Why Do I Feel the Need to Decorate My House Like a Ski Lodge?

Hi Everybody!  I know, I know, it’s been a while.  Still dealing with my mom and her house and bankrupting her to the nursing home.  BUT, it’s Christmas now and I’ve decided that I need to get back to doing some of the stuff I enjoy and writing stuff on this blog is one of them, so here I am.

I really like Christmas.  I don’t have the same love for Christmas as I do for that wildly pagan Halloween, but I really like Christmas.  I enjoy the real meaning of Christmas.  I like setting up my nativity scene under my tree and my mother’s antique one from Germany on a high shelf out of the reach of cats and dogs and visiting children.  I like going to all the local Christmas events and remembering my childhood.  I like watching the Cincinnati Ballet perform the /Nutcracker/.  I HAVE to watch /Elf/ and /The Santa Claus/ at least once per season.  I like going to church and hearing Christmas Carols.  Not Christmas songs, but the real, religious ones that they play at church.  I like the food.  I like remembering Jesus and teaching my children about the true meaning of Christmas, summed up best I think by Linus in the /Charlie Brown Christmas/ special, watch the scene here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKk9rv2hUfA.

But the thing that I DO best? Decorate.  I love Christmas lights.  I like ornaments.  I like Santas.  I like pointsettias and quilted wall hangings.  I like Christmas trees.  So much in fact, that I have a nine foot tall one in my family room that I’ve had for two years that is finally, at long last big enough for my life-long collection of ornaments, and I’ve started my kids on the same path with 6′ trees in their rooms.  I also have a small one in my dining room. 

I also love the look of ski lodges.  I like big soaring ceilings and big soaring stone fireplaces and big soaring windows overlooking big soaring mountains covered with big soaring snow falls.  Unfortunately, I don’t live in Colorado or Montana.  I live in Ohio, so I have to make due.  Two walls of my family room are covered in really dark brown, rough, barn wood that was here when we moved in.  I didn’t like it for years, but I have recently realized that it adds to my Christmas decor.  I have a floor to ceiling surround on my fireplace and a hearth that can be sat on like a little bench.  Sadly, it’s brick and not stone, but hey, I work with what I have.

I am a red and green Christmas girl.  I like some of the other combos, but I’m a traditionalist and plus, red and green are warm and cozy and help me pretend I’m in a ski lodge somewhere else.  So the nine foot tree is on one side of the fireplace, greenery and Santas and a pretty sparkly, lit-up angel are on the mantel.  There is a poinsettia the size of a bush to the left of the fireplace with a quilted wall hanging of a Christmas tree made by my mother-in-law (done in reds and greens) hung above it.  With a fire in the fireplace and the curtains pulled shut, I feel like I’m in Christmas land and that when I look outside, it’ll be cloudy and very, very snowy.

In reality, it is 50 degrees outside and we might have to mow the grass again because apparently, we no longer have winter in southwestern Ohio.  But when I close us up in the house and watch old DVD’s of Bing Crosby Christmas specials or run across Rod Stewart’s new special on PBS, it feels like a different time.  It feels like a time when gas was 60 cents a gallon.  When my Mom and Dad where both young and alive and healthy.  When my brother was a little kid with me and alive in the next room.  When my Mammaw was coming with a big bag of presents.  When the world was a little more innocent and a little less scary.  When, if you sat quietly on Christmas Eve, you could feel the stillness and importance of the night.  When I heard Santa’s sleigh bells ring right outside my window just as I was going to sleep.  When all Christmas lights were giant colorful globes that burned your fingers if you touched them.  When people regularly said Merry Christmas to one another.  I guess that’s why I decorate my house like a ski lodge.  For a few weeks every year, I can revel in the beauty of the holiday and what it means.  I can spend lots of time with my kids before they grow up and go on their way.  I hope they decorate their houses like ski lodges and think of me happily some day.

Merry Christmas everybody.  Be kind to one another.

September 11th

For the last eleven years, September 11th has caused me grief.  Nothing like it had happened in my lifetime and I was unprepared for the depth of feeling the incident caused.

