Some Pig

Lies, Damned Lies, and Education

I am sitting in an IEP review meeting (for you non-educators, that means we are reviewing the education plan for a student with a special education designation).  The student in question has an IQ that's a little above room temperature, but not by much.  Her reading ability tests at "low average," which means I don't know what, but in practice I can tell you that she barely understands the material I present in my low-level Econ class and her comprehension and recall scores are pretty low.  Her math testing shows issues that make her reading problems look minor by comparison, and she has a report card replete with C's and D's in most of her academic classes, all of which are either the lowest-level general ed classes we offer, or the "supported" classes, which means there are five kids in the class and the curriculum is covered very, vee-eee-e-ry slowly.

On the "transition planning" page, I see a note to the effect that, "Tanner* wants to attend State Flagship University and study education." So, as politely and as obliquely as I can say without actually saying that Tanner doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell, I raise the subject that Tanner may want to research "other possibilities" after high school, because with a transcript full of C's and D's in level three and four classes (where four is the lowest possible), the state U system?  Ain't gonna happen.

Mom asks me, "What are the colleges looking for?"

I respond, "They are looking for A's and B's in level two classes and above."

At which point the Grand High Vizier of Special Ed gives me the stinkeye and says haughtily, "Level three classes are college acceptable."

And I smile and say, "Oh, okay," and act like I actually believe that bullshit.  However, inside my head (which is where all the action takes place), this is what I'm thinking:

If you think for one fraction of a second that I or any other person even tangentially connected to the educational profession believes one word of that, mister, you are either seriously delusional or flat-out lying.

Of all the many, many things that make me crazy about my chosen profession, here's the thing that drives me batshit, up-the-wall, ripping-my-hair-out crazy:  WE LIE TO KIDS ALL THE TIME ABOUT COLLEGE.  Can I say that again?

WE LIE TO KIDS ALL THE TIME ABOUT COLLEGE.

And by "we," I mean not just teachers, but teachers and administrators and politicians and the media and parents and everyone -EVERYONE - who has ever espoused the stupid (and irrefutably wrong-headed) twin fallacies of "everyone can learn at the highest level" and "everyone should go to college."  And so, to make sure that everyone thinks he or she can, indeed, go to college, we no longer label classes as being for the college-bound and the non-college-bound. All the classes we teach are college appropriate! Which is, as I can tell you, a CROCK.  If I showed you the work I give my level three class, you would LAUGH (or alternately, be completely horrified).  You know what I give them?  I give them WORKSHEETS.  We watch movies and they answer "essay questions" in poor paragraph form, usually in grammatically incorrect sentences.  We do a lot of "partner work," which is code for "most of you don't understand everything I'm talking about, so if you work with other people the chances are much greater that all of you will understand at least some of what I'm doing." I grade a lot of assignments based on participation or completion - do five for an A, four for a B, and so on.  And why do I give these kids that work?  Because it's the hardest work some of them CAN do, and it's the hardest work others of them ARE WILLING to do.  Because if I gave them honest-to-goodness college prep work taught at the college prep level, most of them wouldn't understand it, wouldn't pass the class, wouldn't get credit and would require summer school or another section of the class next year. Because half these kids couldn't pass a class that required grade-level reading and writing if you held a gun to their head.  But!  They're all going to college!  Isn't that GREAT?!?!

Why?  Why?  Why do we lie to kids who clearly have no conception of how difficult college is, or of how far short their skills fall from the necessary standard, or who have no interest, intention, or desire to continue schooling past the twelfth grade?  Why do we tell people of below-average ability to expect to succeed at schooling of above-average difficulty?  Why do we tell kids that everyone can go to college instead of helping them assess their abilities realistically and guide them to options that will allow them to leave school with employable skills that will help them, oh, I don't know, SURVIVE as adults in the real world?  Why do we act like college is the best, indeed, the ONLY choice for EVERYONE and allow them to delude themselves that all they have to do is choose which school they like best and hey, presto! Instant college acceptance! I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but the Oprah perspective - believe in yourself and you can accomplish miracles - is a lovely thought, and it makes for great TV movies, but in real life, we run up against these things called "limits."  I, for one, will never, ever get to play in the WNBA, unless they create a special league for women who are stubby and chubby and middle-aged and unathletic and who don't particularly care to play basketball. (Oh wait.  They created that league.  It's called "a book club.") Yet for some reason, we as a society are far more willing to accept the idea that not everyone is able to make a hook shot than we are that not everyone is able to read Sylvia Plath's Daddy in a Freudian deconstructionist context.  Why??

