hamburgers will cost more). And dropping unemployment benefits to below the minimum wage would be fought every step of the way through congress. No one wants to lose "free" money!

Seriously though. What, therefore, should we do?

Today's reading assignment, no matter your politics or opinions on poverty:

And we expect people to take these jobs... why?

Cognitive Dissonance and LEGO

2010-12-05T18:13:00.000-05:00

Cognitive dissonance is what happens when you pull a band-aid out of the box and find a stinkbug sitting on it (I swear they are EVERYWHERE), and your logic circuits take .3 seconds to retrieve the response: "Just a stinkbug, nothing to worry about", while your lizard-brain goes "OHMYGODITLOOKSLIKEASPIDERITSASPIDERAAAAAAHHHHHHRUNLIKEHELL!". And since you can't think two things at once and fight-or-flight beats logic every time, you flail and send the stupid bug flying into the sink before regaining control of yourself and calmly retreating to a bug-free location hoping no one saw you freak out.

Rick got LEGO sets for himself as an early xmas present; because they were buy one, get one half off like every year at Toys R Us. We spent all night after I got home from work sitting at the dining room table, constructing a really cool Jeep-like vehicle complete with working doors and steering, a full trailer and 4-wheeler. Nerd bonding is the best bonding!

Whine Wednesday

2010-12-01T15:25:00.000-05:00

It's time for.... Whine Wednesday, wherein I moan and complain about all the terrible things that have happened to me and justify my horrible mood. If I remember, I'll try to do a Thankful Thursday tomorrow to make up for the whining.

Sore throat started last night.

The cat/dog woke me up 5 times this morning before 10am.

The dog chewed through yet another pair of underwear last night and tried to play with my only pair of work-appropriate black tights too. I swear she's trying to keep me indoors by eating all my clothing.

Sinuses have been draining icky green snot for days.

This morning it's snowing, and it's the nasty wet kind of snow you get when it's barely freezing outside, and it's forecast to do this all week.

I have work 8:45am - 5pm tomorrow. I won't even see daylight before/after work because of the cloud cover and early sunset. Ack!

It's -cold- in here, and we still haven't fixed the big gap in the back door frame that lets a lot of air in.

Rick's asleep (still) after staying up till god-knows-when playing video games.

I have a headache on top of the sinus issues and sore throat and nausea. Wooo!

Did I mention it's snowing?

On Adorable Kids

2010-11-28T22:27:00.000-05:00

The highlight of my day today? A little boy.

His parents were showing him the cologne as they passed by. He was pumped about this, and was smelling all the different scent cards we had out and giving opinions and being a very good little shopper. When they came around to the register I got him a little sample spray of one of his favorites (with mom's permission, of course). He was so totally thrilled by it. His face lit up, and he held it up to his chest and said in his best manly voice:

"A LITTLE SPRAY FOR A LITTLE MAN LIKE ME!".

Kids rock.

On Crying at Work

2010-11-28T22:19:00.001-05:00

Basically, crying at work is a bad idea.

So it's a good thing I haven't yet. I almost did tonight, but I'm sure it was a fluke. I cry VERY easily (I get that tingling-nose, going-to-cry feeling any time the situation makes me look less than perfect, which is a lot of the time), but at work the last three weeks I've been the most cheerful, positive person on the floor. Boundless optimism is at my beck and call! I am not the sad sack of tears that I am at home where no one can see me, because crying is just not good for business! And I was doing very well at being cheerful and rolling with the punches, and I was proud of myself!

Then Black Friday hit, my teenage coworker started dumping her relationship drama on me and wanting advice (Ha!), and the area manager threw a fit today because we hadn't done all the things we should have been doing two weeks ago but which she didn't think to tell us about until Friday, which meant all of us spent the day running frantically around the department to please her (and it didn't work anyway, but if we sat still she would've bitten our heads off). I've worked nonstop since the 22nd, unless you count Thanksgiving as a "day off", which I don't because it was nonstop work here trying to make the house presentable so Rick's grandma could visit without me dying of embarrassment at not being able to keep the house livable. My first actual nothing-to-do day off in a week is tomorrow, and then I got asked to stay an extra hour and help clean up another department. Which is why I almost broke down and sobbed tonight in front of a really nice manager who just happened to get flustered at me.

Thankfully I got a minute alone and pasted my smile back on. I had to laugh the other day when one of the regular salesladies told me that I was always happy. I put on a happy face at work because I like to be liked (although the job's not that bad, so smiling does come easy). It works, but now I'm stuck with the reputation of always being happy... uh-oh. I get the feeling sooner or later I'm going to have a bad day, and they're going to think the world is ending.

Boxes

2010-11-23T22:51:00.000-05:00

More fun at work today. I was inexplicably happy, and it was easy to be happy because all my coworkers were happy too and we were BUSY for the first time since I started work. We had a lot of gift sets to put together and our manager was frazzled and my full-time coworkers were all over the place finding boxes and printing labels and setting up towers of neatly arranged cologne at the mall entrance. I put together a lot of boxes. Shiny boxes with neatly tied ribbon (my ribbon-tying skills ROCK, yo), colored plastic containers with funky designs, little clear plastic display boxes. Those suckers are a PAIN to unfold (they come flat, and snap open and chew up your knuckles on their nasty stamped-plastic edges).

What amused me even more than boxes, though (yes, I am so easily amused that shoving cologne into shiny boxes works for me) was the fact that I am apparently not supposed to be happy about working seasonal retail and I definitely wasn't -expected- to be happy without some kind of outside influence. Co-workers jokingly tossed ideas back and forth - She's new. It'll wear off. Do you drink? Did something really good happen before work?

Nope, I just had a good day. Until I left, anyway. Then it was cold and windy and I had to wait for my ride (who was late because he was working on the Jeep, yay!), and I got home and the house needed cleaning and I wished I'd stayed in the store with the boxes. Making pleasing little gift boxes is so much more fun than cleaning litterboxes...

This is a short post.

2010-11-22T04:22:00.002-05:00

I really need to quit rambling. My blog entries are so long, even I don't want to go back and re-read them!

So here's a quick update to say I'm still alive; I'm behind on my NaNoWriMo wordcount by nearly 20,000 words, I wrote 6700 words yesterday in a mad bid to regain some sense of control over this month and I am working Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (BLACK FRIDAY) this week. I'll probably start panicking about this on Tuesday night.

At least working at the Mens' Fragrances counter has provided me with some stories. It's terribly quiet, since cologne does not in fact have massive discounted sales like the clothing departments do. Customers also always seem to show up at the time we are paying the least attention. Granted, when there is -nothing- to do because you've cleaned the glass, tidied the displays, wandered three times around the counters and sampled half the scents it's easy to let your mind drift.

Anyway, Funny Moments #1:
I take great joy in watching most of my older, commissioned (I am not on commission!) co-workers wander aimlessly around the displays while I am helpfully asking the CUSTOMER making an appearance on the other side of the counter if I can help him with something. It's like wiggling a bit of bloody bait in a shark tank the way everyone else jumps and zeros in on the poor unsuspecting shopper. It helps that 4/5 of the ladies I've met so far are shorter than I am, and the gift set boxes we have stacked on all the counters are up to my nose. The others can barely see over them, and rely on me to tell them when people appear. I suppose this is in some way wrong or mean to find it so amusing, but we're all bored as hell and it's probably nicer to address the customer rather than A) wait for the others to notice him or B) wave frantically around the other end of the display for someone else to help him because I'm technically not a salesperson, just a "ringer" (read: cashier).

And Funny Moments #2:
The Prada Guy. He was a late-40s-ish man who came by during one of my long shifts, and since the super-helpful older ladies were at lunch/talking across the aisle at ladies' fragrances (behind another large stack of stuff) I decided I'd take him on. He wanted Prada. Easy enough; we only have one Prada set in stock. I found it after he followed me around two circuits of the cases (cut me some slack, it was like my third day!), which would have been funny enough since having a customer follow my obviously clueless ass around the fragrance counters has clear comedic value but when he found it, the following (approximately) happened:

Prada Guy: OH YES. He proceeds to pick up the tester bottle and stuff the nozzle halfway up his noze while inhaling.*
Me, the awesome saleswoman: We have this great gift set. Only for the holidays! It's got x, y, and z in it! And if you buy, you get a free toiletries bag in either pink or blue!
Prada Guy: Sprays both wrists and his chest with the tester bottle, and holds first one wrist, then the other, then both up to his nose, inhaling deeply each time and almost -moaning- with delight. I'm trying not to giggle at his... enthusiasm. This is the best scent *sniff* they've made in the last thirty years. *sniff, sniff* I love this scent. It is *Sniff* SO *SNIFF* amazing.
Me: So, what do you think? The set's a great buy. It's worth $dollars, which is only $fewdollars more than the bottle on its own. Are you getting just this today?
PG at this point gets the look that I'm beginning to associate with all the hit-and-run "just browsing" customers, which means that no, he's not going to pay for the $80 scent he just bathed in, but I'm one *SNIFF* away from rolling on the carpet, so he's forgiven. "I'll be right back, I'm gonna hit up the cash machine." he says, and hurries off toward menswear (there is definitely no cash machine there!), still sniffing his wrists. He's not to be seen again for the last 4 hours of my shift. By the time I settle myself behind a suitably tall display of gift sets and start giggling, my coworker is back from lunch, and I giggled so hard telling her about him that I think she thought I had been huffing the Prada too.

I can only hope that as things pick up going into the holiday season I get more funny customers and very few of the Mean Ones I've heard about.

*I am not exaggerating. Much. He was really intent on sniffing that bottle.

Missing Nature

2010-11-15T18:03:00.000-05:00

Having started a seasonal retail position on Saturday, I am not looking forward to this fall/winter. I finally gave in to the need for money, and idealism be damned (for now - after Christmas I probably won't have any more hours with the store, so I'll go back to being unemployed, delivering snarky commentary on the terrible plight of retail workers and dreaming about the awesome jobs I might eventually run into if I just hold out a little longer...)

Anyway, I had yesterday and today off, and after some much-needed sleeping in and some much-enjoyed lounging, I spent this afternoon reading the blog of one of my camp friends' moms, who is an awesome woman and someone I wish I could spend more time with. Unfortunately, she still lives in New York. Fortunately, she's taken up photography as well as hanging around camp and updates several(!) blogs with pictures of the area for me to oooh and ahhh over, including my favorite place in the world - Camp Timbercrest (here is the Timbercrest Blog). I miss that camp SO much. I've written about camp before. I think it's awesome, and Timbercrest is the most awesome camp. I still get teary-eyed when I think about all the time I spent there and all the friends I made, and the fact that I can't just get in the car and drive over makes me feel empty deep down.

See, I really love nature. "The woods" has been my favorite place for many, many years and I habitually seek out quiet, nature-y places when I'm upset. Unfortunately, since I started college I haven't found many of those places. I've been living in cities and large towns, cut off from the best parks by a couple dozen miles (unlike my mom's house, where we had a forest in the back yard), without a car for most of that time, and without anyone to share the trails. For years Rick and I have been saying: "It's spring, we should go camping soon!", and then: "we'll go camping this summer", followed by: "well, maybe we'll make it this fall", and finally: "it's too cold now. We'll definitely go next year." Of course, there's always something in the way of just throwing the sleeping bags in the Jeep and heading for Laurel Highlands. Invariably, I spend all summer humming camp songs and staring at state park websites and all winter wondering if running around in the cold is really as bad as I remember it being and whether any of the parks are open for winter hikes. I keep thinking I might give in and join a local hiking club, but I'd probably feel bad when I showed up with my 6-year-old fraying-at-the-edges hiking boots and plain cheap water bottle, getting winded on a 5-mile "easy" hike while the rest of group is hauling state-of-the-art frame packs and energy gel drinks on 30-mile hikes around the Allegheny park system. Is there a "casual nature walks" club for 20-somethings?

It would be better if I had a camp or a park here that feels as reassuring as Timbercrest did. I might even quit bugging Rick about camping if I could walk or bike to the nearest large stand of trees whenever I needed a nature break. Pittsburgh's very own Riverview park is within dog-walking distance and is a pretty big park, for being located on the edge of a city... but you can still hear the cars on the bordering highways when you're wandering the trails there. Call me a sentimental fool, but city noises just ruin the whole "oneness with nature" thing. And I don't have any hiking/biking/exploring buddies, which is to say: I'm lazy, and without anyone to encourage me to go out and explore the city's green spaces (and there are a lot!), I will sit in the house, complaining about the cold and the fact that it's supposed to rain all week and that I'm sore and tired from work, etc, and I won't be able to drag myself out for that utterly revitalizing walk. November is a lonely time for walking by one's self. Only nuts go out on a day like today, when it's grey and muddy from yesterday's rain, and windy and only 45*. I'm a nut, but I'm a lazy nut. I need other nuts to drag me out of my shell (pun intended).

So: Anyone local feel like making a new friend for some trail walking this winter? I don't bite (hard), and I can identify poison ivy!

I forgot to title this post.

2010-11-08T00:35:00.003-05:00

I haven't been feeling that great the last few days. Actually, I haven't been feeling great the last few months. I'm mopey, I'm solemn, I'm drab. I've been avoiding all my chores (although this is usual for me, and it's hard to tell whether it's gotten worse or I've just gotten more aware of it now that we own a house and I can't blame the landlord for any of the home maintenance issues that keep popping up and getting avoided because I am lazy and don't need to start yet another project before we finish the guest room and the braided rag rug for the basement and getting the dryer hooked up and figuring out whether we want to tile the bathroom wall opposite the tub) and fighting off sinus infections and sleeping way more than is usual or healthy (and I'm not sure why, but I can't afford to go to a doctor just because I'm sleepy), and griping about cold weather setting in and generally not feeling like doing anything, even taking the dog to the park, which is sad because she LOVES the park and she LOVES going on walks and I have decided that if I want to get into any kind of shape that isn't "round", I am going to need to make some lifestyle changes, and I had expected that getting a dog would help me do that. Boy, was I ever wrong. I was sad to discover that dogs acquire the habits of their owners, and not the other way 'round, so dragging myself out for walks is still just as difficult, only I get twice the guilt trip (once from myself and once from the dog) when I don't do it.

Anyway, at least SarahThe is making me feel better. I found her blog a few months ago and bookmarked it because I wanted to read the archives. Reading about other peoples' lives makes me feel better. I am an introvert and a people-watcher, and I am a very dedicated blog stalker, when I'm feeling up to reading. So tonight I finally felt like reading, and got through several pages of blog posts from 2008, and with each one I've been smiling a little more and giggling a little more. SarahThe is funny, and fresh, and honest, and I am enjoying reading her posts from 2008.

The dog is also making me feel better. Mystra is not generally my go-to girl for making me smile, since mostly she does what we do - flops around the house, plays games with the cats and eats. She whines when she has to go out and barks to get our attention when the cats try to sleep on top of the fridge. She's very enthusiastic about guarding the house from both teenagers down the street and cats on the fridge. She has recently figured out, however, that she's able to get our attention for play too! And because we have recently changed our schedules (we are prone to staying up until 3am when not otherwise occupied by work, and the husband JUST got a job), she is used to playing with us long after normal people with day jobs have put their dogs to bed.

So tonight, just now at 12:20 AM, when I should have been in bed 2 hours ago because I have an interview on Tuesday morning and need to be awake before noon for once, she came walking up to my desk, fixed me with the "EXCUSE ME" stare, and proclaimed, loudly: "IT'S PLAYTIME." Then she started chewing on my hand, because when there are no toys nearby her idea of play (thanks to my ever-thoughtful husband, who thinks that wrestling with the dog is the best fun ever and should be encouraged never mind that she's 40 lbs of enthusiasm and teeth!) is to play catch-the-hand. She's never quite sure what to do when she catches it, because we long ago taught her that people are not for chewing, but the catching instinct is still very much intact, so she'll put my hand in her mouth and then spit it out, and as soon as the hand moves she tries to catch it again. It's often bad for my hands, since despite her best intentions I almost always come out of it with tooth imprints when she misjudges a pounce, but for some reason (I blame SarahThe and Scout's antics), I giggled at her tonight. A lot.

I should probably go to bed. There are, as usual, a lot of things in my head that want to be put down in the nice white space here, but I should probably let them ferment a little more. I have discovered that my thoughts are like wine; when they haven't been aged properly and the miscellaneous bits haven't settled out, they're often terrible.

2010-09-22T14:05:00.001-04:00

I know it's been a while since I last wrote. I haven't much felt like sharing thoughts. A lot of what's been going through my head has been personal (read: boring to you, the reader) and sometimes incredibly painful, and I find myself unwilling to put it into words. It's superstition... if I think it, it might not be true, but if I say it out loud and no one disagrees (or worse, someone agrees), I'm stuck with it. There's also the fact that a lot of my questions have simple answers that I don't like, and I know what I want the answers to be instead, and I'm still looking for someone who will confirm my bias rather than ask whoever is closest and get an answer I don't like. Does it make it better or worse that I recognize my own bias-seeking? I'm fighting to stay in my own little world of illusion because I don't like what's outside.

So I failed the Boundless Summer challenge. I knew from the start that I probably wouldn't finish it despite my saying otherwise. I figured that eventually I'd hit a challenge that was too xtian for me; that one of the challenges would require praying for someone I hated or standing up for a belief I don't hold and that I'd just quit in disgust. What actually happened was that one of the early challenges required calling a friend and bringing up how we could be a better friend to them, which is a rather awkward thing to ask someone. Not only have I lost contact with most of my friends since the end of college, I also hate phones. Talking on the phone makes me intensely uncomfortable (thank you, Neil Gaiman for that turn of phrase... (via Coraline)). I'm pretty sure I could go into a psychiatrist's office and come out with a diagnosis of Social Anxiety Disorder and a prescription for Xanax. Of course, I don't have the money to go get myself diagnosed, so whether or not I have a disorder is beside the point. The point is that I don't like phones, so I put it off. And put it off. And put it off. And by the time I had decided, after laying in bed one night, that I really ought to just get it over with (because it couldn't possibly be as bad as I imagined, right?) it was 2 weeks later and I'd been smacked with a few more minor upsets, it was really warm, and didn't feel like continuing. I'm working on a half-baked plan to go back and finish it on my own time at some later date, skipping the phone (of course). We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I've been waiting impatiently for the unemployment office to finish its five-month-long "investigation" into the conditions under which I was "terminated" (I hate that word. I'm not a computer program! I'm a living being and I have feelings, damnit!). They finished it last week and sent me out a pair of nice, impersonal letters - one regarding my last call in July (when they told me they'd file a couple weeks I missed, and promised to 'hurry' the investigation) to tell me that no, I wasn't getting compensated for the weeks that I forgot to file/couldn't file due to lack of internet access/working on the house because I didn't have a good enough reason for missing the filing dates. The second letter told me I wasn't getting anything at all. Five months of waiting. FIVE MONTHS. They ruled that because I "should have known" the rule which the company states that I broke, I'm not allowed to be compensated. While logically I understand why the system works this way, I can't help but feel like I'm utterly worthless now because on top of the anguish caused by my mistake and subsequent firing, the denial letter after five months of not-quite-daring-to-hope tells me in no uncertain terms that I'm a terrible human being and don't deserve help, regardless of the fact that I only made one mistake. Regardless of the fact that I would have gotten down on my knees and -begged- to keep my job, that I apologized, that I had no history of stupid mistakes like that and that I did learn from it. In the eyes of bureaucracy, error is error, no matter the cause and no matter the conditions. If I had been fired without breaking a rule, even if I had been the least useful member of the company previous to my firing, I probably would've received full payment within two weeks of filing. That stings, and it's the typeset equivalent of a whip to my flagging self-confidence.

While I'm afraid to put my resume out there (especially after my laptop was dropped and the hard drive broken three months ago - we only just managed to recover some of the files last night and in the mean time I didn't find it worthwhile to re-create my resume and references from the much older versions I had saved online), I did land a 'job' last month. I'm now a freelance writer doing short local articles for Examiner.com. The pay might as well be nonexistent but it's something to do which ties neatly into the volunteer work I was already doing (I'm writing about urban agriculture). I figure eventually I'll either get tired of it and move on to something new, or find a new client with a higher pay scale. Maybe in 10 years I'll be able to make a living off my writing... a girl can dream, right?

Speaking of volunteering: Fall is upon us, which means volunteering is winding down. The Tuesday afternoon sessions are done and now there's just Thursdays, which are harvest and farm market days. I go in the mornings now, and pick tomatoes and okra and swiss chard to sell at the market. I don't help with the afternoon markets, because they're usually the most popular volunteer times and there are plenty of others who actually need the volunteer hours for senior projects or community service orders. Still, I like the harvesting. It should last through November, when we'll plant the last of the garlic (did you know that planting garlic in the fall is best, because it overwinters and then comes up earlier and bigger in the spring?). Winter work is intermittent, from what I hear, and I'm not sure I'll be needed, so I expect a long, boring winter as usual. I hate winter. The highlight of the entire time is NaNoWriMo, and I'm not even sure why it's a highlight any more, since I've won once in 7 years and haven't really learned much from the experience.

The house isn't ready for winter, either. We have a lot of work to do. The last big rain we had soaked through wall under the bathroom glass-block window; the shingles outside have been missing since before we moved in but we didn't realize the damage was that bad. Of course, there was a massive colony of carpenter ants under that same window sill, so the wood there already needed replacing. Apparently, the water damage in that wall has been ongoing. We can't afford to replace the entire wall and I'm hoping we won't have to. For now, we'll probably try to replace the few feet under the window where the ant damage was most obvious, put up new shingles on the outside, add a vapor barrier to the inside to protect the new cement board and tile and pray that there aren't any other leaks we're not seeing.

In more positive news, I'm making a braided rag rug for the wash area in the basement. I hate cold, concrete floors so it's a selfish measure more than anything else, but it uses some of our old clothing that wasn't good enough to be donated. I'm hoping to finish it by the end of the week, barring severe boredom from trying to sew it all together by hand. I figure that even if the rest of the house is unfinished when the snows come, I'll at least have the satisfaction of not freezing my toes off when I do the laundry. So: look for pictures soon. You may now proceed to leave fawning comments regarding my obvious prowess with bits of fabric.

Some days, I cry for humanity.

2010-09-02T15:44:00.000-04:00

I'm all about saving the world, one person at a time... but this? This is just sickening and I don't think my comment will be posted, but even if it does, I'm re-posting it here because I think more of us need to speak up against the irrational hatred on all sides of the political mudslinging ring.

Comment as follows is the exact wording left on "No Left Turnz":

I care more about my cats than about most people because most people don't give a flying... I'm not even going to finish that sentence. Let's just say that until we all stop flinging mud at each other in selfish little "No, I'M right!" squabbles, I'll keep enjoying the company of my non-judgmental little kitten more than that of the selfish, miserable, disconnected human race. I still love humanity dearly and I still work every day to try to make my world better and make the people around me healthy, happy, and glad to have me around... but I despair of my cause every time someone posts something like this miserable diatribe, because it speaks to the human tendency of "Us vs Them" so strongly and I would give my life to see that tendency wiped out. WHY must we divide ourselves?

I'm by no means insane but I do love nature. Does that mean I am a target for your hatred? Should I be embracing stainless steel and concrete instead? I've never heard the term "skyscraper-hugger", but is that what we should aspire to be? Just because a couple of bad eggs jumped into the "environmentalist" basket, am I supposed to shun the label entirely? Aren't hunters and farmers environmentalists? If not, what should I call them?

This entire blog is really the epitome of selfishness and hatred. The devil's in the details, so to speak - and this little detail, this little corner of the web, is perpetrating the exact kind of hatred and divisive thinking that prevents all of us from reaching that mythical "better tomorrow". Instead of wasting your time spreading hatred online, why aren't you out helping your community in whichever way you feel you can serve them best?

I do not hate you, but I am ashamed for you. You are the reason I will never call myself a conservative OR a liberal. I refuse to associate myself with any party that agrees that hatred and slander is a good use of its time and energy, and I cry for those who are too wrapped up in tearing down what they are opposing to work toward what they promote.

Short update

2010-08-26T03:22:00.002-04:00

I'm still alive. I've had some thoughts stewing for a while that I'll be putting down later.

Something to think about next time you crave "fast food".

2010-07-15T14:11:00.000-04:00

From a book I picked up at the library, after watching the documentary "Food, Inc". I highly suggest both the film and the book if you're really interested in the author's realization "that the straightforward question "What should I eat?" could no longer be answered without first addressing two other even more straightforward questions: "What am I eating? And where in the world did it come from?".

(reflections on a McDonald's meal)
"In truth, my cheeseburger's relationship to beef seemed nearly as metaphorical as the nugget's relationship to a chicken. Eating it, I had to remind myself that there was an actual cow involved in this meal - most likely a burned-out old dairy cow (the source of most fast-food beef) but possibly bits and pieces of a steer... Part of the appeal of hamburgers and nuggets is that their boneless abstractions allow us to forget we're eating animals. I'd been on the feedlot in Garden City a few months earlier, yet this experience of cattle was so far removed from that one as to be taking place in a different dimension. No, I could not taste the feed corn or the petroleum or the antibiotics or the hormones - or the feedlot manure. Yet while "A Full Serving of Nutrition Facts" did not enumerate these facts, they too have gone into the making of this hamburger, are part of its natural history. That perhaps is what the industrial food chain does best: obscure the histories of the foods it produces by processing them to such an extent that they appear as pure products of culture rather than nature - things made from plants and animals. Despite the blizzard of information contained in the helpful McDonald's flyer - the thousands of words and numbers specifying ingredients and portion sizes, calories and nutrients - all this food remains perfectly opaque. Where does it come from? It comes from McDonald's.