My daughter was a brand new kindergartener.  My son was two months old.  My girl was in the afternoon session of school, so I left her sitting on my bed next to the baby who was in his pumpkin seat while I went in to take a shower.  I was only in there for about three minutes when she started pounding on the door.  It frustrated me, because all I wanted was ten minutes of peace and hot water.  I’m sure I snapped at her when I said “what??”  “Grammy is on the phone, she said you need to get out, something bad has happened somewhere.”  So I rinsed my hair as quickly as I could and got out.  Those few steps between my bathroom and my bedroom tv, before I knew what had happened, were the last truly secure moments of my life.

Like everyone else, I thought it was an accident.  Then I SAW the second plane hit the second tower.  I saw it with my own eyes and I knew that nothing would ever be the same again.  This was even worse than Pearl Harbor, because although that was a sneak attack, at least the Japanese had attacked fighting men.  These people attacked civilians.  There were children on those planes.  We found out later that there was a little girl on one of them who was headed for her first trip to Disney World.  Happy, excited, innocent.  Terrified, confused, pain, death.  The juxtaposition of what should have been to what actually WAS, was almost more than I could process.

The morning it happened, I watched it all unfold on tv like everyone else.  I sent my daughter into her room to play.  I held my baby.  I talked to friends on the phone.  Then, another plane into the Pentagon.  The brain of our military.  In my mind, we were officially at war.  My husband was at work forty miles away.  We talked on the phone.  Everyone in his office was watching it on tv.  Then, there was news that there was another plane in the Cleveland area that was not responding.  I live in southwestern Ohio.  That was too close for comfort for me.  Then, a little while later, news came that the plane from Ohio had gone down in Pennsylvania.  I called my husband and begged him to come home before he wasn’t able to get there.  He was already on his way out the door.  In our minds, we were at war and our enemy would have no hesitation in killing civilians, or women, or children.

We watched tv for the rest of the day and nothing else happened.  We were ready to go donate blood for the survivors, but there wasn’t the influx of survivors everyone hoped for.  The buildings came down. Thousands of people died.  President Bush made a wonderful speech that gave us hope for revenge, or retaliation or at least some action against the brutes who would attack civilians who were just trying to go to work.  It was the worst day ever.  I can’t wax more poetic about it, because it was just the worst thing ever.

In the days that followed, everyone watched tv.  We waited for the other shoe to drop.  Is this it?  Was that all they had?  Are they done?  Or are they going to do the horrible things like attack schools and malls and football games like they threatened to do.  The sky was so blue and so quiet.  The only air traffic for a week or so were military aircraft patrolling.  How could the sky and the weather be so beautiful when something so horrible had just happened?  Wasn’t war supposed to be black and white like all the old WWII movies?  Did the people in London right before the Blitz look up and see a blue sky?  Did the people in Dresden see sunshine and birds before they were blown away?  What about Japan, at the end.  Were the flowers blooming in color?  Apparently, because we were at war and everything looked beautiful.

I had to explain to my five-year old daughter what had happened.  I had to tell her that if anything bad happened while she was at school, to do exactly what the teachers told her to do and wait for me.  I would be there to get her if I had to walk with the baby strapped to my back.  I had to teach my five-year old daughter what it meant to be brave, what it meant to soldier on in the face of fear, what it meant to be an American.  We don’t cower.  We don’t run and hide.  We pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, we tip our chins to the sun, we stand up straight and we go on with what needs to be done.  We put a black ribbon on our flag pole for a while, and then we take it off and let Old Glory fly free and proud.  We take care of one another and we NEVER FORGET.

So as another September 11th comes tomorrow, I WILL watch the footage on tv.  I WILL have my kids watch it.  We WILL talk about what happened and who did it and why.  I am not afraid of the truth.  I am not afraid of what happened.  It still makes me sad though, and although it may be politically incorrect, it still makes me angry.  The heat of the slow burn in my chest when I see those planes hit those buildings, when I see my fellow Americans leap to their deaths rather than burn, when I see office workers covered with dust and tear streaks down their faces, when I picture my innocent babies sitting on my bed and remember that I realized that their lives would be forever changed for the worse, when I remember all those brave souls who ran in to save people when everyone else was running out and when I remember President Bush promising that we would come after the people who knocked down those buildings, that slow burn I feel kind of shocks me with its intensity.  I haven’t forgotten how I felt.  I haven’t forgotten all those nameless innocents who died that day because of religious radicals.  I have not forgotten how we all came together in the days and months following.  I have forgotten none of it, and to be completely honest, I haven’t forgiven it either.  And I never will.