Here's a story that encapsulates the whole everyone-should-go-to-college philosophy for me:  In my previous job, I had a student, Libby*.  Libby was the sweetest, nicest little girl you would hope to find on two feet.  She was kind, gentle, caring, polite, all those good things.  Libby was also dumber than a box of tacks.  She was in my low-level junior US History class, the one that used a seventh grade reading level text, and she STILL couldn't comprehend what the book said.  Her schoolwork was a saddening mishmash of incoherent, half-literate, unintelligible efforts, over which she worked laboriously before turning them in.  She couldn't pass a test if she ate it first.  And short of actually doing her work for her, there was nothing - nothing - anyone could do to help her get any better.  Why?  Because her IQ was borderline mentally retarded, that's why!  I know I tried, and after spending the better part of forty-five minutes with her trying to get her to comprehend a simple read-and-recall question, I realized that the twenty-two other kids in the class weren't going to learn a damned thing if I kept that up.  Somehow she and I muddled through, and she duly earned the D that would get her out of the class and onto senior year.

At the end of senior year, Libby resurfaced in my consciousness again.  Actually, she had never gone very far, since she had been appointed to the job of "office aide," in which a senior or two works part-time at the switchboard doing simple office tasks and making announcements.  The job was perfect for Libby:  Someone oversaw everything she did, the stuff she messed up doing she could do over until she got it right, and she was a big help.  If it weren't for the fact that she couldn't read a simple announcement over the intercom in less than five minutes and with less than five mispronouncements, all would have been golden.  Fast-forward to graduation week, and the Academic Awards Night.  This is where we gave out the $100 to $500 local scholarships and the departmental prizes.  At the end of the night, by way of being a grand finale, the head of Student Services calls Libby to the front and announces that she has been awarded a full scholarship, including assistance with books and transportation, to the nearby community college.  And the auditorium erupts with applause.

Except for me.  I was furious.  I was furious because I knew, thanks to my friend who actually works at that college, that there was no way - NO. WAY. Period, the end. - that Libby would ever set foot in one of those classrooms, not for one single day.  Why?  Because in order to enroll at the community college, you have to take a placement exam, including a reading exam.  And students who are not reading at the minimum of a ninth grade level are not allowed to enroll.  Those who aren't reading at a twelfth grade level are allowed to enroll, but still have to take some remedial coursework.  As my friend says, "Community college is college, not grade thirteen."  In other words, for all those of you who assume that community college will fill the gap for those kids who graduate high school and don't go on to a four-year school, don't count on it. 

Back to Libby, the poor kid.  Here she was, with her diploma and her fifth grade (maybe) reading level, thinking she was going to go to college.  WTF are we doing here, people, when someone at that ability level thinks she's going to make it in college?  Arguably she shouldn't have made it out of high school, but that's a whole other post,  When I asked one of the counselors what the hell they were thinking, in a roundabout and indirect way, the response I got back was, "Well, she's going to have to go to Adult Ed for a semester to bring her reading level up."  Yeah.  And going to Adult Ed fitness class is going to bring my WNBA recruitment levels up!  Worse yet, in my view, that scholarship was going to go to waste one way or another.  Either it wasn't going to get used (most likely), or, even if by some miracle Libby did finagle her way into enrolling, she wasn't going to be able to hack the coursework and she'd flunk out.  Meanwhile, we had plenty - PLENTY - of other dirt poor, deserving kids who could make it through community college and who would have been able to USE that scholarship as it sat there, doing nothing for anybody.  I wanted to spit. 

A year later, I broached the subject again with the same counselor.  Libby had washed out of night school (surprise!) and was working somewhere in the area.  Her counselor and I wound up having a circular argument, in which she said, "It was the only chance she had," while I kept answering, "It wasn't really a chance because she was never going to make it."  After two or three rounds of this, we stopped, mostly because I realized that I could win the argument and lose a friend, or just let it lie. 

