Extravagance: Are we sending the wrong message?

Today is a moment in history and I don’t want to take away from the moment. I want to be hopeful in what it means. That we have reached a point in this country where you are simply judge based on your character and not external factors that no one can control.  I am hopeful but feel in the next 100 days that those hopes will be dashed after the confetti is cleaned up and people try to get home on a train.

However with millions of people missing work and 1.6 million dollars spent on the inaugration day alone and while millions  of people are fighting to keep their jobs or look for new jobs, I wonder if this extravagance is sending the wrong message.  Maybe with change we should be starting new traditions of saving and less pomp and circumstance.

Not that this day should not be celebrated, it certainly should.  Couldn’t this 1.6 million dollars be put to a better use than just a party?

Rants and Raves

To those of you who may read the post below and be confused, it is not directed at any that frequent the blog. James, Max and I are all fine.

Those who are closest to me know exactly who this speaks for

If your looking for fair and equitable you better look for a new job.

I should tell you now that there isn’t much in the world that is fair and equitable. I hate to disappoint you on these things but someone really should tell you. I’m sorry that you left a six year old to try and tell me differently, if you would have read my email and talked to me directly we could have a conversation about equality. You were scared to answer my email because I may have brought up some um..awkward items.  They are no longer awkward for me.

So anyway there was so much in the world that was unfair when you decided everything should be fair. That everything should have been decided 50/50 and most of it was and sometimes the door swung even farther your way because I decided it wasn’t worth the phone call, it wasn’t worth the pain that happened every time that I saw you, in reality it was just stuff and to be honest I didn’t want the stuff that you and I shared or that we called ours because we no longer existed and I didn’t want to look at the stuff that you had left a mark on.

Anyway I accepted eventually the new found freedom I had from you and yes it wasn’t always fair, there were lots of things that were unfair and not just for me. I am sure you would have been satisfied with it being hard and unfair for me, but you never took into account what else you left behind in your legacy. There were lots of times when I was the one that picked up the pieces, that I called off work, where I made sure things were taken care of. There were lots of times and there are still times that I am the one making sure that everything is ok, that some form of a relationship is carved out, that what happened while he was sleeping in infancy is pushed under the rug and he doesn’t witness it first hand.

I didn’t want to go here because I don’t want to think about a time that I had to struggle financially and emotionally and tote a newborn along with me. Yet you have never heard a word about it and to be honest I’ve gone above and beyond what I owed you and I’ve never let infant ears hear about how unfair it was that you choose not to see him for years or the time that you told me that having a child you see once or twice a year sounds like a good child to you.

Yesterday you cried foul because of time spent in the car. I wish that is all I had in years looking back to cry foul about. I’m sorry that you decided to put a six year old in the middle instead of talking to me about it, instead of answering my emails when there were questions in there for you. I hope your superhero cap didn’t get stuck in the door.

If McCain is Unstable then Biden is too

Here I go delving into politics again…hmmm..  Anyway I would like to take this space that the media and everyone in the world seems to have gone left.  The media I am convinced is democratic and are really trying their best to smear the entire John McCain campaign. Not that John isn’t doing a bad job of smearing Obama either or at least according to the media this is what they are gearing up for next since he is behind in the polls.

The latest media guffaw has to be that McCain is being portrayed as erratic, as being old 72 and that any moment right now he could go senile and even though Biden is obviously a dear friend of McCain’s , Biden claims that it is  just not safe to have him in office. He could keel over at any moment ( I read last weekfrom the AP that McCain has a 1 in 25 chance of dying in the office because of his age, even though at the beginning of the campaign McCain got a clean bill of health.)

The press are daring to touch any statistics that Obama may actually have to run for his life in office because of some angry prejudiced nutjob.

All of this swinging to the Obama side makes me extremely leary, like the press are paid off.

What is even more worrisome is Joe Biden who claims he is just your average cup of Joe.  Joe Biden who if forced to accept the office in case of something happening to Obama probably has just as much chance of dying in office as McCain, being 66 and all and once treated for a brain aneurysm.

But the worrisome part is that Biden claims to be your average guy who eats at Katie’s restaurant in Delaware, and shops at the local home depot.  I am telling you this guy may have never been in a home depot except to make a campaign speech.  As Katie’s restaurant goes , James showed me an article where the restaurant closed in the Clinton campaign. If Joe is eating there on a regular basis, then we really do need to worry about his instability.

This is what I hate about politics, the smearing of the campaigns. McCain has done it too, but it is not as noticeable because he mainly sticks to internet ads. One of the things that seems to have hurt him is not responding to the negativity about Sarah Pallin.  I think people were expecting him to have a speech or something and recently I saw a news article where he said the negativity was not worth responding to. The media jumped all over it and said that deep down McCain really thought this about Pallin since he refused to respond to the negativity.

I am not a republican and I am not a McCain supporter but I really am tired of the media and the one sided story the media is portraying.