Rest in peace, and God Bless this beautiful country of ours.

Be kind to one another.

What I’d LIKE To Say To The Athletic Director At Our School But Probably Won’t

My daughter is in marching band.  She plays mellophone in MB and french horn in orchestra band.  She can also play flute and piccolo.  Every summer, the high school marching band kids go through a little thing called Band Camp.  For the first week, they rehearse from 7am til noon.  Second week, they are working from 7am til 10pm with occasional social things thrown in.  Third week, they are back to 7am to noon.  Then they have a couple more multi-hour practices and then school starts.  Once school starts, they rehearse every Tuesday and Thursday night from 6-9pm on the football field and every Wednesday afternoon from 3-5pm on the black top in the parking lot.  There are 240-ish kids in our marching band.  We have what is, in my opinion, the best band director in the state and maybe the country.  Our band wins awards and marches in big famous parades and tours Europe and stuff like that.

Last week while our kids were busting their butts in 90 degree heat for roughly 13 hours per day, the soccer coach at our high school complained to the athletic director that on Tuesday and Thursday nights, our MB rehearsals bother him because the big loud metronome they use when they are learning is irritating to him.  Awwww, booo hoooo….   So our athletic director told our band director that we could not use the football field on Tues and Thurs because we irritate the soccer coach who is playing on an adjacent field.  They ended up working it out and we still get screwed, but not as thoroughly as we originally thought we would.  This is the scenario, the following is what I would like to say to the soccer coach AND the athletic director.

Dear Whiners,

Our marching band kids are athletes.  They stretch, march forward, backward and sideways, all the while playing difficult music that they must memorize.  Most of them lose significant amounts of weight during their training season and sustain athletic injuries like torn achilles tendons, muscle pulls and cuts and bruises.  One of our color guard girls had a sabre cracked into the underside of her chin last week that required stitches on one part of the injury and glue on the other part.  She sat holding ice on the wound and watched what was happening so she would not be behind and she was there bright and early the next morning to continue working.  If our kids do MB for two years in a row they are excused from a year of gym classes, same as soccer players, football players, baseball players and cheerleaders et.al.

Marching band kids have parents who pay taxes on their homes.  Thousands of dollars a year of taxes on their homes, with the overwhelming majority of said money going to the school district to pay for educating our kids and providing facilities for them to use for their various activities.  There are waaay more MB parents paying those taxes than soccer parents.  Our kids have every right to use the facilities that we pay for.

Our marching band is award-winning.  BIG awards.  Grand Champions at all but one of the competitions we attended last year.  Our marching band wins so many trophies in fact during the course of a season, that there is not room for them at the school and kids who win various marching band awards get to choose from the mountain of trophies and take one home at the end of the season.  Can the soccer team say that?  Nope.

Our marching band has performed in the Rose Bowl parade, toured Europe and is going to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in 2013.  Hundreds of high school bands applied to be a part of that parade and ours was one of only 12 I think, that were accepted.  Has the soccer team done anything like that?  Nope.

Our marching band has given our school district countless opportunities to demonstrate to the world the excellence of our schools and our students.  When our band marches into a stadium for a competition, you can hear everyone in the stands groan, because they know that in all likelihood, they don’t stand a chance against us.  Can the soccer team say the same?  My educated guess is, Nope.

So, athletic whiners, if you don’t like Dr. Beat, go to Wal-mart and buy some earplugs.  We have work to do and unfortunately for you apparently, we compete on football fields and in order to maintain our excellence, we need to practice on the football field.  If the earplugs are not enough, put your balls in a bag and go to the freshman building to play or practice or whatever you are doing.  In order for US to go to the other field, we have to use two large panel trucks to transport our equipment.  It costs a fortune to move our stuff and since we are self-funded and get ZERO dollars from the district, we can’t afford to do that twice a week.  Your balls will fit in a trunk and your kid’s parents can drop them off at the other field.

