For only $5 YOU can send a child to public school.

This is my blog.  I come here once in a while to complain.  It isn't anything personal, ok?

School.

School should be about reading and writing and 'rithmetic.  Right?  Kids should gather at their teacher's knee and listen to stories and make crafts out of dry macaroni noodles and eat (or not) questionable school lunches and learn to survive on the playground.

School shouldn't be about fundraising.  I know I brought home my own share of wrapping paper orders that I was supposed to guilt my non-existent nearby extended family into buying.  But I think it has gotten worse.

Today my 5 year-old (FIVE YEAR-OLD) came home from school and the first thing he told me was "MOM! My teacher says I need to sell 5 pizza cards because our school needs new computers because a lot of them are breaking and we need to buy new ones so everyone has to sell 5 pizza cards, but I need to sell 10 pizza cards so I can get a prize!"

I just had parent-teacher conference for this same child at which I was informed that he needs to be able to write numbers up to 30 and that he can only do it to 12 and that he only recognizes 5 out of the 30 sight words he needs to know.  (For one thing, I know he knows more than that, he just doesn't appreciate being tested.)  So you are telling me that he isn't meeting his curriculum standard and I need to work on it more at home, but heaven knows he KNOWS HOW MANY PIZZA CARDS HE HAS TO SELL.  How am I going to fit in all of this home practice with his, I mean my, door-to-door sales job?

Will he be getting a marketing degree awarded along with his kindergarten diploma?

Here is the other blatant problem.  There are 7 houses on my little section of my street.  5 of them have children attending this same elementary school.  And, oh yeah, there is another little salesperson who lives in this same house.  Because Will arrived home a few hours later and the first thing he said was "MOM! Can I go door to door and sell pizza cards because everyone has to sell 5 and I have to sell 10 so I can get a prize!"

This is on top of the month-long pleas I just endured for box tops because they HAD TO collect box tops because the class with the most box tops got an ice cream party.  I offered to just buy them an ice cream cone, but that was not cool enough.

And the "hassle-free fundraiser" which asked everyone to just go ahead and send in some money and BONUS we wouldn't even have to sell anything for the privilege!

And the Krispy Kreme cards which are for sale in the office.

Now, the Krispy Kreme cards and the pizza cards aren't even a bad deal.  They probably aren't nearly as much of a rip-off as the wrapping paper catalogs I used to drag home.  My problem is that my 5 year-old doesn't have any friends with money.  So clearly the idea is that I will sell them to the people I know with money.  And it wasn't just given out with the instruction to "have your mom and dad look at this paper and see if they might be interested."   Instead they were worked up to know that they NEED to sell them or they won't have computers AND they need to sell a lot so they can get a PRIZE.

I offered to just give him a prize.  But that was not cool enough.

Anyone want a pizza card?

I feel better now

A few things.

1. Pox parties.  I dare not put into words my opinion of any parent that would take their child to one.  I usually try to maintain a fairly live-and-let-live attitude towards parenting.  And I think American parenting has become a rather embarrassing competition sport.  But if you think pox parties are a good idea I apologize in advance for my judgments about your judgment.

2. Men who try to hurry past you not so they can hold the door for you, but just so they can beat you in line.  This happens to me constantly around here. (I don't know where else it would happen since I am always "around here" but I am inclined to blame it on a lack of manners in my general locale at the moment.)  I am carrying a baby carrier, leading another child by the hand, as well as juggling a diaper bag and a purse, and guaranteed some guy pulls into the parking lot, hops out of his car, and books it so that he can be sure to get into the Subway/Panda Express/Walmart check-out line (to name 3 recent examples) ahead of me.  And then lets the door slam in my face.  And studiously avoids eye contact.  You make me think bad words.

3. People who insist on posting blatantly untrue things on Facebook.  Snopes.com.  Use it.  Or any basic internet search.  Now I know that 75% of Facebook content would cease to exist if we all followed a basic fact-check-first-then-post policy, but for the love of truth please stop.  Theoretically I could also just stop looking at Facebook, but this is just a theory and hasn't been proven.

4. Rompers.  Super adorable on babies.  Super awkward on adults.

5. Fluff.  Why can you not buy it here?  How am I supposed to send my kid to school every day with a peanut butter and whipped-sugar sandwich without a local Fluff source?

6. Spiders.  Within the last 2 weeks I have found two giant spiders in the house.  Well, technically, one was on the door leading from the garage into the house and the other was in the crawl space.  Obviously their forces are getting alarmingly close to our actual living quarters.  This is a problem because as soon as I find one in said living quarters we will have to move and that sounds like a lot of work.

