Watch for Spraying Vitriol

I hear caustic remarks cause severe acid burns.

Today I received an email regarding the Iranian persecution of a Christian pastor.  There is, of course, great outrage about Iran’s push to force him to recant his Christianity and urging him to return to Islam.  As an American, who truly believes in our Bill of Rights, I share their anger and criticism.

Yet…

These are the very same people who send me hate mail regarding abortion, are outraged at people who say Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas, and who continue to believe that we’ve gone to hell-in-a-hand-basket as a country because we removed the word “God” from the Pledge of Allegiance,  rather than acknowledging we’ve really replaced “God” with “money” and “prosperity”.

As much as I would like to share your righteous indignation, I can’t.  We’re not on the same side.  I want to live in a country controlled by a government free of religious interference.  These people want to live in a Christian nation.  I have no reason to believe that, if you had your way, we wouldn’t be writing an article where an Islamic person wasn’t jailed under false pretenses in order to force him or her to recant his/her faith and return to Christ.

Thank you, but I don’t like Kool-Aid.

The “A” Word

Sigh.  I really dislike anti-abortionists.  Perhaps I wouldn’t if the people who set out to be their spoke’s mouths seemed reasonable, educated and rational, but that’s rarely the case.  Most of the time it’s someone with an axe to grind who seems to have gone off his nut (see no Cream of Fetuses in OK).  And yes, for some reason it does seem that the most vehement are male.  The very ones who will NEVER have to face the chance of an unwanted pregnancy are the ones most wanting to push that onto someone.

First, I will give you that it kills a potential life.  I will give you that most pro-choice people, myself included, are not fully comfortable with that.  However, I won’t give you that the unborn child of a teen-aged girl who can’t really take care of herself is more important than the teen’s future contribution to society.  I don’t understand the idea of “you play so you pay” with only one half of the parents involved, nor do I really think that society has a right to force a pregnancy with the idea that it will produce the future adoptive offspring of an infertile family.  I believe statistics, over time, have shown that the stigma of an unwed teenaged mother is nil; therefore, there is no reason for these people to give up their children.  There is, however, usually a higher reliance on public assistance in these cases.  Teen mothers aren’t really prepared to go to school, work and take care of their children. Yet we want to punish them for getting pregnant.  With that in mind, who is really punished here?

While I’m more than okay with using my tax money to take care of children, society really isn’t. In the 80s there was a lot of backlash against welfare queen mothers who had baby after baby so they wouldn’t have to get off of public assistance.  I believe that many people still feel this way.  Wouldn’t then, the more logical choice be some sort of birth control?  Even abortion?

Most pro-choice advocates, myself include, don’t like the idea of using abortion as birth control.  Yet, most anti-abortionists are equally against any sort of birth control education, sex education or even access to birth control.  Insurance companies will fund access to Viagra, but not birth control pills. It seems to me that anti-abortion really means anti-population control.  Yet, again, we don’t want to PAY for these extra people.  It seems to me if you want them to be here, you must have an avenue for taking care of them.  In fact, we find them to be annoying and a nuisance.

As a teacher, it’s amazing how many students you get who really are unwanted.  Their parents don’t like them, have no interest in their futures or education, and in general find being a parent to be a job they never really wanted.  Sure, they liked the attention having a baby gave them.  They liked dressing the baby up and the cute factor.  However, when it came to the actual work of raising a child to adulthood, they didn’t want or like that.  They don’t want to sacrifice time to help with school work or to spend with their child.  They prefer to buy objects to keep the child occupied and out of their faces.  I’ve been told countless times that the parent has no idea how to control the child or to get the child to mind.  I fail to see how sacrificing a life to incarceration is better than not being there.  An unloved, unwanted child never truly connects with society.  There are huge costs.  Costs no one really wants to pay — education, welfare, social, and, in some cases, legal.