Band geeks of the world unite!  No more second fiddle to sports!  We ARE a sport and we are an EXCELLENT team that deserves to use the facilities that we pay for just as much as people who play with balls.

Thank you,

Rabid Band Mom

Have a lovely evening and be good to one another

Why So Serious???

The world is a super strange place and some of the people in it are strange too.  If you have read this blog, you know that most of what I write is not serious.  Most of it is humorous and most of the people who read it find it humorous.  Sometimes I write with sarcasm, sometimes I point out things that to most normal people, are ridiculous or wasteful.  Sometimes I write about things that I find annoying or funny or hypocritical or lacking in common sense.  Sometimes I tell stories about my life.  Most all of it is done with humor.

If you have a comment about something I have written, I would love to hear from you whether you agree with me or not.  It’s ok if you don’t agree, that is what makes the world interesting.  If we all agreed, the world would be a boring place, full of Stepford people who march in lock-step with one another, creating a scary science fiction like existence.  What I DON’T want to hear and what I will NOT acknowledge or approve for publication on my blog is cruelty, rudeness, profanity or ignorance.  If you disagree with me, by all means, let me know, but do it with decency and respect.  If you have no sense of humor, if you can dish it out but not take it, if you are crude, rude, mean, small-minded or ignorant, don’t read this blog.  WordPress and the world, is a big place, my little corner of it shouldn’t dominate your thoughts or cause your blood pressure to rise.  In fact, if I write about something remotely controversial, within the first sentence or two, I warn you and if you don’t want to hear what I have to say, go away.

That is the beautiful thing about freedom.  When you are free, you have choices.  If I choose to write about shoes or wasting millions of taxpayer dollars studying the already known fact that radiation spreads, invades bodies and is bad and I think that is a wasteful and less than intelligent use of time and money, I’m gonna do it.  If you don’t like what I write, you don’t have to read it.  Ever.  No one is forcing you to sign on to this website and read my ramblings.

So, now that I’ve laid a few ground rules for visiting Hollytopia, I plan to get back to regular topics.  My family has had a rough time this summer, dealing with relocating my mother to a nursing home.  It’s been hard and I haven’t had a lot of time for writing, but things are calming down now and I’m baaaaaack.  I’m gonna get back to voicing my observations and opinions.  If you can’t stand the heat, get out of my kitchen.  If you want an occasional chuckle or a voice who is saying something that you think, but wouldn’t say out loud, come on along for the ride.

Be kind to one another and lighten up for God’s sake

I’m Starting To Think That Scientists Are Stupid

Is it glowing or is it not? And if it is, what is it doing migrating and is it safe to eat???

Not just scientists, but analysts of various types are really disappointing me lately.  I am a fan of science.  I think, for example, the things modern medicine can do for people is nothing short of miraculous.  Men on the moon?  Another miracle.  On the other hand, scientists are surprised that migrating bluefin tuna have radiation in them after living off the shore of Japan and getting irradiated when Fukushima was leaking last year.

Really?  You are surprised that fish who migrate from an area with radiation to an area without radiation are sporting radiation?  Ummm, super smart guys, I have one word for you.  Duuuhhh.  And that is another thing.  Why do we automatically assume that people who are scientists are smarter than everyone else hmmmm?  Could it be that their INTERESTS are different, and therefore they have learned about stuff that many other people have not?  I could’ve gone to medical school or majored in some science-y pursuit, but I’d rather not.  I like words and books and artsy-fartsy stuff.  The actual process of scientific discovery is, don’t tell anyone, boring to me.  It’s like watching paint dry or grass grow.  Yawn…

So, next time you blindly believe something you read, just remember that scientists are surprised by the whole radiated bluefin tuna thing, and develop a nice healthy dose of skepticism.  And oh, one more thing, when government food scientists tell you that three rat turds in a cereal box is an acceptable level of rat poop in food, or that a certain number of bug parts per million is still healthy to eat in your chips or that radioactive tuna is still ok to eat, search around real good in the back of your brain, find that healthy dose of skepticism we just talked about earlier and use it.