It's my bloggy and I'll sigh if I want to.

Because I think writing something on Facebook is like walking into a room filled with everyone I know and making pronouncements on random subjects, I am not writing this on Facebook.  No matter how tempting it might be.

But this here blog, well it's like a private conversation...which you, gentle reader, are welcome to walk away from.

So I'd just like to say that I sure hope the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act tomorrow.  Because it sure has been aggravating to not pay any co-pays when I take my kids in for well-child checks.  And I think it is despicable that kids in this country with pre-existing conditions can get health care.  I mean, that just should not happen in this day and age.  And we were warned about what would happen with this nonsense.  I called to make my kid a doctor's appointment the other day and I had to wait a whole week and a half to have her seen!  They might have said they could see her same day if she were actually sick and didn't just need a well-child check, but I'm ready to be done with all this health-care rationing.  That has gotta be unConstitutional!

Sigh.

But now in all seriousness.  We all know that hospitals are required by law (Constitutional!) to treat you if you show up in need of treatment.  They have to.  They can not say no.  It doesn't matter if you march in announcing "I am uninsured and don't plan to pay you a dime ever!"  If you are in labor, or in need of medical treatment, they have to treat you.  But the government can't make you have insurance right?  (Constitutional?...UnConstitutional?...tomorrow will tell...for now.) So who do you suppose pays for the folks who, whether by personal choice or not, don't have insurance and show up at the hospital doors? That, my friends, would be you.  And me.  And everyone else who DOES have insurance and pays taxes etc.  It seems only logical that if we can't require people to have insurance then we can't require hospitals to treat you if you don't have any way to pay them.  Right?  "Sorry that your dear dad is having a heart attack.  Please stay outside on the sidewalk.  We only treat insured patients here.  Thank you."  Or maybe little Timmy is bleeding from a head wound from the car wreck you just got in (you know, while driving your car, which you are required by law to insure).  Quick!  Pull up a youtube how-to video and stitch the poor little guy up!

Maybe that doesn't sit quite right with you.  Maybe a person's a person no matter how small (or rich, or poor, or uninsured).  Maybe people deserve to have medical treatment because they are members of this human race with us (and some are winning that race and some are not).  Maybe it isn't little Timmy's fault he was born with a genetic condition that is going to make his entire life much harder than mine or yours.  Why should he get to have insurance?  And when he doesn't have insurance (because no one will take him), why should a hospital have to treat him?  We know he can't pay.  Which means you and I are gonna have to pick up the costs one way or another.  And he ain't my kid.  So it ain't my problem.  Because I've got insurance.  Thanks to my job (which I hope I still have tomorrow).  And I shouldn't have to pay for sick people that can't bother to insure themselves (because I'm healthy...today).

Because America is not a country for the weak.  Literally.  We don't want you.
And maybe someone once said to give us your tired and poor.  But we're done with them now.  And the wretched refuse of your teeming shore?  - shudder - No thanks.

(And please...I paid good money to sit through a semester of Con Law so I am quite aware of what is in the Constitution and what isn't...whether this is ruled Constitutional or unConstitutional tomorrow has nothing to do with what the Constitution does or does not say.)

And now that I am writing to an empty room I shall bid myself adieu.

Transcript of a tantrum.

I bought Sawyer an ABC game a while back, but we hadn't opened it yet.  He was pestering me to play a game today so I told him we could do the ABC game in a few minutes.  After much whining I sat down to play with him.  The "game" consists of a board with all the letters of the alphabet printed on it and then a bunch of small cards which have a letter on one side and a drawing of an object whose name begins with that letter on the reverse.  I would show Sawyer a picture and ask him what letter it started with.  He wasn't getting any of them right (this is why I bought the game in the first place) so then I would tell him which letter and have him look for it on the board (still getting very few right even though I swear he does know quite a few letters).  We went through about 5 letters and then I held up the picture of a quilt and asked him to find Q.  At which point he went into full tantrum mode and was rolling on the floor and throwing pieces around.  After a few minutes I started writing down his rage.  I missed the beginning, but I present for you now an "Almost Complete Transcript of a Complete Tantrum."