But that's not so. It comes from refrigerated trucks and from warehouses, from slaughterhouses, from factory farms in towns like Garden City, Kansas, from ranches in Sturgis, South Dakota, from food science laboratories in Oak Brook, Illinois, from flavor companies on the New Jersey Turnpike, from petroleum refineries, from processing plants owned by AGM and Cargill, from grain elevators in towns like Jefferson, and, at the end of that long and tortuous trail, from a field of corn and soybeans farmed by George Naylor in Churdan, Iowa."

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin Press, 2006. pp 114-115.

Volunteering

2010-07-14T13:42:00.000-04:00

Yesterday (Tuesday) I started a new volunteer position with an organization I really look up to: The Pittsburgh Project. I'm a garden volunteer, which means that I actually go to work once a week in their small farm (reclaimed from an abandoned baseball field!) - weeding, tying up tomatoes, planting, harvesting, and helping the community regain something important - food security. Our neighborhood is a "food desert". There are few stores and what is available is often not the healthiest. Gardening isn't a way of life here. Abandoned lots fill with weeds and detritus from the streets. Kids leave candy wrappers and drink bottles on sidewalks.

It's not barren, but there's little hope. You can see it in the faces of the people here and in the run-down houses, with rotting porches and loose shingles that owners can't afford or don't care to fix. The Pittsburgh Project is working to change that by focusing on youth education and community service in a way that empowers the people they help. They help those who can not help themselves. They teach the local kids environmental stewardship, gardening skills, home maintenance, leadership and interpersonal skills. They have programs which attract mission groups from all over the country who come to provide destitute homeowners with home repairs and cleanup. It's an amazing project and it's making a difference. The park across from their headquarters is low-priority for the city, but they've kept up the maintenance, cleaned up the areas that used to be drug havens, planted gardens and re-opened the pool. The kids love it. The after-school and summer programs are full. There's work to be done!

Someone asked me why I'd bother doing something that's bringing in no money and taking time away from our home repair, when I'm out of work already. It's not about the money; as much as I'd love getting paid for what I'm doing with the project I wasn't motivated to join the group because I was desperate for funding. It's about helping out, feeling good, doing something to give to the community and improve the place where we all live and play. It's about providing a good role model for the kids, making my life an example of responsible living, and having fun with a group of people who are passionate about making the world a better place - one tomato at a time.

I could still use a job, but jobs rarely feed the soul. This experience will give me more than resume padding and new friends. It will give me peace, and that's something all of us need. Do you volunteer? Why, or why not?

Summer Challenge 4: Love and Respect

2010-07-13T20:27:00.000-04:00

This task was focused on 3 reading selections (linked from the Boundless page) and an action - showing love or respect to someone you share a relationship with, be it parent, child, sibling, or spouse.

I'm going to go do the dishes and tidy the house to show respect for my wonderful man, who I "abandoned" the other day to volunteer while he was helping the delivery guys get our new appliances into place. What better way to wake up from a nap than waking up to a clean kitchen?

Things to consider: Do you show love and respect to each other in your relationships? If not, why? Do you think that others deserve unconditional love and respect, or is there something you expect from them first? Is it fair to withhold love and respect from someone, even if they do not appear to love or respect you? Why or why not?

Summer Challenge 3: Relationships

2010-07-12T19:52:00.001-04:00

This week's challenges are all about relationships. What makes a good relationship, how we should act in them and how we can build (or re-build) them. Today's challenge was reading from Romans, Chapter 12:9-13 and meditating on how it affected our views of relationships.

I read the verses and then the chapter to get some context, in 3 different versions (to get further context regarding the translation). The instructions in these verses are general instructions for how to get along with each other: Be kind; be humble; be generous, and treat your enemy as your friend. It's good advice to heed in relationships of all kinds.

I have seen many relationships between family and friends fall apart because one party did not treat the other with kindness or respect. It's hard to watch and harder to experience, especially when one of the people involved is trying to repair or maintain a relationship while the other is oblivious to the destruction they cause. Selfishness, patience and generosity are all necessary to be a great friend, sibling, or spouse. I hope that I can keep this in mind as I move on in my relationships!

Summer Challenge 2: The Weekend!

2010-07-11T15:02:00.001-04:00

This weekend's Challenge Task is to read a series of articles on Christian Dating, and to respond to them with agreements, disagreements, and the ways we would, could, or have applied the principles put forth. I don't plan on reading all 8 articles at once, but I'm going to consolidate my responses as well as possible, so I'll be taking notes as I go. I'll sometimes include quotes so that you can reference what I'm responding to. The articles are written by Scott Croft, an elder at Capitol Hill Baptist Church where he runs relationship seminars, and an attorney.

Right off the bat, I'd like to note that Mr. Croft has no credentials related to relationship or marriage counseling, psychology, sociology, or even theology (aside from a year as a "pastoral assistant"). FotF doesn't even tell us what kind of attorney he is, so I checked with Google. If this is him, he's in "litigation", mostly the 'business and gov't' kind. Therefore, his experience as an attorney is completely irrelevant to the matter of Christian Dating.

So why tell us he's an attorney at all? It's a basic rule of sociology: Anyone with a Degree is More Important Than You and Knows Better, and is therefore Qualified to order you around. There have been studies done on obedience to authority figures, and it clearly works in real situations. Even I have experienced the obedience phenomenon when I tell people I was a Behavioral Therapist. Isn't psychology fun?

Regardless of Mr. Croft's lack of actual related credentials, let's assume he's a smart guy and has enough general life experience to give us some dating suggestions. We'll start with the first article: Biblical Dating: An Introduction. He begins with a pair of Basic Assumptions that color the entire series: Inerrancy of Scripture and its close cousin Sufficiency of Scripture. Basically, Scripture comes from God and is therefore neither flawed nor has errors, and also therefore it is Sufficient to guide Christians in all areas of their faith and life; nothing is left out of God's Instruction Manual.

Ok. So we start with a definition of biblical dating:

We may define biblical dating as a method of introduction and carrying out of a pre-marital relationship between a single man and a single woman:

1. That begins (maybe) with the man approaching and going through the woman's father or family;
2. that is conducted under the authority of the woman's father or family or church; and
3. that always has marriage (or at least a determination regarding marriage to a specific person) as its direct goal.

While I've never been a fan of the whole "asking her father" thing, it does help when starting any relationship to have adult guidance and good role models to look to for help when things get awkward or difficult. Authority is something entirely different, and I do take issue with that. I have no problems with #3, though. Dating for me was never about getting into short, semi-casual relationships "just because". I've always considered it to be a search for a mate. I don't think casual dating makes much sense from either an evolutionary standpoint or a moral one. People are built for love and attachment - the goal of all life on earth is to reproduce, and in our case that goal includes hanging around long enough to properly raise our young. So marriage, or at least a settled domestic partnership, is a good idea, and therefore dating ought to lead toward partnership.

The rest of the article bashes on modern dating. He makes a few good points - that many people are entering the dating world entirely self-centered, looking for the person who fills their wants and needs without thinking about whether they are ready to fill someone else's wants and needs, that others are only dating to fill some basic emotional or sexual need without looking for the future commitment, and in doing so are keeping themselves satisfied in the short term but damaging their ability to commit to marriage in the future. Our system is flawed. But do we have to return to 300AD to get around that? Wouldn't advocating personal responsibility and attention to the needs of others get you the same result? The historical and social context for our current dating behavior bears examining; is this 'trend' going to continue, or will a few more generations experience the backlash of single mothers and unattached 40-somethings, and be pushed into marriage earlier than we were?

[derail]Mr. Croft mentions regret - in the context that he has never heard a Christian not express regret for a sinful relationship before they turned around and started living a more Godly life. It's not surprising. Most cultures (and Christianity is a culture) will encourage you to look back on the time before you came into the fold as one of disgrace, or at least one of ignorance. Why? Is it so important to alienate ourselves from our pasts that we must be told that not a single one of our companions has ever accepted past behavior as a good or necessary thing? I firmly believe that everything we experience is a chance to learn about ourselves and the world, and that we put ourselves into situations because we subconsciously know (or, if you will, God knows) that we can benefit from the lessons we will receive. If you regret something, you haven't learned everything you could from it, or are denying the lesson. I've made quite a few "mistakes" in my time, but I work every day to understand why and to eliminate regret. Life is too short to look back with sorrow and guilt, and besides, isn't thankfulness a lot more spiritually mature? So I strive to be grateful for the lessons I've been given, instead of regretting that they had to be taught. [/derail]

Now I'm going to nitpick at the biggest issue I see with Biblical dating. "Men initiate, women respond". Men are, of course, put into leadership roles in the Bible.

Hollywood's perfect woman runs with the boys, knows what she wants, and is aggressive en route to getting it — especially romantically. Hilariously, Hollywood even writes these characters into period pieces, as if the normal woman at all levels of society in the 18th and 19th centuries was a post-feminist, post-sexual-revolution, "there-ain't-no-difference-between-me-and-you" libertine.

Take one look at 18th century London with 10,000 prostitutes top-to-bottom, courtesans to streetwalkers, and tell me that society hasn't always had its share of "liberated" women! The "normal" woman back then succumbed to a lot of peer pressure when she chose a husband and lived a "normal", quiet, meek life. The "normal" woman had to live with her husband taking a mistress and say nothing, as it was common for him to do so and in some cases encouraged, especially when the wife wanted to avoid pregnancy (contraceptives being neither readily available nor Godly)!

Historically, ancient Rome (from which Christianity sprang) was a patriarchy, and most societies since have been patriarchal. There are few surviving female voices from those times to tell us whether they liked their roles in the household; whether they struggled as women today do with their expected roles; whether their husbands left their togas on the floor. There's been debate since 200BC regarding women's independence and authors in all eras have blamed women to some degree for ruining families by taking on male roles, whether it was owning land or money in ancient Rome or having the ability to work outside the home in more recent times. There's nothing new about the debate regarding male and female roles. It's rather telling that despite Mr. Croft's insistence on the vague historical ideal of women as meek and willing participants in the Patriarchal order, a good hard look at history says that the ideal has existed as long as written history, and so have the "recent problems" regarding marriage and family values. I'd much rather hear "either can initiate, as long as they do so with honesty and good intentions". Defined roles are not bad (see my post "Femininity" regarding gender roles), but I think the definitions should be left up to individuals.

(Sunday's Thoughts)
Now that I'm through with the reading I realize: I wanted to get mad at these articles. I fully admit that I went into this Challenge geared up for a full-on "Logic vs. Religion" rant about the various ways in which Biblical dating was both absurd and cheerfully ignorant of real life situations. Despite that initial reaction on my part, the rest of the articles are fairly straightforward and agreeable. Even though I'm still tempted to pick God right out of the equation, the guiding principles - communication, getting to know not only the person but his/her friends, family, etc to better judge compatibility, taking it slow - are all sound concepts to apply to dating in general, Christian or not. And of course, it reminds us not to leave our friends behind in our zeal for finding a mate. (Keeping a healthy social network is another post on its own)

Really, despite Mr. Croft's repeated assurance that Biblical Dating does not include "playing at marriage" and warns against too much intimacy and getting to know someone "too well" before marriage, lest a breakup cause more damage than it really should, he does advocate a lot of getting-to-know-you kinds of discussions. Discussions are GOOD. What he doesn't advocate, clearly, is finding out whether your potential husband leaves his socks all over the house by moving in with him. I guess you should just ask his mother! In all seriousness; I would bet that the most awkward part of marriage is learning to share your space with someone else. Suddenly you have two dressers, the closet is half full of someone else's clothes and there are socks on the living room floor. Old habits are hard to change, and again he gives the advice that to solve potential problems, you must communicate. Nothing wrong with that!

I think that what I am most having a problem with is the idea that women need to subject themselves to some invisible authority who will make all of their important decisions for them. I love the quote "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it is yours (love it forever). If it doesn't, it never was." And really, that's what women are advised to do in this series of articles - let go of the control.

The Lord is sovereign. If it doesn't work out with a particular guy because he didn't step up, the Lord will cause something else to work out. He knows what is best for each of us, and all of us must learn to trust him — especially about things that are really important to us.

The wording is enough to get under my skin! Even though the meanings are similar, the first quote puts control in the hands of the reader; the second puts it in the hands of God. I guess this is something I have to work through - my own desire for control. But that's another blog entry on its own, and a lot more learning ahead. For now, I'll just say that I have not been forced to submit to my partner but that I do on occasion simply because I love him and respect him. And really, that's what dating should be about - respect for the other person; wanting to find someone who is worthy of that respect and who can not only help you in your own growth, be it spiritual or material, but who can be helped by you. All relationships are a two-way street, and I think a lot of people forget this.

I'm glad these articles reminded me of the work it takes to willingly put your partner first in a relationship, instead of selfishly asking them to put you first. The challenge certainly gave me a lot to think about this weekend!

Summer Challenge

2010-07-08T16:40:00.001-04:00

Before I tell you about the Challenge I am taking on, I'd like to give you some background.

I really dislike and distrust Focus on the Family. I have for a while; even during my adolescent years when my father was doing his most intense spiritual searching and taking me to churches along the way, listening to FotF on the radio, and handing me FotF-approved tape sets on relationships, I wasn't sold on their approach. I thought them shallow; trying too hard to appeal to as many people as possible, spewing the same thoughts over and over again in a desperate attempt to brainwash listeners without ever encouraging true thought or growth in faith. And I think I've finally pinpointed why I disliked them so much: They Lie.

An excerpt:

Our young believer listens, and two subtle evils begin to work in his life. Focus On The Family first admonishes our believer to keep listening, because their programs will help heal the damage in his soul. They don't just come out and say it, but the message is clear. If he wants to learn how to be a better Christian, he need look no further. In other words, they set themselves up as the authority on moral living. This little device hooks our young believer. If he rejects what's being broadcast by Focus On The Family, he is rejecting the information God obviously wants him to hear.

He keeps listening, and over time the second evil takes root and does its damage.

Focus On The Family tells our young Christian what good Christians do. They talk about how to love correctly. They talk about how to talk correctly. They talk about how to believe correctly. They talk about all the evil sins our Christian should avoid. But unfortunately, they inadvertently use themselves, their speakers and their leaders, as examples of what good Christians do. They do this by holding up their own interpretations of Scripture as God's will for our young believer's life.

Now, FotF recently sprouted a new website/media offshoot called "Boundless", aimed at single twenty-somethings and young married couples. They're trying their hardest to be the Cool Ministry on the block, which to me is both ridiculous considering their already large following (why conform to our "immoral" society's ideas of 'cool' when you already have 3-5 million listeners?) and scary - I don't want people like my sister and brother-in-law being targeted by an organization that preys on the weak and confused, especially when they're using FACEBOOK as a way to get their message across!

So when I stumbled on the Boundless Summer Challenge through a pair of Christian friends of mine, I wasn't terribly impressed with the whole idea of Boundless, or the Challenge itself - I mean, they're offering an iPad for "the person who completes the entire challenge and writes us the most compelling final essay". (Keep in mind that the only way they know you've completed it is by you following them on Facebook, which gives them access to your wall and your Facebook Notes, in which you are expected to keep a daily journal of the "tasks" they set). Maybe it's just me, but the idea of offering any prize at all for a challenge which is supposed to be about immaterial, spiritual growth seems a little like... what's the word I'm looking for?... desperation? Hypocrisy? Reeking of underhandedness - ah, duplicity!

Still, the idea of participating grew on me despite the threat of winning an iPad. For a start, I noticed that nowhere in the selling points for the challenge does it mention that it's Christian-only or even that it's directed at any given God or Faith. In fact it's not until the first Task appeared today that the word "Christ-followers" (not Christians!) was written in relation to the Challenge. Well, I'm a follower of Christ, if you translate that to mean "I follow the Golden Rule!". And since "The primary benefit in this Challenge is growth in godliness and the enjoyment of fellowship.", I'm going to translate "godliness" as "cleanliness" (no, not really, but I thought that'd get a laugh), that is, enlightenment. I'm going to use this challenge for growth toward Nirvana and the enjoyment of the fellowship of humanity.

So! While I'm not interested in using the Boundless Summer Challenge as a way to improve my relationship with Christ, I'm going to follow along anyway. The first task is a 3-part: Register on Facebook, pray, and ask people to join. I'm not interested in the iPad, so I feel no need to register with these people and allow them access to the most private parts of my public life (Because I do actually have privacy settings enabled; I'm not sharing my information with the entire world!). I consider this blog entry my official, formal registration for the Boundless Summer Challenge. "Praying" (or at least meditating) I will do. If I come up with any interesting thoughts I'll share them later today. Finally, asking: Consider this my invitation for you to join me on my 31-day journey through faith and spirituality. Regardless of your faith (or lack thereof), you are welcome to use this challenge to improve your relationships with people, study whatever religious texts you feel will help you in your journey, and meditate daily on how to live a better life (whatever "better" means to you is ok). If you'd like support, a dialogue, or just want me to know that you're participating you are welcome to leave a comment with a link to whichever website, profile, or blog you'll be updating for the next month. The challenge starts today, but you can join any time during the month (unless you're joining with them on Facebook; they set the deadline at Monday, July 12). Here's to a month of spiritual growth!

Oh, and for the friends who are doing this, especially N: I am going to pray not that you don't condemn yourself if the new baby prevents you from completing these tasks, but that you never feel or are ashamed of the "condemnation" of FotF and its members; that you remain innocent of the greed and anger that cloud its work and that your faith and companionship with your husband grows stronger not because of a few days spent in contemplation but because of a life well-lived with honor, compassion, and grace.

I leave you with this:

"How much better it would be if we could just remember that our Basic Assumptions are just that: assumptions. We do not know for a fact that anything is true because we are humans, and our minds are interpretive machines. We may believe something with all our hearts and still be wrong. We might fight and die, or even kill, for our interpretation of truth, but it won't make it any more true. All we can do is learn as much as we can and then remove everything that cannot be true and start seeing what is left. It'll never be a perfect truth, but at least it won't be a self-created one based on our personal or our group's own Basic Assumptions."

Maybe you can tell me...

2010-07-08T03:26:00.000-04:00

Is it better to satisfy one thousand desires or conquer just one?

Samsara poses this question, with beautiful cinematography and careful attention to detail. A young Buddhist monk trained from the age of 5, Tashi begins to desire the experiences of the outside world and is allowed to leave the monastery to live in a nearby village - but what does he learn about himself and the nature of the Buddha in the process?

As someone who is interested in Buddhism, I found this movie both entertaining and thought-provoking. It's also spurred me to continue my study of Tibetan, which I and a friend are beginning together. Although right now I only have a basic grasp of the alphabet, I'm enjoying the feeling of being new at something.

Living with Grace

2010-07-01T23:25:00.000-04:00

I find myself on the edge. I have been reading blogs like Feelin' Feminine (which I have linked here before) and Little Homestead in the City, many of which have feature some very intelligent women who happen to be writing about their lifestyles - homesteading, homeschooling, self-sufficiency, femininity, modesty, grace... and on top of it all, Christianity.

Here, I am torn. I love the dialogue I can have with these women at times, and I admire their insights on life, appreciate their dedication to their homes and families, and envy (yes, I admit to such an emotion!) their talents and skills (cooking, cleaning, sewing, knitting and crochet, soap and candlemaking, gardening, art, music, song, and so much more!). I feel unaccomplished at 24, next to these graceful and mostly humble young women. I am sure I could achieve most of what they have (I do not aspire to be a parent, and that is one difference I do not wish to erase), were I to apply myself. However, I am not a Christian and that brings up some tension.

I do not want to be a Christian, and I have chosen my spiritual path after a lot of thought, not because someone else was doing it or because I felt the need to fit in. I fully appreciate the appeal of religion; I understand its use in leading a purposeful life and the support it provides for both men and women seeking to live according to a moral code and belong to a supportive, tightly-knit group. I don't think there's anything wrong with living according to religious principles; I simply choose not to. And I feel that because of my choice I am not welcome to engage in discussion or befriend some of these women; they speak words of welcome but they discuss openly the fact that those who do not follow Christ/YHWH/Yahweh/Jeshua are not to be 'left alone' or 'tolerated' but actively spoken against and encouraged to join the fold. Some of them speak of "standing out from the crowd" of sinners and non-believers and then turn around to encourage conformity and group support within the ranks. I have yet to decide how hypocritical I think this is, but I know Christians aren't the only group to do it (there's an entire blog post on the psychology of groupthink just waiting to be written).

I'll give you this - you choose your friends, and if one of them does something you don't approve of, you have every right to say something. Against strangers, though? If I want criticism of my life I have no further to look than the nearest mirror; I don't need others to judge me for me. I think there is a fine line between living an upright life in support of the Lord and proclaiming loudly that anyone who doesn't live such a life should convert immediately. We all have the right and the duty to "be the change we would like to see in the world", so to speak. We have the right to surround ourselves with people who support our lifestyle or to go into the world to witness to others, knowing the intellectual dangers that associating with those different than us can introduce - namely, having our opinion softened or swayed by the very people we would like to convert. We all recognize that to associate with someone is to be influenced by them and maybe the loud proclamations against nonbelievers are simply a way of protecting oneself against the inevitable erosion. I still don't think it's the correct way of going about things.

I think that if you want to live a certain lifestyle, you should do so. Live in a way that glorifies God, or Nature, or yourself. Blog about it. Welcome discussion. But be open and accept that others will come to you seeking more than condemnation. Be an example to those around you of the things you hold most dear. If you live as a true example of the things you wish to uphold, others will seek you out and convert to your way of thinking on their own; seeing your success and happiness will bring them around more effectively than a hundred thousand years of proselytizing ever could.

I want to live with grace and let my actions speak for me. I only hope I'm not letting my mouth get too far ahead!

Breaking News

2010-05-24T11:55:00.000-04:00

Autism linked to infertility treatments, via Education Week blogs.

HOUSE!

2010-05-18T21:16:00.000-04:00

Busy, busy! Bought a house - a 1930's brick beauty with actual wood lath and plaster walls (and the plaster has horse hair in it - I was totally floored when I looked up plaster building techniques from that era). This house has HISTORY. And of course, being us, we're going to have a lot of fun updating it and obliterating three quarters of a century. We're scrubbing walls, patching walls, and cursing at broken plaster keys and rough casement windows. Fixing leaks in the basement, tearing up carpet. Imagine this - we paid less than assessed value for this house, and were told that the bathroom had hardwood floors. The rest of the house, other than the wonderful wood stairs, was carpeted (except for the ugly linoleum in the kitchen). We tore up the carpet - it started because I wanted to get rid of the carpet in one small bedroom where it smelled awful and was too stained to bother with. There is solid, beautiful old hardwood underneath, albeit a bit water-damaged. It's recoverable, mostly. So this weekend Mom came down and we tore up two more rooms. The wood floor is in great shape downstairs and I'm both cursing and praising the idiots who installed carpeting over it... it's a mixed blessing, as it wouldn't be in such great shape without decades of protection from the ugly carpeting, but there were at least two carpet installs (we found a few brown shag carpet fibers stuck to rusted staples under the current beige carpet) and I have to pull out a LOT of staples from the padding. Ugh! We think that there's wood flooring in every room of the house... even the kitchen - hidden under not one, but two disgusting layers of linoleum!

We also discovered that behind a giant mirror (it literally covered the entire chimney from mantle to ceiling in the living room), there were remnants of some really cool old wallpaper which we've got to remove before we can paint. The 50's come back to haunt us...

So that's that. We're trying to get things in move-in shape (a big task, considering the copper plumbing was stolen from the basement before we bought the house, and all the rooms need serious cleaning), and it's a huge task... but we're EXCITED.

That's all for now - more updates soon - hopefully with pictures!

Antici............

2010-05-02T17:13:00.002-04:00

......pation.

Been waiting for stuff to settle, and I hate waiting. I get flustered, and waste my time with things like this word game, which although supposedly good for your verbal skills is also infringing on my ability to finish my paperwork (as usual; anything is more exciting than paperwork).

Monday afternoon I've got another appointment with the adviser at the community college and will hopefully be able to register for classes right then and there. Once that's done for sure I'll have to re-work my summer schedule at least for the mornings that I'll be in class, and after that I'll need to check on funding for fall and scramble to get my fall schedule worked out as soon as I can get the class listings, because that class schedule will determine which client (if any) I can keep and which will have to be dropped. I'm planning on tutoring this summer/fall and possibly changing jobs to pick up any slack in income, and will need to know when I'm free to do that as well.

This week some time we're supposed to be getting new neighbors - a single mom and two young children. Since we're moving out soon we probably won't get to know them very well, but I hope they're quieter than the last neighbors!