Back to the meeting with Tanner - who, by the way, is gazing around the room like a kitten watching a firefly while the rest of us adults discuss her future.  Seriously, she is turned around in her chair looking up at the ceiling when we try to ask her a question.  "Whu?" she says, when asked what she wants to do after high school.  Huh. Anyway, Tanner is definitely streets and streets ahead of poor Libby in terms of IQ and skills, but so's your pet dog (and I don't see anyone offering Fido a scholarship to Harvard).  That's not going to get her very far.  This kid is one year away from graduation, and we're sitting here arguing about what colleges she's going to apply to?  That's criminal, in my opinion.  We need to be looking for job internships, apprenticeships, on-the-job training programs, something that will allow her to gain skills in an employable field without having to go to college.  I realize that a college degree is becoming a necessity in order to stay in the ever-shrinking middle class.  I am well aware that we don't have the job base we once had here in the U.S. of A. that allowed hourly workers to make a decent wage and support a family.  But those facts don't change another fact, which is that just saying everyone should be ready for college after high school doesn't make it so.  And can't make it so.  I don't care WHAT program, curriculum, philosophy, course structure, or schedule you put in place, the fact is, half the kids you teach are going to be on the lower side of average.  That's why they call it AVERAGE, people!  And, parents, I don't care what your school calls it, if your kid is in the lowest level of whatever system your high school has in place, unless that school is named "Andover" or "Newton North," he or she is NOT getting prepared for college. 

There's a lot here that has to wait for a later day, like all the very real faults of our educational system. We've got big problems in our public educational system, problems far beyond this one. Certainly there are a lot of capable kids in the low-track classes, kids who are marginalized or who choose to underachieve, and there are plenty of success stories out there of the kid who was branded a failure in school but bloomed in college.  This post doesn't mean they don't exist.  But we can't find those kids and try to help them succeed, truly succeed, until we stop fooling ourselves that everyone is going to succeed.  (We also need to broaden our definition of success and our perceptions of what constitutes meaningful and valuable work, but again, that's an argument for another day.)

Vomitrocious

Sweet weeping Jeebus.  The NYTimes has an article up today asking why schools suck worse now than they did when "A Nation At Risk" comes out, and then Slate runs this article about a mom who does everything for her son up to and just short of wiping his bum when he gets off the potty.  Anyone out there want to connect the dots?

Somewhere along the line, middle class parents decided that their kids should never, ever, ever encounter any hardship, difficulty, or challenge because, hey, they're middle class kids from nice families!  Somewhere along the line, they came to the conclusion that anyone who tells their kid "no," or "that's not good enough," or "you can do better" is a big, bad meanie who needs to be stopped!  Somewhere along the line, middle class parents began infantilizing their kids, hovering and monitoring and second-guessing and overriding any situation in which a kid might make a bad choice and (gasp!) suffer the consequences.  Somewhere along the line, middle class parents decided that their kids would never be cut from the team, fail to make honor roll, get fired from a part-time job, or have anything happen to them that could be construed as unpleasant, and if that were to loom on the horizon, why, mommy and/or daddy will step in and fix it!  Somewhere along the line, middle class parents came to the conclusion that their particular child is unique and special and precious and fragile, so much so that they must be coddled and swaddled and held by the hand at all times, figuratively if not literally.  Somewhere along the line,  middle class parents arrived at the conclusion that it was their job to run interference and defend their child at all times no matter what the circumstances.  No way could their child lie, cheat, manipulate, shirk, or just plain fail - everyone knows [insert person or issue here] is unfair/mean/biased against their child/[insert justification here]. 

For the love of Mike, this woman filled out eleven college applications on her son's behalf!  No WONDER he washed out of his first try at adult life.  He didn't even have an IDENTITY OF HIS OWN that isn't somehow an extension of HER!  She paid for private school for a kid who RARELY DID HOMEWORK!  Then she marveled that, gee, he didn't want to live at home and go to a juco in his hometown!  Gee, I wonder why not??? [Insert eye roll here here, followed by supercilious snort.] 