Have a great, relatively nuclear free day and be kind to one another so that when we all turn into giant moths or spider people from eating radioactive fish, we can all just get along in our altered states

And here’s to some cool super hero powers as a result of the above!!

Ahhhh Geez, Do I HAVE To?

I’ve been doing lots of deep thinking lately, and I’ve come to a conclusion, procrastinators are not lazy, they (we) are just tired of being responsible all the time.

Think about all the stuff you have to do in just one day.  For me, I have to get up before everyone else,  force a teenager out of bed way too early, get dressed, fix the teenager’s breakfast, drive her to school after asking her if she has all her stuff, drive home, wake up the younger one, make sure he dresses in clothing that is clean and not too big for him, fix his breakfast, lunch and make sure he has all his stuff, drive him to school, and then go to work myself if I have a sub job.  During the day, I do all the teacher-y stuff, then I have to go pick up the boy, then pick up the girl, come home, make sure they do homework, have a balanced dinner so they stay healthy, make sure everyone takes a shower and gets to bed at a decent time, again, so they stay healthy.  In between all that, I have to do bills, laundry, clean the house, run errands, and do stuff for my aging mother.  My husband travels a lot, so he is only available to help on a part-time basis.  I WILL give him credit for being a good husband and Dad though, and he really steps up when he is home.  Just the basics of living is exhausting.  I am exhausted just from writing about it, so this leads me to my problem with procrastination.

Some things, like going to school and work HAS to be done at a particular time and so cannot be procrastinated over.  OTHER things like house cleaning, laundry and exercising so I stay healthy, don’t have to be done on a schedule.  Those things can be fit in when it is convenient.  Problem is, I find that it is not exactly convenient for me to do that stuff.  Ever.  I have books to read and books to write.  I have friends I want to talk to and a husband I like to hang out with.  I like my kids and I like to spend time with them too.  I enjoy the computer and I like to watch a little tv.  I get tired of being responsible ALL THE TIME.  I am tired of being a good girl.  I don’t want to do anything particularly bad or illegal or anything, I just don’t feel like doing everything I am SUPPOSED to do, all the time.  So I procrastinate.

I sit on my behind and read when I should be doing laundry, so the laundry piles up and up and up and then I find myself spending three days getting it caught up.  I play games on Facebook, and look up to discover that I forgot the run the vacuum or start dinner.  I sit on my swing listening to the Dean Martin station on Pandora radio, and realize that it is time to go get the kids and I forgot to put the laundry in the dryer and I’m behind again.  I get watching Paranormal State on Netflix and delay going to the park for my walk and by the time I get motivated to go, it’s too hot or too late.  I get in a conversation with a friend on the phone and run out of time to sit and work on my book.  Again.

This doesn’t happen everyday obviously, because I am generally too busy being responsible mom to just do what I want, but it DOES happen.  I’ve decided to stop fighting it.  I am realizing that when I get distracted and procrastinate, it’s because I am tired and too filled up with everyday responsibilities, and procrastinating is my unconscious way of taking a break.  So PROCRASTINATORS UNITE!!  Sit on your butt and daydream, or take a drive, or read a book. or work on a craft project.  When you were a little kid, that was called “playing” and everyone wanted you to do it, because it’s good for you.  Who decided that grown-ups aren’t allowed to play?  I don’t agree with that person, so I am going to ignore them from now on.  Now where did I leave my book…

Have a great day and be kind to one another

Why Does The Health Food Store Smell So Bad?