I believe fully that abortion needs to remain a legal right of women.  I don’t think you can know until you walk in that person’s shoes.  It is true that women have been recommended to receive abortions, haven’t, and gone on to have healthy children.  Mazel Tov.  Yet, it was still HER choice.  I believe that social issues can be restructured to minimize abortions numbers.  While it would be nice to say, only medically necessary, you have to take into account failure in birth control methods, rape, and change of heart.  Women with three children who are barely making it should not be forced into child-birth.  It’s not exactly cheap or easy, you know.  What is the benefit?

Yet to minimize abortion numbers we have to realize that we are sexual beings.  We need to consider the role sex plays in our lives and to decide how to deliver this to our children.  We need to create a world in which it’s true that every child is loved, cherished and wanted.  We need to allow people who opt out of being parents to do so without stigma.  But mostly, we need to realize that if we, ourselves, don’t want an abortion, we don’t have to have one.

But we must never lose sight of the fact that the largest percentage of people living in poverty and receiving welfare are women and children.  We can never lose sight that giving birth doesn’t make someone a mother.  We need to realize that existence doesn’t equate love.

 

Kids and Sex Education

I’ve been teaching for long enough now to know that sex is a really uncomfortable subject in schools.  It is NOT to be discussed, especially because parents get to choose if their children should learn about reproduction and what aspects of it.  Really?  You can cherry pick human reproduction?  In my mind it’s not that complicated, but… whatever.

While I don’t love nature, or even really like it, I do think we must be WAY too disconnected from nature if we can actually put off having to discuss or address reproduction with kids (or Bob Barker did an AMAZING job with his spay or neuter your pets campaign).  When I was a kid, you’d hear a cat in heat, and we all knew what that yowling meant. Hell,  we tried to keep our animals in when they were in heat.  Yes, we were the contraception Nazis, save that we were going for abstinence.  Imagine our surprise when six months later the drawer was filled with tiny, mewing kittens and a load of unwearable clothes.  Apparently just say no is not a viable option in the animal kingdom.

Therefore, the whole movement of we’ll wait until the kid is going off to college, having sex, and probably has had a couple of STDs and pregnancy scares before we consider addressing this with him or her just smacks as incredibly stupid.  Look, I’m clear that I have no religious ties to sexuality.  However, I do have moral ones as well as ethical ones.  If you don’t want your child hurt or damaged or living a life that could have been avoided, then you need to do the right thing.  You need to talk to your child not only about sexual reproduction, but about human sexuality.

Truthfully, at my advanced age, I have really not met that many people who were virgins when they got married.  In fact, I know a great many people for whom baby came first, then marriage.  Sometimes not even marriage.  We need to get past the judgement of that, because it’s really NO BIG DEAL.  What is a big deal, though, is when those people hide the truth of their lives for “moral” reasons or to force their children into other paths.  Revised history hurts.  Don’t do it.

Here’s what you need to do with your children.  Talk to them a lot starting when they start talking.  Show them loving and respectful relationships.  If there aren’t any, point out that these relationships aren’t healthy.  Let your child know what you want for them when they grow up.  Be honest about who you are and your mistakes.  Lying is never in fashion.  Explain what you are prepared to do to help them as they age, including making sure they continue to see a doctor and have access to health benefits.  Don’t punish your child for doing something dumb.  You were once young, right? You didn’t do dumb things?  I ask because I’ve made so many mistakes.  I can help someone avoid the pitfalls. Don’t send your child out blind.

Finally, show them a picture of me and expose them to my writing.  Then let them read this: I am not the prettiest woman in a room, the thinnest, or the best shaped.  I am not the kindest, the smartest, or the most loving.  I am flawed.  Yet, I know that my husband is not the first or the only person to have loved me.  He is, however, the best person who has loved me. I am lovable despite the fact that I have wrinkles, a wiggly wide butt, and speak sarcasm fluently.  If your romantic partner doesn’t love you and treat you as well as your best friend, you need a new romantic interest.  If someone needs you to change to be good enough, kick that person to the curb.  You will NEVER be good enough.  Trust me.  You are worthy of love, devotion, care, and friendship.  Hold out for it.  Find out who you are as a person first, before becoming part of a couple. You’ll be glad you did.

