no other way to say it

It is a pull your head out of your butt day. Started out with me getting up to make sure everyone was on track to getting ready for school. Chris seemed to be the only one. Shellie was eating breakfast, so she was ok at the moment, but Chris was ready to walk out the door to the bus stop and Ben was nowhere in sight. I asked Chris if Ben had packed his lunch yet, and he said no. So I hollered for Ben. 5 minutes til the bus comes and he is lunchless, sockless and shoeless, still trying to get his track stuff together. He got ripped a new one and I will be laying it out on the line for him. You never saw a kid move so fast that early in the morning in all your life..........

I am back to emailing teachers about grades showing up as missing---this one teacher of Ben's still shows 3 missing grades from this six weeks. Ben has no answers so I emailed her this morning. Again putting it in the " Do I need to kick my kid's butt or what?" tone, even though I honestly believe this one is her fault. Ben has told me that the test grade from weeks ago is in and he did well, but I have seen no paper and it is not on edline, so.......grading period ends next week.......

Our inventory at work was yesterday, and so far so good. I hate to be really optimistic, but I am hoping the final number shows us beating last year's . It looked good with the flash right after it was over, but we think we found a glitch that may make it even better. So keeping my fingers crossed......

Ah yeah, the other head up butt today did turn out to be Shellie. I told her to make her bed--actually just to straighten her covers---while I got her clothes together for school. I came back into the room and she had 15,000 things in the middle of the floor. So I took care of her bed and then dumped some stuff out of her closet and the drawer where I keep her spare blankets, since she had seen fit to junk both of them up after we cleaned them out earlier in the week.

I told Ron I am going on strike. These kids can flipping take care of themselves and see how well they like it. Just the teens though. I know I cannot back off on Shellie--she is 6, not 16. I am not completely serious, but it's the little stuff---like the PB jar dropping on my toe because one kid cannot tighten the lid. Or the bread being smashed up because whoever put it away just piled it wherever they felt like it. Or the trail of dirty clothes all over the house, after I have washed the last load. Just general laziness. We all suffer from it time to time, but it seems like it is a constant battle. And I am worn out, and just cannot do it all for them anymore. They are all able to pick up after themselves---Shel with some help maybe---but I have to yell and threaten and everything to get it done.

Maybe after I get some good, uninterrupted sleep, I will feel better.........

thoughts from the interstate

just a few thoughts I had today while en route to Charleston and back......

why do people believe that if you ride someone's tail at 70 mph that they will move faster? Sorry, if I am doing the speed limit, in any lane, and you are riding my bumper so close that you should have asked it to dinner first, all you are gonna get is to buy me a new vehicle. Dare ya........

why do those same people not even flinch at the thought of suddenly swinging directly in front of a 53 ft tractor trailer moving at the same speed, with no signals, no clearance, no warning of any kind? I swear I think the Darwin award was made for these people.......

why did they make those ever changing billboards---you know the ones that advertise the dr one second and beer the next? If I am driving like I am supposed to, I am NOT going to be able to take a look at the durn thing.........

And by the way, to Mr/Ms NY plates that I followed all the way out rt 10 to work today-------get some help. If you cannot drive at anything approximating the posted speed limit---usually 15 mph slower than posted----then get the hell off the road. Even better, the next time I drive thru your state, I will make doubly sure I drive AT the posted speed limit----55 shouldn't be a problem for you, since it is the posted speed limit on your stupid interstates. We can at least go 65-70 here so as to get thru it quickly-----and I-84 in NY is the most boring stretch of road I think I have ever been on---even Indiana was semi interesting on I 70.

By the way, I heard my first Obama political ad. Unfortunately, I live close to Ohio, where there is a primary in the next week or so, and so I suppose I will have to put up with HIllBill too. But Ihave to say that I was not impressed by the Obama ad. rather boring and bland if you ask me.

Ah well, neither he nor BillHil will get my vote, for any reason. Not even for dogcatcher.