Saturday, my sister comes to town. I haven't seen her since... over a year ago, maybe more. It's been a long time, although it didn't seem that long until I thought about it. There will be a lot to catch up on!

And next Friday we close on a house, and I expect the rest of May will be lost in a flurry of cleaning, repairs, and packing. We are planning on giving notice at the beginning of June or July, depending on how long it takes us to fix the place up, so we'll be out by August, a year after we moved in. As soon as the new house is secure I'll be bringing my gardening tools over and setting up the veggie beds. The raised beds I was working on were left unfinished due to a run of bad weather and our sudden house search, and last week I finally gave the pallets away to two people from the local Freecycle group where they'll be turned into a chicken coop and someone else's raised beds. There's one left; the only one that had been finished and filled. I planted a few onions, radishes and greens in it, just to have something to show for my efforts. When we move I'll harvest what I can and re-seed with nasturtiums so that the new neighbors have something pretty to look at this summer.

Later this summer I'm hoping to take off work for a week or two. I want to go camping, visit some friends and/or invite friends to visit us here, and catch up on my reading. There will be lots going on this summer! What are your summer plans?

Charter Schools and Summer Camps

2010-04-24T11:29:00.003-04:00

Came across an op-ed article on charter schools this morning. I don't have much to add at the moment, but I'm sure you'll be able to form your own conclusions.
Straight Talk About Charter Schools (The Answer Sheet; a Washington Post blog).

...okay, so I do have something to add. I was going to just comment, but I'm not registering for yet another site just to drop one comment, so here it is:

Our "public" school systems (public schooling, private religious schooling, and charter schooling) are failing us across the board - charters are only part of the problem. The "experts" can't even agree on what makes a good school, or a good teacher.

They forget the most important part - what makes a good student? And that answer - the parents, the community, the culture, the teacher prep programs, AND the school... that's too much for most candidates pushing educational reform. They'd rather focus on merit-based pay (yes, let's blame the teachers!) than admit that there is something intrinsically wrong with a system in which parents are allowed to verbally abuse their child's teacher, in front of the child, and the teacher has no redress; in which teacher salaries are much lower than other equally-educated professionals and teachers often pay out of their own pocket for classroom supplies because their funding is misspent on football uniforms; in which sports and American Idol are elevated beyond research facilities, community involvement, or responsible living as the summit of American achievement, and in which teacher prep programs spit out graduates from the bottom of the SAT score pool, the ones who often can't spell, let alone read aloud - but they make awfully good bulletin boards!

The schools are failing us because we are failing them.

And now on to the other topic of the day: Summer camp!

I think about summer camp all year. It was my second home for most of my childhood. A lot of important things happened there. I worked there for 3 years after getting too old to attend as a camper, and I loved it so dearly that I still have to wipe away tears after singing the songs I used to lead around the campfire. I miss it in ways that are impossible to describe. You know how, sometimes, you find a place that is so perfect that you feel as though you found something that you never knew you were missing, but now, you can't stand leaving? That feeling describes how I feel about camp. And that, more than anything else, is why I advocate so loudly for children to attend a camp.

Not everyone likes camp, and not all camps are the same, but for many children it's an experience to which nothing else will compare. The friends you make and the lessons you learn stick with you - not just practical things like identifying plants or using sunscreen, but life lessons: friendship, teamwork, an understanding of nature and all its cycles of life, death and rebirth. And for a child with autism, camp can be a place where the lessons from school, especially social lessons, are repeated and built upon, so that come September there hasn't been a backslide. Camp is important, and not just for the child - how many parents tear their hair when school lets out because they don't know what to do with their child?

Camp is a big choice for a lot of families, but it can be a great time if you put a little planning into it. If you are considering sending your autistic child to camp, now is the time to do it. Really, March was a good time to start looking - some fill up fast, but depending on your area, some camps may still have spaces open, and if not, now is a great time to research for next year and work on any skills your child may need for a successful camp session.

To find a camp, you may look online, but I recommend local research first. Many camps are small, and don't have much (if any) web presence; camps also develop reputations which may not be aired on their website and which may influence your decision. My Summer Camps covers the basics in the US and Canada, and you can ask your child's teacher, behavioral therapist or doctor to compile a list of appropriate camps. Brochures may be available at offices or through your child's school. Available camps may range from half-day social programs to full-week sleepover camps with adjustments for the needs of the children they serve. Most here are day camps which run approximately the same hours as a school day and allow the child to continue a school-like schedule as well as allowing families some freedom to retain home services through the summer months.

Keep in mind that your child's functional level will be considered in the camp application. If your child is not potty trained, is a flight risk, or has other concerns that would require one-on-one aid, look for a camp where a nurse aide or behavioral worker would be welcomed. In PA, some camps invite the child's current behavioral therapy staff to work with the child at camp, which helps with continuity of experience for the child as well as easing the burden of camp staff. Other concerns may be:

1.Communication: If your child does not speak, does he or she have an appropriate system in place to communicate needs to camp staff? Can (s)he bring a technological aid such as a dynavox? Are staff familiar with your child's mode of communication?

2. Behavioral concerns: Does your child show aggression (either toward self or others)? Do you know their tantrum triggers, and does the camp environment and/or staff address them? Will your child require restraint during tantrums? Does your child follow directions and have basic social skills like sharing and turn-taking? Will your child pick up any new behaviors from other campers?

3. Medical concerns: What medications will your child need to take at camp? What medical conditions should staff be aware of and able to treat? Autism-related or not, all camps will require a medical checkup and knowledge of allergies, medications and medical conditions. If you plan right, you can use your child's school physical for camp, and vice versa.

4. Sensory needs: If your child is on a "sensory diet" or has known sensory needs (needs to get up and move, needs to be squeezed, needs a fidget toy) you may want to address this with camp staff. Since many special-needs camps focus on children with a wide array of needs, and not just autism, you'll want to ensure that camp staff or the child's care provider at camp have the tools they need, and not assume that they know all about sensory issues. A child whose sensory needs have been met is more likely to learn and enjoy camp!

5. Funding! Some camps are expensive - do they offer funding? If not, can you apply for a grant or 'scholarship', or do you have to raise the money? A woman not too far from me is trying to raise $2300 for her daughter to attend a special-needs camp, by making and selling jewelry. To her, it's entirely worth it. Would it be worth it to you?

Most of all, consider your child's interests, desires and needs! A camp should be a good fit for the child, and if possible, should spend some time with your child before accepting an application. It will help the camp evaluate your child's fit for the program, and help your child get to know their potential camp leaders.

Camp is pretty awesome, and I believe that it can be a great way for both parents and children to enjoy summer. If you can't go to camp, consider keeping your child on a schedule anyway. Get them up at around the same time, put them to bed at around the same time (bedtime is VERY important!), and structure their meals and a few activities. Not only can a schedule decrease summer tantrums and make life manageable, but come September the school will really appreciate you!

Comments

2010-03-28T13:01:00.003-04:00

It is with regret that I post the following service announcement.

Due to a couple of Asian spammers posting suspicious links, all comments will now be moderated. Have a nice day!

Agitation

2010-02-25T22:17:00.004-05:00

Today, we finally got our new washer and dryer. It was supposed to come last week, but with all the snow and the city's refusal to plow our "tertiary" (read: unimportant, unless you're the people living on it) road, the delivery truck refused to come up the hill and deliver our stuff. They managed this refusal from the bottom of the hill. I was steamed, let me tell you... but today the snow held off well enough for them to haul the two big boxes in, cursing at the snow and the large basement step, and set things up. We had to do some last-minute running to get everything in position but now our first load is in and we're happily saving money with a high-efficiency, agitator-less washer.

I've been excited for the washer all week the way a kid is excited for a new toy. For one thing, this means we don't have to drive across the city to use grandma's 70's-era appliances, which have ruined at least 2 of my sweaters by mysteriously shrinking them and take forever to dry heavy loads because the dryer overheats and has a long cooldown cycle. For us, the washer/dryer in the house is a convenience. We could have kept using the ones available at grandma's, but we managed to afford a set of our own. And it got me thinking (what doesn't, these days?).

First thought: poverty. Yeah, yeah. I'm wearing that welcome mat thin. It struck me full-force today just how badly we treat the poor, though... and how even a simple thing like doing laundry can hurt. See, we've been in the position before (when we moved down here, in fact) of having to visit a laundromat and PAY to do our laundry. One huge basket and $10 in quarters later, half my jeans were still damp and we'd run out of money. Keep in mind we weren't even paying for detergent - we brought our own. What do the poor do? They certainly aren't getting much help as far as washing clothes is concerned. I wonder as I look over my own struggles what the people living so far below my income level can possibly do about laundromat fees. Even people with washers in their apartment complex have to pay - often a couple of dollars per washer. How do the poor manage to pay? At college the washers started at $1.10 my freshman year, and by my senior year were up to $1.50. Those who could go home on weekends never used the dorm washers.

Which brings me to kids washing clothes. A good number of people I knew at college didn't know how to separate light and dark clothing, let alone read tags, wash red shirts alone to remove excess dye, or not shrink things in the dryer. Many of the students at my college were there on scholarships; some though had no excuse for not knowing how to do laundry, other than the fact that no one taught them. I don't know about other households, but I was taught how to do the laundry and so were my sisters. But it seems that a lot of kids are missing out on this essential part of life, and it makes me worry. Parents seem to put a lot more emphasis on good grades and lots of sports practice than on good life skills these days.

It also makes for an interesting comparison to autistic kids, many of whose parents can only wish that their child will be able to do his own laundry one day. I see a lot of treatment plans for kids on the spectrum that call for self-help skills like making sandwiches and folding clothes - stuff most of us take for granted. It's interesting that while the rest of us are busy worrying about whether our children will be doctors or lawyers, the parents of autistic kids have it right and are worrying about whether their child will be able to make chicken nuggets without burning the house down. I guess having a kid with a developmental delay really makes you re-think your priorities.

The above is not meant to downplay the frustration that comes with raising kids, especially autistic kids. Parents with kids on the spectrum often do want to be able to dream normal dreams for their children. They want to be able to blithely mention that Timmy's growing up to be really good at math, and might become an engineer, or that Susie won an award for her high school speech competition. For most, autism takes away the opportunity to dream, and replaces it with a daily struggle to complete the most mundane tasks. I've worked with 11 year-old kids still in diapers, with first-graders who couldn't identify the letters of the alphabet. It's not easy to teach those kids how to tie their shoes, let alone read the instructions on a box of macaroni and cheese, follow them properly, feed themselves and clean up after eating. To get a deeply autistic child to that point would be a lifetime effort in many cases.

[offtopic]
And speaking of autism: I've been reading a news follow-up on that mother who killed her son in NY earlier this year. To have an 8 year old who can't even tell you he's hungry, let alone that he loves you... what a distressing idea. But it seems to me she was going about things the wrong way. The article quotes friends who describe her as a woman on a crusade - one even goes so far as to suggest that her "devotion" to finding a cure for her son was itself something twisted by her own motivations: "[one friend] believes her obsession was ''a control issue, the feeling that she would be the one to save that child, almost a salvation quest.''" They mention that for all the money she had, she didn't have a secondary caregiver (nanny, babysitter, behavioral therapist). Hmmmm.

I get the impression that this woman really was somewhat insane. Whether she ended up that way or started that way we'll probably never know. She certainly could have used help with her child, but for some reason reconsidered sending him to specialized schools or finding a state which would provide good wraparound care. She spared no expense on strange, cutting-edge treatments but refused to let the child out of her own hands. She seemed so desperate for help... but only if she was the one to give it. And I wonder: are the overbearing/underbearing parents I so often see with kids on the spectrum simply showing normal human behaviors on high alert due to their child's diagnosis, or is a parent with one of those two polar personalities showing gene expressions which in a child may become autism? It certainly seems that some parents show obsessive or otherwise autistic behaviors themselves (but have no diagnosis), but no one has yet studied personality traits of parents in relation to their child's diagnosis, and I doubt it'll happen soon - likely it would be seen as adding insult to injury to claim that our personalities affect our child's abilities.
[/offtopic]

Well, the washer's caused the basement drain to back up and spill rich, black silt all over the basement floor (third time this year the drain's done that... first two times were due to sudden thaws after long cold snaps). Guess it's time to call a plumber. Still, I'll take a backed-up drain over a laundromat any day. The basement is warm, the washer works beautifully (and quietly!), and sooner or later the snow will melt and give me an excuse to garden while the laundry does its thing. I already have onions and peas and lettuce and mint sprouting. Onward, spring!

Comments

2010-02-25T13:04:00.002-05:00

I've received a few spam comments on this blog lately with links that look like this at the end of a comment, usually one unrelated to the actual post content: .........

If you see these, DO NOT CLICK THEM. I'll delete them as soon as I can and I'm going to consider implementing comment moderation so that these don't get through. Blogger needs to provide us with a good way to flag these comments so their service can remove the offending profiles and/or block them, but in the meantime I advise anyone who sees a comment like this to warn the blogger about it and ignore it.

So I've Been Thinking...

2010-01-27T00:30:00.006-05:00

...and if you know me, thinking is never a short-term process.

(halted while I go do the dishes and further ferment these thoughts). On a related note: I don't mind doing dishes - the reason I put them off till Midnight on a work night (given that I called off work this evening because of a sore throat and slept half the day, I'm not quite tired yet anyway!) is because I hate the back aches that come from slouching over our not-quite-tall-enough sink. Sometimes being tall sucks.

Right, but back to the thinking. I've been reading more than I had before Christmas, given that it's midwinter and I've been calling off sick a lot (yet another issue that needs to be addressed, but will probably be put off till I get my taxes done and see if I'm getting anything back to pay the doctor), and that I got as a Christmas present a wonderful, magical gift card to Half-Price Books, which makes good on its name's promise with a great variety of fun stuff.

So in the last few weeks I've consumed a book on school bullying, a bestselling journalist's exploration of the working-class life, and a selection of essays by New York Times journalists about the class divide in modern America. (I link to Amazon, because it has pictures and reviews. These should be available in your local library system if you'd like to find them for yourself). I'm now starting another poverty-related book: The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shippler.

Aside from the bullying book, which I picked up because I'm one of the survivors of school bullying, these books are variations on a theme which has starred heavily in my experiences, especially since I started my current job. The issues of class and income in our country are ones I have long been aware of in some form or another; they influenced how I was raised and how I currently live. And sometimes, they make me feel really uncomfortable, depressed, or just plain mad.

Poverty is a tricky thing to define but in this country there is little argument that poverty describes a pretty big group. Dictionaries say things like "Lack of the means of providing material needs or comforts" (American Heritage), "Want or scarcity of means of subsistence" (Webster's International, 2nd ed). I like the third definition: "The state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions." (Webster's Collegiate). Poverty in this country holds that connotation - of someone who can't afford what the "rest of us" desire. A lot of the "poor" that I know are quite happy where they are, including my father who despite occasional sighs over the availability of funds to pay the gov't their due (in land taxes and the like) seems rather content to chase turkeys around the yard and dig up potatoes with his girlfriend. Is he "poor"? Yes. Is he lacking in love, housing, or food? No!

I have no doubt I'll never be rich in the traditional sense of the word. I'm too far in debt; even if I got a better job tomorrow, worked my way up to a decent middle-manager position with great benefits, won enough on a lotto ticket to pay off my debts and continued to save for the rest of my life, I wouldn't be rich. And so I fall firmly into the lower class at the moment, with vague hopes of becoming lower-middle and a homeowner in some far-distant future. I figure I'll be rich in other ways, with laughter and friends and loving family and a great-looking veggie garden. But even if I make all my homesteading dreams come true, I'll still be "Poor", which strikes me as very odd, and a very undesirable label. And from this vantage point, the books I'm reading ring very, very true, and bring up a lot of food for thought about why I'm so bothered by poverty and class-ism.

The books say things like this:

"Breaking away and moving a comfortable distance from poverty seems to require a perfect lineup of favorable conditions. A set of skills, a good starting wage, and a job with the likelihood of promotion are prerequisites. But so are clarity of purpose, courageous self-esteem, a lack of substantial debt, the freedom from illness or addiction, a functional family, a network of upstanding friends, and the right help from private or governmental agencies. Any gap in that array is an entry point for trouble, because being poor means being unprotected... With no cushion of money, no training in the ways of the wider world, and too little defense against the threats and temptations of decaying communities, a poor man or woman gets sacked again and again - buffeted and bruised and defeated. When an exception breaks this cycle of failure, it is called the fulfillment of the American Dream." (The American Myth, as the author later calls it).
The Working Poor: Invisible in America. Shippler, David K. (New York: Vintage, 2005), p5.

After some personal observations this week that brought reality sharply home on the heels of having read all this scholarly discourse, I wondered what we can do (and more specifically what I can do) to alleviate the problems we're seeing. If there are so many widely-read books out there about poverty and class issues, why are there so few widely-promoted organizations devoted to fixing them? If so many people struggle in poverty every day, why aren't more of them working -together- to ease the struggle? And a question for the politicians: if the struggle with money is such a serious problem that the President is now admitting that the so-called middle class in America has been struggling since before the recession, why is consideration of this growing class of between-the-cracks Americans not higher on the list of things to look at when passing legislation?

Readers of this blog know me as a huge proponent of education - something that would alleviate the skill deficits of many working poor, would improve self-esteem and (hopefully) add purpose to lives, and might even improve friend networks as students (both kids and adults) meet teachers and workers who would support them instead of dragging them down. However, teaching a person won't guarantee them a job (that's the economy's problem). It won't provide the help they need from the gov't or private charities (volunteering is a good option, but not the only one!), and it won't set a better starting wage or give the option of advancement. And for the middle class, it's hard to say that education would have helped them avoid low-interest variable rate mortgages, overspending on brand-name "necessities" and chasing that terrible cultural belief that You are defined by Your Stuff. Education may teach you how to pursue a better life, but it won't guarantee you'll get there or even that you'll be immune to people who prey on insecurity to sell goods. A lot of highly-educated families are now paying the price of keeping up with the Joneses.

Then there's the question of whether it's even possible to eradicate poverty and class, and if so, whether it's a desirable option. Poverty provides our economy with cheap unskilled labor, which in return provides the consumer with cheap goods and services, which creates an upward cycle of saving and spending for both company and individual. The only ones who fail to benefit in this upward cycle are the working poor who eventually disappear into the shadows of their employers' skyscrapers. If they did benefit, eventually someone else would have to replace them at the bottom. We can't pay everyone in our society $14/hr (what a study in Nickel and Dimed quotes as a "living wage"). If we did (and if companies actually dealt with it and didn't immediately make the problem worse by outsourcing their factories to China and thus removing the jobs entirely from our market), the prices of goods and services would rise immensely to make up for the new "wealth" pouring into the hands of the poor, as well as the increased cost burden on business... and we'd be back to square 1, only with inflation to boot. In economic terms, in order to keep capitalism afloat, someone somewhere has to lose.

Some people go willingly into this sacrifice. They don't mind the long hours, the tedious and often body-breaking labor, the low pay. They have other loves - stargazing, their kids, their tiny gardens. Others hate it but have no escape and still others willingly try their best to break free only to be beaten back down. But the ones who choose to live a quiet, frugal lifestyle are never thanked; the ones who attempt and fail to rise are rarely comforted. I've always wondered why the mantra that "hard work will get you somewhere" is so rarely confronted and so often upheld as the absolute Truth in this place where hard work is as likely to turn around and bite you as it is to lift you into the executive's Comfy Chair. David Shippler provided some food for thought on this one, as well:

"...the American Myth also provides a means of laying blame. In the Puritan legacy, hard work is not merely practical but also moral; its absence suggests an ethical lapse. A harsh logic dictates a hard judgment: If a person's diligent work leads to prosperity, if work is a moral virtue, and if anyone in the society can attain prosperity through work, then the failure to do so is a fall from righteousness."

I've seen that attitude at work; it prevails in comments online when I or someone else offers the information that they can't afford this or that, it shows itself when a co-worker sheepishly admits they shop at a thrift store and then hastens to add that it's only for play clothes for the kids - as if wanting to save money is the same as not having any to spend.

Then again there's the other side, the anarcho-socialist railing against The Man that riles up the traditionalists and at first glance makes sense to a lot of disillusioned youth - that poverty is not anyone's fault but that the poor are victims: of corporations, the government, the rich and all their bad influences. I don't like that reasoning, either. It excuses the poor for their bad decisions because most (but not all) decisions can be traced to a lack of options or a lack of education - and therefore it is the system's fault that people end up poor, drug-addicted and in gangs and it's the system's responsibility to get them out. A lot of people, especially a lot of borderline-poor people, use this as an excuse for why they do the things they do.

And I feel like if these attitudes don't change - if people continue to think that hard work is all that's separating a single mom on welfare from the suburbanite couple the next neighborhood over, or conversely that the suburbanites are somehow repressing the poor by supporting sweatshop labor to make their angora sweaters, we'll get nowhere in the discussion of how to alleviate poverty. And I do want to alleviate it. I think a lot of the reason I'm bothered by poverty is that I've seen the higher levels of it - places where my parents lived for a long time, where the term "paycheck to paycheck" doesn't just describe your work schedule but your life schedule - waiting for the money that barely covers the bills, worrying about missing a day or the car breaking down or the school taxes, scared of your dependence on things going just right, unable to gain security on your own and yet too far above the poverty line (by $10 or by $1000) to get help. That kind of balancing act, the fact that someone who is making enough to "get by" isn't really secure or happy at all, is what bothers me - that, and the fact that if you're in this group, you don't talk about it. It's a silent struggle, and admitting it is an exercise in shame, because of the poverty stigma and the worry that you really aren't good enough, after all.

Then there's abject poverty, which is in a class all its own. While the moderately poor and lower-middle classes have to worry every week about whether the next paycheck will be enough to keep a roof over their heads, the abject poor are worried about whether they can stay with their mothers or sisters much longer. They have the longest climb to food security, their own space to live, and for many of them, a regular job. They are the least educated and the most desperate, and they are the ones I most want to help, even though I'm still trying to help myself get steady. I feel like I'm part of a shipwreck, clinging to a board while the lifeboats sail away, and still trying to dive back into the water to pull more people up, even though it may cost me the board and make rescue that much more difficult. Having lifeboats help would be better still, but lifeboats are organizations of people, and they're not all thrilled about the risk of tipping the boat - they may not save someone unless the water is shallow or rescue is already imminent.

In reality, poverty is not an extreme of laziness or repression. It's a sliding scale between personal choices and poor support systems, and it will take a combination of societal help and personal responsibility (there's that big bad R word again!) to dig most people out of abject poverty. I want to be part of that societal safety net. I try to help myself first (personal responsibility!), because saying "no" can be the difference between sinking under the combined weight of hangers-on, and keeping a few afloat. I make sure the rent is paid before I give to charities; I make sure we have enough to eat before I offer food to the neighbors. But I'm also trying to lead by example. I want people to see that even though I am barely keeping my head above water, I can still hold out my hand. I want others to think about doing the same. I think that selfishness is a terrible sin when so many people in the worst circumstances can find it in themselves to be selfless. I think that community safety nets in the form of shared gardens, resource centers, and mentoring can really improve quality of life, even if they don't improve income levels, and I think that connecting someone to the health of their community in such a vital way as growing food together, cleaning up the neighborhood, or running programs for the kids is a measure of security, a hedge against dropping out and letting go.

After a lot of thought on this issue, I think that I'd really love to spend more of my time working on the problems of poverty - getting people away from their friends' tiny apartments and into a place where they can afford to take a day off work, fix a car, buy furniture, take night classes... even if we can't "solve" the poverty problem, I think it's our duty as human beings to help each other find security: food security, housing security, safety in their own homes and the knowledge that their kids aren't going to turn to drugs as the "only way" to reach their dreams of wealth. Poverty may always need to exist to provide room for wealth, but it shouldn't have to mean starvation in one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Poverty should be stability. It should be the knowledge that you are still important in the system and the gratitude of those who rely on your labor. It should be a chance to improve yourself, but the security of knowing that even if you spend the rest of your life where you are, you'll never go hungry.

Femininity

2010-01-05T09:56:00.006-05:00

Got an impromptu morning off today when my client ended up taking longer than expected at the doctor. While I waited for them to call and say they were home (didn't happen), I checked out my usual morning news and blog posts, and found this:

It's time to Wear the Pants, via Feelin' Feminine.

Let's first get this straight: I appreciate the efforts of anyone who is trying to make the world better. And I think Feelin' Feminine is a cool blog with a cool idea. I don't even mind the religious aspects, because they're respectfully submitted as part of a whole feminine process, not as the end of the argument on why women should wear skirts. But this ad struck a nerve, and I had to respond with more than a comment which may not be posted (all due respect to their moderation - if they decide my comment is inflammatory, it's their decision, and that's why I've got my own blog).

This ad is bad. It's a very good ad, as far as ads go. It's terribly effective in selling the Dockers brand of pants as Pants for MEN. I just happen to disagree with their definition of manhood, and think the ad is doing more harm to a population that is already struggling with gender identity. See, as I commented on Feelin' Feminine, I don't think gender roles are what's ruining society. And this society is absolutely not genderless. I challenge the guys who came up with this ad concept to prove me wrong.