Then makes sure that you explain about eggs and sperm.  That’s pretty freaking important too.

 

Soul Mate

I have such a deep loathing of this phrase that I have fantasies of stabbing Richard Bach (remember him?  Jonathan Livingston Seagull and such) in the head with a fork.  What the fuck, dude?  Really? Of course, it’s not just his fault.  I’ve learned from watching “The Millionaire Matchmaker” that this exists in Jewish lore, so maybe Bach was just distilling it for the Goyim in the world.

I think soul mates are for adults what Santa is for children, a dream and a fantasy.  Only I find the soul mate issue far more damaging because it’s selling the dream that there is ONE person out there who, upon your meeting, you will recognize as your missing other half.  The person who shares your deepest longings, and who, in their absence, you feel the cold harsh reality of life.  Fuck.  Seriously?

First, that’s one hell of a job description (disclosure: I don’t want it). After all, if you have to be someone’s EVERYTHING, when can you just chill?  What about bad sex?   What happens if you don’t like them anymore?  How do you resolve problems? What do you do when your love throws his/her vote away on Nader?  Don’t tell me this won’t happen.  I’m old, but not so old that I’ve forgotten your declarations of “We’re soul mates!”  “She’s/He’s the ONLY one for me.” “You wouldn’t understand our need to do everything together.” Ha.  Yeah, that shit didn’t last, did it?

Second, I think it’s the job description of most stalkers. In fact, upon breakup, some of the soul mates in question did go all Mark David Chapman (slash) John Hinckley Jr. for a few months.

Finally, that job has already been filled by most people’s dogs.  Truthfully, the only one with the time, care and loyalty to be completely, utterly, thoughtlessly devoted to you is your dog.  Yes, the sex is off-limits (Most of the time. It really does depend on your relationship with your dog, and the laws in your state or country). However,  by and large, if this is what you need, I’m sure you can find your soul mate at the shelter.  I hear mutts make the best soul mates.

I’m Not That Kind of Blogger

My first blog was set up for me by someone in our little group.  I was pretty surprised by it because I wasn’t real in the know about blogging.  Apparently he felt I was opinionated and needed an avenue.  Perhaps he thought I’d stop monopolizing conversations at brunch with my crazy.  He was wrong.  I did write a bit, but I was never focused on one topic.  Eventually I just stopped posting — in part because I forgot the password.

Fast forward:  Cassie, my buddy started writing about raising twice exceptional children at her blog, Just a Glimpse.  So like any good friend, I followed suit.  Same thing, though.  I’m not a focused blogger.  I write about anything (hence the eventual title).  I write about almost everything.  I lack what it takes to have a following of thousands.  I find that strangely comforting.

You see, I realize that, at my soul, I’m very much the person I was at 14.  I am loyal, opinionated, willing to swim upstream, and not terribly interested in anything that remotely smacks of “being a lady”.  I have come to accept that no one is going to turn to my blog to discover parenting tips, how to be more organized, the best recipes to use for an ADHD kid (’cause I’m still feeding mine Kraft Mac n Cheese), or how to ensure your child WILL BE THE BEST.  I don’t DIY, I’m not into home decorating, and I’m just political enough not to go into too much detail about my job.

I’m not sunshine and rainbows, a diet and exercise guru, or an expert on hosting fabulous dinner parties on a dime.  I admit my Christmas tree is still up, and it still makes me happy.  I don’t know the best day trips for toddlers, how to get cat urine out of the carpet (although I’d pay good money for that one!), or even how to make my house a home.

I am a middle-aged overweight white woman with an attitude.  I write for pleasure, to clear my head, and, yes, to kick the hornet’s nest.  I am not as complacent as I look; although I will accept your stupid-assed ideas because I don’t argue with the unarmed.  I don’t even really respect life that much, truth be told.  I am alternately crazy happy and curmudgeonly.  I rail against the light.  I don’t like the status quo unless it makes for a nice, calm existence, and I’m not even consistent.

In short, I’m not that kind of blogger.