Long live Opus and Bill the Cat................

one of them days....

Just when I thought things were going smoothly......
I called my ex yesterday on the way home from work to ask him to clarify the dates he was taking the boys this summer. Usually he takes them the latter half, but this year he wanted them the first half. I just wanted clarification, as we have had ....ummm...misunderstandings....in the past on dates.
No problem---I would check the school website to verify spring break dates while he double checked the summer dates. I emailed him, he emailed back, voila, we have it in writing.
So I put two of my 3 paid vacations on the calendar at work tonight, and thought all right---I at least have a week with the boys after school lets out before their dad gets them. So I am checking email and stuff tonight---Ben wants to do track and I am corresponding with the coach to make sure my questions are answered before I sign the papers--and double check the school website for the last day of classes----June 9th.

Their dad picks them up the 14th.

Sigh.......

But there is a silver lining----I pick them up July 19th-----and the next day is my birthday. It will be the first time in 10 years they will be with me on that day.

She amazes me.....

Shellie. I am in awe of her---her brother is too. Chris bought a book the other night that quite frankly, I thought was below his reading level---he's in 10th grade but reads higher. Shellie is in kindergarten, and is now reading it. She has read quite a bit out loud to Chris and me, and even more by herself, missing or needing help with a very few words. She is 6. She just started reading early last fall and I would say this is about a 4th or 5th grade level book, about 150 or so pages.

Chris has now cleaned out the remainder of the books in his collection--barring a couple I deemed to have subject matter a little above her head--that she could read. She is discovering that the higher the reading level, the less pictures, but seems to do fine with that. Maybe it is time to haul back out the Little House books again--heck she should be able to read it herself!!!!!

Go Shellie!!!!!!

just a thought....

But if all the idiots who kept coming into the store after the snow/ice started this evening and complained about how bad the roads were would have stayed off them in the first place-----how badly did you need that Coke or that storage tote for $6-----then we could have closed early and gotten our folks home earlier. Not that I kept anyone who felt they needed to leave, but I sure would have liked to get home earlier.......my 20 minute trip took nearly 50, but most of that was me not trusting my eyes that the road was actually clearer than I expected, so I kept my speed slow.....School just notified us it is a 2hr delay, so I can sleep in some.tomorrow night will hopefully be better.......

sticking my opinion in again

Apparently I need to quit reading the local paper. I have always griped about the decline of the educational system in this area, and now have involved myself back on the forum page of the online version of the paper.

First, pay raises for teachers---the presumption being that if you pay them more, they will be better teachers. NOT. Ok, number one, I don;t like the idea of any pay raise for anyone that is not based on job performance. Sorry, I don't believe in giving raises across the board for anyone in any sector of work, private or public. I believe if you do the job you are supposed to be doing in the first place, then yeah you get a raise. Now if I give you a raise, then I also like to see a little more performance for my money. Works both ways.

So why should I give raises to those who do not teach the subject they were hired to teach? Any idiot can open a test booklet and tell you to study for the test and teach just a few concepts so that they look good when the test results come out. What about the biggest test of all----LIFE? Can you teach to that? Maybe not, but why not try to teach the kids all they may need to know later? No I do not use the Pythagorean thereom every day, nor E=MC squared, but I learned them. I do not remember the theme of Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" but I did read it. I do remember having to actually use my brain to do the classwork to get the grades to succeed in school. My parents and teachers expected, and demanded, the best of me and they got it, for the most part. I proved I could make A's in tough subjects, so I had no excuses for not making A's in easier ones. I learned how to think, which is a rapidly disappearing quality in many folks today, as evidenced by the poorly completed job applications I review daily. I learned how to question what I was taught. I would grant just about any teacher I had in high school a major pay raise, because for the most part, they did their job. They weren't there to get rich, but to teach. Yeah, maybe to some it was just a job. Heck I have plenty of days like that in my own job. But I still do it to the best of my ability.