Everything is well in democrat land. We have a man that is embarking on a new camelot, and at campaign rallies they are serving hot dogs and having face painting. Its a feel good moment, its an illusion because we are supposed to feel good about all of this when wall street is running amuck and we are in a recession.

The McCain rallies just seem formal because in the last few weeks they have been portrayed as people that just want to work and get the job done. However the press has attacked this. John McCain suspended his campaign to work on the budget crisis but then was attacked for not being able to multi-task, then the press and Obama actually blamed the budget crisis on McCain.

In the future I  would love to see a politician that gets elected to office on his own. What I mean by this is not hiring the press to spout off about the other candidate. If Obama really is the man, then he should be able to stand on his own accord. If Obama really has changed our country and our dear friend Biden, then I should know more about them than just being great orators.

If anything I have started to support Sarah Pallin these last few weeks because SHE IS NOT A WASHINGTON INSIDER.

Joe Biden and McCain admit they have reached across the aisles to strike a bipartisan conversation.

What happens in Washington stays in Washington and the rest of us are all outsiders.

Take a look at this caterpillar

I will be heading out to the field soon, and take a look at this caterpillar. I think its pretty cool.

Give Credit where Credit is Due and Move On: Let’s Move To Canada

I should preface this post with saying that I really don’t think Obama or McCain is qualified enough to run this country in the direction it needs to go.  I probably won’t vote for several reasons. I feel no need to throw my support against a mediocre choice ( and I have felt this way for every election), and I will be away during the election and I don’t really think they count the absentee ballots.

I feel disheartend that the America people choose a president the way they do and I feel even more disheartened that it has become a debate of who has the flashier campaign and the money to pour into advertising.

I actually was nervous for Sarah Pallin last night because of all the negative press that she received. I actually was not a Pallin supporter and I actually believed that McCain really had lost it when he picked her and it was an obvious market ploy.  However no one deserves to have to get up in front of a captive audience and be ridiculed.  Reporters and news programs were ripping her to shreds before she even got up there to say anything. No one’s family should have to go through that regardless of what you believe. If the tables were turned and all the negative press was geared toward OBAMA then people would cry foul and prejudice, racism, etc. No one has even dared and trust me Obama had many blunders in his own debate too.

But because Sarah Pallin is a woman and happens to be a white conservative she is supposed to not cry foul at the negative press that she has been receiving where news stations will edit clips to portray her as what they want her to be.

Getting back to the debate, I actually thought Sarah Pallin did a great job last night and held her own.  People are saying she was coached, whatever it really doesn’t matter. She stood up in a time of uncertainity and was able to deliver and stood her ground. I actually thought she was more no nonsense and spoke the truth. Let me give you example:

The moderator posed the questions to Joe Biden: Do you believe in homosexual rights?

Joe Biden went on this whole rant about civil rights liberties where he actually I believed tried to convince the America public that he would actually support gay marriage if it came down to it. A move that he tried to appeal to the gay population.

Sarah Pallin answered it honestly and true to her party line.

When the moderator flatly asked Joe Biden did he approve of gay marriage, he said no he did not.  He wanted you to believe one thing but when pushed he backpedaled into saying no he did not support that.

At that moment I felt that it was disheartenening for the America public who probably will be swooned by visions of a camelot ( with the historical election of Obama), and good neighborly Joe Biden as vp. Here we had someone trying to convince you that he feels otherwise when in the end will just do what he wants to do anyway.

Who speaking of…. Sarah Pallin with her five children is way more middle class than Mr. Biden who has come from a privelged family and probably lives in a nice neighborhood and has for most of his life.

Whether you support Republicans or Democrats, give support and credit when it is due. Give Sarah Pallin credit for standing up there and looking very polished and move on.

But I guess its not as newsworthy when people overcome the obstacles set forth by the media.

Got To Get Ready

I got one big thing off my plate for school and now I really need to concentrate on the time I will be away. I am looking forward to it. I know I will miss Max and James. It will be nice to be away from school for a little bit and do something in science. I hope it all works out on the school side of things. I want the kids to get something out of it.

I also need to buy boots and pants.  I was looking at some of the pictures from the group that is out there now and there are really really huge spiders( the largest I have ever seen) and alligators on our trek to collect the caterpillars. Should be a fun experience and I hope to have many adventures to tell my students and James when I get home.

Tactile And Noise

This weekend we went to the energy festival in Kempton. It was unique in any festival because there were lectures there that you attended all day in addition to the exhibitors.  James got to go to a ton of lectures. There were a few that I attended. I was looking forward most to the one on population challenges but the person never showed that was speaking. Right next to the lectures was this huge playground where all the kids congregated and they had a ton of activities going on like puppet shows, playing with clay, face painting, spin art, chalk drawings etc.

I was in between lectures and watching Max at the playground. i was watching him play with the other kids and also play with clay. In a world of tactile and noise, Max fit right in.  There was no one to go around telling him sshh…. and he didn’t have to sit still for eight hours a day.