First I'd like to address the difference between sex and gender, in case there is any confusion. Males = male sexual features (penis, lack of breasts, more body hair), Females = female sexual features (breasts, vagina, curves). No more (although if you want to indulge in a day's worth of reading, check Wikipedia's list of possible chromosomal anomalies and their results). The sex you're born with, unless you have surgery, is the sex you stay your whole life. Gender, which doesn't even come into play until after birth, is a LOT more fluid. This is why there's a difference between transsexuals (who have gender reassignment surgery) and transgenders, who fill the "opposite" gender role of their sex. Gender is the entire package - not only what bits you have in your pants (or skirt), but how you feel about those bits and how you fit into society's expectation of what people with your kind of bits are supposed to be doing. And that's where gender roles come in.

Historically, men and women have occupied a sort of dichotomy when it comes to gender roles - the expectation of what they should do in society. In a patriarchal group, males were providers for the family and ran the gov't (whether it was a tribal council or a feudal castle) while females kept the home and children clean, organized and well fed. Some societies were matriarchal, where women ran things and the men took a stronger provider role in the woods and gardens. Either way, western gender roles are historically seen as pretty rigid. Females didn't attend male-only wars and ceremonies, and men didn't act as midwives. The exceptions to this rule seem to have been select North American native groups who provided a third, "mixed" role for either men or women who were seen as embodying multiple genders (and in some cases, multiple spirits of multiple sexes in the same body). There is no single term for these groups' identifications of what we might call transgendered or "other-gendered" people, although anthropology likes the term "berdache". These people were usually seen as a natural part of a gender spectrum, rather than a bridge across a gender dichotomy, and in some cases were revered as closer to the creators because of their dual nature (Mother Earth/Father Sky).

Because gender roles have not had a single definition throughout history, but are dependent on culture, tradition, and values which have changed through the years, it's illogical to assume that the "normal" roles we assign (think 50's sitcom families) are the only appropriate gender roles, or even the ones best suited to us. People have a tendency to oversimplify the past. We would like to think that everyone during a certain time period fit the stereotype we have of that period - that most of the Victorians were prim and proper, for example. As a matter of fact the ideals of the times were rarely met, as is the case even today. Even in Victorian-era England, ladies farted in public, swore, and occasionally pinned their skirts up while doing chores. Their primary expected gender role might have been that of the prim and retiring young débutante, but they filled other roles too - washerwoman, nursemaid, whore. Society can't thrive when it insists on filling one role too well, and the others not at all. And it would seem it falters equally when everyone insists on trying to fill every role.

Today there seems to be great fragmentation of gender roles, probably thanks in part to the feminist and suffragette movements. Women find themselves able to do work that was historically reserved for men as part of our armed forces, scientists, doctors, and lawyers, and are expected to fill the roles in those jobs just as well as men (or so the HR office insists). Still, we are being fed crap like this Dockers ad, which leaves us with the message that Men are somehow better at it all, and that women pushing into the traditional "world of men" is androgynizing (and therefore destroying) society. Logical failure: androgyny is not the right word for what's happened to our gender roles. Failure to balance is more like it. There are already plenty of people who hate these attitudes, so I won't go about systematically picking them apart here. Instead, let me point out a better source of blame for society's problems: responsibility.

Gender roles will always be fluid and one person will always fill many of them. Wife, sister, daughter, friend, co-worker, and teacher are just a few of my current roles. The important thing is that for every sister-role, the other sibling plays their role as well. What causes dysfunction is dropping the roles you said you'll play, and expecting someone else to fill a role regardless of their feelings toward said role. Relationships work best when roles are defined and filled, whether or not they are the stereotypical roles for the chosen sex. I am able to play the role of provider for my household just as well as my husband, and we are partners in paying the bills and cleaning the house. If one of us suddenly stopped showing up for work and asked the other one to take on the full burden of bill payment, just because it was the expected gender role to take, we'd be in trouble (not least because it's economically unfeasible to support a household on one paycheck these days). If my sister needs me for support after a hard break-up, I am expected to be responsible for my own 'sister' role and support her. When we fail to fill our roles, we are "bad" at them... so it's important to fill at least some of the roles expected of us (spouse, sibling, parent) - in any way we can.

But it's not important whether our fulfillment of that role is traditionally male, female, or something in between. What's important is that we do what we say we're going to. It's also important that we communicate our role expectations - to our friends, family and children. I'll admit there is a lot of gender confusion these days. The GLBTQ lobby has managed to open up discussion about gender roles. Feminists are doing the same thing from a different angle. Fundamental religious groups are growing ever louder in their demands for a return to "godly" ways and traditional roles. Kids are growing up in this wash of ideas, discussions and taboos, and lack the understanding or the guts to ask their parents "what roles am I expected to fill?". You can't simply tell children that they can be "anything they want" (read: fill any role they like), and then show them ads like this. It sends all kinds of mixed messages. So we need to make sure we answer that unspoken question.

We need to provide good role models through ourselves and our friends (if this is not possible, send your kids into responsible care and put your damn life in order already) so that they can see what we value and what roles we enjoy filling. We need to explain, if necessary, that playing with girl toys doesn't make you a girl (or even guarantee that you'll be familiar with your feminine side - how many boys "play" with Barbies by sending them to war and ripping off their heads?) and that mommy is perfectly capable of changing the oil in her car, even if someone else expects differently. We need to address traditional roles with our kids through discussion of media, play, and peer interaction, and then teach them skills to fill and accept a wide range of nontraditional roles as well. We need to tell our children that being "bad" has little to do with fitting into someone else's pigeonhole, and everything to do with avoiding responsibility for their own actions. I would care very little if my son wanted to wear bows in his hair. I would care a lot more if he lied to blame someone else for putting them there.

In some respects I agree with the ad. It is time to drop the complacency and DO SOMETHING. But why does it have to be men (and only the stereotypical, non-salad-eating, manly men at that?) who get to save the world?

Oh, and Happy New Year

2010-01-03T18:02:00.004-05:00

Hope all is well with everyone who reads this. While I am still rather shaky in the belief that every day is a new day and the first day new year doesn't necessarily mean the rest of the year will follow suit, I did have a bad first day, and it didn't make me hopeful for the rest of the month.

I'm trying to start school again this semester, and we'll see how that goes. I'm also trying to keep my sanity in the face of the student loan companies... my forbearance is up in February, and if I don't get into 6 credits of classes by then, I'll have to start paying them back, something I'm not a in financial position to do.

I'm also stuck in the mid-December mindset of finishing presents and waiting for Christmas. We haven't had Christmas with my family yet due to work, weather and my little sister's inconvenient bout with the flu. My mom's presents are sitting in a bag next to the computer, wrapped and neatly labeled. The year hasn't had closure not only in the sense that I haven't done Christmas the way I expected to, but in a lot of other unfinished projects and goals yet unreached. Maybe this year will be better than the last...

I'm So Sick of...

2010-01-03T14:37:00.004-05:00

...people blaming the schools for every problem the educational system has.

Michigan Teaching School Tries Something New". Great article from NPR. I will not dispute that most teaching programs SUCK. Even my program at a highly-recommended teaching college (which used to be a Normal School where girls were educated to become teachers) wasn't that great. There was too much focus on writing the perfect lesson plan (in perfect arbitrary formatting) and too little focus on working out problems. We were encouraged to "reflect" on our lessons but often those reflections were unguided "I think I did this wrong, this theory might have helped" statements; they were something a third-grader could have written and we never had the opportunity to teach the same lesson more than once, to see if our reflection and problem-solving would have actually helped. The result, at least for me, was a sense that it didn't actually matter whether or not you could learn from your mistakes and grow as an educator - it mattered that you got it "mostly right" the first time around, and the reflection on your lesson's success was a very small percentage of your grade, even during student teaching (we got 3 student teaching experiences, starting with simple observation and teaching of one lesson and moving up to a full-on teaching experience under a mentor teacher).

Still, it irks me that the comments on the article shove so much blame onto the teaching schools and the teachers for the failure of our education system (which I blame for the failure of half a dozen other systems, but that's a different rant). I don't think I've ever seen a front-page mainstream media article about a school board screwup, and superintendents taking huge pay raises gets regional coverage at best. I'm pretty sure if I told you the name of the previous principal at my high school, who was removed from his job for being skeevy (the details were kept -very- quiet, but there were allegations of sexual harassment), and then applied for (and GOT) the superintendent position for the district, you'd probably never recognize it. It barely merited an announcement in the tiny local paper. But of course, we don't blame the people in charge.

Never mind that the policies set by school boards and superintendents, by state boards of education and federal laws like No Child Left Behind are what inform every teaching school in the United States and are the standard by which teachers are told they will be judged. Never mind that Race To the Top, the latest in a series of ill-fitting educational reforms put forth by our legislators, looks more like a cutthroat, backstabbing, brown-nosing contest for recognition of "great" school leadership than a measure intended to improve the education of our children. Never mind that the White House is actually taking measures to educate a few groups of schoolchildren on the wonders of gardening (and it seems pretty successful)... the media isn't covering THAT. (NPR did, and I think Mother Earth News ran a blurb. Hardly the kind of coverage that inner-city kids successfully being introduced to healthy diets deserves!).

And especially, never mind that most of America, coast to coast, will tell you that education doesn't really matter that much. Who are our heroes? Sports stars who got through college with a 2.5 GPA and scholarships paying them to entertain us. Entertainers, picked by television contests and record execs without regard to their attendance at an educational institution. (Juilliard will get you into a symphony orchestra, if you're lucky. It won't get you onto American Idol). Talk show hosts (see: Oprah) who tell us how to make perfect cookies using Pillsbury cut-outs and offer heart-rending abuse stories for us to gawk at, but rarely mention that we should spend time reading with our kids. When was the last time Oprah's Book Club read a children's book? They don't bother with telling us about the importance of education until they're washed-up and the only paying job they can get is speaking on NBC's "The More You Know" commercials.

No, of course our society doesn't have problems that contribute to the failure of education. Of course, if we simply force the schools to adapt to the needs of our kids with free breakfast for all, free lunch, lots of teaching to the test and finding that magic way of picking good teachers (I mentioned in a previous post (see "Most Likely to Succeed") that picking good teacher candidates is being done all wrong anyway), we'll magically improve test scores and all will be well. Of course if we cut extracurriculars in order to devote more time to Everyday Math (I can't tell you how much I hate that curriculum) and continue to allow school boards to build multi-million dollar football fields instead of funding new textbooks, we'll teach our children that we really value their education.

Honestly, at this rate I don't think the educational system deserves a penny, but I don't think it's entirely the system's fault. With all the other problems in the world, how exactly is our failure to teach our kids the right things (whatever you believe those to be) the fault of the schools? Parents can't figure out how involved to be (see: Refrigerator Mothers (often blamed for autism) and Helicopter Parents (which I'd almost call a backlash after the Fridge Mom reports)), teachers aren't getting paid enough to deal with the bullshit kids bring from home and the bullshit administrators dump on them, and our teacher education programs aren't exactly admitting the best and brightest (Google "Teacher candidate SAT scores"). But even with "better" teacher candidates, perfect parenting and better teacher pay, kids would still be hearing from all sides that school isn't worth it.*

What do we do in the face of this horrible opposition? Make school worth it. Don't expect the people most important in a child's life to lie about the value of their education. Getting somewhere in life, as any well-educated, highly-paid executive will tell you, is less about what you know and more about who you know. That's not to say that education is useless - it's certainly possible to become a Somebody if you study hard enough and solve a problem in a novel way which gets you the attention of other Somebodies. And education can improve quality of life in myriad ways, too - some of which have nothing to do with the supposed end result of school: getting a job and being a productive member of society. Education can improve health and diet, provide for better social interactions, contribute to global consciousness and encourage informed political activity (and not just in the "protests and sit-ins" kind of way). With a good education comes a better understanding of the world around us, and a better set of tools to tackle daily problems. We can tell our children this, and we can prove it to them despite our "failing" schools.

So yes, our curriculum needs to be changed, both in teacher prep and in primary schools. But at the same time our attitudes need to change. We need to help our children apply skills to the real world, instead of assuming they'll go on field trips to learn those things. We need to show them that learning about electricity can be useful when a light bulb burns out in their night light. That knowing how to round and multiply is useful when getting party supplies for 12 guests, or figuring out how many valentines they need for the class party. That division, fractions and percentages can make sales tax less of a surprise when they get to the register with those valentines, and can tell them how many cookies their classmates will get if they follow a recipe. That reading signs and directions can be the difference between embarrassment at calling for help and pride in doing it yourself. And that it doesn't matter whether you can shoot a basketball as well as Kobe Bryant if you can't read the contract they want you to sign. Maybe when our children realize what education can do for them, a better teacher will make a big difference. Until then, why do we expect the schools to enforce life skills lessons that the kids can't practice inside the classroom?

*Hell, I'd even tell them that. Learn all you like, but don't expect school to teach you everything you want to learn.

Weighing the Hogs

2009-12-04T11:53:00.003-05:00

Teaching Reforms Should be Based on Research and Experience. (Californiaprogressreport.com)

This article may have been written in response to a California legislative move, but it's applicable to schools and school laws across the country. Marty Hittelman, president of the California Federation of Teachers, has his head on straight. He says, in a nutshell, that putting emphasis on testing isn't going to improve our schools.

"Anyone who has spent much time in the classroom will tell you that one day’s performance in not a valid indicator of a student’s mastery of his or her school year curriculum and growth."

I could have told you this. My first student teaching experience in my Junior year drove the point home with one amazing boy. He had some learning difficulties, which had not been diagnosed nor even caught (I suspect now that it was ADD) - he was in my mainstreamed classroom and they had -just- started talk of sending him for a few minutes of Title I reading instruction every day. He had also adopted the attitude that he didn't need school at the ripe old age of 9, and insisted that he was going to be a bricklayer like his dad (who worked 60-hour weeks and never seemed helpful with academics, yet would somehow have time to teach his son the trade). So he was a difficult case, and as a first-time student teacher I was frustrated by his lack of attention and disorganization - as was the classroom teacher. Still, when I wasn't presenting lessons I would hover in the back of the room where he sat - keeping an eye out for signs of distraction, prompting and prodding and pulling him along with the rest of the class. He got through a few math lessons that way and actually made good progress... but I was only there for a few months.

I didn't expect anyone to grow attached. I wasn't a great teacher; the lessons were messy and the kids were sometimes bored. Still, on the last day I went home with an armload of notes and cards - most of them hand-made by the kids during study time in between shushing and fits of giggles. I still have all of them but one in particular stands out. It was written by that boy who had already been labeled "trouble".

This is the note (click for an image):

"I had a fun time wall you were hear. you tout me math skille and ss, sin I learnde alot. eavn thou I fallad alot of your tests it was fun you were a verry verry verry nice teacher. Bye!"

Three sentences, from a child who had trouble writing one complete sentence when I started my placement. Even this child, one the system was struggling with, proved that he could learn (and enjoyed it!). And he did so not in one day or on one test but over a couple of months. On a standardized test, he would have been one more failure for the school to be embarrassed about, and there would be no evidence of his growth that year. Tests are great - when properly applied as continuous assessment of single topics. As a general picture of education, they suck.

I also found this to be both funny and sadly true:

"Any effort to close the achievement gap in our schools that does not address the conditions that children grow up in is doomed to failure. Schools can only do so much in the time that they work with students. Until this country closes the gaps in job opportunities with a livable wage, health care, and affordable housing, efforts for improvements in the schools will have limited success.

In addition, you can develop all the best tests in the world but if you don’t improve the conditions in the schools in which students and teachers operate in, the test scores will not improve either. As the famous farmer said, “Weighing my hog accurately doesn’t help it to grow heavier.”"

That 5th grade class lived in a low-income area in which most jobs were blue-collar or agricultural work. The housing in the area was mostly old farmhouses or the cheaply-built homes of the 40's and 50's. None of it was in great condition, a sign of both the area's poverty and the homeowners' lack of ability (or funds) to keep up with the maintenance. The school breakfast program was packed every morning. The computer lab ran old, donated computers that sometimes locked up, and the library was in need of new books. If kids were sick, parents missed work to take care of them... so kids came to school and spent the day in the nurse's office. In conditions like these, can we really expect students to increase their test performance based solely on curriculum changes (which at many schools probably wouldn't be supplemented with new materials)?

Oh, and speaking of low-income education - Race to the Top (link: PDF of the law) horrifies me. Some people are shouting for "underachieving" schools to be shut down, the entire staff fired and new people hired "to show that the district is working to improve the school" and be competitive for federal funding. HAH.

1. The "underachieving schools are often in low-income areas, serving minorities who may also be ELLs (english language learners), and are already understaffed, underfunded and overcrowded. You're going to fire everyone on the staff regardless of the fact that those are the people who can afford to work at the school, who love the school, and who know the school's problems inside and out, and replace them with the people who couldn't get hired at any of the other districts and have no idea what they're in for?

2. Last time I checked there wasn't exactly a waiting list to be hired for inner-city Chicago schools and the burnout rate among new teachers in stressful situations is really high. Do they honestly expect a couple of fresh-faced graduates are going to make a difference before they quit in two years?

3. What will these kids do while their school is shut down for a year because the district can't find a math teacher? Better yet, what will they do when the district hires a math teacher on an interim teaching certificate because they can't find someone "certified" and need the school open anyway? Some of the best teachers I know aren't qualified to teach (officially, anyway) but that doesn't mean that you should be shoving unprepared individuals into classrooms where the message is "Raise the scores, or find the door." That's just cruel, to both the teachers and the kids.

I'd rather They sat down with the current staff, discussed what they're seeing as problems (10:1 odds the teachers cite a rough neighborhood and a need for community resources as part of it!) and then work to fix the cause, not the symptom. Unfortunately, They don't do sense.

Holidays with Autism

2009-11-26T20:18:00.002-05:00

Holidays with autistic children can be rough. Anyone who's taken their screaming child out of a crowded family dinner, or avoided one entirely, knows this.

For those of us who work with autism, or have a relative with the diagnosis, knowing how to help can save a holiday get-together. And if you live with a child with autism, being able to control or avoid the worrisome meltdowns will make your holidays a little more cheerful.

The first tip, of course, is to know your child. If he/she doesn't do crowds, don't force them to come along to a large gathering. Invite a few family members or friends over at a different time, or arrange child care (there are babysitters who have the skills and experience to care for your child, though they may be hard to find) so that you can enjoy your family gathering.

If your child is ok with family members but can't handle a whole evening, ensure a quiet and calming place for him/her to go. Remember not to leave your child unsupervised in a strange place (this goes for all kids, autism or no), but also remember that other family members are there to help - and if you are that other family member, don't hesitate to step in and sit with the child for a while. Parents need a break sometimes, and having a supportive family can be the best holiday gift.

Preparing a child for the holidays is also a great way to reduce meltdowns. Practice greetings and read stories (social stories or children's books) about the holiday. Discuss expected behavior with both the child and the relatives. If a child is touch sensitive, remind relatives in advance so Aunt Sarah doesn't attempt her infamous bear hug. If they enjoy certain kinds of touch, like tickling or tight squeezes, tell relatives this as well. Arriving early is a good idea. Prepare foods for your child in advance or give recipes to the cook. If your child likes new foods it's ok to introduce one or two but now is not the time to be pushing a plate of ham and peas at a child who eats only chicken nuggets.

Be sure to provide your child with something to do at the gathering, too. Many children with autism do not play by themselves and even though children seem to enjoy self-stimulating behavior (rocking, flicking, head-banging, staring, squinting, and a host of other behaviors), it may actually be a habit that they can not break and no longer enjoy. It's better to prompt them through a couple of games with lots of praise and favorite treats than to assume they are having "fun" on their own. Even a fidget toy is a better alternative than nothing.

Which brings us to gifts: sometimes, buying the right gift for a person with autism is awkward. If you're buying, ask for suggestions. Sometimes a family could use autism-related materials like special clothing, toys or sensory devices. Other times, they may just want clothing made out of materials that won't irritate the child's skin. As a relative, don't insist on buying a gift that the child can't enjoy because "it's what normal kids play with", and avoid gimmicks related to "fixing" autism - they don't work, and they're insulting. As a parent, you can make it easier by developing a list far in advance, and updating with appropriate clothing sizes and a developmental range for toys as the holidays approach. Children may not have the skills (attention span, fine motor, ability to take turns, etc) to enjoy a toy aimed at their typical peers, so choose based on a developmental level, rather than age. That's not to say you can't buy a game that the child will need to work at, but be mindful of the challenge. And be mindful too of the child's ability to open gifts - you may want to simply use gift bags, or expect adults to do the unwrapping.

Not all kids will enjoy or even manage family gatherings. Never feel guilty if you know your child can't handle the holidays the way your relatives wish he could, and do not apologize for your child. Simply work on it for next year, with small steps, including giving the relatives plenty of warning.

If you are a relative, your main goal for a happy and relaxing holiday should be to educate yourself. Don't expect a child with autism to be a perfect guest even if he is high-functioning and generally well-behaved at home. Ask the parents or caregivers about triggers - things that may set a child off. Do your best to reduce them or provide a space without them. Have parents teach you how to deal with problem behaviors, and inform other family members so that you present a united front (this is good advice anyway; kids love to play adults off each other in order to get away with bad behaviors). Make sure there is food that the child can eat, or ask the parents to provide it. Inform any children coming that the autistic child is not "stupid" or "bad", but simply learns differently, and needs more patience to play with. And remember that rule yourself.

Don't exclude a family member with autism, or his/her parents, because you think it will be a "headache" or "too much work". By doing so, you are doing more than hurting feelings. You are denying family members the ability to enjoy the holidays the same way you do, and denying yourself the opportunity to get to know your autistic relative a little better, and provide a wide support network to help him/her improve. No child can improve his or her behavior without support from adults; why neglect the child who needs the most support of all?

NJ Center for What?

2009-11-20T22:33:00.006-05:00

NJ Think Tank "The Center for Modeling Optimal Outcomes, LLC", a primarily business-oriented group of smart guys, claims to have stumbled upon a link between a glycine-based stabilizer used in the US version of the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorders. Their shortened press release is so carefully worded it's like a goddamn journalistic minefield; they never actually commit to a link, and are careful to insist that this is explained in lay terms and is actually very very complicated (try me - I bet I'd understand!). The longer .pdf linked on their site explains more clearly that the proposed link is only there because someone's pulling a lot of correlations together; no research has been done that wasn't published by someone else, and some of it was shaky to begin with. I quote:

"Based on Wakefield’s* hypothesis involving the MMR vaccine as a possible factor in the cause of today’s iteration of autism (but not all of the disorders with ASD), [the company founder] decided to look carefully at the MMR vaccine as well as others.

...Since 1979 the MMR vaccine has contained hydrolyzed gelatin as a stabilizer. This fact may seem unrelated to the problem of autism unless the process of hydrolyzation is understood (i.e. concentration) and the fact that gelatin is a substance high in levels of glycine (approximately 21%).
In lay terms, the glycine is concentrated in this form of the gelatin, so presumably other kinds of gelatin have lower concentrations. Glycine seems to be related to glutamic acid (monosodium glutamate), which is a common food additive. I'm not sure exactly why the chemical makeup of glycine is thought to cause more problems than glutamate, because I'm not a biochemist; I think we can safely assume that since they are in the same family, it would make sense to investigate all of them.

Quote continues:
Is the addition of gelatin to the MMR vaccine in 1979 (US patent 4,147,722 of April 3, 1979) merely coincidental with the increase in the rate of autism soon thereafter? Has the addition of hydrolyzed gelatin to some chicken pox vaccines compounded the problem? The challenges for the medical research community are now clear! Do certain classes of cells absorb substances? If so, the entire science of toxicology will change. If the homeostasis of certain classes of cells associated with bodily functions are disrupted, could the outcome be autism[?]; i.e. the inability of some cells to absorb the critical substances necessary for the brain and
body to function normally? Can a substantial imbalance between glutamate - gelatin/glycine cause autism by slowing or stopping the ability of certain cells to absorb substances in the brain and elsewhere in the body?"
Note the bold - they're not even sure that disrupted homeostasis causes autism (or if it's even correlated, if I'm reading that right). This is yet another unfounded leap. I'm not bashing unfounded leaps - they got us things like the chicken pox vaccine and penicillin, and an uninformed outside observer sees things the educated among us may miss. Still, it's a leap of faith to trust this connection at this point - it'd be like claiming faith in the single steel wire they use to run a suspension bridge cable, before the cable or decking have been put in place. It might hold weight, but it's not well supported.

In fact, nowhere does the release state that The Center is sure of this connection or that it is a single cause of autism:
"Applying The Center’s model for homeostasis of the body’s substances uncovered a few startling facts. First, several imbalances/disruptions in bodily processes appeared to be variables that contribute to autism. It became obvious that these variables have to occur concurrently for a “perfect storm” to cause the disorder. Simply, there was no one cause behind autism."