I am a fan of the health food store.  We take some supplements to help avoid things like heart disease etc and we enjoy organic products wherever our budget will allow, which considering a small organic watermelon is seven dollars, is not a lot.  We tend to make sure we have organic milk and beef, mainly so our kids are exposed to fewer hormones etc.  This is my disclaimer for the rest of what I have to say…

Last weekend, my husband and I went to what we lovingly refer to as Wild Goats.  It is a play on the name of the store, before the name was changed to something that rhymes with Pole-Dudes.  There is ALWAYS an interesting smell in Wild Goats, and to us and our kids it is unpleasant.  It smells like a combination of rotting vegetation and creepy hippy perfume, but normally, we just go “Sheesh” and move on with our shopping.  This time?  That rotting veg/hippy perfume smell was so bad I almost gagged.  I have two children, three cats, two dogs and three chinchillas.  I have been puked on, pooped on, and snotted on.  I have cleaned litter boxes, hair balls, and rodent cages.  My gag reflex is pretty well under control, but I actually had to put my hand over my nose and mouth until I got used to the stench.  My poor husband, who would rather eat ground glass than clean up barf, turned an interesting shade of green swirled with gray.  It was gross.

The funny thing was, no one else seemed to mind.  Sure, I saw lots of glazed over eyes and vacant expressions, but you know, that happens.  We walked as quickly as possible to the vitamin side of the store, got what we needed and headed toward the checkouts.  My hubs said, “Wait!  Don’t you need some milk and stuff?  We can just grab it here instead of making another stop.”  My reply, “Do you remember the time we left Don Pablos before being seated because we could smell the bathroom in the lobby?  There is no way I am buying ANY kind of food in here because of that smell.  It’s bad enough we are buying our vitamins and stuff here, but fortunately, they were packaged elsewhere.  I think I’m gonna spray the bottles with Lysol when we get home.”  Oops, that kind of blows the whole “organic, good for you” thing right out of the water.  “Oh, yeah, you’re right.”  We paid our $79.00 for four bottles of stuff and went to Kroger.

I suppose my point is, that just because something or someplace is touted as being good for you, doesn’t mean that it is.  It also means that something or someplace that normally IS good for you and just happens to smell like death one day, will not necessarily be bad forever, but next time you go into Wild Goats because you think that everything in there is good for you, make sure you don’t have a cold, take a deep wiff through your nose, and if the rotting veg and hippy smell is worse than usual, be on guard, cause something is rotten in Denmark. (that’s just a saying, don’t get upset because I implied Denmark has an odor)

Have a great night and be kind to one another

Wouldn’t You Like To Be A Teacher Too? Probably Not…

I’m going to do a soapbox here and I generally don’t do that kind of post, so forgive me in advance.

I am a substitute teacher.  I have been teaching kids in some capacity pretty much constantly since I was about 20 years old.  I have taught everybody from preschoolers to college freshmen, and I feel the need to address a few “issues” regarding teachers.

Issue #1

Teachers don’t work during the summer.

Teachers DO work during the summer.  Planning for next year.  It takes the entire summer just about, to re-do lessons based on curriculum changes and beaurocrats in the education system.  Nobody can leave well enough alone.  Ever.  So everything changes a lot from year to year.  The only time teachers can do this work is during the summer.  During our “break.”

Issue #2

All they do is teach kids, how hard can that be?

Yes, we teach your little darlings five days per week for about nine months of the year.  Roughly 30 of them at a time in elementary school, well over 100 different kids per day if you teach middle or high school where the kids change classes.  Please remember the feelings of relief all you non-teachers get when school starts again in the fall, or when you put little Jenny or Joey on the bus in the morning.  WE take your kids all day every day and teach them academics, social skills and control.  We hug them and tie their shoes and band-aid their owies.  We give them part of our lunch when you forget to feed them in the morning or forget to send lunch or money, or if the school lunch is gross and lets face it, school lunches definitely tend to have a gross factor.  We spend our own money to stock our rooms with things that will help your kid learn.  We often spend our own money when we have a student who needs a notebook or pencils and you can’t or don’t provide it for them.  We dry tears, cheer for them and cry our own tears for them at night when we think about the ones with hard home lives or if one of them is sick, or hurt, or bullied.

Teaching is incredibly hard, physically, emotionally, spiritually.  If I took home all the wounded ones I’ve seen over the years, they’d be stacked up like cord wood in my house and I’d have to change my last name to Duggar and/or get a couple of sister wives.

Issue #3

Teachers don’t care, they are only teachers so they get the summers off.

See issues 1 and 2 above for your answer.

