I Didn't See It Coming...

When I was in high school, actually for my entire childhood, I shared a room with my sister. We were two girls in a small space with a LOT of stuff. At least that's the excuse I always made for why our room was so messy. We did clean on occasion however. Once, after I had cleaned, my friend Janel came over. When we went upstairs to my room she said, "You have a desk? I never knew you had a desk!" As sarcastic as she is, I still think she was serious. That desk was always piled high with "not quite dirty" clothes. Come on, you have a pile like that too.

When I was in college you couldn't even see the floor to my bedroom most days. That's particularly alarming because my bedroom was nearly all floor; I had a loft for my bed. I used to come in, dump out my bag, load it up with whatever I needed next, and leave again.

My first several years of teaching, before I started job sharing, my teacher's desk used to be buried under piles of papers. I never sat at the thing,and so I just kept setting things on it. About twice a year I'd get it all cleaned off. Kids used to tell me on my end of the year teacher report card that I need to work on "finding things." I bet that was the most common response.

But now, now everything has changed. I found myself standing in front of our futon, which is in the main room of the house, hyperventilating on Monday evening. It was piled high with sleeping bags, pillows, jackets, backpacks, books, papers, dolls, bags, markers, crayons, and on and on. I had asked for it to be cleaned off on Sunday and Saturday already, and yet here it was Monday and now it had even more stuff piled on it.

The hyperventilating must be becoming a common occurrence because I didn't even get out the first sentence of my sentence of my rant before Russ put his hands on my shoulders and said softly, "I got it. Don't worry." Since I was actually in the middle of six other things, dinner, homework, chores times three, I walked away and let it go.

Actually, by 7:30 it was all cleaned up and I felt much calmer. When did I become a person who had low clutter tolerance? When did I require the main space of my house to be spartan in order to have inner peace? Huh.

"Whatever!"

I know I already did a post with the same title. Tough.

I've now declared that, "Whatever," when said by my husband means, "You're right honey. I completely agree with you, but I'm too wrapped up in being manly to admit it."

When I told Russ that I would now be thinking this every time he says, "Whatever," he just replied, "Whatever!"

This Makes NO Sense to Me

I've mutter about this before, often if you're Christi I suppose.

What does this bumper sticker mean?

"Not fooled by the media!"

If you think the media is trying to fool you, where do you get that information? Do you do a first hand search and talk to primary sources on every topic currently in the news? Surely not, especially if you're the bumper sticker plastering kind of person. So, then didn't you get your information that the "media" was trying to fool you from just another media source? How do you KNOW that THEY aren't trying to fool you?

Huh.

Since I Doubt Newsweek Will Publish My Contribution

I thought that the Perspectives page in Newsweek should publish this quote from Julie Dolan of the Satellite Sisters. She said in on the October 3rd podcast. She, of course, was referring to the current financial meltdown.

"Well, last week was bad, but this week is worse because Congress is involved."

I couldn't have said it better myself. Isn't there a Mark Twain quote along the same lines? Something about nothing and no one being safe when Congress is in session?

Ginger- I still haven't looked up who's running against "our guy," but I'll get on it.

I Can Actually Ride a Bike and Think At the Same Time

It's cold here in Michigan today. Not like winter, but too cold to ride your bike without gloves and hat. It's breezy on a bike. Unfortunately I didn't wear a hat today. Fortunately my sweatshirt has a hood. Also fortunately I'm not too worried about my appearance and so I was ok with tying up my hood for my bike ride home from the Goodwill store.

Ironically, to get to and from the Goodwill store I have to pass through two neighboring school districts, both of which serve families from higher tax brackets than most of the families in the district where I live and where my children attend. Both of these districts have very good reputations in our county, while our district is generally feared. When I say "feared" I mean both in terms of academic competence as well as physical safety. I just heard someone today worrying about her children being surrounded by a lot of kids doing bad things because there had been a shooting involving two high school kids from our district this week.

Back to my bike ride and my appearance. (And you thought this wasn't all going to come together!) As I was riding back home with my hood up and my little shopping bag hanging from my handle bars, a car of four high school boys drove past me. Before I could even see them they shouted at me, "Grow up already!"

I'm pretty sure that they had no idea that I'm nearly forty years old. Not to brag, but from the back, which was all they could see when they yelled, I could have been just about any age. Regardless, it was rude. Besides, they scared the crap out of me and what if I had veered into them because I was so startled.

I still had about two miles or so back to my house, plenty of time to ponder, and here's what I came up with. It doesn't really matter where you send your kids to school, as far as keeping them safe goes.

I started wondering what the ratio of gun accidents to car accidents involving high school kids in our county is. Maybe gun deaths to car accident deaths would be a closer comparison. My suspicion is that more kids are killed or permanently injured in car accidents. I also think that kids in more affluent districts have more access to cars than the other kids have access to guns.

I started thinking about my cousins who grew up in rural communities. I don't think their parents worried a lot about gun violence, but I know they worried about car accidents. They have lost many kids in their small communities to car accidents.

I think the way you keep your kids safe is to teach them how to keep themselves safe and then after that you just pray like crazy. Sometimes that will be enough, and sometimes it won't.

I guess I've sort of slipped into a ramble here, so maybe I should be more explicit with my point. I think more people should give our "scary" district a chance. Maybe if more people had a stake in how well we do, the district would improve in many ways. It's not fair to be more afraid of guns than cars. It's just easier.