Simply, the fact that there is no one cause means that even if the hydrolized gelatin in the MMR vaccine turns out to be one single trigger, we may spend decades searching for the next half-dozen links which cause this "perfect storm", and in the meantime, someone is going to be blowing the single link we have out of proportion. One blogger for Autism awareness has already taken it and run with the title "Vaccines Cause Autism!". Seriously? This kind of sensationalism is damaging to the community and especially to already-scared parents who are looking to blame anyone and anything they can on the sudden disappearance of the child they thought they had. Let it go, dude. Vaccines cause immunity. Some unknown inability to process the outside world and/or respond to it in reliable ways causes autism, and denying your child an immunity to a trio of very serious and very real diseases because of some shady circuitous reasoning is stupid at best and possibly inhumane.

*Wakefield's hypothesis has been relatively well trounced since it came out, and is unpopular among many autism caregivers and doctors because it has caused a hole in immunity to MMR, which opens a lot of innocent kids up to serious health risks - these diseases are not gone, folks. They're only rare in developed countries because we vaccinate. See the Wiki entry's "Recent Studies" list for more information.

What is the cost of living with Autism?

2009-11-18T21:43:00.003-05:00

On my Google news feed, an article series popped up regarding Autism specialty schools in New Jersey.
This is the latest in the series, but all are linked if you're curious.

The school, named the Garden School, had to fight for state approval just to stay open, and with good reason - it costs $70-80,000 per year, per child for one-on-one ABA-based education. (For those who don't know, Applied Behavioral Analysis is the only study-proven behavioral intervention method for autism spectrum diagnoses, although half a dozen others are well recommended, and are often used in combination, especially when teachers aren't specifically trained in one method).

The article was friendly and had great pictures of the twins they followed, and the school seems to have been successful thus far but I had a shock when I got to the end. One anonymous commenter asked:

"And it costs the taxpayers exactly how much to spend a dozen years to teach one of these children to sweep a floor, or empty a garbage can, or even just to sit still for five minutes?

How many normal students could be put thru medical school for that same money?

Can't p**ss money away fast enough."

So, "blogbat999". Better question: How much does it save the taxpayers to educate these children in basic life skills now, instead of paying for lifelong (70+ years) care? Someone later mentioned that cost of education was "$864,000.00, plus transportation costs." I won't count the transportation costs, because they're a fact of life for everyone with a kid and they're built into any school's budget.

Regardless of the veracity of that number, I guarantee you 12-20 years of early intervention and ABA training will cost you far less than paying for the next 50 years of welfare, disability, and state-run group care homes. This is especially the case in states like PA where Act 62 promises to make regular insurance companies pay for wraparound services (what I do is covered under wraparound). For the money-oriented, that means that taxpayers will no longer be paying so much through MH/MR and state-sponsored insurance for these kids to get the care they need (or that more kids can get the same care as before, with less taxpayer funding per child). Instead, the private insurance companies, which are businesses which have pockets far deeper than our poor state, will pick up the slack and provide a certain amount of care. On the other hand, some families may end up with a co-pay or need to apply for Medicaid to cover the rest; we will see how well things actually work.

Run the numbers any way you like; early intervention and intensive childhood care pay off as a long term investment. This is especially true for less severe cases, where early intervention can lead to a child having a successful job and living outside the home on their own, paying taxes and bills into the system and generally being useful, instead of living with parents on disability pay or being shuffled to a group care home after their parents die - or worse, developing behaviors that can end lives . Ever heard "too little, too late"? It applies to autism very well. The less and later intensive, consistent care is given, the harder it is to change behaviors and make progress. There is no reason for any parent to suffer abuse at the hands of their child, no reason for any child to be hospitalized or jailed (and run up more bills for you loving taxpayers!) when they can be diagnosed early, treated early and improve before they get too big to control.

Note that the commenter, as usual, didn't specify what to do with the kids who are currently going to the school, either. Most of them can not be mainstreamed; they'd be put into special ed classrooms or, if they're lucky, "life skills" classrooms where they'll spend the next 12 years of their academic careers in understaffed classrooms with overworked aides and one teacher (vs the one-on-one the private school can offer), where their progress won't be tracked as cleanly, their needs won't be met as consistently and they'll often be shoved into mainstream classrooms long before they're actually ready, which will strain the special ed room even further as they push aides into the classrooms with these kids to deal with the "problems" that crop up. And do you think the schools, when faced with such an influx of children from these private institutions, will simply sit back and go "ok, we need to re-balance the budget"? In your dreams, guys. More special needs students means more school funding, which comes out of... oh, hey! Your pockets. You're paying for it either way, people.

But of course; it's all about the money NOW. Never mind that an $80,000 investment in your child's future isn't really that much when you consider we pay most sports stars more than that for 30 minutes of play time when some of them have fewer skills than the average autistic kid I work with, and you're paying THAT out of pocket too if you subscribe to cable or FIOS TV, buy tickets to the game, or pay taxes which fund new sports fields. The only difference is that taxes are money we can't choose what to do with; in this case I'd much rather my portion of the state's fat pie go toward education in all its forms than to paying for a new stadium. Wouldn't you?

P.S. I'd also like to note that I find it interesting that this person equates "normal" students with med school (see Temple Grandin, who worked herself through a Ph.D), and thinks it's a fair comparison between a chosen profession and an unasked-for diagnosis, and all the costs that come with each. Please keep in mind that you can churn out all the doctors you want, but until someone finds a "cure" for autism (and I doubt many people would accept a cure anyway), you're still going to have at least 1 in 150 citizens of the United States diagnosed with autism this year (and next, and next... and the numbers keep going up!). Chances are, someone you know already has a child, sibling, or relative with the diagnosis... and they're not getting the support they need because so many of us don't want to "waste" our money. Think about that next time you whine about your taxes. Then go vote for someone who will handle the budget properly, and get your kids the education they so very much deserve.

Watching the Clouds

2009-11-13T13:42:00.004-05:00

This is a map of whitecoralbells.blogspot.com as seen by Wordle. It's pretty cool. The link was found on the NaNoWriMo forums, and I'm pretty interested in how it presents blocks of text as visuals. It certainly gives you a good idea of what I blog about on a daily basis, eh? Books, school and kids all come up fairly often! Maybe I ought to toss in a political entry just to mix things up. ;)

Read Animal Farm today (finally). More thoughts on that later, if I find the time. Right now, gotta take the puppy out for play!

An Open Letter to The Richmond High School Rape Witnesses

2009-10-31T16:21:00.002-04:00

Dear witnesses,

You disgust me. You really do. The entire news story disgusts me; rape is never ok and no one ever deserves it or asks for it, but the ones I blame even more than the perpetrators of the crime are you: the witnesses.

How could you stand by and let this happen? The news says there were at least ten of you. Ten people, standing or sitting nearby, seeing what was going on... or did you turn your heads? Did you pretend it wasn't happening? Did you watch with that same horrified fascination that presents itself at the scenes of brutal car crashes and burning homes? I understand that group psychology dictates that everyone in the group is predisposed to think that someone else will take responsibility. I was taught that the Kitty Genovese murder was allowed to take place because of a psychological blind spot which allowed every single witness to believe honestly and truly that someone else was calling 911. And knowing that, all of that psychological bullshit still doesn't excuse YOU. Any of you. All of you. You all sat back and waited for someone else to act first. None of you took responsibility and stepped forward.

You must have been scared. You must have been angry or uncomfortable or felt unsafe. But what did you do about it? You waited for someone else to save your asses, and hers. Now you have to live with the sickness that should rightly come with helping something like this happen. You have to go to sleep every night with the knowledge that you failed to stop a beautiful young woman from losing her self, her entire sense of safety within her own body and mind... and that a single word could have made a difference. You have to wake up every morning with a sense of personal failure - and you SHOULD. Every last one of you should learn to take responsibility for yourselves; you need to learn to step forward and speak up for your own safety. You could be next, regardless of your age, sex, or orientation. You could be the victim of another act of senseless violence, and what do you think you will feel like when you see 10 more faces staring at you, silent and watching as the crime takes place?

Think about that next time you walk by one of the rapists, or a fellow witness. Think about it, and feel disgusting, because you are. You are slime, and screaming for more lights, cameras and security fences will never protect you from yourselves. Only taking responsibility for your own safety and using your own voice can keep you safe. Maybe once you've figured out how to stand up and say something, instead of blindly hoping someone else will take care of it, you'll also figure out how to forgive yourselves.

Sincerely,

Faerunner
The blogger who, from now on, is going to make even more of an effort to live responsibly.

Countdown to NaNoWriMo!

2009-10-21T22:25:00.003-04:00

National Novel Writing Month is coming!

Join us on a 30-day trip through your own imagination. Leave the dishes undone for a few more hours and get someone else to sort the socks and feed the cat. You know you want to write that novel "some day", and November 1st is the day to sit down and start typing, writing, or dictating your masterpiece. Set the inner editor aside and let the words flow!

Click the image or the link above to visit the NaNoWriMo site and find out what this awesome venture is all about and sign up for yourself. If you do, you'll find me there and in the IRC chat (available on the site or at irc.goodchatting.com #nanowrimo) as MossAngel. Good luck, future Wrimos!

Home Gardening Strikes Again!

2009-10-20T21:20:00.005-04:00

In case you're wondering whether your tiny square of grass will make a difference in the way you eat... this is the harvest I got out of my garden this afternoon. Not included: 2+ lbs of beans previously harvested, the rest of the lettuce bed and one potential pea pod. I chose to pull it all in today because two nights ago we got a frost that killed my bean plants and nipped the potato... and we're low on groceries. The carrots, lettuce and (surprisingly) the two pea vines did ok through the frost, although I doubt the peas will flower before the next cold snap.

Here are my garden specs this year:
Planted: Mid-August
Crops sown: Spinach, sugar snap peas, green bush beans, lettuce, chives, carrots, potato (planted later than the rest - found going to seed in a WalMart bag and stuck in a hill on a whim).
Crops harvested: 2+lbs bush beans, loads of lettuce, pan full of baby taters, 5 carrots (plus 3 more too small to pull).
Hours invested: Approx. 10, not counting random runs to grab a bean/lettuce head and pull 3 or 4 weeds. Includes tearing up entire 14x14' back yard, fertilizing, raking, planting, watering, weeding, and current state of winter prep (tilling weeds into soil and mulching, 1/4 done).

Problems I ran into: the seeds I used were just not up to the challenge. Peas took 3 plantings before some came up. Chives and spinach never showed up at all. Carrots sprouted after I had given up on them, and one ended up in the lettuce bed somehow. For 2 year old improperly stored seeds that I just happened to have on hand, the beans and lettuce came up amazingly well and the whimsical potato planting gave at least a fourfold investment in volume compared to the seed tater - not bad for a short growing season! The bean rows did terminate in an anthill, though - something I ignored when I tilled and planted. I learned my lesson and sacrificed two whole plants plus the beans off another one to the ants.

Improvements: Better bed planning (removing the anthill, putting the carrots in the sandy area at the back, etc) and utilization of space. Getting a big washtub to use for compost at the back of the garden. Adding a proper path through the beds, proactive weed removal (mulch!) and more fertilizer! I'd also like to make it look prettier next year with some nicer row markers and plant cages... but that's something to worry about come January. :D

Looking forward to getting things all done for winter, and very glad I "bothered" planting something this year. It may not have been worth the 10 hours of labor in monetary terms, but you couldn't pay me enough to give up the satisfaction of eating my own produce.

Pittsburgh Welcomes the World? Bah.

2009-09-24T14:43:00.003-04:00

G20 is starting (has started?) today. El presidente is supposed to be arriving as of a few minutes ago, if I heard right. The news radio stations are a flurry of critiques and snarky comments and Pittsburgh business hates that the entire area around the convention center where G20 meetings will be held is closed off, barricaded and guarded and everyone's lost business and money from the deal. That's not even going into the issues we're having with traffic, what with stopping it on the parkways to let delegates come rolling through the empty streets in their heavily-armored motorcades, half the downtown blocked off and several major throughways being re-routed around the city. It's a nasty mess and honestly, I'm pessimistic about the entire thing, but then I haven't been connected enough to educate myself about what's going on past listening to the radio when I can (10-minute snatches in the car)... so I can't really comment other than to report the unease that everyone else seems to be feeling, and note that the large noisy 'birds' passing by every few hours with binoculars almost certainly aimed at the area below are making me nervous, too.

The mayor has apparently declared a state of emergency as well, the effect of which is to increase police power during the summit and to limit the rights of protesters including the right to open carry a firearm without a carry permit (normally, open carry does not require a permit of any kind - only concealed carry requires the License to Carry Firearms). This means that anyone caught openly carrying a weapon without their LCTF is likely to be hauled away to the jail with the several hundred protesters who have been stuck into cells and the rather upset prisoners rousted from said cells to live in the jail gymnasiums until the summit's over. Did I mention it's a mess down here? But that's politics for ya...

In happier news, I saw two deer yesterday morning while driving to work. Came around the corner of the street that lets out of our little neighborhood, and there they were on the side of the road, looking wide-eyed and utterly confused at the amount of morning traffic, while we stared back at them equally wide-eyed at the closeness of nature. I'm 5 minutes walking distance from a major road through the South Hills and it's amazing to me still that there's a full hillside of grapevine and second-growth forest to block the noise and the exhaust fumes from the houses up here, plus deer, rabbits, groundhogs and other interesting critters wandering the brushy hills.

I think what's kept Pittsburgh green is its lack of flat space. Most cities built near water are on floodplains, from what I've seen; they naturally use every bit of ground available to them. Here where there are cliffs and steep hillsides along the three rivers and where they had to build two incline railways just to move miners and steel workers from their hilltop homes to the industry at the banks, there is still a lot of green space that has been built over, under, and around but not through. It's as though the city isn't so big after all, until you crest a hill and the illusion vanishes in the glitter of a thousand windows staring back at you from the hills. Pittsburgh is a pretty city.

In other news, Mystra the puppy (did I mention we got a lab/retriever/something else mix puppy?) is doing well. She's finally figured out how to bark and we have retaliated by telling her "good speak!" and then shutting her up by handing her a treat and praising her for being quiet. She's picking up on it fast - I hope that by next week she'll know both "speak" and "quiet" to add to sit, lay down, come, potty (only outside - she hasn't had an accident yet today!), and stay (although stay is difficult. Try asking your toddler to sit still some time!). She is also very friendly and our biggest challenge with her is getting her to recognize that not all new people want to have a puppy diving at their legs. She doesn't like to be dragged away from new friends and thinks that everyone loves her!

Lots of fun, lots of running around. My schedule was messed up due to some lack of paperwork last week on the part of the insurance company, but it's back to normal this week and I only lost a few hours so I'm not crying - yet. We'll see how much I have left over after next week's paycheck goes to rent and bills. We haven't turned the gas on since the only thing that uses it is the heat and water heater - pitcher showers with water heated on the stove work pretty well! Honestly, I'm glad we didn't have to pay gas the first few weeks here. It's allowed me to put a little bit more money toward buying things like blinds for the windows. Soon we'll be working on curtains as well! Things are coming together nicely - pictures coming soon!

That's about it - we're using Rick's phone and the tethering service that he's been paying for so that we can connect to the internet at home, but I'm going to make a library run at some point this week to return a few books and pick up some more reading. I'll say one thing - not having 'net at home has really improved my reading habits!

Stuff of Interest

2009-09-08T14:19:00.002-04:00

Newsweek has an interesting article about children and race perception, if you have time for a read. It's definitely worth noting that NOT talking about race (or hair color, or gender, or anything else) allows a child to form a bias against those of other races as part of a natural psychological need to categorize people and to form a group in which they feel safe and accepted. Kids gravitate toward those they feel will share their views and opinions (much as adults do) and they are likely to separate each other using the most prominent physical characteristics when they are young, which can lead to a lifetime of unspoken separatist attitudes.

In other news I shot the groundhog (with a BB!) today. He was only nibbling weeds, but I'm not about to let him get cozy in my garden, and Rick thoughtfully left the bb gun by the window. The pudgy critter jumped about a foot in the air when I popped him in the side, and then headed for the shed like the devil was behind him. It made me giggle, but I'm sure it's only a temporary fix. If I could fire the .22 within city limits I'd have aimed for his fat head, but as it is, the BB gun packs a good sting and will make him think twice till I can go digging under the shed and block off his hole.

Quickie

2009-09-04T13:46:00.002-04:00

Walked to the library today to save the quarters for the laundromat instead of feeding a meter. It's a gorgeous day, and I enjoyed it. I might stop for ice cream on the way back, since my paycheck was a little more than I expected it to be (hooray!).

Kitten (I've forgotten to update about her! Oh no!) is doing well at nearly 4 months old and is free of the ear mites that had taken over her darling little ears when we first got her. I've been watching all of the cats closely to make sure no reinfestation took place - so far so good! They're all overjoyed by the couch and spent the morning curled in various positions on and around it and me as I finished off another book. I'm going through this library entirely too fast, but I love having books so close, and I'm trying to catch up on my reading before November, when I'll be deep in work and writing. NaNo is coming again!

The library is full of characters as always. Maybe if I hang out here enough this winter I'll start typing out stories about them, because things are always funnier if shared.

Off to get something tasty for lunch and enjoy my Friday before work! :)

Dawn

Busy, busy, busy!

2009-09-03T14:45:00.003-04:00

Ok, time to put my fast typing fingers to work, since I've slacked off on blogging till my computer timer says 12 minutes left! Still no 'net at home (of course) - my paychecks are only this week getting caught up to the 15-hour weeks I've been working for the last 3, and I'll be up to 32 or so as of next week (Hooray!). Next month they'll catch up to the 30-hour weeks and I'll actually be making enough to pay that nagging student loan that I defaulted on last month. The office handed me a case with a darling little boy who is one of quadruplets, so I've been told I'll be there as part of a TEAM of TSS's; we each have an assigned kiddo but it'll be good to have backup! I'm excited to get the extra hours and hope that the case is as fun as it sounds (they usually are).

Gardening is going well. I found 5 or 6 teeny tiny carrots sprouting after I'd given up on the entire bed; I don't know if the rest were dud seeds (they were old) or if they just didn't like the weather. Two of my second-planting peas have come up as well. I guess I'll have to content myself with a meager pea harvest this year and try new seeds in the spring.

I also found out what's been digging holes under the fence in the garden - a FAT groundhog. I had thought that whatever it was had been scared off after last week's discovery of holes in the pea bed (which is right against the fence) but I went out this morning to investigate the appearance of 3 more holes (none of which made it all the way under - the other side is paved in large chunks of rock) and as I was scrutinizing the unknown critter's handiwork I happened to glance up... right into the eyes of a very large and very content groundhog. He hurried under the shed as soon as he heard me say "You bastard!", but now that I know what he is, I'm going after him. Anyone know how to set up an effective snare? I want groundhog stew, and this one's big enough to give us stew meat for a month.

Jeep continues to be dead. Rick replaced the starter, and it's not the issue. The engine still clunks and won't turn over. Most likely it'll need an engine replacement but we can't afford to get it towed to a garage just yet so it sits.

Got our couch (half of it, anyway) on Wednesday. Rick went north to see his grandmother after news that she got a good offer on the house and she'll be moving soon. He borrowed her van and brought her down for the evening; we got the couch set up and had a great dinner and a nice visit. She's found a cute apartment near us and her daughter so we'll all be within range for holiday visits and random stopping-by. He's back up today, bringing her home again and cleaning out his old room.

It will be good to have family closer than New York, even if it's not technically my side of the family. I miss everyone back home but no one seems to have time to come visit, and I can't afford time off work yet. Hopefully with the addition of more hours to my schedule I'll earn enough paid time off to take a holiday break. I'm debating the offer of a Saturday client as well, but pending more information I don't think I'm going to take it. 30+ hours a week is good enough for me, at least for now. I'm waiting for a library position to open up, but failing that I think I'll try for a few hours tutoring each week, instead of taking more clients. Variety is the spice of life, after all!

Update #3

2009-08-15T14:32:00.003-04:00

Well, we got power on Monday afternoon (the truck was there by the time we got back from the library) and so now we have a fridge, although no gas for hot water yet. My job is going very well; the little boy likes me and is easy to work with although he gets distracted easily so I have to think fast between activities. We spend at least 15 minutes every day outside, which is great fun.

My garden is sprouting, in other news! I checked yesterday morning and the chives, spinach, and lettuce have all sent up sprouts and this morning I counted 3 big fat bean sprouts pushing up through the dirt as well. I'm terribly excited by it all, and encouraged by the big, thriving gardens in some of the neighbors' yards. I like our neighborhood, especially how close it is to everything (30 minutes of walking will get you to a dozen bus stops and almost as many pizza places, a shopping center, the library, and a street full of assorted local shops). We walked up to the library today, which was very nice although it's a bit toasty out there!

In worse news, the Jeep remains dead. We now think it's the engine, which means lots of pain (and money) to test/replace. We took both the battery and the alternator to the local Advance to have them tested and neither seems to be the problem. For now the Jeep is immobile, and the bike is wrecked (again) due to an idiot in an SUV... as if I needed more reasons to hate those lumbering pieces of junk. Rick was out yesterday taking a jacket back to his old employer when a woman cut him off at a merge point, tapped the motorcycle and threw him off. He scraped up his arm and leg pretty nicely... he says he didn't hit his head but I'm glad he was wearing the helmet anyway. She then proceeded to ask if he was ok and drove off when he said yes. The insurance won't cover the damage to the bike and since we don't know HER info we can't put a claim through to her insurance either. Thankfully it's not "serious" - the exhaust just needs to be put back on and the frame bent back into place - but it's just one more more thing to deal with when we're very low on resources.

Ah well. I want to end on a positive note! We're healthy, we've got a roof that doesn't leak, we have cheap shopping (Salvation Army Superstore for clothes, Aldi and WalMart for groceries and home goods) nearby, I like my job and the garden's coming along... life is going pretty well, all things considered.

Powerless update #2

2009-08-08T10:49:00.003-04:00

Lots to do, lots to do. 4 hours on Thursday and 2 on Friday of weeding, hoeing, raking, hauling 160lbs of humus/manure (which barely covered my beds... sigh!), planting and watering... but the garden is finally in! I'm sore from my thumbs to my calves, but it's going to be worth it when I can make a salad from my own veggies. I planted beans, peas, carrots, lettuce and spinach, and scattered some chives in the back by the shed. Now I'm crossing my fingers and watching for sprouts impatiently.

Even without power we're doing ok. Rick figured out a great way to make tea involving a small oil diffuser (the kind where you set a pan of scented oil on top, with a tealight on the bottom) and a metal cup. With a taller candle the water gets plenty warm for tea or individual cups of coffee! I'll get a picture of it some time, so you can see the genius of it. Considering I always thought the diffusers were pretty useless, I'm glad we have one now.

Not much else to say for now. Back at the library updating, of course. Today is a market day and the street's lined with little stands selling jewelry, arts and crafts, and neat trinkets. My wallet is thankfully empty, or I'd be dragging home more stuff! There's also a 5k walk/run today, which if I had found out about sooner I'd be interested in doing; as it stands I'm so sore from gardening that I don't think I'll bother. There might be another one or two before it gets too cold, so I figure I'll keep exercising and do the next one.

The Jeep broke down on the highway Wednesday night (I think it was Wednesday) so we ended up getting it towed all the way into Pittsburgh and dropped in front of the house... turns out it's probably the alternator, which will be a $160 fix. Much better than our fears of engine replacement, though. Rick will get working on it soon, I'm sure. The Jeep is the only vehicle we have that's high enough to back into our hillside parking spot without scraping on the curb all the way down, so that spot is empty and with 3 vehicles on the street it's awfully crowded. We have to make sure that the garbage truck can get around everything on Tuesday, or the landlord says they'll be lazy and just skip the house.

Plenty to say but there are a lot of people waiting for computers here so I'm going to finish checking e-mail and log off. :) If you want more news, give us a call! My phone has a pretty good battery life and we'll be going out to Rick's aunt's house this weekend most likely so we can charge everything again. Ah, the joys of nearby relatives from whom to mooch!

Quick Library Update

2009-08-06T10:44:00.003-04:00

Well, here's a very quick update! I'm on the library computers, which give you a brisk 45 minutes per login session to get things done, so no long rants for Dawn! The good news is that I found the library, and it's a nice walk from the house to here.

We're moved in with all our stuff (some of which I feel like we should have jettisoned, after having dragged it all into vehicles, out of vehicles, and up and down the stairs. Ugh! We're sorting things out at the house. The electrical inspector will be here this afternoon to check the wiring and then hopefully will get his backside over to the power company ASAP so we can have power - they said we'd get it turned on the day after they got the OK from him. He would've been here yesterday but the landlord didn't call until we had left for Indiana for our last bunch of stuff, and left the doors locked behind us. Oops! We also have to get a gas meter put in on our side of the house as it's nonexistent but we're not as worried about the gas as we are about just having LIGHTS. The furnace and the water heater are gas but I can deal with cold showers for a few days...