"You're just doing the too hard ones!  You just always do the too hard ones!  I want that game out of our house.  Cuz if you do the hard ones ever again I won't want to be in our family (fwamly) any more and I won't want to be on the earth ever again. I would just stay in my room and sleep.  I'm not going to eat anything you make. I would just stay in my room and sleep. That's all I would do.  I would just eat my desserts every day. Stupid letter ABC game. I'm not gonna play your games any more Momma. I'm not. Cuz you did a too hard game.  So I'm not even going to learn my letters!  I'm just gonna stick with the letters I know.  I know P, A, D, L, H, W, A, D, S, P, and....like....H.  like H.  So I don't want to play your games any more.  I'll just stick with my own games.  Cuz if you only do the hard ones first on any game I won't even want to play the game.  I won't even want to play it ever!  If you just do the hard ones first.  So just make that chalk game* and I'll play that every day.  That's all the game I want to play.  I only want to play your easy peesy games.  Except after your ABC game you go into the crazy hard games!  And I don't want to play it!  That's what I don't want to do ever again!  Cuz it's too stupid games you make!  Just stupid games that you make.  Cuz they are always just 'too hard games, too hard games.'  That's all you make.  Only the hard games.  That's all you make.  Every day.  Or else I would never play your games!  If you do that every, every single day!" 

 (Break to throw pieces across the room.) 

"Uh! Boo boo Momma!  That's what you always do.  You only do the hard and hard and hard.  So I'll just stick with my games and never learn your games to play.  I'll just learn how to play them and never play them though.  That's all I would want to do with your games!  your stupid games!  and cuz I don't want to play your stupid letter game for learning.  I just want to play normal games that's in our closet that have destructions** too.  Poo poo Mom."

(bathroom break)  Singing the alphabet song while on the toilet and skipping half the letters ending with  "W, X, Y and S!  S!  That's all I would do now!"  (muttering to self)

Comes out of bathroom inspecting shorts - "Bwackwards?!  Are these on bwackwards Mom?" Then walks back over to game.

"Cuz I don't want to play your games any more.  Cuz you are making them way, waaayyy, waaaaayyyy too hard games!  Cuz I'll only stick with...cuz I know all the letters to your game!  And I'll just always get them right!  Xray!  X starts with... watermelon!  That's what I'll do.  I won't play your games!  Cuz I'll just know.  I know all the letters to your game now.  Now I don't have to play it ANY MORE.  Cuz I don't like your games any more.  You make it way, way, way too hard.  So I'm not playing your games of stupidness any more.  Bo bo."

"So I'm not playing your games any more.  In fact, I'm for sure not doing it.  That's what I'm not doing any more.  I'll stick with my own letters now.  Oh yeaaaahhh.  Uh huh."

(Fly goes by) "Flies!"

"Cuz I'm NOT PLAYING YOUR STUPID games any more.  That's all they are.  They're just stupid! That's what won't ever happen ever again - which is me playing your games."

"Alligator.  Lyle. Alligator.  Oooowwwww."

"So I'm not playing your stupid bo bo games.  That's what I'm not gonna do again." (takes off shoe and throws it)

"Ouch. Bouch.  Ouch.  Bouch.  Ouch.  Alligator.  Ice.  Bryce.  Bow wow wice.  Ooouuuuucchh."  

(wanders off into the kitchen and gets into the band-aids...after a few minutes wanders back into the family room and says "Mom, can you please open the garage?" and kisses my leg.)

The End.

* About a month ago I drew all the letters of the alphabet in chalk on the driveway and tried to play letter recognition games with him.  This lasted about 30 seconds before he freaked out that it was too hard and took off.  The next day they got washed away by a rainstorm and he flipped out that his game was gone.

** He says "destructions" instead of "instructions" and I don't plan to correct him any time soon.

PS- New blogger can't handle my colored background and I don't know how to fix it.  Sigh.

Pop Quiz

It's quiz time!

1. Last night Addie...
A. Slept through the night!
B. Required minimal attention.
C. Woke up the second I went to bed, finally fell back asleep for about 1.5 hours and then woke up again and decided it was play/whine/cry/practice crawling and try to throw yourself off the side of my bed time until 6 am (which I thought was 7 am - see question 2).

2. Today our alarm went off at
A. 7:05 just like normal
B. 6:05
C. 6:05 which I thought was 7:05 like normal

3. Today I got up at
A. 7:30 just like normal
B. 6:30
C. 6:30 which I thought was 7:30 like normal

4. Today I woke Will up at
A. 7:35 just like normal
B. 6:35
C. 6:35 which I thought was 7:35 like normal

5. When I finally realized it was an hour earlier than I thought I headed back to bed and found
A. everyone sleeping peacefully
B. gold under my pillow
C. that Addie was awake and ready for more play time

6. Amount of sleep I got in the hour until I had to get up for real
A. 1 hour of bliss
B. a good power nap
C. zero.

If you answered all C's you are correct!  If you chose all A's you are a very optimistic person and probably don't know me in real life.