These are only a few of the issues I’ve heard people talking about lately.  There are a million more.  I get irritated when I hear people talk about how teachers make too much money.  Again, the kids that so many of the parents out there can’t wait to send back to school, come to us in droves day after day.  We are expected to make sure they do well on standardized tests, make good grades and have friends and don’t pick on others.  We are expected to be sweet and kind and gentle.  We are expected to maintain a constant level of understanding and patience, for thirty kids at once, when SOME, not all but SOME of the parents we see regularly, can’t maintain those qualities at home with only a couple of kids who are related to them by blood.

We live in a culture where no one thinks a thing of someone like George Clooney making millions of dollars for pretending to be other people in largely crappy movies.  We live in a society where sports athletes who play GAMES for a living are paid millions of dollars, and on their off time, get into bar fights, DUI accidents and drug deals gone wrong, get their hands slapped and keep getting their big bucks.  We live in a culture where teachers and nurses make fifty thousand dollars a year and when all is said and done, pay about half of their salaries to taxes and union dues and fees, only to find out that the people who WORK FOR THEM (ostensibly), i.e. elected officials etc. earn four times more than their bosses (us) and then have the balls to tell us we need to do more because they have screwed up.  We live in a culture where vice and bad behavior makes you popular and well paid.  We live in a culture where a teacher can lose their career for something they do outside of work that has nothing to do with school, but a politician can embezzle money and hide it in their freezer for years and then get re-elected.  The world is upside down.

The next time you trash teachers as a whole, stop and think for a second that maybe the problem is the system, or parents who don’t take care of their kids.  Yes, there are some bad teachers, just like there are some bad people, but overall, we are not bad.  We try so hard to take care of your kids and teach them what they need to know.  We get attached to your kids, I dare say, we come to love them and it breaks our hearts when a child begs us not to tell you when they are in trouble because they are afraid of what you will do to them when they get home.  It breaks our hearts when first and second graders come to school and tell us all about the violent, sex-filled horror movie they watched last night with their parents.  We really do care, we really do work very hard and what we do really DOES matter.  I’m not complaining about the low pay, or the long hours or the heartache.  Every single one of us knew what we were getting into and all of us did it gladly.  We don’t ask for much in return, maybe just a little respect would be nice.

So, be kind to one another, including the teachers in your life.  You don’t need to give us a gift, we’d be happy with a smile, we love it when a parent says thank-you, you’ve made a difference to my child.  Have a great night and the countdown to summer continues, eight more days.

Cat Races

So apparently, my ten-year old son turned into a bookie this morning.  He decided to launch the first annual Mother’s Day Cat Races at our house.  We have three cats, he assigned himself, my daughter and my husband a cat to “train,” collected bets, which he wrote down on some kind of weird paper, and gave me the job of standing in the kitchen and shaking the cat food to get them to run.  For some strange reason, we all cooperated, and it was hilarious.

Bella

Bella, is a small, delicate little tortoise-shell kitty.  She is kind of hyper and loves my husband with a strange, obsessive intensity.  So Hubs was her trainer.

Blue

Blue is a huge, fat Garfield of a cat.  He is a gray and white tuxedo mutt who flops down at random intervals when hauling all that chub around gets to be too much.  The Girl was assigned this bundle of endless energy.

Tigger, the sink dweller

 Tigger is the latest rescuee who we found in a glass case at Petsmart.  He is orange and supposedly a Maine Coon, which based on his size (big, but not fat like SOME people) and luxurious hair seems to be accurate.  He is a momma’s boy, and is marginally afraid of my son who made himself Tigger’s trainer.

Since Tigger will run down the main hall of our house, but then makes a sharp right and hides behind the couch when he hits the family room, the edge of the family room was the finish line.  Monkey Boy downloaded a megaphone app on his iPad and made a big long announcement on it and a ready, set, go 3-2-1 thing and they were off.  As soon as I heard him say go, I started pouring food into their bowls.  Tigger, who wanted nothing more than to get away from my son, took off at warp speed, Blue who is always interested in food was hot on his heels and Bella, who is in love with Hubs, ran because she was initially startled and then turned back to look for her Daddy.  In the end, it was Tigger by a length and a duck behind the couch due to the horror of being held for a while by Monkey Boy and Blue of course, was the first one to the kitchen and the promise of delicious kitty kibble.