Neo-Luddite Tendencies

In the near future, there may be meetings for those of us not willing to embrace all of the new in our lives.  Hell, I’m not even fully embracing 1993.  My name is Suzanne, and I am a Luddite.

Admittedly, this is a blog, so not a full-blown attack on your manufacturing plant (’cause I’d have to travel to China to do it) Luddite, but a bit of one nonetheless.  You see, there are aspects of modern life and technology that I find truly disgusting, distasteful, and downright annoying.

Yes, I’m talking to you Mr. Caller ID.  We don’t have one on our house phone (yet another indicator of our unwillingness to go forward into the 21st century).  When people call, I have no idea to whom I will be speaking.  It’s fine.  Really.  I’ve never once been trauamtized by talking to the WRONG person.  After all, if I want to not talk to anyone because I’m hanging with my boys, you know what I do?  I DON’T answer the telephone.  The answer phone will get it.

Now my cell phone DOES have it, but I have to look at the screen to know who it is.  By that time, I’m answering the phone.  I don’t download different ring tones for different people (save for that one time seven years ago when I used “Flight of the Bumblebee” for one particular friend.  It was a self-preservation thing.  I was saving herself from me.).  I have neither the time, nor the inclination to go through all that.  To be honest, I had to finally find a ring tone that sounds like a phone because I missed so many calls.  They were just the random callings of whippoorwills for all I cared.

Now please sit down for the next one, I’d hate for you to recoil in horror and hurt yourself.  We still own the same television we bought in the late 1990s.  It’s not HD nor is it the size of Picasso’s Guernica nor is it flat screen.  It’s an average color TV set.  It lacks surround sound and a mate.  You see, it’s a spinster (or would that be bachelor) TV.  We only have one in the house.  Mind you, we have an iPad, a school-issued lap-top that I consider “my precious”, as well as the heavily modified, customized, and doctored PC we have upstairs.  With all that, you don’t need a second TV.

I refuse to have a television in my bedroom.  As a rule, no screens are allowed at bedtime; although that will change since Shonen Jump will only be putting out electronic copies in the future, making the need for a screen inevitable.  Actually, we still have (gasp) CDs.  We even play them on a boom-box.  In fact, I miss those.  I miss mixed tapes.  I miss making mixed tapes.  A mixed CD just doesn’t have the same beauty of weird poppings, overrun music, wrong stops and starts, and the wrong songs placed side by side that will stay there forever because, fuck-it!, it’s already on there.

I’m Luddite enough to be appalled at school when I see the parents give their little kids the phone to play with.  Toddlers know more about their parents’ phones than they should, and they consider them THEIR toys.  I already feel sorry for the poor kindergarten teacher.  Damn.  Two issues at play here: first, you gotta compete with a phone and someone who has made it solely their purpose to make sure you NEVER bother them, and second, you’re dealing with a kid who must be pretty freaking unpleasant when he or she doesn’t get his or her own way — the phone.  Shit.  That stuff just makes me shudder. Worse, if the kids aren’t playing with the phone, the parents are.  I don’t even know that I term that benign neglect.  I call that raising “semi-civilized bastards.” Hey, at least we know it’s the school’s fault.

While I’m not a total Luddite, I do see the ripples in daily life where our ability to deal with each other is diminished, our egotism is increased exponentially, and our reliance on a communications device for everything but communication is divisive.  For that, I should destroy some manufacturing plants in China.  However, I know that I would merely enrage the slaves.  I suspect they have Stockholm Syndrome.

Career Crossroad

Apparently I’m the poster child for “be careful for what you wish for.”

Let’s go back 5 years.  When I was 40, I was at a PI school near downtown San Jose.  Due to how many years under NCLB it hadn’t reached ALL of its goals (it doesn’t matter if the school aced 4 out of 5, you were still in trouble for the 5th), it was cruising towards some low-level of soul-sucking awfulness of interference.  I was ready for a change since I was tired of the constant meetings that allowed for very little else, including working with students (unless I wanted to give up my lunch time).

