Is this true? A public school that served a large African American population…The White Knights???

And people around here wonder why the minority community thinks the rest of us are cluess….

The White Knights of White School…good grief.

**updated…well, a friend confirmed that they were the White Knights but that the neighborhood wasn’t predominately Black back in the day. Where there SOME Black kids that went there? I’m assuming so. Therefore, my disbelief still stands! (Although, seeing as the Pekin had the “Pekin Chinks” until the 1980s, how surprised should I REALLY be?)

So, today’s gems….

Today there was lengthy conversation between our Student Body and our Fearless Administrator. She outlined a few new rules. One of them being that the staff coffee pot is off-limits to students. No more making hot chocolate or Ramen noodles in the coffee pot. Three hours later one of our little peaches MADE RAMEN NOODLES IN THE COFFEE POT. When confronted with the error of his ways, he threw a temper tantrum. He called his dad. Then he tried to SWITCH Ramen Noodle preparation vessels. When our Administrator took the whole shebang away from him (by this time, lunch was over) he threw the lid to the coffee pot across the room. The noodles were transferred to a zip-top bag for later.

However, now we can’t find the coffee carafe. The little fucker hid it somewhere in the building.

Also during that same conversation, a few select students learned that they were perilously close to being dropped from the program for gross insubordination, lack of effort and sundry other offenses. Of course, the students in question were aghast at the suggestion they were anything less than shining stars.

One lad was so upset at the suggestion he wasn’t trying hard to succeed that he left the room with a jolly “Suck My Dick”! (I can see that we have mistakenly characterized his efforts.)

Another fellow was similarly upset. He proceeded to rant and rave all during lunch break. I made the observation that perhaps this was an opportunity for him to re-evaluate his behavior and make some changes. He vehemently disagreed….he proclaimed that everyone loves him, he’s popular and his life is going just fine. I had to disagree with the “my life is great” assumption given that this young man is currently on house arrest and is adorned with an ankle bracelet AND attending the expelled kid’s school!

Another day, another buck fifty.

So, my meeting with my long lost gal pal left me feeling a bit inadequate. She’s really skinny. When I first got back, I was kind of wrapped up in the fact that she looks so great. We shared quite a bit about how our kids are…our oldest’s are close in age. As teen boys they have similar interests…video games. And they both are musicians.

I was overwhelmed by how insanely crazy active she is. As our time together wore on, it became obvious that some of her ups and downs with marriages have brought about some neurosis (duh). She’s a clean freak….like OCD clean freak. She shared that she’s struggled with NOT going overboard with dieting. And it was obvious (since we ate all our meals out) that she’s got food “issues”.

At the time and for a week or so afterwards, I was preoccupied with how she’s managed to stay thin. And how her house is spotless. I figured that seeing me again after all these years was probably a big let down. Here, she lives in Florida, has a house with a pool, takes fun weekend trips, etc. I’m a frumpy fat housewife. She works at Disneyworld and has access to lots of fun stuff. Me, no.

I think that’s why I didn’t write about our reunion sooner.

Now that some time has passed, I realize that my old friend and I each have our “shtick”. Although I’d really enjoy being thin again, I think my friend’s life seems exhausting!

That’s the long awaited part to of my non-drama drama.

I have more to write about…other things. But I had to get that out of the way first.

Anne moved to our little neighborhood the summer before 4th grade. She’s just a month younger than me but because of her birthdate, she was a year behind me in school. It’s safe to say that we were BEST friends from day one. (She says I was staring at them as they moved the boxes off the truck…)

We were inseparable. Very different young ladies, but best of buds. She was way more in to pink, long fingernails and curling irons than I ever was. I was our ticket to neighborhood baseball games with the boys, the tree fort in the woods and finding ways around our mother’s watchful eyes. Of course we fought like…well, like girls fight. But there was never a time when we didn’t have each others backs. She had boyfriends and I was the 3rd wheel…but the boys she liked had to (at least) tolerate me. She dragged me along as we drove back and forth past their houses and I was her go-to girl for prank phone calls.

The summer  between my freshman and sophomore year, Anne’s family moved to Connecticut. I was devastated. It was awful. She came back to visit a couple times, I wrote her letters, she called.