I'm truly surprised.  I've had two kids of my own, and as far as I could tell, they CUT that umbilical cord before we left the HOSPITAL.

Wake Me Up When the Bush Administration's Over

Reading this first thing this morning made me want to throw up.  And then go back to bed, only to be woken on Election Day, and again on January 20th, 2009.  What gives her the right to ...  Under what authority does she claim to ...  Who does she think she is that she can ...

Oh, never mind.  I've become so inured to the crack-brained decision making and narrow-minded social engineering that passes for running our country, I can't even work up a good rant about it.

I hope when Monica Goodling dies, she goes straight to a new circle of hell populated by tie-dye-wearing, free-love-promoting, Druid-worshiping hippie-dippies where she has to spend all eternity having her hair dreadlocked and reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."  I can't think of anything that would horrify her more.

Just a Thought

I wonder how many of the executives at Bear, Stearns benefited from Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.  I also wonder how many of those self-same executives have no compunction at all about accepting one of the biggest acts of corporate welfare made in my lifetime.  I'm so glad we're not letting those deadbeat single moms, Iraq vets and handicapped children mooch off the public dime so we can bail out Wall Street!

My heart goes out to the Joe and Jane Averages who worked for Bear, Stearns and weren't making megabucks, and whose retirement accounts lost a huge chunk of their value. I also feel sorry for me and Warren, because a lot of our retirement funds have declined in value recently as well, but that's a moot point. The corporate greedheads, on the other hand, can eat their words for dinner and burn their statements for warmth.  Right before they take their first job asking, "Do you want fries with that?"  Bah!

Three Rants in One Week? That's Got To Be Some Sort of Record.

Scratch a Teacher, Find a Closet Reactionary

I read this story about mothers of newborns in Alabama being arrested for having drugs in their system.  I realize that as a card-carrying lover of the US Constitution, I am supposed to be concerned and alarmed about the potential violation of their civil liberties.  As a card-carrying proponent of the right to choice, I'm also supposed to be leery of the drive to give fetuses (fetii?) the same rights as infants, which is the first step toward subjugating the mothers' rights to those of their unborn children.  Yeah, yeah, I know we have a tendency to blame the mothers in these situations when the fathers are long gone, or nonfunctional, or doing the exact same and worse.  We're human.  Mistakes are made. But you know what?  As someone who has to deal with these kids in a professional capacity fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years down the road, I say, GOOD.  I've worked in the classroom a long time now - over a decade - and the one truth that transcends any individual classroom, school, district, or state is that what happens in the home far overwhelms the influence of what happens in the classroom.  As far as I'm concerned, you are free to take drugs, drink yourself silly, and live as irresponsibly as you like UNTIL you bring another person into this world.  Then, I'm sorry, but your ticket to ride has just been cancelled (and yes, the babydaddies should be held to the same standard, but right now they aren't, and that's  a reality that will change only with a lot of time and effort).  I'm a huge fan of doing the greatest good for the greatest number, and if it takes some arrests to dissuade other pregnant women from doing things that permanently render their children far behind the eight-ball neurologically, socially, and academically, well, I'll live with that.

Then I read this story and I felt like a weazened old Grinch.

He must think I AM as dumb as I look...

Check out the long con my so-called "better half" tried to pull this morning:

We alternate early-morning child tending duties on the weekend.  My philosophy is, we each get one morning to sleep in late, ignore the kiddies, monopolize the NY Times and generally pretend we're not married and encumbered by responsibilities and babies.  And if one chooses to pursue activities that require getting up early on one's designated sleep-in day, well, that's tough cookies, Buster.  The usual pattern is that I sleep in on Saturdays and Warren gets Sundays.  However, Warren also likes to go to yoga class on Saturday morning.

"I have an idea," he said at 5:45 this morning, in his best I'm-just-thinking-of-you voice.  "You can sleep in until 8, and then I'll go to yoga."  When I expressed doubt (as in, "HELL, NO,") he was surprised.  "But you get to sleep in!  Until eight o'clock!" he countered. 