Bryce set the alarm and has no explanation for why he set it for an hour earlier.  Also, at some point around 4 a.m. when I was dozing in and out while trying to stop Addie from throwing herself off the side of the bed I opened my eyes and found Bryce's face about 6 inches in front of me with his eyes open wide staring at me with a huge grin.  I said "What are you doing?!"  He looked around confused, closed his eyes, and continued sleeping.  He does not remember this.

A Funny Thing Happened

Humorous things of late: I walked to the school and picked up Will one nice day and let the boys play at the park for a while. For a while until I sat down to feed the baby and they wandered away and then I looked over and saw that Sawyer was doing his best to break branches off the newly-planted tree while Will watched. If you are at the new park by the school and see the sad tree with the twisted down and broken branch say hello for us. There were about 5 other moms sitting nearby watching too. Embarrassing. Then I told them they were in trouble and made them go home. We started walking home and Will was throwing a fit about how mistreated he is. He told me he was going to run away. I told him to go ahead and see if he could find any one else that wanted to take care of him when he's naughty. We were at a cross street so he turned right and started walking while I continued going straight. He made it about half the distance of one yard and then turned around yelling "Oh! So, you're just going to allow this?! You're allowing this?!" and then he turned around and caught up with me. Hahahaha.

 Sometimes I pretend I do things like exercise. One day I was doing an exercise video and I had been at it for all of about 5 minutes when Sawyer walked in with a Poptart and waved it under my nose saying "Just take a break Mom. Just take a break and have a niiiiice Poptart." Then last week I was doing another exercise video and Sawyer asked why the lady was saying "Don't stop. Keep going." I told him that she was just trying to help you keep exercising. He said "But Mom, you don't have to listen. You can just stop. You can just turn it off because they can't see you!"

 Sawyer also cried, with real tears, when he caught me pulling out dandelions last week. He was sobbing "You're hurting them! They don't like that! My flowers! We aren't going to have any more flowers!" (Don't worry, there are still about a million in our park strip alone.)

 He also cried when he saw the pile of debris I swept up in the kitchen and knelt down to try to pick bits of things out of it. This happens almost every time I sweep. Also, if he sees me removing a bag of garbage from the house he will run along beside me and look through the bags for things that he wants. He is amazingly talented at this. He can spot the corner of a paper he colored three weeks ago at church from 5 feet away while in motion.

 I'm realizing that Sawyer is a major demotivating factor in my life.

 The other day I got up, made Will's lunch, gave Will and Sawyer breakfast, fed the baby solid foods and nursed her, did my exercise video, packed lunches for Sawyer and I, packed the diaper bag, and got showered and dressed and left the house by 10 a.m. I felt very accomplished. And thanks to the power of television I kept thinking all day that I deserved Arctic Circle.

 Will happily told me the other day that he has a new seat at school and that he is "the only person at his table who doesn't speak Spanish!" Hmmmmmm. This was followed a few days later by him telling me that he "didn't even get in trouble at school today!" I said "Do you usually get in trouble?" to which he enthusiastically replied "Yes!" I asked why he gets in trouble and he said "Because I talk to people and I don't remember to raise my hand and I just say answers out loud!" I'm not sure having Spanish-speaking tablemates will deter him.

 I have come to the conclusion that Sawyer doesn't understand much of what he sees and hears around him. I mean, he thinks he understands, but really he must end up with a bizarre view of the world. I suppose most four-year-olds probably have a bizarre view of the world. Some examples: he told me they learned about agency at church = Ah, smart. And then continued to tell me that he "is a spy or something and his name is Agent C." = Ah, well, not quite. Or: "Mom, did you know that Adam is the first person every one meets on Earth?!" Hmmm... really. And then 3 days later I hear him singing a church song - "Adam is a prophet, first one that we know, in a place called Eden, he helped things to grow." And it dawns on me. "First one that we know." Ohhhh.

We won't even get into his theories on how Addie got here and "when she is going to turn into a boy" and how she eats "the milk that [I] drink and store inside" of me.

 Sawyer calls hand sanitizer "hanitizer." I think it is an improvement.

 Addie doesn't like to sleep alone in her bed. It is a rare event. The other day I actually got her to sleep by herself in her bed. Then Sawyer went upstairs and shouted "Mom! Addie is in here ALONE!" He was very concerned. And then she wasn't asleep any more.