I have work, too! The office here has need of more people (yay!) and with my schedule being totally open (at least until I go looking for a library job), I was immediately dropped into a position 15 hours a week in the evenings. I'm thrilled since 15 hours will pay the rent, if not much else, and I'll have more soon - once school starts, since I'm one of the only TSS's without college classes, I'll have daytime work as well. :)

Overall, doing well. Going to try to get some garden work done this afternoon, since I have beans, peas, lettuce and spinach to try to get in and growing before the frost hits, and the "garden" is covered in weeds and is very sandy. If we're lucky we'll get a decent crop out of the tiny chunk of backyard that isn't covered in deck! I'm excited to do anything at all in actual earth instead of pots, although I brought a few pots anyway, since I figure if I can keep the cats off them I might be able to get a late-season tomato started outside and bring it in for the winter, or something. I even have a new hoe to play with, now that I have more than 2sq ft of space to dig in! :D

So there's the update - no power or heat yet, but we have water and I have work (actually, I have orientation at the office in an hour, so I should sign off and walk home!). Will update again in a few days when we have some idea what we're doing with our internet, since the house is only wired for phone right now (no cable?! Oh no!) and we're going to discuss the cost/work with the landlord of wiring the place for cable, at least in the living room/first floor, so we can dive back under the heavy hands of Comcast and its high-speed connections instead of struggling with dial-up. What can we say, we're spoiled!

Moving on...

2009-08-01T16:54:00.002-04:00

This upcoming week will be our last in town. We're moving to the Big City, to (hopefully) get better jobs, expand our cultural horizons and avoid the rent hikes that cut painfully into our budget the last 2 years. We're paying less for more space at the new duplex, but it still feels weird letting go of this little cramped apartment. We've been here 3 years, and this will be my first time living in a town with a population of more than 15,000 - Pittsburgh's population is somewhere over 300,000. Naturally, I'm a little apprehensive.

I'm not worried about violence - our current home is statistically less violent than Pittsburgh, but it only has 1/3 the property crimes, and for a town this size, that's a LOT of vandalized cars and broken-in doors, not to mention the issues we have had during popular holidays and especially around Homecoming. I'm more worried about getting lost, both physically and metaphorically. I've been frantically looking up the locations of needed services (doctor, stores, bus stops, my new office) and then double and triple-checking them on the map, looking at distances and running through Google Streetview until I feel less nervous about walking to the library or the mall, but Google Maps doesn't work well as an inner compass. Pittsburgh is farther from most of my friends (who I already don't see much) and I don't have any real hobbies to get me out of the house to meet new people. In an unsurprising spiral effect, not meeting new people will keep me at home even more. I am an introvert at heart, but even introverts need company sometimes and it's nice to have more than one shoulder to lean on.

Since we're changing our address I feel the need to make other changes, too - start a garden in our tiny new yard, start working out again, pick up a new hobby (I was looking at dance classes), change careers, maybe work on grad school applications one more time. Unfortunately, I feel stuck. I'm still too worried about my bank balance, my job, and my health (I need to see a dentist desperately but we just can't afford it, and I should probably check in with a specialist about my 3-month-long sinus infection). All the stress isn't doing anything for my ability to concentrate, let alone stick to another long-term commitment like exercise or grad school. And I know part of me is saying that all I need to achieve my higher goals is just start working on them and believe they'll happen, but another part is screaming at me that I'm being impatient and starting things too soon and that I should sit back and let life figure out where it's going with me, instead of the other way 'round.

For now I'm content to sit back and let life move us along to a new place... we'll see where it goes from there.

Grrr, Argh.

2009-07-03T12:36:00.002-04:00

The last few weeks seem to have brought intense frustration down upon my head, and I'm reacting with the usual amount of stress and snapping at everything. Every plan we make seems to fall apart like a house of cards, and I can't take it.

For instance: My loan forbearance application went through to AES, and they sent me back a paper with a list of loans for which the forbearance was granted. They neglected to tell me that 2 of my loans, including one Stafford loan and one "alternate" private loan, weren't included. Why they left out my Stafford loan is beyond me, although the alternate loan makes sense. What gets me is that 1) They never told me I still had loans to pay off this month, and 2) They've got the nerve to call my account delinquent for their lack of communication. I don't have the money anyway, which is why I applied in the first place... so the account will have to remain delinquent until such time as I start making enough to pay. It's yet another stressor, and I wish that it would go away.

The wedding, of course, is a huge source of stress. Mostly, it's stressful because we're (possibly?) getting married on the 16th and we don't know what's going on yet. Rick's schedule changes on a daily basis, or so it seems... his supervisors can't find their ass with both hands and can't give him even a rough idea of when he'll be working that week, so we aren't sure he'll even be here to go sign the paperwork. Mom's not coming down, which means less stress as far as performances go, but more because now I feel guilty for chasing her off. Still, we can't exactly promise a wedding on the 16th when we're not even sure one of us will be free to do it. Then there's the issue of an officiant. PA supposedly allows self-uniting marriages, in which there does not need to be an officiant; originally they were offered to those religious groups who had no ordained spiritual leader, such as the Amish and the Quakers, but a State Supreme Court ruling in '07 decided that a couple whose secular beliefs led them to apply for a self-uniting marriage should be awarded the certificate. When we asked, the clerk said they don't even stock those applications because "no one ever asks for them", and we were later told that unless we were Quaker, we couldn't have one. Which is it? Are there none to have, or we just can't have one? Either way, it's frustrating because now we are searching frantically for an officiant who won't attempt to crack open a bible and drone at us when all we want them for is a signature. PA won't recognize internet-ordained ministers either (they demand that the officiant hold regular services with a congregation!), so I can't even ask my stepfather to perform the honors. I'm PISSED about it, and I'm frustrated that so many things are getting in our way.

So yeah. Financial issues, time issues, and the house we were so excited about renting... isn't ours yet. Apparently the wife didn't know that her husband wanted us to fill out a rental application first, and so she waited 4 days and needed an email from me before sending it to us. Grrrr...

We found a house!

2009-06-30T20:35:00.002-04:00

Those of you who know us know that we've been planning to move toward Pittsburgh to ease up the long drives that my fiance has to do for work, as well as to get out of our increasingly expensive apartment and find somewhere a little more... private. We're frankly sick of having neighbors above us, below us, and around us. I'm also sick of not having grass and a garden.

Previously, I'd run a few searches in the Pittsburgh Tribune and Craigslist (To the guy who started it: THANK YOU!), but hadn't turned up much of interest. There were about 3 places out of the 40 or so I initially looked at that fit all our requirements: Allowed pets (without an extra monthly fee), had enough parking/a space for Rick to work on the cars, had enough space, and was under our current rent. I posted a Housing Wanted ad on Craigslist myself, just in case.

About a month ago a very nice woman answered my ad, saying that she had a 1-bedroom house for rent, and although it took us nearly a month to get back to her, she called last night saying she hadn't rented it yet and would we like to come look. Turns out she was holding out for us to see it before she posted it in the paper, and we loved it.

The house doesn't look like much, and it's adjacent to an alley, but there's parking for our vehicles, a small patch of grass, and a little Japanese maple tree in the fenced-in yard. The interior has a wood floor in the living room, ceramic tile in the kitchen and bath, and a full basement newly painted and sealed (so it's dry!) with a work bench and laundry area. There's also a little square of dirt outside that the landlady said used to have hedges, which are since gone (except the stumps). When I asked about a garden she was thrilled - so veggies will be going in outside the kitchen window next spring! I might be able to even coax a crop of lettuce and spinach out of it this year, if the frost holds off. It's small, maybe 5x7, but it's already weed-free and edged!

We poked around, stuck our heads in everywhere, exclaimed over the workbench and the wood floors, and generally decided that we like it. It's small, but it's cozy, and at $200 less than we're paying now, plus privacy, how can we say no? As I told Rick - "I feel like we're moving up in the world. We have a patch of grass!". Next step - something with a barn.

More thoughts on Education.

2009-06-29T21:20:00.000-04:00

Someone on Facebook posted a link to yet another news article detailing the excruciating battle between Christian Values and Scientific Learning that is taking place in school science classrooms. Expressing frustration with the fact that yet another class of children is going to be put through Creationism as a theory while ignoring all the other possible creation myths out there. She claims that she's going to put her kids in private school and supplement their education at home to work around this. I said "Homeschool, duh!".

Someone else claims that public school will be just fine for their kid, with parental involvement tacked on the side after the public school day to make sure they actually learn something. That got me thinking, because that's what my father tried to do with us for years.

The problem with putting very bright, home-educated children into an environment like most public schools is that they are incredibly likely to suffer for it at the hands of both teachers (who are statistically the underachievers of their own past high school classes - what does it say that your kid's teacher probably has a lower SAT score than he will?) and kids (who are either jealous or distrustful of a child who knows so much more than they do and prefers learning over making fart jokes). In some ways, having a parent who is active in your academic life either in or out of the classroom is a dividing factor, especially in days when many children are raised by the TV. Even if they claim happiness with this method, there can be no doubt that many of them desire more attention from the two most important people in their life, and realize that in some way when they react poorly to students who show signs of a strong parental bond.

I know - I was one of those kids. By high school, the system had crushed my love of education pretty badly, and I consider myself one of the lucky ones. The educational system is not only failing our underachieving youth; it's failing the overachievers.

With the exception of a few star pupils who are reading so far above grade level that their parents enroll them in college successfully at 10 years old (and make the national news doing it), most "gifted" kids never find the recognition and challenges they desire in public school. I know I was reading at an 8th grade level (coincidentally, the level that most newspapers write at, and the level at which most kids stop learning) when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. I only know this because my parents bothered telling me. No one at the school, that I am aware of(although this could be due to a fuzzy memory - in those years I was reading so much that I lived half my day in a fantasy world of one sort or another), ever told me that I was smarter than the rest of the class. I wasn't placed in any advanced classes, given harder material, differentiated at all from the others. One of my clearest memories of fourth grade is reading Hatchet in reading circle and being so frustrated with the pace that others were reading at that I wanted to blurt out every word they stumbled on, which was most of them. The teacher told us to follow along, but I couldn't make myself read that slowly, so I half-listened to parts I had read 10 minutes ago being sounded out by the slow readers while I flipped ahead. Inevitably I'd be caught and chastised for reading ahead, as the teacher would skip around the circle instead of following an order, presumably to 'catch' poor students who would otherwise attempt to predict their reading passage and pre-read it several times instead of listening to the story. She never did seem to catch the poor readers (they were right in front of her, stumbling over words like 'assumption' and 'porcupine').

It got worse from there, but after my parents split and I stopped getting so many impromptu engineering lessons from dad, my head start faltered and I ended up in the top percentile of my class instead of high above it. I have no doubt that with the right combination of teacher support, parental challenges and financial aid I could have gone to college a few years early, but no one in the educational system wanted to realize that, and my bet is that they didn't like the thought of pulling their student funding until I had been thoroughly wrung dry by the system and they could graduate me "on time". Consider this: The school districts spent an average of $7000 per pupil to educate us in the '99-00 school year ^[1]. Considering that lovely sum, why would a school remove a student (and therefore, the student's $7k or more in funding) for early placement in a higher grade when they can continue sucking money out of taxpayers and government?

Teachers really don't help; students seem to despise peers who achieve better than they do. I had friends, but mostly I had competition. By fourth grade it was clear that some of use were "smarter" than the others, and our small group competed within itself for the honor of highest grades and most teacher praise. I remember being especially envious of one boy whose father had helped him with a civil war project. Mine was a clay figure of Abraham Lincoln holding a tiny, painstakingly copied Gettysburg Address in his little clay hands. Mom couldn't find modeling clay so it was the cheap Crayola clay, and it fell apart quickly. The boy (who I also had a crush on) had a plywood board painted as a battlefield, complete with plastic hills and two opposing armies of blue and grey toy soldiers. It was a masterpiece of elementary school projects and I hated him for it. But back to the point - the other kids hated all of us "smart" kids. So we tried our best to stay quiet and not achieve too much, lest we be tormented mercilessly (I bet those kids didn't even know how to SAY merciless at that point!) by the peers who were either jealous of our success or hurt by it.

In a school situation like that it's not hard to see why I'd prefer my children, if I have them, to be homeschooled. I know that even if I adopt, my kids are not going to fit in with the educational system by the time I'm done with them, and I don't want them to. The schools have failed us, and I want them to know this. I don't blame parents who want to send their kids to a better school because they don't think they can homeschool a child. Not everyone is a teacher, and not everyone has the time and energy to play teacher to a bright and curious child. However, I don't think we should be giving bad schools any more support than is legally necessary (keep payin' your taxes, folks), and in fact I think we should protest every board meeting that goes by without improving the situation in our schools... if more of our children were getting a proper education, and not just shoved into boxlike rooms and told to behave for 6 hours a day, I think a lot of our other "problems" would start to fix themselves... but that's another post

1. Gross, Martin L. Conspiracy of Ignorance, The. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. Back to post

Tales from the Library

2009-06-28T02:37:00.002-04:00

For those of you who haven't been stalking me lately, I've started to volunteer at the library two days a week, shelving books. It's a great way to spend 2 hours a day, although that goes really quickly when you're trying to shelve a cartful of children's literature. Kids' books are always first priority because they're the library's most popular item and there's almost always a lot of them to re-shelve.

Of course, when working anywhere there are people, there will be fun stories. Today I found a lot of interesting bits in books. Someone left a note saying "hi" on one of the shelves upstairs, for starters. Not terribly exciting, but there's always the little mystery of who left the mundane notes one finds, and for whom?

In the children's cart I didn't find much of interest other than a book that was mildly sticky (watermelon and books don't get along) and two falling out of their bindings (promptly handed over to be fixed. The poor books!). The adult section was full of wonders today, though. I found no less than 5 checkout slips (they're printed out every time you take out a book or pay a fine, as a reciept and to remind you when it's due, since our library doesn't use a card system any more). The slips have the library user's full name, the date and a list of their currently checked out works... paper trails that make it easy for a finder to make up stories about why they checked out that particular series of books. One girl had checked out the same book I just returned - Three Cups of Tea. I also found, in a time management book, someone's printed weekly schedule and handwritten notes regarding mailing out cards. Looks like the book wasn't as useful as they hoped, since they must have been in a hurry to return it!

The best find, though, was an envelope which fell out of the back of one of the nonfiction books. It said "Sorry, Dad was in the hospital. Hope this covers the fee!". It was a mundane enough task to report it to the desk after a brief period of wonderment that someone would be so considerate as to put their late fee in an envelope before using the night drop box, (and that the librarians had missed it - apparently they don't check the books before putting them on the carts). Still, it was a neat sense of mystery to have to look up the nameless patron who had last checked it out and make sure that his late fee was labeled with his name so that the librarians could absolve him of the crime of returning a book late (one I often commit, I am ashamed to say). It was also a touching reminder that library patrons are not nameless and faceless, despite the fact that as shelvers we are far removed from the act of choosing the book or returning it and will likely never know who took out Jane Austen's complete works. I really hope that patron's dad is ok.

So overall, it was an interesting day at the library. I really like it there.

Well, I -was- feeling pretty good...

2009-06-08T22:53:00.002-04:00

It's hard to feel poor when you have 6 meals' worth of turkey soup and homemade bread (albeit a bit overdone) sitting in the kitchen... until you remember the electric bill for making all of it.

Thoughts on Weddings

2009-05-19T23:08:00.003-04:00

It's funny how things can change. When I was a little girl I wanted the fairy-tale wedding that I think all of us dream of at least once: the white horses, the gilt carriage, the gleaming cathedral and a spectacular, shimmering, seed-pearl-embroidered gown. I didn't bother thinking about the cost; as a child anything was possible. I hung on to that idea of marriage for a while mostly because I hadn't been faced with serious thoughts about it, so I had no reason to accumulate more useful ideas or opinions on the subject, other than some mild amusement at the thought of $99 Vegas weddings.

When I got to college and was informally introduced to the big wide world, I met a bunch of people - married, engaged, and life partners - who pointed out that there were a great deal more ways to get married than the traditional Christian ceremonies. I cataloged them, fell in love with the idea of handfasting for a while, and then went back to wanting the white dress. The fairy-tale ideal wedding got cut down a little bit, but I still expected something really pretty - a park with an arbor draped in flowers, a gorgeous dress, and rose petals strewn on the grass.

When I got engaged, I started planning. I still wanted a park for the ceremony. I had ideas about a simple dress (I even had one picked out), the right color scheme, a proper set of bridesmaids (I asked them, too). Two or three months in, as my mother was trying to get me to call her local florist and I was researching the cost of catering, I did one last Google search and threw the fairy-tale out the window, realizing once and for all that the cost of flinging even cheap artificial rose petals onto the grass of the town park was absurdly out of our price range. I still have the red cardstock that I was going to use for the invitations (I might still make a few, just to see, and send them out more as keepsakes than anything else), but so far that's all I've spent on the wedding - about $20 in card stock, silver paint markers, stamps and embossing powder. Even a "proper" DIY wedding is out of reach, with my work hours dropping and student loans due.

So we're getting married at the courthouse. He has a black button-down shirt and I have a natural linen halter dress I bought in Mexico. We're not having a reception, though if friends can make it we'll probably go out to dinner. I'll be paying maybe $30 for sandals and a strapless bra, plus the cost of a daisy bouquet from Wal-Mart (unless I can find them growing wild). That, plus the license and officiant's fees, is all I plan on paying for this wedding. I'm even debating on the necessity of rings, since the reputable shops are expensive even for plain silver.

In a way it actually feels a lot better not to be worrying about catering and seating charts. I've been thinking about it and tonight I found a new way of looking at the whole thing. "Traditional" weddings are absurd because the bride is relying on hundreds of strangers and acquaintances from the dress shop to the catering company, all to enjoy one single day which they insist isn't supposed to be about the dress and the food in the first place. I've never been good with strangers anyway; I can't imagine the stress it would have caused to force myself to depend on a dozen of them for every detail of my wedding, and then have to tip them all for it afterward when I could have done things myself. Instead, I'm sitting here after a good dinner with a short list of things to buy for myself and not stressed at all. I can invite a few people to share our ceremony and enjoy my day with the knowledge that I won't have to worry about the photographer showing up late.

Oh, and if you'd like to show up, we're still planning on July 16, probably early afternoon. We'll update if anything changes.

It's funny...

2009-05-06T21:56:00.002-04:00

I know on some level that hatred is a pretty useless emotion, and I know that I have a lot of things to improve in my own life before I go nitpicking at someone else's decisions, and I know that Jesus said "love they neighbor" and "turn the other cheek"... but I still hate everyone who was involved in the current auto company "situation", alongside the others I've come to blame for our current economy and the slow loss of our rights and our dreams. It's hard not to, when every day is news like this:

Chrysler isn't paying back its initial bailout loans, and the Treasury Dept. is sitting back and saying (And I quote): "While we do not expect a recovery of these funds, we are comfortable that in the totality of the arrangement, the Treasury and the American taxpayer are being fairly compensated". Canada isn't even getting their money back. How's that for foreign policy?

Uh...

WHAT?

I'm sorry, but the auto industry shouldn't have had any bailouts at all. Screw the unions, screw the workers, screw everyone who has struggled to keep the "Big 3" from biting the dust a decade ago. It was their idiocy and their greed that got them to this point and I see no reason I nor anyone else uninvolved in this circus should pay for their mistakes. Let the employees bail out the company if they love it so much and want it to survive. Let all the people who are screaming about supporting AMERICA! (when these companies have as much overseas business, if not more, as they do here, and Honda is manufacturing cars almost wholly in the US now) go ahead and whip another few billion out of their pockets. Otherwise, let them all fall and let them all suffer, because if I'm going to have to default on my paltry $40k in loans due to the economic "downturn" and I'm going to get chased down for every damn cent, the jackasses in charge of Chrysler, AIG, General Motors, Ford, and Fannie/Freddie had better be suffering the same fate for every cent of taxpayer "loan" they can't repay plus interest.

I am one of probably millions of people who are struggling to pay the bills every month. I fulfilled my education with a promise from Them (businesses, my school, the government which loaned me the cost of my tuition, my mother, and many of my classmates, teachers, and friends) that I should and would be able to pay it back, if not make piles of money, upon leaving school. Maybe I should've seen it coming 5 years ago when I applied to these colleges; maybe it's my fault that I got so deep into debt just as the economy tanked, for the sake of a bit of paper that says I dealt with 4 more years of academic bullshit. But I'm still bitter that everyone else was parading around with their heads up their collective asses, pretending that everything was still fine, and letting thousands of students and young families work their way into debt with cars and mortgages and high-cost colleges, thinking that we'd all be able to pay it off soon, and taking our credit cards and offering us MORE, because hey, why worry about credit risks?

I like to be responsible for myself. I like the idea that I could be self-reliant, and not have to depend on loan forgiveness. I want to be honorable and pay back every cent I borrowed, although I'd skip on the interest if AES would let me. But when every large company I can name is getting bailouts left and right from the government for making a mistake big enough to bring down the entire economy when they actually fall (and fall they should, and would if we didn't stop handing them crutches), I have to wonder: Where's my bailout?

And if I don't get any help, I who am supposedly the spirit of our great nation, a well-educated young woman looking to better the world around me, willing to work, eager to help, and proud of my freedoms... what does that say about how much They value people like me?

I wanted to own land some day. I wanted an actual garden, not a bunch of wilted plants in containers on a second-story porch. I wanted to be able to put a little bit into savings, to own more than a ten-year-old bicycle and a couple of books, to have an apple orchard and a horse and a house that I helped build. So you'll excuse me if I'm a little bitter when I've ended up working 20 hours a week from a badly insulated apartment, trying to find a place we can afford to live this fall, and struggling to keep our services turned on, pay the rent, and avoid the creditors all at once, while Chrysler is taking part of my paycheck to cover its ass without so much as a thank-you. So I hate them, furiously and helplessly. And by hate, I mean I have wished upon them various and terrible things, but mostly that they all suffer at the hands of a market that won't take them back when they lose their jobs and their houses and their company cars, and that they end up in a squallid concrete-block basement apartment somewhere in Detroit, and have to live with the fact that they put themselves (and the rest of us) there, and that they won't be eligible for help. I admit I want them to die unhappy, and I ought to feel bad for that, but right now I can't say I feel anything more than a bitter satisfaction at the prospect. Misery loves company, and I'm pretty damn miserable right now.

The Cat Who Made Trouble*

2009-04-30T20:05:00.005-04:00

Hear and attend and listen, O Best Beloved, and I shall tell you a story about another Cat, only this one was not so wild and wily as the first, but in spite of that he made a great deal more trouble for his People. He was a shadowy stripey little cat with a round little belly that he was quite proud of, and little grey pit-pat paws with claws in them ever so sharp, and a wild and waving tail which appeared to be quite all that was left of his ancestor from the wild woods. We shall call the man who fed him Man, and we shall call the woman who petted him Woman, and do not believe that they did not have names, Best Beloved, but it is only that the Cat, who was not so wild and wily but awfully stripey and shadowy and round about his furry little tummy, did not particularly care what their names were, so long as he was fed and petted. And they all lived together in a small 'partment, which was rather like a house only colder and more cramped.

The Cat, for he was a true cat, took it upon himself to make Trouble occasionally, to remind Man and Woman that he was still a Cat That Walked By Himself, and 'specially that all places were alike to him, including the table and the countertops and the birdcage and the desks and that warm spot on top of the kitchen cabinets, and as I am sure you can guess, O Best Beloved, that vexed the Woman and the Man terribly. For he was also a Cat of 'satiable curiosity (rather like the Elephant's Child) and he asked ever so many questions, one of which was: "Can I go there?", which he asked with his little pit-pat paws and a trilling meow like a little babbling brook and to which the answer was usually "No", and another which was "Will you feed me now?", which he said in his loudest and most protesting meow. Man and Woman did not speak Cat, of course, for this was no longer the time when animals and people all speak alike and when everyone could understand each other. But they knew what he meant, all the same, and he knew that they knew, and if they did not get up and feed him when he asked, he would get out his 'satiable curiosity and go wandering and waving his wild tail in the 'partment till he found a suitable place to make Trouble by getting into Things (which means, Best Beloved, that he would poke his little pit-pat paws where they weren't supposed to be, and make messes, and ask ever so many questions), and there he would go - up on the table or the desks or the bed where Man and Woman slept and snorted and snored and he would ready his little grey pit-pat paws. He left his claws retracted, Best Beloved, because he knew better than to claw up the furniture or the People. THAT would have gotten him put out on his wild waving tail, and no more food! And when he had ready his little grey paws and had sat on Man's chest and had purred in Woman's ear, for those were ways he had of getting them out of bed, then he would tap-tap-tap just so with one paw on Woman's face, and meow in his loud and protesting meow: "Will you feed me now?". And Man would roll over and Woman would pull the covers over her ears and they would both go back to sleep, and the Cat would go to find another place to make Trouble, waving his wild tail and complaining about his empty dish.

Then he would get up - on the desk or the dresser or the counter, where there were many nice Things that the Man and Woman had gotten, and he would plan and plot and ready his little pit-pat paws. And when they were ready he would tap-tap-tap just so on the boxes or candles or papers and they would fall to the floor just so: THUD! CRASH! And Man would wave a newspaper at him, and Woman would snap her fingers and say "DOWN" in her most you're-in-trouble voice that she saved all tucked in her throat for really serious occasions. And when the Cat had listened (for if he did not listen he would be out on his wild waving tail, and no more food!) the Woman would clean up the mess and go back to her work and the Man would go back to his reading because the Cat had only just been fed and they didn't see why he should be hungry, but the Cat would find another place to make Trouble all the same. It mattered less to him when he had been fed, only his bowl was empty, that was the main thing. So you see, Best Beloved, why Man and Woman would be vexed, at all the Trouble the Cat made for wanting food. But that is what Cats do, and they do it well.