Let's just look at this proposition a little more closely:  Say he takes Saturday as his early day AND goes to yoga.  That means the latest I can sleep in is 8 a.m., and, hello?  That barely counts as sleeping in!  I'm just getting started on my third or fourth round of REM sleep at that point!  You're talking to someone who was capable of sleeping til 9, 10, 11 a.m. easily before the ankle biters came along, and you think 8 a.m. counts as late????  I think NOT.  Add to that the fact that should I agree to this travesty and have to stumble out of bed at that ree-donculously early hour, I am then IMMEDIATELY confronted with being on duty for the remainder of the morning whilst Himself toddles merrily along to his own personally enriching and fulfilling pursuits.  Warren then does some grocery shopping after yoga, thus handily extending his family-free time by another hour.  AND, since I have technically already had my morning to myself, Warren THEN gets ANOTHER morning to himself to sleep in late, ignore the kiddies, and so forth and so on.

To summarize:

The Caroline Plan - There are two weekend mornings in play. I get one full morning.  Warren gets one full morning. 

The Warren Plan - There are two weekend mornings in play.  I get about one-third of a morning.  Warren gets two-thirds of one morning and all of another morning.

You know what?  I wouldn't get so worked up about this, except that Warren tries to pull this shit all the time.  Are you reading this, dear?  Here's the bottom line:  YOGA COMES OUT OF YOUR PERSONAL TIME. YOUR.  PERSONAL.  TIME.  IF YOU CHOOSE YOGA OVER SLEEP, THAT'S YOUR ISSUE, DEAR.  NOW GET YOUR MITTS OFF MY MORNINGS.

Letters From A Broad, Current Events Edition

Dear Eliot Spitzer,
As a civics and economics teacher, I have to thank you.  For the first time in my teaching career, I had students actually paying attention to my explanations about the arcana of bank transactions and impeachments.  You generated one hell of a teachable moment!  As a fellow parent of girls, on the other hand, I am not so thankful.  Did it ever occur to you, Eliot, that the young lady with whom you most recently cavorted is less than ten years older than your eldest daughter?  Hmm?  When I put it like that, don't your actions seem just a leeeeetle bit slimy?
Sincerely,
Some Pig

Dear Silda Wall Spitzer,
I cannot imagine - cannot even begin to fathom - what you must be going through.  While it's easy for us to stand on the outside and say, "If I were her, I'd...," you owe us neither an explanation or an apology for whatever you decide to do.  After all, you can't just erase your history with this man, and regardless of what you do, he still is the father of your children.  Just know this:  If you decided to chop off his peenie and nail it to the lamppost, not a jury in the world would convict you, sista.
You have all my sympathy and support,
Some Pig

Dear Media,
Please stop referring to Ashley Alexandra Dupre as a "high class call girl".  She is not a high class call girl.  She is not a hooker. She is a prostitute.  That is the word we use for someone who sells his or her sexual services, often through an intermediary.  That intermediary is a pimp, not an "escort service". If we use the proper nomenclature for these things, suddenly some of the mystique diminishes, doesn't it?  When you call a prostitute a "high class call girl," you denigrate the idea of being high class.  High class, to me anyway, is a Yo-Yo Ma cello recital, a day at the art museum, a discussion of Platonic versus Aristotelian ideals, a fine meal enjoyed with intelligent conversation.  It is not the sale of one's body for the pleasure of someone else.  Any moment now I expect some member of the Fourth Estate to refer to Ms. Dupre as "a happy hooker with a heart of gold," and then I will vomit.
Get it straight,
Some Pig

"Charity" Is NOT My Middle Name

WARNING:  What I have to say here will be offensive to some parents.  If you have extremely allergic children, you may be put out by my thoughts, in which case, please skip to a post you've previously read so you don't become permanently pissed off at me and delete me from your blog roll.