 Sawyer built something out of Legos and asked me if I knew what it was. I said that I did not. He said "It's an antique gun!"

 Will told me he wrote Grandma a letter and asked if I would mail it. I thought that was nice. Then I read the letter: "Dear Grandma, Can you send me some Easter cookies like the Halloween cookies? Will." I told him I wasn't mailing it until he wrote a letter rather than a demand note.

I asked Will to go get in the car to go to school. He said he had to get something from his room. He ran upstairs and came down with a piece of paper which he handed to me. On this paper he had written "100 strikes and you are out" and then he had drawn a bunch of boxes. He gave me the paper and said "While I'm at school will you mark off a box every time Sawyer is naughty?"

 I asked Sawyer if we should take him to get a haircut. He said "Uhhh no. I was just about to make it cool and it needs to be long."

 I have more to report on Sawyer than Will because he is home with me all day. Also, I usually instant message Bryce the funny things the kids say during the day. So I did a search for "Sawyer" and found all the things I told Bryce over the last few months. Doing a search for "Will" is not helpful. The downsides of having a name that is also a commonly used word.

 Everything Sawyer says starts with "Anyways..." I have no idea where he got that from.

 Anyways. That's all.

Coincidental theater

This is a random entry and has nothing to do with my children (as my remaining 2 readers click away...)

Anyways.

Continuing.

Sometimes I read this blog: http://www.reagansblob.com/page/2/ I don't know why I just do.

A little while ago she mentioned this tidbit:

"Also, last night Jake and I went to *Sleep No More. I had to buy tickets clear back in November because they were sold out for so long. It was insane!!! I don’t know what to think, but that’s ok because we are going again next month.*Sleep no more is a theatre type show in a huge old hotel. It’s floors and floors of intricate sets/rooms. You wear masks and follow the characters you’re most interested in. I went with Jake and two friends, but we split up at the beginning and had our own very different experiences, seeing totally different things. It’s very strange and not for everyone, but so so cool if that’s your bag."

Then a few nights ago I was searching for something to read on the kindle and came across "The Night Circus" available to borrow from the library site. I figured I'd give it a try since most of the other available titles were 1. romance novels 2. Dr. Laura books (apparently her advice is not well-valued out here) or 3. super specific non-applicable titles such as "A Guide to Better Relationships between Black Men and Women" (no, I'm serious).As I was reading it I kept thinking "this reminds me of that theater thing mentioned in that one blog thingy I read" and "it would be cool if this were made into one of those theater things and you could wander from tent to tent and follow the characters around."Then at the end of the book there was an Acknowledgments section, as there always is, and I read it, as I always do AND the author mentioned something called Punchdrunk as a source of inspiration.

So I googled it and discovered - voila: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/theater/sleep-no-more-from-punchdrunk-transforms-chelsea-warehouses.html?pagewanted=all

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"IF New York’s junk shops, antiques fairs and confectioners have fielded some odd requests recently, it may be because the British theater company Punchdrunk is coming to town for the first time. The props list for its show “Sleep No More,” an environmental, stylized mash-up of Shakespearean drama and Hitchcockian noir, reads like the contents of a madman’s shopping cart: plastic teeth, animal eyes, hair samples, several kinds of blood, caramel spray. For “Sleep No More,” which arrives in New York after a run at a school near Boston in 2009, the company took over six stories of three adjoining warehouses on West 27th Street in the Chelsea gallery district. Audience members don masks and explore some 100 rooms and environments, including a spooky hospital, mossy garden and bloody bedroom. An eerie soundtrack fills the air as costumed performers move about all six floors re-enacting pivotal scenes from “Macbeth.”Each room has a back story that has been painstakingly detailed and designed with a mid-1930s vibe. More than 200 unpaid volunteer artists spent about four months hand-writing letters, coloring wallpaper and building furniture. A spokesman for the show declined to say how much the production cost, other than the budget was “in the millions of dollars.” . . .“In our world, every single drawer, cupboard, wardrobe that can be opened, should be opened because you’ll find something inside,” he said."

_________________________________________________________________________

Punchdrunk IS that theater thing that the book reminded me of.

I feel 1. very clever 2. like the stars are aligning for some mysterious purpose and 3. like I need to go see this.

The End.

Acknowledgments:

My clown collection - because circuses are fascinating, but also creepy. My baby - for sleeping in her bed by herself long enough for me to type this.