Often when the Cat made Trouble Man would say to Woman, "Did you feed him today?", and Woman would say to Man "How many times has he eaten?", and the Cat would say "It doesn't matter, my bowl is empty. How am I to stay shadowy and stripey and ever so round about the tummy if there isn't any food?" And they would sigh and shake their heads at him and say "It would do you good to lose some weight anyway!" but they didn't really mean it, because they liked his little round tummy. So the Man and the Woman made a deal with the Cat, which was this: He would have to be good and be quiet and leave them to sleep when they liked, else they would be awfully cranky and yell more than usual at the Cat, and throw things as First Man threatened to do. And they, seeing that he was good and quiet and had left them to sleep, would feed him and pet him when he wanted. So the Cat would be quiet for a while, but when he had had enough of being quiet and good, and it was nearly time for Woman to wake up, and his bowl was not yet filled, he would go and threaten to make Trouble again and wake her up anyway, and vex her terribly and she would be cranky. And someone would feed him eventually, for that is what People who care about their Cats do, when the bowl is empty and it's been hours since lunchtime, but the Cat still made Trouble, for that is what Cats do to remind us they are Cats That Walk By Themselves, and that all places are alike to them - 'specially the ones we don't like them being in.

*Can you tell what I've been reading lately?
Author's Note: Yes, the Cat did wake me up in the middle of a nap by getting into Things (by which I mean knocking them all onto the floor) on my desk again.

Here goes nothing.

2009-04-19T14:26:00.002-04:00

Added a "Donate" button. As soon as I find a better, fee-free way to give me money I'll put that up as well. Obviously checks or money orders work, if you know my address.

Putting this button up is an acknowledgment that we just aren't going to make it on our own. My debt could have bought me a small house already, and it will take a lot of work to get free of it. I'm not begging, and if I had anything to give back other than words of gratitude, I'd offer it. As it stands we are struggling with a lot of things including some very uncharitable neighbors, and I thought maybe seeing a few cents trickle in here and there would help me keep my head up and my eyes forward.

Here's hoping all of us can keep working toward the future.

Look out, World!

2009-04-15T20:11:00.002-04:00

Apparently knowledge beyond how to use a current M$ desktop environment is dangerous these days. At least, if you're a college student in Boston. I'd pray that the ignorance shown by this group of uniformed thugs doesn't extend to other areas, but previous anecdotes from friends and associates online have proven the point already. Watch who you brag about your new Linux box to...

Also, for those of you who use Blogger, you'll notice a new little tab/link named "Monetize" has gone up! I haven't logged in for a few weeks so this may be old news, but I'm mildly amused by the sales pitch going on here. Google gets a fair share of revenue from its advertising partners, I assume, and it's only natural to want to enhance their chances of getting even more exposure (and entice the good users of Google's fine products to make a few cents on the side), but why would I ruin my layout with ads whose content I can't control, and bother my few loyal readers with stuff they don't need? If I want to make money via my blog, I'll put up an unobtrusive "Donate" button like so many other people do. Heck, I might even use Google Checkout to do it.

Look what I made!

2009-03-29T20:12:00.004-04:00

My latest swashbuckling kitchen adventure involved the ever-fascinating rising yeast and its companions, the sweet but sneaky cane sugar and the strange beast called flour! Pounding the combination into the table and heating it yielded some fantastic results, and this pirate came away with booty to share! Behold - the taming of the baking ingredients!

It's delicious, too. Not whole wheat, as we didn't have whole wheat flour, but for bleached flour it turned out well enough. The crust is deliciously crispy and the inside is soft and light and chewy. I did an egg wash over the tops, as suggested by a friend online, and the tops turned a gorgeous shiny golden brown. One loaf suffered some mild discoloration where it came into contact with a rust spot on my cheap bread pan (sadly, I only have one good glass one) but having spots in no way diminishes its edibility.

So far I've done bread and butter as a late-night snack (I started baking late, and the loaves came out rather close to midnight, but I couldn't resist cutting off the end and crunching happily through it), thick-sliced toast in the morning with jam, and another slice for dinner with turkey and mashed taters 'n onions. I suspect both loaves will be gone by Friday, but that just gives me an excuse to get some real whole wheat flour and do it again! Thanks for the recipe, dad. ^_^

Help the Homeless

2009-03-26T16:32:00.002-04:00

Just found this site and thought it was interesting. Some people see it as abusive or exploitation, but my honest opinion of any site that helps people get off the streets and makes sure they stay that way is a great thing, no matter what you call it. They've raised quite a bit of money so far and have put one man through a full detox and job training, and are on the road to helping two more, with plans to expand the program to multiple cities. Think it's worth it to Pimp This Bum?

In other news, I've been caught in the crossfire between parent and school on one of my cases. The school wants to kick me out entirely, and the mother wants me to stay there and is fighting tooth and nail with the school to keep me there. I'm with the mother - the school says they're overstaffed with me there and that they have complete control over what's going on and don't need me, despite the fact that they're not doing for the child what they say they are (and what they should be) even after 7 months of fighting with them over sensory breaks, PECS interventions and IEP goals.

My supervisor tells me this school is the worst in the district and I believe her; I'd never send my child there after having seen how they work. The worst part is that they're so passive-aggressive about it; they tell me nothing and ask me nothing directly, and then send letters to the insurance rep stating that the child "seems irritable" around me on top of me being a third wheel in the classroom. It's not that it's personal; any TSS would be a thorn in their side... but now that they've opened up this can of worms, I'm going to take great pride in watching this child's mother remove him to another school next year... because I don't mind having to move to a new client if my hours get dropped, but I worry about the child and how much he's being ignored in that classroom. No kid deserves to be the victim of a school system that thinks it's too good for advice from outside.

Procrastination Station - The train will leave.... eventually!

2009-03-16T13:13:00.002-04:00

I'm rather frustrated with myself today.

I hate paperwork. This is no surprise, really. I've never liked bureaucratic measures of self-reflection and my progress notes are as bad as they come. As much as I understand the need to keep records of such things as a child's progress within the system, it's painful to be spending 3-6 hours per week of my unpaid at-home time doing so, especially with my habits of procrastination.

Take today, for example. I tried staying up late last night, thinking that numbing myself into brain-deadness with lack of sleep would help, but all it did was make me less able to focus, and I've been having tons of trouble focusing on anything already these last few weeks.

Then I tried getting up really early after very little sleep in an attempt to just force it all to be done before the deadline (which was this morning), but I felt like I was coming down with the flu this morning, slept 2 hours past my alarm, and dragged myself up at 5:30 only to get a text message from my client's mother telling me he's still sick and won't be in school. I tried to shrug that off and finish the paperwork anyway, but having been let off the hook for the entire day, I gave up after two attempts at sitting down and crawled miserably back into bed where I've been all morning.

This afternoon I tried again. I really did. I cleared off my desk yesterday so my paperwork is all on there nice and neat and surrounded by clean desk instead of piles of distractions. My computer is still in need of repairs so I don't have to worry about sitting there and staring at that little Firefox logo on the screen. I put my iPod on random and turned it to the perfect background noise volume to drown out Rick's little snores (because he worked 2pm-7am) and made sure I was warm enough and had food and tea.

And then I sat there, finished calculating my hours on my timesheet, put a header on a progress note and stared at the black LCD on my desk and wondered whether I should go get a cloth with water or alcohol to clean off the fingerprints on it, and decided to come over to the living room to blog about it.

It's not that I have no willpower. I managed to get the dishes done yesterday, did the laundry, cleaned the litterbox, and spent about two hours on and off cleaning my desk and filing the resulting piles of paperwork, as unpleasant as that was (some of it had been there since March of last year, when I had my little upheaval and gave up on everything), but I only wrote out two notes (that's about 7 minutes of work) all day, despite not having anything else to do because my client that afternoon called off too. It's just that when it comes to this damned paperwork, it gets harder and harder to force myself to do it every week to the point that I find myself actively searching for other things to keep me busy just so that I have an excuse for not doing it. It's not hard, per se, and it only takes about 15 minutes per sheet, but I just can't sit down and do even one sheet at a time, even with taking breaks or rewarding myself (rewards are their own problem because all I want is to get away from the paperwork. Food doesn't help, media is too distracting, craft projects are hard to put down halfway through to go back to work).

I know I should just sit myself down and DO IT, but my frustration level is getting really high just thinking about it. I suppose I should at least try, before I end up doing it tomorrow morning at 4am.

Augh.

What's Cookin'

2009-03-01T20:50:00.003-05:00

We're not exactly rolling in money especially since my student loans came due, but thanks to Uncle Sam we were eating enough, most of the time. My biggest struggle has been finding food that is quick and easy to make, but keeps well because I have 3 days a week where I'm home for 10 minutes in the afternoon after a 6 hour day at school, and want to eat before I run back out the door for another 3-4 hours. Usually this results in Ramen being used as a stopgap meal till I can get home for a proper dinner. Well, today I found out that we've lost our gov't subsidized meals (aw, shucks) and I finally got fed up... and made enough to feed both of us all week!

We had a ~20lb turkey sitting in the fridge thawing all last week, waiting for a roaster pan (and waiting for me, apparently, because Rick isn't a turkey fan and wanted suggestions). We don't have a roaster pan and our largest baking dish is too small for a large turkey. What to do?

What I did was get up enough motivation to play butcher, which was both amusing and educational (ever had to find a turkey's shoulder joint and cut through the ligaments to separate it?). We thankfully have the right kitchen knives for this task, and none of the blood spilled all over the table was mine (for once - remember kids: always cut away from yourself when using a sharp knife!). In the end, the carnage was complete - the turkey's chest cavity was halved and re-stacked with potatoes and carrots and green onion inside and around him in our little baking pan, and he was buttered up and tucked in the oven (it's going on 4.5 hours now - he's almost done and juicy as can be!). Drumsticks (both thighs and shoulders) were ziploc'd and re-frozen for later meals. The wings, the neck, and all the innards were dropped in the crock pot with another potato and carrot, some water, seasonings and about a cup of black bean broth from the beans I'd been simmering all morning in a fruitless attempt to soften them (the few beans that made it into the crock pot with the broth did soften up, so there's hope for the rest!).

When I came back from 2 hours at work, the house smelled like heaven. Now I've got several servings of crock-pot stew to freeze for later, and another couple servings of turkey and veggies to serve over rice or with biscuits and turkey gravy from the pan, or what-have-you, and I'm more pleased than the cat who ate the canary.

I guess there's really something to say for this buying and cooking in bulk thing (although the turkey was a Christmas gift from Rick's company, so it was technically free). I used:

2 old potatoes
2 old carrots
a handful of old green onions (peeled and diced, threw out the wilted tops)
Spices (pepper, salt, paprika, onion powder, oregano on the baked turkey and sage and a bay leaf in the crock pot)
A free christmas turkey

...and I got enough to feed our family of 2 for at least a week's worth of lunches and dinners, with a little more left over (still 1 carrot and 2 potatoes left - thinking of stuff'd baked potatoes later this week).

Rick's been experimenting with bannock, too, which is a terribly heavy flatbread and so quick and cheap to make that we'll eat well even without any money for food... which is good, because while we're making too much money for assistance programs, we're still not sure where our food money is going to come from. But hey - as long as we can make do with homemade bread, rice, black beans, and the leftovers from our turkey, we'll eat for another month, and probably much healthier than the neighbors!

Eureka!

2009-02-14T20:46:00.005-05:00

While link-surfing tonight and educating myself on the psychological signs and effects of panic, I stumbled upon a treasure trove of interesting stuff; if I wanted to I could be up all night reading, and pondering, and researching just for kicks.

Three articles on Gladwell.com (by Malcom Gladwell, journalist and author of "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - a 2005 NYT Bestseller which I sadly haven't read) caught my eye tonight, all along the same lines - success; notably, how to predict it. Most Likely to Succeed, Late Bloomers, and The Uses of Adversity are all fascinating looks into what makes success, and why our methods for picking out potentially successful people may not always work - especially in certain fields. Teaching is apparently one of those (who'd have guessed? *cough*).

Late Bloomers thoroughly explores the stereotype that genius is destined to be recognized in youth, with examples like Robert Frost, who published nearly half his great works after the age of 40... and compares the kind of slow, perfectionist, directionless learning practiced by older "masters" of an art with the fast-paced, goal-oriented, immediate results of young genius. I place myself firmly in the former category both with relief and regret - I have always felt like I wasn't living up to my potential and wondered if I could have been a smashing success by now, but it feels good to know that I might still have time to work out the kinks in my presentation.

Adversity ties nicely in with that theory of late blooming, telling us that sometimes, it takes an outsider to scramble one's way up to the top and stay there, as opposed to the well-cushioned, well-bred and well-intentioned Yale grads who make it there and then fall off the pinnacle, much to the surprise of those around them.

And I'll leave you with a few quotes from Most Likely to Succeed, because Mr. Gladwell sums it up in a better manner than I can, even if he is verbose about it:

"Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year's worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half's worth of material. That difference amounts to a year's worth of learning in a single year.

...many reformers have come to the conclusion that nothing matters more than finding people with the potential to be great teachers. But there's a hitch: no one knows what a person with the potential to be a great teacher looks like.

...Educational-reform efforts typically start with a push for higher standards for teachers—that is, for the academic and cognitive requirements for entering the profession to be as stiff as possible.

... A group of researchers—Thomas J. Kane, an economist at Harvard's school of education; Douglas Staiger, an economist at Dartmouth; and Robert Gordon, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress—have investigated whether it helps to have a teacher who has earned a teaching certification or a master's degree. Both are expensive, time-consuming credentials that almost every district expects teachers to acquire; neither makes a difference in the classroom."

...Perhaps no profession has taken the implications of the quarterback problem more seriously than the financial-advice field, and the experience of financial advisers is a useful guide to what could happen in teaching as well. There are no formal qualifications for entering the field except a college degree. Financial-services firms don't look for only the best students, or require graduate degrees or specify a list of prerequisites. No one knows beforehand what makes a high-performing financial adviser different from a low-performing one...

...Ed Deutschlander, the co-president of North Star Resource Group, in Minneapolis, says that last year his firm interviewed about a thousand people, and found forty-nine it liked, a ratio of twenty interviewees to one candidate.

...Deutschlander interviews a thousand people to find ten advisers. He spends large amounts of money to figure out who has the particular mixture of abilities to do the job. "Between hard and soft costs," he says, "most firms sink between a hundred thousand dollars and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on someone in their first three or four years," and in most cases, of course, that investment comes to naught. But, if you were willing to make that kind of investment and show that kind of patience, you wound up with a truly high-performing financial adviser.

...What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?"

If you have the time, I suggest reading all 3 articles in their entirety - I'm going back for more.

Notification

2009-02-14T20:44:00.003-05:00

Crossposted from here:

Until further notice, the wedding ceremony is canceled. We will still be getting the marriage license and taking care of the legal end of things, if you are interested in signing as a witness for us or just being there for the "big day".

Planning was slow from the start but lately we haven't gotten anything done and I have come to the conclusion that it's just not meant to happen right now. Our funding isn't there, and neither is my drive to search for another 40 hours for a site that is within our budget, can hold 150+ people, allows alcohol, doesn't force their own catering on us, has parking and is centrally located. We have decided instead to invite a few people to be there when we sign the marriage license in a few months and to plan for a larger ceremony later when we can afford it and aren't as stressed.

This means:

* The bridal party is invited to come out and see us, but as most of you are rather far from Indiana, I won't blame you for not showing up. We'll just have to plan visits soon, as jobs and weather allow it.
* Family members are certainly welcome as well, but again as most of you are somewhat busy and none are right here we'll work out visits within our means and celebrate with you all then.
* Wedding gifts, while accepted, are not necessary. We currently have everything we need to set up a new home, except funding. If you are planning a gift, please consider helping us with buying a home - we would greatly appreciate it! Thank you!

There is no official date for the marriage as of yet, but we will let you know when we set one. Thank you all for your support!

~ Dawn

Lists:

2009-01-31T22:09:00.003-05:00

1. Are a good way to organize thoughts.
2. Help us prioritize.
3. Can be:
....a. spoken
....b. written
....c. drawn
....d. read
....e. ~~crossed out~~
.[x]f. checked off
....g. rewritten
....h. scribbled
....i. typed
....j. sung
....k. and more.
4. Look nice, especially on properly lined paper.
5. Make good meme formats.
6. Are easily turned into Outlines.
7. Provide:
....a. information
....b. amusement
....c. motivation
8. Can be used to procrastinate.
9. Are sometimes turned into poems.
10. Break down information into easy-to-understand chunks, to help us process it all.
11. Can be used to show pros and cons of important decisions!
12. Are in .txt files all over my desktop.
13. Fit on post-its, even if the post-its don't stick to anything very well.
14. Help with the shopping.
15. Remind us who to send Christmas cards to.
16. Invite others to read over our shoulders while writing them.
17. Have been seen as a threat.
18. Have been used to punish.
19. Are used by bureaucrats to...
....a. Call upon
....b. demand
....c. urge
....d. endorse, and
....e. request.
20. Don't actually seem to work for the bureaucrats.
21. Help us remember what to do next.
22. Make us look busy.
23. Add an air of authority to the listed items.
24. Give us something to read in the doctor's office.
25. Are the favored format of much of pop culture ("Top 10", anyone?)

I think I may start writing my "To-Do" lists in pictograms, just for kicks.

Dirt = Crime?

2009-01-30T09:17:00.002-05:00

This story fascinated me.

We all have things that red-flag as "criminal" or "suspicious" to our brain - things that for the most part lie in stereotypes of behaviors we've seen before. It is nothing new to say that if I see a movie about gang colors I'll be on the lookout for them when I go into the city. But does seeing evidence of criminal activity (graffiti, drug use) make us more likely to bend the rules? If so, does seeing evidence of criminal deterrence (neighborhood watch signs, impeccably clean areas) produce the opposite effect? Why?

The article mentions that the study's results show a pretty clear spike in minor criminal behaviors (cutting through a gap in fences, tossing litter) when people are presented with an area in which minor crimes (graffiti, locking bikes to a fence next to a "do not lock bikes here" sign) had already been committed. But what of an area in which no crimes were visible - it was just dirty?

I personally don't see dirt as automatically pointing to criminals or criminal behavior, although there does seem to be a strong correlation these days between how clean one's house is, and how high one's income level is, making a strong case for the poorest of us (who are also the ones more likely to commit minor crimes, if you believe statistics) also being the dirtiest - either through lack of caring or lack of cleaning products. But I don't try to add to the mess when I walk through a particularly untidy part of the neighborhood... nor do I get the urge to steal bicycles there. But how many people would? Is it possible that crimes are more common in dirty, run-down areas of cities only because that's where the criminals feel most comfortable committing them, despite the fact that police concentration is likely higher in those parts? If we removed all the police presence from the most wealthy parts of town for a few days, would crime rates rise there? What if we scattered graffiti on the walls of the McMansions?

It's an interesting study, and I'd love to see more that replicate these results in different areas and conditions. If the human mind associates dirt with criminal behavior, I want to know where that idea came from - although I'll probably still let my kids play in the mud.

Well, I was tired...

2009-01-23T22:52:00.002-05:00

But as usual my brain doesn't sleep. I was thinking about first one thing and then another having to do with school today and the various frustrations of working with Instructional Aides who just don't "get it" and a new teacher who has simply adopted much of what the old one did without questions - which means I am stuck asking them, if I dare (and I don't, because a TSS who upsets the classroom too much is a TSS without a job).

But on to the main point - my own school experiences. I thought myself into the train of thought that goes something like this: "I wonder what my elementary school is like now... I wonder if I'd run into any of my old classmates if I went by the Shur-Fine in town now... and whether they'd recognize me... do I remember any of them? Huh, I don't think I do. There was that Lisa somebody, and Joel... Osomething? And... oh, hey, I don't think I even remember my teachers' names."

And so on. But the fact is, I really don't remember much of my childhood. There are a few fuzzy memories, tattered around the edges and entirely without context, floating in a sea of blank faces and forgotten lessons. I remember, for instance, the exact day I learned to braid while playing with a horse (it was a bright lavender horse with a pink mane and tail, and it was during afternoon recess indoors, which means it was probably raining or snowing at the time, although I can't remember that part at all). I think it was third or fourth grade, which are my best remembered years of school. I was terribly excited by the sudden realization that I could braid, and showed off my horse's newly braided tail to all the other girls, only to hear that they already knew how to braid and were not at all impressed. Thinking back on it, I realize that at least a few of them had to be lying, likely out of jealousy... but my own self-concept back then was already of being the "weird kid" and I took the girls' disinterest as yet another sign that they had excluded me from the club when it was time for everyone else to teach each other how to braid.

Isn't that a weird memory to have? I remember writing a story too - it couldn't have been the first story I wrote in school, but it was unique because we had to use just a few pictures cut out from magazines, and make a story around them. I wrote about a little girl and a herd of wild horses (I spent half the first lesson time rooting through the picture pile for one of a horse!)... and I was so proud to write my finished copy neatly on a piece of green paper (it was for Christmas, I think - the paper we "published" on was green and red) and see it hung in the hall!

The strange thing is that those few memories are all I have. After fourth grade, everything just blurs into a feeling of being entirely lost. I switched schools for fifth grade in the district next door because our elementary school hadn't had a fifth grade at that point, and I moved on to the huge, prison-block high school in sixth. I remember the high school because it was a gigantic tiny-windowed three-story brick edifice that towered over the farmland around it like some kind of sinister unnamed government project, and the interior design didn't help the effect. For a lanky, late-to-puberty, highly reflective and extremely self-conscious "freak" like me my sixth grade class was probably the worst environment I could have been planted in, and the effects of that single year are clear even a decade after, if you know what to look for. But I don't -remember- any of it clearly. Not even the dark-haired girl who tormented me endlessly, whose name I swore I'd never forget (I also swore to myself that I'd one day mash her face into a pulp in front of the rest of the class). I find it both disconcerting that most of my "formative years" seems to have gigantic gaps, and strangely comforting that I really could let all of it go when it seemed like I'd never get away from it.

Maybe memory loss isn't such a bad thing after all. If nothing else, it makes forgiving a heck of a lot easier.

Well, we let them slip THAT one through...

2009-01-18T01:48:00.004-05:00

It seems that "thinking of the children" has gone a bit too far.

And here is a "clarification" from a (former - wonder what she did wrong?) spokesperson for the CPSC.

What's next? Banning untested pets because of allergen issues?

And to all, a good night.

2008-12-25T11:32:00.002-05:00

Well, Merry Christmas. Rick worked last night so I stayed up till 1 all by myself, then slept till 5 and got up again to welcome him home at 6. Then back to bed till 10, and up to feed the pets and survey the apartment. I cleaned some of the kitchen yesterday; today will be the bathroom and maybe the bedroom while I finish the laundry. At least I can give us the gift of a clean house this year. He works again tonight, 10pm to 6am. At least we'll have time for dinner before he goes.

When I got up at 5, it was all quiet and dark like it used to be when we were little and would get up to check our stockings before mom and dad were awake. Out of some last upwelling of childhood hope I went to the living room as though there would somehow be a tree there all lit up and sparkling. Of course, the only lights were the LEDs from the speakers and computer. Christmas has entirely lost its magic for me this year.

It's almost New Years' again. Another calendar change, revisiting resolutions... I didn't complete mine this year. Aside from fumbling through some wedding plans, not a single goal on my list was realized. I blame some of that on the major upset in March that caused me to spend an extra summer in college, but the rest of the blame lies solely on my lap for not just doing it.

I fail at self motivation. Which is hard for me to say, because I have such big, glorious plans for my life - but they'll never be any closer to achievement if I can't even keep a resolution to keep the kitchen clean. I've been trying to develop better habits, but obviously not hard enough. And so I'm tossing out specific resolutions for the coming year, and focusing on just doing what needs to be done without making excuses or avoiding it. I figure if I can do that, my life might be a lot better... and I'll probably develop some good habits along the way.

2008-12-24T11:38:00.001-05:00

Merry xmas!

This is a photo of a christmas card I got from one of my online friends. What does it say that I can't see my family for xmas and haven't gotten anything in the mail from any of them, whether or not they expected to see me this year, but I've gotten cards from 4 people who I've never met in person? To be fair, my family has never been big on cards and it's been years since I even talked to my aunt and uncle in CA, let alone gotten a gift from them (or given them one), but still, it kinda stings. Especially when every aunt Rick has is sending him a card at the very least.

A sense of community is a great thing and I'm glad that I have that with someone, even if I can't hug them for the holiday wishes.

I WON!

2008-11-30T22:37:00.002-05:00

....and that is all. NaNo's word counter shorted me by 22 words after I tried to validate with 50,001 the first time, but it was all good. I crossed the finish line at just after 10pm and am now basking in the glory of having written 20k words in two days to finish my novel in the sloppiest and least coherent manner I have ever written. But it's ok, because I'll be editing it in January, I swear...