So when I heard about a school going K-8, I jumped on it.  My dream job had always been a self-contained 6th grade.  The first year was not successful.  I had a hard time with the kids, the community, the rationale for what was going on, and they had buyer’s remorse with me.  Somehow, by February it was better.  However, it was slow going.  By the end of the year, I thought, well, maybe next year.

The next year was better, the kids were far more fabulous, I had my own class, and I thought I was going forward.  I still didn’t have a team or a colleague, but I had hope.  It wasn’t great; it wasn’t bad.

Year three was wrong.  I remember being astutely aware that we were not making progress.  I wasn’t making progress.  I couldn’t figure out how to move ahead and actually make it work.  We needed to be a full program.  I even suggested one thread for K-8.  It didn’t seem to matter if I noted it wasn’t working, or tried to get us to go in a direction, or even suggested that we determine a course, I was wrong.  I was what was wrong.  I remember crying in a meeting knowing that I was considered the asshole letting everyone know that I hadn’t envisioned the program being this way.  I cared.

Now… it’s over.  I can’t do it anymore.  OK, that’s a lie.  I can do it.  I have skills and the capability.  I just don’t want to.  In four years we’ve never managed to move beyond mediocre.  One could say that it’s my fault.  After all, I’m the only one who’s been there all 4 years.  I’m the only constant in a sea of suck.

So I’ve asked for reassignment.  Yet, there are ripples in the fabric.  I’m hearing tales of others who are being recruited who “will” make it work.  Who have vision and ideas.  It breaks my heart.  First, that I was never allowed to really try with support.  Second, what if they encounter the same thing?  I know I’m jealous at someone being able to groom the program and actually make it something.  On one hand I want that person or that team to be wildly successful.  On the other hand, it just emphasizes what a waste these last four years have been.

Now what?  I’ve asked to stay; to move to a lower grade.  I’ve signed a transfer form, for whatever that means.  Maybe it’s time to leave this particular district for good.  People say that I’ll just run into the same problems in different places, but maybe that’s the right thing.  After all, if you get divorced, is it healthy to live together?  Sigh.

This makes my obsession with Goyte’s “Somebody I Used to Know” more poignant.  Is this how it will be when I’m gone?

Simplification Sqaured

I’ve spent the better part of this morning doing something I generally avoid.  I actually clicked on the “advertising” spam that, through online purchases, I must have signed up to receive.  Usually, I open email, click the messages I don’t want to read, and then I delete them.

Today though, I clicked the unsubscribe button on each and every one of those messages.  While I recognize that my old system wasn’t time consuming, there were times when I was bored or simply wasting time that I would click to see what was on sale.  Then a good week later, boxes would arrive.  While I don’t mind spending money on stuff I’ll use, and I do use what I’ve bought, there’s still that part of me that realizes, I didn’t need more.

As I see it, out of sight is out of mind.  I am working to render my email box as irrelevant as my snail mail box.  I know that the amount of mail will be small, and that it will most likely be related to Facebook and Pinterest, but that’s the risk you have to take in simplifying your life.

Maybe, just maybe, if I’m lucky, the absence of garbage will attract the interesting, the pithy, and the personal.  If not, I haven’t lost a thing.  I might even gain time and money.

Simplification

I am, at my very heart, a piler.  I don’t like to make quick decisions.  I like to think I can use something later.  It seems wasteful to throw things away that might be perfectly good.  As such, I collect clutter the way Oscar (one of my childhood heroes, no less) collects trash.  At 1600 square feet, my house has room enough for it.  However, in my heart I know it’s not good.  There’s always this messy quality to it.

Like any 10-year-old eager to shoot outside to play with her friends, I tend to solve the problem by hiding it.  Sure, I don’t shove loads of dirty clothes under my bed anymore, but I have been known to buy baskets for my clutter.  At some point, it becomes a basket, filled with stuff, that needs going through, that I ignore because, to be honest, that was it’s real purpose.  No matter how much I protested against the accusation.

My husband is a neat, organized person.  He is Felix to my Oscar (that’s ironic, isn’t it?).  He has systems in place, works them, and knows where things are immediately.  I know where things are approximately.