So I'm packing the baby's lunch to take to day care today and making lunches?  Is not my favorite activity.  Shoot, I hate packing lunches for myself, and having to think of TWO meals-to-go, one of which is intended for someone who isn't so good at the taking-small-bites-and-not-choking thing, well, it taxes a girl.  Add to that the fact that it's frigging Spring Ahead, and I HATE Spring Ahead because the kids sure don't care that the clock says 8:30 p.m. when their internal clock says it's only 7:30 p.m., so they stay up gamboling about until 9:00 ... 9:15 ... 9:30 ... and then they're all sleeping happy as babes in toyland when I have to pry my middle-aged tired self out of the sack at 6:30 a.m., which is actually 5:30 a.m., to get myself showered and dressed and then I have to make intelligent decisions about what to have for lunch?!?!  Is it any wonder why I have a sandwich and a piece of fruit every single day of my freaking life???  So I collect the foodstuffs in question and open Ceci's lunch sack, only to find her cereal bar left over from Friday.  I bought said cereal bars only last week in a desperate attempt to find something portable this kid could bring to eat that she can manage by herself and that isn't a banana.  Geez Louise, if I give this kid any more bananas, she's going to start swinging from the trees! "Huh," thinks I to myself, "she must not have been very hungry on Friday."  Then I pick up the cereal bar and I find a sticky note on it:

Sorry - we can't give this to Celeste because it may have been made with nut products.

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

I look more closely, and there it is, in teeny weeny print on the wrapper: "Made on equipment that also manufactures products containing peanuts and tree nuts."

Again, AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

I'm telling you, this kid's classmates are allergic to everything.  One of these days I'm going to go in there and find out someone's allergic to AIR.  This one can't have dairy.  That one can't have soy.  This one has a nut allergy and is sensitive to wheat products.  The other one can only have food brought from home.  On Ceci's birthday, I wanted to bring in a treat for the class to have, but wound up in the day care dietary Catch-22 - the kids can only have food that comes with a content label, but all the food with content labels contains the warning about peanuts, so they can't have it.  They can't have ice cream because it's dairy, but they can't have tofutti because of the kid with the soy allergy.  I would have been HAPPY to make a special gluten-free, dairy-free cake or brownies with canola oil, but the day care center isn't allowed to serve foods made in a private home.  They can't even have frigging RAISINS because the state licensing poobahs consider them a CHOKING HAZARD.  So they celebrated Ceci's first birthday with GRAPES, cut up of course, and probably pre-chewed, and for all I know predigested and given to them in FEEDING TUBES.

Okay, okay, I'm a reasonable human being, and a mother, and if I had an insanely allergic kid who couldn't move five feet away from the Epipen without putting himself in mortal danger I know full well I'd be the first one there with the sani-wipes and the fluorescent orange warning labels.  Still, GEEZ.  I am happy to avoid peanut butter if it risks endangering your child.  I will avoid white flour and eschew tofu in the group snacks.  But when I can't give MY OWN KID a frigging CEREAL bar that I specifically checked doesn't contain nuts and nut products because it *might* have some cross contamination, that's when I get a little tetchy.  Can't my kid and the allergic kid sit at different tables?  Could they eat in shifts?  Isn't there some way we can negotiate a path between avoiding the allergens and providing a lunch that isn't the same damn thing every day without needing a PhD in food sciences?

I packed Celeste yet another banana.

Because Some of 'Em CHOOSE to Get Left Behind, That's Why

This is why teachers get hot around the collar when non-educators start talking about holding teachers "accountable":

Today my per 7 class (low-level juniors) had presentations due.  They did brief reports on a career field of their choice.  I won't bore you with the details, except to say that I gave the kids THREE class periods in the library to complete their work, which was more than ample time to get the whole shootin' match done if you actually gave a damn and applied yourself.  Even if you arsed around, nearly all these kids have study hall and/or computer access at home and could get it done then.

Out of my class of twenty students, eight - 40% - were absent (hmm, and on the day a major project is due, too - coincidence?!?!).  That includes the kid I saw walking through the cafeteria fifteen minutes before class began.

One student just flat-out hadn't done anything on his project and I sent him to the resource room to catch up on other work.

FOUR students came in with incomplete projects, three of whom were able to finish before the end of the period.