2 years later her family moved back to the Midwest – Michigan. And so began the days of us meeting 1/2 way. My mom would drive me half way then Anne and I would head back to her new home in Niles, MI. I spent weeks on end with Anne. It was absolutely awesome. We explored her new town met new friends…just great.

we managed to stay pretty close as we both did our thing in college.

I was married in late 1993, she was married in 1994 and that was, literally, the last time we saw each other. Years past and there was an occasional phone call…our oldest children were born about 4 days apart. Her youngest and my youngest were born on the SAME DAY, 3 years apart.

This summer I tracked my long lost buddy down via facebook and we made plans to meet while I was in Ft. Lauderdale.

I’m still processing the visit…it was just great. We talked and laughed for about 22 hours out of the 28 we spent together. The things that made us besties are still there…but the things that always made us different seem to have taken strange turns.

This is gonna have to be a 2 parter…..

You know what else? I don’t care if my President did drugs when he was in high school. Honestly? I don’t believe anyone who says they didn’t…at least once. Drank underage? Had sex before they got married? I don’t fucking care.

Do I (or anyone who voted for Obama) think he is the Messiah? Fuck no. First of all, that would mean that I ascribe to some sort of voo-doo magic religion bullshit. (Sorry Gramma Mary).  The only Messiah that appeals to me is Handel’s. Give me a fucking break.

Each side wants to line shit up and do a “tit for tat”….she blew him, he fucked her. Are you kidding? Talk a walk down your block, you’re neighbor’s a meth-head. Your doctor snorts coke. Your Judge is fucking the clerk. Give me a break.

Here’s what I want….

FIX THIS FUCKING SHIT. Make sure my kids can get insurance. Fine the bastards who pollute the inner cities and fuck over all the poor kids. Fund my program so that I can have a real school with real internet. Pay my co-workers (who work with the kids no one else wants) MORE THAN $30K a year!

I don’t care how you do it…I don’t care who you piss off…stand the fuck up and DO SOMETHING.

5 years ago this month I was packing up our home preparing for a move.

6 years ago I thought our life was set.

I’m a jumble.

So, I’m going to spend this fall redefining what’s acceptable and allowable and what’s not. I’m a horribly emotional and reactive person. I’m passionate about things and my passion often clouds my judgement and prevents me from being objective. This is especially true when it come to politics, my kids, my family and my career.

I’m not always very good a agreeing to disagree and I often get bullheaded in the hopes that my “adversary” will just relent. I’m not proud of this behavior but it’s a habit. I’m going to work on that. And it coincides with one of my boundaries. There’s not much point arguing or debating with anyone who isn’t interested in hearing the other side or actually researching their position. It’s often easy to figure out in a discussion if a person falls into that catagory or doesn’t. So, I’m going to stop banging my head against a wall and just not discuss those things with folks I meet who aren’t open to a dialogue that includes facts and rational reasoning (and yes, I understand that this is completely subjective on my part, but it’s my boundary, I get to be subjective).

I enjoy my job very much. But I have a terrible habit of getting over-invested in my students. Just can’t do that anymore, either. I’m going to have to leave work stuff at work this year. Obviously that’s the nature of education. I’ve yet to meet a good teacher who DOESN’T get emotionally invested…especially with the types of students I’ve worked with all through my career.

This kind of thing is what made me eager to leave the profession for nearly 10 years. I didn’t think I could be emotionally present for my students and equally emotionally present for my own children. I thought I’d prefer not teaching. Now I know that’s not true. It’s not teaching that wipes me out, it’s the ‘other stuff’ that gets to me. So, I’m out. I’m going to make a concerted effort to leave my student’s issues and work stuff at work so that I can be totally present and available for my OWN family. Shees….I have an 8th grader! Before I know it, he’ll be out the door and I’ll be a blubbery mess.

Maintaining these boundaries is gonna be tricky. But for my own sanity, it’s gotta happen. And my friends know how little sanity there actually IS in my head so I’m sure they’ll appreciate any that I’m able to salvage!

Health care reform is, obviously, near and dear to my heart. Our family has been intimately affected by the the problems that exist within our current health care system. I have close friends who have been adversely affected by the state of health care in this country.