Then there is the rapidly changing/disappearing honors program in our county high schools. My boys are honors students, and I see their 6 yr old sister reaping the benefits of having two very bright siblings---she will probably surpass them all. My stepdaughters are very bright----not in honors program, but I honestly feel that they would both have done very well in it, if given the chance. Even given the hormonal hurricane, ditzy, clueless days they all have from time to time, none of these kids lacks the capacity to think for themselves and learn whatever they want to know.

So are they being challenged in school? Are they being pushed to do at least what they are capable of? With a few execptions, the answer is no. Why not? That is my question. Since when does teaching at the lowest level of understanding benefit those kids who knew the stuff 3 yrs ago? What benefit is it for those gifted kids to be bored, and ignored, in the classroom, while fellow students who could not care less, or even those who learn at a slower pace, are taught and catered to? Why should my bright kids be in classes with those who are constant discipline problems? Get the problems out of there so the others can learn. Put kids of like abilities in the same classroom so they can learn from and challenge each other.

Demand the best. Always.

I am sure there will be much more on this topic.......

R.I.P. Thomasina

My kitty cat died today. I guess she was more Mom and Dad's kitty than mine, but she was mine at the start, when she showed up at our house as a wet, bedraggled kitty hiding under our porch. And of course I had to pet on her and then my brother fed her a can of tuna---after that, she was ours. I took her to the vet and got her fixed and her shots, and she was designated as an outdoor kitty, since we didn't want pets in the house.

That changed in May of 1990 (we found her in September 1989). Mom came home from the store or something and grabbed me to drive her back out the road where a cat that looked an awful lot like Tommicat had been hit. We drove by it a couple of times and I told Mom that I couldn't see where a collar should be, and we always kept a collar on her. Plus I told her that I had seen a cat that looked like ours around, when I knew ours was in the garage or something. About an hour later, here comes that persnickety cat walking up the drive, looking very pleased with herself. After that, she became a house cat.

I moved out in August 1990 and couldn't take her with me like I wanted, but Mom and Dad kept care of her over the intervening years. Occasionally we argued good naturedly about whether she was a Maine coon cat or a mutt cat or what. But she was gorgeous. I have pic after pic of her as a younger cat, with beautiful long fur that was charcoal gray mostly, darker some places, lighter others, with some orange mixed in and I couldn't begin to tell you what other colors. She was just a pretty cat. She caught baby birds straight from the nest, chipmunks, mice......
typical kitty cat.

She was a purrser---meaning she was a purry kitty.

But she got older, and kind of crotchety with age. In 1995, married with kids and living in PA by this time, with 2 other cats, I was diagnosed with asthma and told that the cats aggravated it greatly. So as I refused to destroy what finances we had by taking costly allergy shots or daily medication to keep the pets, we farmed Scruffy out to Mom and Dad and Charlie found a good home also. So Tommicat had Scruffy to torment her in her later years, after years of being an only kitty.

Tommicat aged, and not well. She went thru a period of not grooming herself--and not letting anyone else do it for her. She became very unsocial around some people---not that she was the most social cat anyway, but around those she was not used to, and kids especially, she did not want to be messed with. Her legs became arthritic and it was hard for her to walk sometimes, much less jump or run, although if she had a need, she could. She began not being particular about her litter box habits, and we began to wonder if each day would be her last.

About 4pm today, Mom called to chat, and part of her call was to tell me that Tommi had died today. Part of me wanted to cry, but I knew she was better off, as I explained to my 6 yr old. She is in kitty heaven, purring around the Lord's ankles, chasing mice and birds and so on, with legs that have no pain now. I know Mom and Dad are sad--she has been part of the family for almost 19 years. I wonder how Scruffy will get on--he is nearly 15 and has been with Tommi for 12 1/2 years.

Bye bye Thomasina. We loved you and will miss all that you brought to our lives over the years.