These past few weeks at school I know have been trying for him and his teacher and we met with her last year and are trying a few things to keep him settled for school. One thing that doesn’t help with the end of his day is that he basically has his special class which is all tactile and sensory and then is expected to come back for the regular classroom for an hour at the end of the day and do work. This is the hour he is having the most difficulty sitting for and also the most difficulty distracting the other kids.

But over the weekend he played at the playground for six hours straight and to look at him you would think he was a normal kid. He is socially gifted and was able to focus on what he was doing. He was also really happy.  Sometimes I think we expect too much from the kids these days.

We expect them to be quiet for too long…..

Busy Busy

I can feel the chill of fall in the air and i’m not liking it. I hate fall because winter is coming. I’m not wowed anymore about the change of color in the leaves because it means that soon they will look like dead sticks. There is so much going on but I guess having no down time is who I am. Someone asked me a couple of days ago if I ever thought I had adult ADD, I don’t think so, just think I have a lot of drive and determination. Plus keeping busy has been a livelihood for me. Trust me I have moments, days where I do just retreat to the bedroom to take a nap or just to veg out. Its rare but it happens.

School has been so busy, frustrating too. A lot of middle man stuff with me and the administration. I hope that all ends soon because its starting to get annoying. The teaching side of things( when I actually get to be in the classroom) has been great, lately though I have been pulled out for all kinds of reasons and my kids have had to have substitutes.

Max has been having a hard time adjusting to first grade and we are trying to get his behavior under control. We already met with the teacher who I think now knows how to handle him. It has been worrisome because we want him to succeed and if we have to just accept what he can do. Hopefully it gets better. The bugger has been trying to outsmart us and last night he’s up a point. He’s been staying up all night and we haven’t noticed. This has been an ongoing roadrunner wylie coyote moment….and I thought we had it solved. Now I’m looking into a motion sensor for his room.

I had to come home yesterday in the middle of the day to arrange some things for Max in school that somehow could only be done in a very narrow time frame. I was running around on a time crunch and realized I was locked out of the house. James instructed me how to break in ( which I’m not sure is all that comforting) and I did only to practically do a front flip onto the couch. It was a very seinfield moment. I picked Max up at school yesterday and he had a great day. In my mind I already knew how to reward this. Six flags was open last night according to my coupon book for season passholders only.

So we didn’t tell him and headed out for the 45 minute drive. We get there and the woman at the parking booth looks at us really weird and then hands us a flyer that says ” Come out and Play” flier. It had the intitals LGBT ( which I now realize that it stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual). I am trying to read the flier and I’m starting to make the connection when I suddenly see all these people in the parking lot that do not look straight. They switched the dates and if we were Lesbian, Gay , Bisexual, or Transexual we had to pay and couldn’t use our season pass. To be honest thankfully max didn’t question because I would have liked to try and explain that one, we just told him it was a private event and we weren’t allowed in. Geesh of all nights to go.. and it could happen only to us.

Sometimes I think heterosexual people should have a night.  I guess I just wish that who you are as a person isn’t defined by your race, nationality, gender, religion , or sexual orientation. Its weird that people cannot discriminate against you in an employer setting for any of those reasons,but people discriminate themselves for those reasons.  What I am saying is that people will automatically cling to their race or sexual orientation.  I really just care about the person and not any of those things and anyone drawing attention to themselves for one of those reasons makes me question their motives.

This weekend we are off to Kempton for an energy festival. Looks to have a lot of interesting lectures and classes so I think it should be fun, and I am glad to be away from the farm for a week.

Trying

I’m trying not to complain because we got the best news of our life last night. Saying that it seems that I am about to unleash a huge array of complaints and to be honest I think I am just plain frustrated of dealing with other people.  I feel I have way too much responsibility at my job and even when I try to turn it off they are piling on more or refusing to meet with me ( Perhaps they know that I am going to turn down a position).  So instead they are letting me carry the position and letting me grow more anxious over it.  I hate for things to fail and this one is going to because I am the only one running it. Confusing I know, but just plain frustrating.

In other news Max is back on the farm tomorrow. Last week was a pretty dull week because it rained but also I just realize that I don’t really like making small talk with new people and I’m not all that much into monotony.  James and I were separated and not that it was a huge deal but when your grinding corn in 90 degree heat, you want to be next to someone who is not complaining that she can’t do anything with her life because she choose to have five children.  Everytime the woman I was with would ask me about my life and I would tell her something I was doing, she would reply with oh I could never do that… because I have little ones at home. Eventually they grow up and go to school and even I say if they are carryable that you should be porting them around and doing something that is important to you.

I don’t think I could ever stay at home and if I was blessed enough not to have to work, I would be out there working or at least volunteering.

But I’m not complaining because right now it could rain for the next 40 days and I wouldn’t care, because we beat the cancer dart for now.