Let's see, that's THIRTEEN out of TWENTY kids who weren't ready for a project that counts for A THIRD OF THEIR GRADE.  One student had legitimate computer issues that I had witnessed, so I have to grade hers later.  Some of the kids who weren't ready at the beginning of class were able to pull it out by the end.  I ended up with EIGHT graded projects.  Eight out of TWENTY.  Come Monday, I'll give them the speech about how the people who weren't there on Friday have to make the effort to see me if they want their project graded, they need to take the initiative, it's not my job to chase them down, blah blah blah, and you know what will happen?  Probably THREE of those missing projects will find their way to me eventually.  The rest of them will give me the "Whu-? We had a project?" look, and proceed not to do it.  If these kids were employees, I'd fire most of 'em.  But you know what?  I can't.  All I can do is flunk them, which doesn't really affect them too much because they can take the class again in summer school, or next year, or on line, or whatever, y'know.  So the next time the state legislature, in all its infinite wisdom, or the feds in all theirs, start talking about how "all students should be college-ready by 2020" or not leaving any child behind, you'll excuse me if I snort audibly. 

Bah, humbug!

I Painted the Town Red. Or Rather, Caliente, Sweet Taffy, and Lemonade.

If it takes you longer than usual to read this post, that's because it's taking me much longer than usual to type it.  In fact, I may have to give up in a minute and start typing with my nose.

Lordamercy, are my arms tired.

All I wanted to do was paint India's room.  The anonymous white wall thing was getting old, I have vacation, why not?  But then Warren got involved.  Painting India's room became painting her room and the girls' bathroom, and then while all the paint stuff is out, why not paint the kitchen/dining area too?  We stopped there for the day, but I swear I saw Warren eyeing the cat, speculating how she'd look in a coat of Nantucket Teal.

And if you know my husband, you know that he takes his household chores seriously.  There is a right way of doing things, and ... well, there's a right way of doing things, period.  The thought of slapping up a coat of paint and calling it good would not only not cross Warren's mind, I think he would spontaneously combust if forced to do so.  That's hard on me, what with the lazy and all, especially since I always get stuck with the taping and the cutting in.  "Cutting in," for those of you not fortunate enough to have spent an eternity the day painting, refers to taking a brush and painstakingly going over/around/alongside the edges, corners, and odd-shaped bits that the roller can't reach, or could, but it would look funny.  I spent a lot of time today with my arms at funny angles, hence the sore arms and longing for a husband with lower standards.  ABOUT PAINTING.  Geez!

Then again, we're living with the results of not thinking that way, which became glaringly obvious the more time I spent five inches away from the previous homeowners' bad work.  I noticed shortly after we moved in that there are a lot of poorly-done patches in the drywall.  I mean, hello, did you not read the handy-dandy directions that come right on the pot of spackle?  You can sand that shit, people, so the patches actually lie flush against the wall instead of bulging out like a tumorous growth.  And by the way, while we're on the subject, howsabout taking the outlet covers off the wall before you paint, lazybones, so that when we cover your crappy, drippy paint job, we don't break the covers trying to bust them off the wall?  Last but not least, I'm really appreciative of the Jackson Pollock treatment you left behind on the floor and carpets because you were in too much of a rush to put some freakin' newspaper down on the floor in your haste to dump your house before the market softened show your house in the best possible light so you could move to your big McMansion across town.  Gah!

Okay, I'd vent more spleen, but I can't move my arms anymore. 

My Country, Tis Of Us

So today I went in to vote in our primary (okay, that kinda blows my cover in terms of what state I live in, doesn't it?).  For the first time ever in my voting life, I was physically shaking when I walked up the granite steps of the picture-postcard-worthy town hall to cast my vote. I was shaking in part because it's really exciting to vote in a primary that the media actually cares about (as opposed to the afterthought caucus process in The State Formerly Known As Home).  More importantly, I was shaking because, after seven years of watching what has to be the most corrupt, autocratic, morally bankrupt, dishonest administration this side of the Teapot Dome scandal drag my country into debt; ruin our international standing in the community of civilized nations; inflict pain and suffering on the families of thousands of servicemen and women, thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians, and hundreds of imprisoned foreign nationals; and sow discord and distrust among specially targeted interest groups all while brazenly flouting the Constitution in the name of expanding and extending executive power far beyond the limits envisioned by the same founding fathers whose intentions they claim to divine under the name of "original intent"... after all this, I may finally be getting my country back.

Today is the first day of a new era.  I feel it.