Along the way:
I made some new friends, drank more tea than I had all year previous to November, used Write or Die several times to meet with great wordcounts each time (something about the screen turning red on kamikaze mode before it deletes your words with as much gusto as a machine can muster really kept me typing!), ate lots of muffins, canned spagetti-o ripoffs and assorted other microwaveable foods, worked 20+ hours a week the first 3 weeks, managed to get all of my paperwork done, kept the dishes washed and the laundry done, nearly stabbed my laptop screen, punched my laptop, dropped it, carried it around with me like a baby, stayed up late to write, thought I would quit 3 times, and finally had my laptop die on me.

Yes, it died. Or rather, the LCD died. Not sure quite how but I think it started with the screen warping when I left the poor thing on overnight a few times several months ago, and it only got worse from there. I never did diagnose the problem, but it had been getting worse (displaying lines down the screen, fuzzing out, going shades of white or purple and freezing up, etc) and could generally only be fixed by a chip clip in the top corner of the screen. Of course it had to completely die on the last day, or more accurately just a few hours before validation was set to close. Talk about frustrating... I might have hit it a few times, but it was already entirely dead so it's not like that hurt it much. Guess it's time for a new laptop. :/

But at least I won National Novel Writing Month for the first time since I started participating six years ago. Whew, what a month.

Kitten

2008-11-25T22:55:00.000-05:00

Aw. Naturally as soon as I took this he rolled over!

Stressssssssss.

2008-11-19T22:02:00.002-05:00

Today was one of those days that I can only describe as "AAAAARGH."

In short, my client screamed a lot, was uncooperative except for a half hour in Kindergarten, and then fell asleep at 1:30, leaving me with another 1.5 hours of unbillable time on my hands and a gregarious temp aide who decided that since I wasn't with a student I must not have anything to do. I didn't get any paperwork done. Nor did I get any writing done for the third night in a row, and it's now 10pm, although to be fair I did sleep from 5:30 to 7:30. I've had a confusing sleep pattern the last few days, too. I've been going to bed early, sleeping in as much as possible in the morning, and dozing off for hours during the afternoon. It doesn't help that I'm -always- cold, and the bed is the warmest place in the house except in front of the mini heater, and this morning I woke up with the left side of my sinus cavities completely congested.

Oh, and the landlady is now showing the apartment all week long, and we've had to spend time cleaning it up properly for showcasing the lovely large kitchen with its sloping floor and the door that we stuffed foam around and masking-taped shut because otherwise there's a draft coming in around it that feels like someone turned on an industrial fan and pointed it at the house.

I hate winter. I think I should be allowed to hibernate.

Just another NaNo update...

2008-11-16T21:35:00.003-05:00

Write or Die is my NaNo salvation:

	3008

68

lab.drwicked.com

I'm now at 28,088 words and am going to write a bit more before bed to give myself a comfy little cushion on which to lean back during this week, as I expect I'll be starting 4 more hours of work this week with a new client so I'll have far less time to write. But more money is a good thing, too... this novel probably won't make any, after all.

Winning!

2008-11-13T22:15:00.002-05:00

	2002

41

lab.drwicked.com

50wpm for 40 minutes straight isn't too bad after a full day of work and being sleepy besides. I think I might actually make it to 50k this year... and I'm having an awful lot of fun with my characters' internal monologues.

...did I mention it's NOVEMBER? :D

2008-11-05T19:36:00.003-05:00

...and that means NaNoWriMo!

My total word count so far is 8,815 - slightly ahead of the Nov. 5 goal of 8334. I got a good start over the weekend of the 1st, went to a write-in, enjoyed myself and have settled into a pace of about 1500-2k words per day now, which if I keep it up should ensure a win. Of course, I'm depending on having weekends free for catching up (and doing paperwork) as needed.

I'm excited; this is the 10th anniversary of National Novel Writing Month, and there are hundreds of thousands of participants. Even my lackadaisical town has popped a few budding authors out of the woodwork (mostly college students - gotta love english majors!). So this year I have more of a support net as well as more of an idea. Here's hoping for few plot holes and lots of tea... speaking of which, the water's boiling! :D

Oh, and while we're on the topic...

2008-11-05T19:06:00.003-05:00

(This will make more sense if you read the previous post first.)

Oh, and on the topic of change being bullshit - it's bullshit because Obama can't do very much from the white house. Our president is a figurehead. He can veto bills from Congress, he can suggest things, but he can not singlehandedly change anything (probably including the White House light bulbs). This being the case, I don't know why we always fall into the trap of campaign promises only to look back at 4 years of a presidency with disappointment (or we simply forget the promises because we're busy fighting over the "issues"). If Obama gets enough support from the Congress and Supreme Court, then we may be in trouble... but even then, Obama can create change only if we allow it.

People seem to forget that we are in a democracy except once every 4 years. The supposed definition of democracy is: "a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly... or by their elected agents" (dictionary.reference.com). Democracy is Rule By the People, For the People, and Of the People. This being the case, why do most of us have a bad case of "It's someone else's problem!"? Trash in the street? Someone else's problem, even if it's two steps from the can. Notice that your neighborhood civic center could use a fresh coat of paint? Someone else's problem. Schools in your city understaffed with overworked teachers? Someone else's problem! Other people's problems bother you all the time, but it's never -your- problem to fix, because the minute it becomes your problem, it also becomes your responsibility. Remember that quote: "With great power comes great responsibility." Yeah, that one. Well, if we're supposedly the ones in power in this great country, why aren't we taking responsibility for it?

I know I complain A LOT about the educational system, about food prices, about just about anything there is to complain about - I'm convinced it's human nature to complain, and if there's nothing to complain about we'll complain that things are too good to be true. But at the same time, a blog post by an acquaintance of mine made me remember that complaints won't get things done. Actions speak louder than the best campaign promises. So even though I didn't vote, I feel like I make more of a difference every day than some people have made in their entire lives.

I garden (as much as I can fit on a tiny, crowded balcony) for some of my own food. I help people when I can afford to (time to listen, money for good charities, volunteering to help out with projects, or just a smile on the street to someone who looks sad). I try to live a decent life and encourage those around me to do the same. I'm not perfect and I certainly could do better, but the point is that at least I try, for 365 days a year, every year, to be a good person, the kind of person I'd like to see running my country. And the way I see it, the best way to become proud of America is to live as an example for other Americans. So while a lot of people voted this fall, and wanted to see our new president (whoever he might be) bring Change to the White House, why don't we get busy now, and invest all that positive energy from the election into volunteering at our local schools, growing some veggies, making cookies for the neighbors, tutoring our children, fixing up our bicycles and doing our best to live good lives. Obama might make a good president (I have my doubts, but four years will tell), but he can not live our own lives for us, nor can he ever bring change to those who are unwilling to accept it.

Think on that for a while next time you get all excited about what someone else is doing for the world, and remember: to a lot of people out there, you could be that someone else.

Well, that's over...

2008-11-05T07:43:00.005-05:00

Congratulations to our (almost) President-elect. My mother apparently called me last night at 10pm, wanting to know why I was still in the voter register in our county back home and wondering if I had indeed voted. She said, and I quote: "because if you haven't, I'll kick your ass." I'm sure she wants to, and I'm sure a lot of other people want to do so as well.

Well mom, you better get driving, and Rick will put you in my appointment book when you get here, because I'm a little bit busy figuring out how to survive through the next few shitty paychecks to get my ass kicked at the moment and you're not helping my stress levels. I'm glad you've come over to the American Way of taking out your annoyance on people through violence. Take a ticket, have a seat, wait in line. I DID NOT VOTE. I ABSTAINED.

And guess what? I DON'T CARE.

I was sick of this election four months ago and stressed then, too, and trying to figure out how I was going to be eating in another month, so you'll excuse me if I didn't get around to trying to re-register until October when I was told it was too late. And it wasn't too late for an absentee ballot, but New York wouldn't have given me one, because I'm technically a permanent PA resident now and have no plausible excuse to write on the application. So I couldn't register down here and I sure as hell wasn't driving back to New York after 6 hours of work, even if the polls had been open late enough to allow that kind of nonsense. Sorry, voter registration wasn't exactly the first thing on my mind this year.

But the reason I really don't care is because this election was not really that important, despite all the bullshit about Americans electing our first black president (you'll notice he's still half white, and you'll also notice if you check the exit polls that Americans didn't elect him - BLACK Americans did), about "Change" (Same shit, different color), and about how much was going to happen when we finally got Bush out of office. I'll say it again; that was BULLSHIT. Half the country knew who was going to win two months ago, because Americans follow very distinct voting patterns just like all other "democratic" nations, and it was pretty obvious the pendulum would be swinging Democrat this year. So in that respect, even if I had voted, my vote would not have counted against the near-guarantee of a Democratic win. I'm almost sure that even if Hillary, Miss Divisive herself, had run for office against McCain, we'd have taken her rather than let the Republicans have the presidency for another 4 years.

Now, I wasn't even planning on voting for either candidate. Let's say that one again. I was not going to vote Democrat and I was not going to vote Republican. I still was not sure, as of last night, WHO I would have voted for because even the third party candidates I looked up online, some of whom weren't even eligible to be put on the official PA ballot, didn't support what I think this country needs. If anything, I would have written in some kind of joke like Charles Darwin, it would have been the only vote for that person in the entirety of the nation, and my vote would have been lost in the other hundreds of thousands of stupid write-ins and mistakes - essentially I would have thrown my vote away in an effort to tell people how much I hated my choices this year. But at least I would've voted and that's what counts, right? (/sarcasm)

It's not that I think my vote doesn't "count" in the most abstract sense of the word. I think that even if I vote for the least likely candidate for office, if I am voting true to my own beliefs I have made myself heard, so my vote counts. Of course I'll never see my chosen candidates get elected, but I think there is a great deal of weight sitting on the shoulders of a minority who actually do vote third-party - they are the ones who tell the people running this great shithole of a country that there are people out there who are still unsatisfied and don't buy into the war hype and the tax cuts (or in this case, increases, unless you're living below the poverty level with me), and who want to see more change than a hopeful slogan and a new skin color in office. BUT I do think that while my vote counts on some great abstract level, in this year's election, no one lost by a single vote, so in terms of statistics and logic my vote counted about as much as a pea in a mountain of soybeans.

I think that I could probably feel horribly guilty about not voting, too. But I don't. I'm not going to let everyone else tell me that I should feel guilty for not voting, because my vote was one of millions to be silent this election and silence is just as good an option sometimes. I'm abstaining from "running the nation" because NO ONE this year stood for sustainable development, overhauling the education system, paring down unnecessary government, reducing our goddamn budget deficit instead of cutting chunks out of school funding so we can keep spending on the war, and improving the chances of single young adults in getting health care. They were all worried about poor Joe the Plumber, Mr. Everyman. I'll vote when a candidate steps up who is more scholar than warrior and who knows the value of a real-life education instead of standardized testing, of letting kids be kids (I swear if I hear any more paranoia about poisoned Halloween candy or pedophiles lurking in suburban bushes I'm going to start throwing bricks at mothers' heads), and of giving this nation some flexibility and forethought instead of knee-jerk reactions and predictability. THEN my vote would really count toward what I want. In the meantime, the line for my ass-kicking starts over there. Enjoy your wait.

So I've been thinking...

2008-09-25T20:46:00.002-04:00

(and of course we know this leads to long, rambly blog posts!)...

I really don't feel grown-up yet. Which is funny, in a way, because it seems like most people spend the first 18 or so years of their life trying to be as "grown-up" as possible, and I know I certainly did want to be more "grown-up" when I was in high school, and looked forward to the awesome adult that I most certainly would become. Yet now that I've finally been pushed out into the world (a fact which was waved in my face this evening when I found a notice that the college is disconnecting my network account now that I've graduated), I'm really not sure what to do with myself.

I have a degree, I have a job, I'm engaged, I have a decent apartment with two cats and some nice stuff (and as George Carlin knew well, life is all about the stuff)... but I feel like somewhere I missed some really important rite of passage that would have otherwise told me "ok, you're an adult!", and with it, some major change in attitude, behavior, or appearance (when, oh when, will my skin clear up?). Instead it's all been rather gradual and confusing, and I'm left wondering - if I'm not sure I'm an adult at 22 years old with an adult job and a car and an apartment, what will I feel like at 40? On one hand, I almost hope the sense of childhood never goes away, because it's most certainly more fun to be able to race kids down the block (letting them win, of course) than to believe that paperwork and dishes are all there is to life, but on the other hand, I'm not sure I want to be 40 and still wondering when I'll think of myself as an adult!

Either way, I'm happy with my job so far and I guess I'm doing ok at playing grown-up, and sometimes I think everyone's just pretending anyway.

Year-Round, or something else entirely?

2008-08-22T16:22:00.002-04:00

So I got bored today and decided to be "useful" to the teeming masses by making my presence known on Yahoo! Answers, a fine service dedicated to the highest reaches of human achievement, answering such questions as: What is the song that goes like this:? and I think i want to be jewish?.

The Answers Blog at the top of the page caught my eye today as I was skimming for more places to leave snarky, 5-paragraph answers. It asks: What are your thoughts on year-round education? A lot of the answers came in the form of anecdotes from teens on both sides of the fence, but a few things kept coming up and I wanted to drop a few thoughts of my own.

1. Kids "need" or "deserve" a summer break, it's "tradition", and it's time well spent on things school can't/won't cover. This one was obviously refuted several times over and it was mentioned that summer used to be farming time, and obviously isn't any more. I do appreciate that some kids can spend all summer in pursuit of knowledge and useful skills, and I know that in our world, a high school summer job is an integral part of growing up, not to mention a potential savings fund for that highly expensive college education. However, most kids I know sit on their bottoms all day long in front of a TV or computer monitor, so making good use of the summer is obviously something that either needs more parental involvement *coughhack* or we ought to be letting "those who know better" do something more useful with our kids, like schooling them! And summer jobs are a bit tougher but I think a year-long after-school internship might teach students more about money management and work ethic than a summer job that they know they'll be able to leave in September. Plus, wouldn't school-company relations be improved by that kind of thing? You send your kids in for grunt work as interns or volunteers, which gains them that precious socialization and leadership training, and since they're there on a steady basis and they're learning more about the company in all seasons, they might be offered a job or a bit of tuition help if they come back... but I guess that makes too much sense.

2. Year-long schools don't get as much vacation time, or get more. According to most of the responses, while there are varied templates for year long schooling, the number of days spent in school is, at least in the US, the same number as that spent in a 9 month cycle. The key is taking shorter breaks more often, which has apparently been shown to increase both student and teacher productivity and would definitely have improved my morale in high school. Getting up on those dark winter mornings when you knew the next break wouldn't be till Easter... well, let's just say I "accidentally" missed the bus a lot. Frequent breaks at off-times also mean that a family can go on a week-long vacation to, say, the Florida Keys and not have to pay as much or deal with crowding.

And crowding is one of the big reasons cited for having several tracks running in a year-long school with staggered breaks for each one, so that the effective attending population of the school can be cut by a quarter or more depending on who's got break at any given time. It keeps class sizes smaller, which I always think of as a good thing, and thins out the stress on school facilities and staff in overcrowded areas.

3. Kids in year-round school won't have the time to attend summer camps, visit relatives, hang out with friends, and experience the "real world, and teachers need their breaks too!" Sorry to say this, kiddos, but the "real world" is pretty well formed by month after month of all work and no play, unless you happen to get lucky with paid leave and sabbaticals, or you're unlucky enough to be unemployed. I think a year-round school could easily give kids a slightly longer summer break to accommodate summer camps and similar educational activities, while still maintaining a fairly even schedule. If you want to visit relatives for more than a week you're probably overstaying your welcome, and I wouldn't count that as a valid excuse anyway - visits happen regardless of schedules, if you really want them to. Hanging out with friends is what school -is-, these days, so no points there. This argument is entirely based on the assumption that those 3 months are going to be spent in a productive fashion anyway, which is entirely dependent upon personal attitudes and SES of the family (can they afford space camp, or do they buy Johnny a $20 video game instead?).

And teachers? I've been told this so many times I'll never forget it: A REAL, GOOD teacher doesn't get summer break. Of course this could possibly be because teaching doesn't pay enough to support yourself without a second job. (*ba-dum-ching!*) It could also be that teachers are *gasp* improving skills via summer classes and training! I was told it was because prep work for the next year, including reflecting on what you learned from the last class, should take all summer. I'm sure veteran teachers have it easier but knowing how much I put into a student teaching assignment and how little work it actually was in comparison to running my own classroom, I can see how teachers wouldn't get a break. So why do people insist that teachers will and should get one, aside from knowing what little horrors their precious children are? It's perpetuating a stereotype of a lazy, incompetent teacher, and I don't think the teaching profession needs any more bad press.

4. Kids are losing knowledge over summer breaks. Yeah, they are. End of story. Even I who read all summer long had trouble going back to school in the fall and readjusting to the schedule. Summer for me always provided a canvas for establishing bad habits as well as for exploring my interests. I ended up having a lot of fun at camp, for example, but I also ended up doing a lot of "nothing" and developing bad habits (like staying at the computer all day) to deal with boredom.

I think boredom, loneliness, loss of learning and establishment of bad habits happens to most kids over the summer, and I think since everyone is always going on about how children need structure and stability in their lives, the natural extension is toward longer schooling with more regular breaks. I would hate for summer break to be taken out completely, since it does offer benefits like summer jobs and a chance to travel, but it would be nice to extend the school year a little farther. Three months is too much, and even the kids on the Yahoo! Answers blog agreed on that. I can't speak for costs of keeping the school open vs closing it, but I imagine that "issue" could be smoothed out if people were willing to work on it. I think a lot of areas have dismissed longer school sessions out-of-hand because they don't understand or don't like the changes that it would bring... but I am pushing for any change that might help our schools. Considering the state it's in, even tiny steps toward improving our educational system are welcome to me.

Garden

2008-07-28T15:34:00.001-04:00

This lovely blurry cell phone picture represents my very first "real" harvest from my garden. I pulled up a lot of lettuce last week for use on burritos, too. The blueberry tomatoes, true to their name, are tiny! They make up for it in flavor and juiciness, though. I could eat them like snack food... mmmm! And the peas are amazingly sweet; I don't think I'd want to cook them because I'm afraid to ruin the fresh-from-garden taste. I did leave the beans on the stalk a little too long but they're still ok in soup (I dropped them into my ramen today with some leftover beef).

I'm proud of the garden this year. It doesn't look like much, but it's giving me some pretty good returns for a few days' worth of planting and watering.

Still jobless, though. Sigh.

DEAR

2008-07-20T19:47:00.003-04:00

It's been quite uneventful around here recently. I'm taking a social psychology class which has me analyzing half the thoughts that pop into my head, an alarming increase from the 30% or so I usually think twice about. It has however shown me a few things about myself, I think. Being a usually introspective person, it's probably easier for me to step back and apply theories to my own thinking, but it might just drive me crazy (crazier?).

No hope on the job front. Tonight/tomorrow I'll try looking in Johnstown, because we found a real fixer-upper type house there and we want to try to get it, which will obviously be easier with a job. It's a big, old brick home with front and back porch tacked on at some later date, and it looks cheaply patched up inside and out but it's still structurally in decent shape, and has a full attic, a full (slightly damp) basement, and a newer-looking pair of furnaces and water heaters (yes, two of each - it was apparently split into upstairs-downstairs apartments). If my guess is correct most of the work it needs is cosmetic, which we can do ourselves (and boy am I excited about it). The lot also has a 3-bay garage, which is in far worse condition than the house (but that's ok, I don't mind rebuilding roofs!), and a tiny lawn where I could presumably put a garden. And it's priced to throw out at $16,900... gotta love foreclosures! I'm not letting myself get too excited about it, because there -was- another offer put in, and we can't offer what we don't have, but I do hope that we have a chance. I really would like a home.

In the meantime I sit here and check my email and my comics and blogs and wonder if I'll ever get a job interview when even Subway didn't seem to want me (although presumably their excuse is that they had hundreds of applicants). It's frustrating but there are little gems in everything. Today's was, of all things, spam mail.

From: "DEAR CONTACT MY SECRETAY FOR YOUR BANK DRAFT"
Subject: DEAR CONTACT MY SECRETAY FOR YOUR BANK DRAFT
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:12:30 +0300

DEAR

I'M HAPPY TO INFORM YOU ABOUT MY SUCCESS IN GETTING THOSE FUNDS TRANSFERRED UNDER THE COOPERATION OF A NEW PARTNER FROM PARAGUAY. PRESENTLY I'M IN PARAGUAY BUT BY NEXT WEEK I WILL BE IN CHINA FOR INVESTMENT PROJECTS WITH MY OWN SHARE OF THE TOTAL SUM.

MEANWHILE,I DIDN'T FORGET YOUR PAST EFFORTS AND ATTEMPTS TO ASSIST ME IN TRANSFERRING THOSE FUNDS DESPITE THAT IT FAILED US SOME HOW. NOW CONTACT MY SECRETARY, HIS NAME IS MR PRINCE UGO E-MAILADDRESSS: princeugo201@gmail.com ASK HIM TO SEND YOU THE TOTAL US$800,000.00 WHICH I KEPT FOR YOUR COMPENSATION FOR ALL THE PAST EFFORTS AND ATTEMPTS TO ASSIST ME IN THIS MATTER.

I APPRECIATED YOUR EFFORTS AT THAT TIME VERY MUCH. SO FEEL FREE AND GET IN TOUCH WITH MY SECRETARY AND INSTRUCT HIM WHERE TO SEND THE AMOUNT TO YOU PLEASE DO LET ME KNOW IMMEDIATELY YOU RECEIVE IT SO THAT WE CAN SHARE THE JOY AFTER ALL THE SUFFERNESS AT THAT TIME. IN THE MOMENT, I AM VERY BUSY HERE BECAUSE OF THE INVESTMENT PROJECTS WHICH ME AND THE NEW PARTNER ARE HAVING AT HAND.

FINALLY, REMEMBER THAT I HAD FORWARDED INSTRUCTION TO MY SECRETARY ON YOUR BEHALF TO SEND YOU THE MONEY AS SOON AS YOU REQUEST FOR IT. SO FEEL FREE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH MR PRINCE UGO HE WILL SEND THE AMOUNT TO YOU WITHOUT ANY DELAY,BEAR IN MIND THAT THE US$800,000.00 IN CONFIRMABLE BANK DRAFT

REGARDS,

MR WILLIAMS OKAFOR
DEAR CONTACT MY SECRETAY FOR YOUR BANK DRAFT

Contact the secretay I shall! If only $800k really was a few clicks away I would be a happy woman. Last week I inherited 5 million or so, but I forgot to send the nice old lady my bank information before I deleted the message. What would I do with that much money, anyway? It's better going to someone gullible enough to need it!

Something caught my eye today...

2008-07-01T19:58:00.002-04:00

While I was reading a forum thread titled "Are we on the verge of serious economic collapse?" I came across a post that stated that Congress had just passed into law a little provision that allows taxation of property when you renounce US citizenship. My first reaction was Wait a minute, wouldn't we have heard about this one?, and then I went hunting.

Look what I found!
The so-called "Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act of 2008", which is supposedly all about "[amending] the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide benefits for military personnel, and for other purposes.", hides a little gem in Sections 301-303.

I didn't read the whole thing, because it's a lot of legalese and politikspeak and references other bills that I haven't had the time and energy to muddle through, and I can't understand half of it without sitting down and writing it all out on paper 3 or 4 times paraphrased in normal human speech and then asking someone else if I got it right. I'm pretty sure they do that on purpose. >.> Anyway, the basic idea, if I understand correctly, is that if you leave the country or otherwise declare yourself no longer a US resident, you're to be taxed on all assets (home, car, 401k) that you have in this country as though they had been sold on the day before your expatriation, and at "market value" (which to me sounds a heck of a lot like "as high as we can appraise it"). Now, I -think- there's a $600k 'gain' limit before they start taxing you, which gives you a pretty good base if you actually had that $600k in cash and not invested in your in-ground pool and your car(s)... and they obviously won't tax you if you're taking a loss. They also make exceptions if you have lived here less than 10 years or are under 18 1/2 years old at the time of expatriation (oh how kind!). However, it's still awfully shady, and it seems to me that the articles pointing this out were right - there's really no reason to start taxing expatriation unless they expect a lot of it to happen. What are they preparing for?

Haircut

2008-06-08T16:58:00.003-04:00

2 weeks ago I finally chopped my long hair off.

In case you can't see the numbers, that's over 20"

It's been sent off in a tidy little ponytail for Locks of Love. Then, I had the nice hair place down the road trim it and layer it slightly, and I did a quick home dye job (temporary, of course!).

It's so nice to have a fresh new haircut!

So if you haven't seen or heard already (sorry, Mom!), now you know what to expect next time you see me!

And in other news I've sent off applications to the state government for a civil service position as a clerk typist... plus I handed in an application for Taco Bell on Thursday. I'm hoping that since they're not actively hiring they won't call back. If they do, though, at least it's a job.