What I’m learning about myself, at the ripe old-age of 45, is that I don’t really need to organize.  I need to simplify.

So I started with my digital life.  When Facebook updated itself last, I was getting all sorts of stuff on my wall — people, bands, consumer goods, etc. that I’d “liked”.  I unliked all of them.  Soon, my Facebook wall was uncluttered.  Would I like to know about these things?  Maybe. Is it worth digging through the visual clutter to get there? Not at all.

Due to having gone a bit non-linear last summer, I shut down my Facebook account for a few days (it was HARD). When I reactivated it, I made a conscious decision to get rid of people.  It sounds callous, but to be honest most of the people I “friended” from high school, I’d only done so to see how they turned out.  There were very few that I actually cared about or even wanted to be friends with.  I also had, between family, acquaintances, colleagues, and students something over 300 contacts.  I can’t keep up with 300 people, that’s just crazy.

So I didn’t. I first worked to get rid of 50.  Then another 50.  I vowed to work down to 150 contacts.  Right now, I’m a little over 100 people I’m friends with on Facebook.  And of those, truthfully, I only really care about 75 of them.  To take care of my students, I started a new “identity”.  I have about 150 friends there.  I rarely check it.  It’s not relevant to my day-to-day operations.

I’m going to take this year and think about who I want to be when I grow up.  I can’t be everything to everyone, nor do I want to.  I will not be more popular if I carry the right purse, wear the right fashions, or create the perfect home sanctuary for my family. It doesn’t matter how many educational books, videos, and realia I buy.  The teacher I am is the person who doesn’t have any of those things.  It’s the person who plans the lesson and activities and cares about the learning. The people who love me, love me.  My real goal needs to be making time to be with them and doing my professional best — without the bells and whistles.

In looking at 2012, I think it’s safe to consider two life goals.  One: become the best teacher I can be.  Really be present to my students, their parents, and my colleagues.  Pare down the educational offerings and go deep.  Two: create a home life and system where my home can be a center of fun for my family and their friends — find a simple way to entertain.  If home isn’t where the heart is, what is it then?

Sigh… Boy do I have a big task in front of me.  I’d better get started.

 

I Don’t DIY

Since being invited to join Pinterest, I’ve found that a great many people I follow are totally into crafts and DIY projects.  They post the loveliest pictures of projects they will make to enhance their homes.  Me? I look at the stuff and think, “Cute.” Then I think, “No way.”

Why?

Seriously, I can’t paint my house with any kind of success.  The first time I painted, I ended up knocking over a paint can in my bedroom and having paint soak into the carpet, which was a huge clean-up mess.  The second time, I removed the tank on our stool to “thoroughly” paint the bathroom wall, only to incorrectly place the tank back onto the stool.  I rendered the bathroom useless for a very long time.  Essentially my husband had to take over, sigh, make comments, and fix it.  Not pretty. Plus, it’s still not really done.  While the walls, ceiling, and molding are complete, I’ve never returned a cabinet or shelf system for storing items, nor a mirror, or even a towel rack that my husband likes.  Honestly, I don’t want to have to go out looking for matching items, buy them, and then install them.  I am, very much, DONE.

Then there is the cost and clutter.  In order to do a DIY project, you have to buy the parts.  Then those parts need to be stored until such perfect alignment of the sun, moon, and Mercury rising which will bless the start of the project.  Which, given that I believe I’m ADD, will be interrupted by something, so then the project will be set aside to deal with some other issue (Facebook, Pinterest, Bejeweled…). The project will sit there, until I’m sufficiently nagged, incomplete until there is perfect alignment of the sun, moon, and Mercury rising for the restart. Until then, it needs a home.  Given that organization is not my strong suit, rather than storage, it will be added to the top of a pile in my garage or Harry Potter’s apartment.  That, my friends, is technically referred to as clutter.  Once abandoned, some new shiny project will catch my eye completing the circle of not life, not death, merely DIY purgatory.

Let’s face it, I’m an idea guy.  However, if I want a final project, I need to  find someone who is into implementation.