I came to several conclusions during this fantastic, new, annual Mother’s Day event.  First, my son is even more clever than I thought he was.  First, he chose the cat that is afraid of him and will do whatever is necessary to get away, figuring out that said cat would also be the fastest due to fear.  Second, my son also has a brilliant future as a business man or maybe a politician or organized crime boss due to his ability to scheme, take bets and generally get people to participate in things they don’t really feel like doing, but in the end they enjoy on some level.  Third, fear, or food, gets things done faster than love because the one in love with her trainer had no desire to leave him, only turn and gaze at him with adoration.

Now that the first annual races are done, I think we should expand and invite in other cats and trainers next year.  We could charge an entry fee and take a percentage of the bets for the house.  Awwww SNAP!!  Maybe Monkey Boy doesn’t have to be a crime boss all by himself!!  Is there such thing as The Godmother?  I can put my fingertips together and mutter “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse,” just as well as Don Vito Corleone did.  Yessss, I can see it now, a Cat Race empire…

Happy Mother’s Day friends, be kind to one another

The Lead Up Day To Mother’s Day Has Been FANTASTIC, LOL…

We have three cars.  Don’t get jealous, they are all old to oldish.  Two of them are ours, one of them is my mom’s.  My mother can’t safely drive anymore, so her car lives at my house so she won’t sneak out in the night and kill someone with it.  Before we liberated it, she ran over a lot of curbs, so it has lots of loose stuff underneath.  We’ve had about five oil leaks fixed, and numerous other things tightened from her curb jumping.  She is also apparently a fan of breaking off knobs, thus resulting in difficulty popping the hood and turning on the lights properly.  The transmission is now slipping which I’m sure will result in a ginormous repair bill, but we have to get through the rest of the school year to summer before I can send it away, so Lucas Oil tranny stuff is the plan.

The other two cars that are ours, are in better-ish shape.  My car, has pretty high miles on it, but it is in great shape.  I love it.  Old dependable.  Thank you Jesus.  My husband’s car, or the “airport car” as it is better known, is a little more tired than mine.  It has been overheating, so last night, the hubs went to Advance Auto Parts and bought a new water pump and thermostat.

Where this gets vaguely interesting is when you find out that my poor hubs HATES working on cars.  My father, God rest his soul, taught him all about how to do it though and I know this, so work on them whenever possible is the thing.  I mean why pay 400$ to get that water pump and thermo replaced when the parts cost him 44 bucks at Advance?  I mean really?

So the day has been a car maintenance workfest.  He replaced the water pump and thermo ( I had to help get the new belt back on because I have this weird mechanical, physical-world mind, while my poor hubs is a computer nerd who can only picture things in his head that don’t actually exist.  Go figure.)  I felt guilty about him working so much, so I took mom’s car to the oil change place we use and got the tranny serviced and the radiator flushed and the fuel system cleaned and then I came home and got MY car and took it back and did all the same stuff plus oil change.  It took about two hours total.  I feel like a dude.  I even have some flavor of black crap under my nails from helping hubs get the snake belt back in his car.  NOT.  HAPPY.  I AM happy though that we saved all that money because the hubs did all that work.

What does this have to do with Mother’s Day you ask?  Usually, my lovely fam spoils me and does stuff for me the entire WEEKEND.  This year, hubs was out-of-town all last week and hasn’t been able to take the kids shopping.  They are worried.  I’m not.  It’s ok.  They’ll take care of it at some point, we’ll spend time together and I’ll be happy.  They’ll be happy, it will all be good.

I’m just grateful for my two beautiful children and I’m grateful to have a hubs who loves me enough to do something he hates because it makes me happy to save money.  As soon as he’s done, I’m gonna take him to Sonic for a burger.  I think we are getting old, cause it doesn’t take very much to make either one of us happy.  WOW, now that I think about it, I’ll bet they are going to take me out for a bagel in the morning!!  YAY!! Makes all that car crap worth it

Have a wonderful evening and a Happy Mother’s Day!  Be kind to one another