When we lived in Wisconsin, my husband’s employer (a hospital) had good insurance. In fact, it was one of the reasons he chose to take the job he was offered. Over 10 years, the policy changed…premiums went up and up, a lifetime cap was implemented, access to specialists was limited, choices were eliminated. For several years, his cost of living raises were LESS than the increases in the premium he paid. So, over time, we received LESS health care and paid MORE for it.

Further, Wisconsin’s “safety net” for children who have special health care needs isn’t very good. If we had needed to avail ourselves of that program, upon our children’s death, the program would have gone after their estate(s) in order to have their estates pay BACK any monies they would have used from the program.

Reform has got to happen.

My children are 11 and 13. They are the age where they should believe that anything is possible. Any career or dream is within their reach. But ask them what they want to be when they grow up and they’ll tell you “Rock Stars but we have to have another job, too, so that we can have insurance.” This should be heartbreaking to anyone who hears it. We are a middle class, working family. Our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles are all working class people who spent their lives contributing to society. I come from a family of community volunteers, union workers, public servants, GI’s, and private businessmen. I have NO doubt that their hearts would break if they were alive to see members of their family struggling to maintain health care.

I have a close friend who has severe hemophilia, the hepatitis alphabet soup (hepatitis A,B, and C) and is HIV positive. The hepatitis and HIV were contracted from the medicine used to treat his hemophilia…medicine that the government KNEW was infected but failed to act quickly on. He contracted the viruses in his teens. He shares that in college, he didn’t figure he’d live past 22 so he made the most of it. Minus intimate relationships. No one knew about his Hepatitis and HIV status. He’s 34 now. He’s married to a wonderful woman. But he constantly must worry about insurance. He works in public health. He’s capped out a couple insurance policies (capped out – reached his lifetime cap). He’s had to choose between taking the medicines that keep his viral load under control and the medicines that keep his bleeds (from hemophilia) under control. He has devoted his life to public service but has been forced to take a job doing something else in order to stay alive.

What is wrong with this country?

I know a husband and wife who have a child with hemophilia. The husband is your typical blue collar worker. He lost his job. He lost his insurance. His wife worked part time. They didn’t qualify for the public insurance program in their state. They were forced to file for divorce so that, on paper, the mother would have limited resources and thus qualify for the state catastrophic insurance pool.

I’m happy that there are individuals out there who have never been affected by the current state of affairs…yet. But sooner or later they will be.

Take it from those of us who have been impacted by this country’s current health care system, change is immanent. Those of us who are advocating for change aren’t doing it just for ourselves, we’re doing it for our children, our neighbors…YOUR children, YOUR neighbors.

If you don’t think the current plan for reform is good, take some time to inform yourself. Learn more. Don’t succumb to the knee-jerk reaction that change is bad. Change IS going to happen. Reform IS occurring.

We’ve always parented from the standpoint of: this is the culture/society/time in which we live; kids are done a disservice if they’re constantly sheltered.

I have to say, though, it’s getting awfully difficult to teach my male children to be respectful and (appropriately) reverent of the opposite sex when they see images of pre-teens and teens “on the pole”. My fellow blogger, EmergePeoria brings up the most recent assault on young girls in discussing  Miley Cyrus’ performance at the Teen Choice Awards. A stripper pole? Really? I understand that she’s becoming a young lady and that her performances will reflect this growth and development.

But wait. This is Nickelodeon. This is the Rugrats network. The Powerpuff Girls. You Can’t Do That on T.V. The only slime I thought was on that network was the stuff dumped on some pre-teen’s head.

What gives?

I’m trying REALLY hard to guide my boys towards an appreciate of the opposite sex for more than the ole ‘hubba hubba’ that pre-teen and teen boys hold so dear. “I’ll bet she has a good sense of humor.” “It’s cool that she does so well on Scholastic Bowl.” “Isn’t it cool that you guys have been in band together for so long?”

I’m not a prude. But this is getting ridiculous.

No one cried. No one stomped out of the store. Not once did I hear “But that’s UGLY”. No piles of clothes on the dressing room floor.

We went to the shoe department, each boy found a pair of shoes they liked. They tried them on and that was that. One pair.

They each found a pair of shorts they liked, one shirt they liked a bag of new socks and proclaimed they were done.

I always knew boys had it easier than girls.