Dirty Dishes

I seem to have lost track of my life. Not sure where it went. Perhaps into the void of unplanned days. School is officially out for the summer and I seem to have lost all motivation to be, well, motivated.

It's hot and humid and I choose not to exercise in hot and humid. The good news is that we are heading to Maine in a few days. It's generally cooler there and the prospect of exercising with an ocean view is too good to pass up.

Until then, though, I'm a hot, hungry mess.

I haven't started a single packing list yet. As queen of the listmakers, this is an unusual confession. Maybe if I do the dishes, I'll manage to accomplish something.

It doesn't matter that the dishes are two rooms away. The fact that they are there, piled up and dirty, taunting me with outrageous French accents is enough to cause me to run away.

The only hope for me is psychotropic medication.

If only.

I can't finish this thought. I need to wash the dishes.

School's (Almost) Out

This morning, as I was emailing a friend, I had a epiphany. And I wrote this: "I fucking hate school. Didn't like it then. Don't like it now. I like classes. The kind that are specific to one's interests. The kind you don't get graded on. The kind where you can tell the teacher to go fuck themselves if they're idiots."

And that's pretty much how I feel.

I feel this way because third grade has been a battle. In many ways a losing battle for my unfortunate kid who is caught in the middle of this tug-of-war. I didn't realize how bad it actually was until this week when homework suddenly ceased.

I had a good sense of it throughout the year, when I found myself looking forward to Fridays more than the Boy because a) there would be no homework Friday night, and b) I could sleep in on Saturday morning (yes, I'm a selfish human being). But the full impact of how homework has made impacted our lives, really hit home this week.

And the comment to my friend has made me realize how much I resent my son's teacher and the school district for turning school into a full-time job without pay. For him and me.

When I would look at some of the work coming home I would curse the teacher and truly want to tell her to go fuck herself "we're not doing this anymore." It's all busy work. And it eats into the the quality parts of a child's life.

Case in point: Thanks to kindergarten and first grade teachers who were more concerned about turning the individuals in their classes into good little student robots, and less concerned about individual attention and follow-through to be sure each child understood the concepts being introduced, my son has spent two years in reading remediation just to catch up to his peers. There seems to be a lot of that in our school, which you would think would be a red flag.

We also went the extra mile and contracted a tutor who specializes in reading remediation, and considerable expense to ourselves. Our son meets with her twice a week, and during the first part of the year it was three times a week.

This necessary intervention, along with what turned into 90 minutes of homework daily, made it impossible for any additional extra-curricular activites which might have fed the creative interests of the boy. And I pissed.

Third grade, and all lower elementary grades, should be less about homework and more about being a child and having the time to explore the world around us. My feelings for my son's third grade teacher are not very kind. I like to think I'm fairly good at reading people, and she's one for the books. As the year has progressed, I've noticed that when our paths cross I can see the inward groan before she pastes a forced smile on her face and pretends that she really cares about what I have to say or about my son.

My dream in life, right now, is to find a way that's financially feasible for me to make a living at home so that I can homeschool my kid. At least until high school when his options might open up. It would be my small contribution to telling the school district to go fuck themselves. Until then, he's just another bright, underserved kid falling through the cracks of our public education system.

Cleveland isn't Prague

A friend posted "Cleveland isn't Prague" as his Facebook status. It kind of stopped me in my tracks because it just reinforced the fact that I haven't done the world traveling I had expected to when I was younger.

And it sucks.

And just to clarify, I was referring to Prague, not Cleveland.

I have done a little traveling. And, as an actor, I've had the opportunity to live in different communities, not just work there. Most of these places are limited to the east coast of the US - Maine to Florida. But I did have the opportunity to spend a July in Alaska and it was quite the learning experience. Although, as much as I got to see in Alaska, we never stayed in one place for more than two or three days.

Outside of the US I've been to Canada, Mexico, the Carribbean, England, Paris, and Northern Germany. And none of those in recent memory.

My husband travels for work. He's been all over the world: Europe, Asia (China and India), Australia and New Zealand, Africa. While I stay here in New England, holding down the fort and washing dishes.

That part sucks too.

So I say to you would-be travelers: Go! Travel while you're young and have the time and no committments. Don't wait, because it may not happen. You may find yourself middle-aged and renewing an unstamped passport, and using a picture you really don't want to have to live with for the next 10 years.

That part sucks most of all.

Speaking of Squirrels

The squirrels around here have a death wish. Either that or they're so wired on crack that they're not even aware that they are crossing the street.

IN FRONT OF A CAR

I have an inherent disgust of killing anything that I'm not eating and wasn't already dead to begin with.

Out here in the pseudo-country there are plenty of narrow roads and foliage cover for little critters to dart out of and into traffic. Now, granted, their brains and smaller than most of the food they eat, but you would think there would have been some evolutionary growth or understanding of car = dead.

Maybe it's our crappy school system so that, evolutionarily speaking, the squirrels are as far behind in understanding the fatality of a close encounter with a car, as my son was in reading. He's caught up thanks to an aggressive campaign on our part which had little to do with the school in question. I speak of external remediation.

I also digress.

The plain, unvarnished truth of the matter is: this is a backward town. With backward squirrels. And for that matter the chipmunks aren't doing much to help the perception of unaware rodents.

Seems to me, the only thing they're actually good at is digging holes in our yard. There are accidents waiting to happen all over the freakin' place. And we all know who it is that will end up in ER.

Maybe, when I'm headed for the ER, I just won't swerve to avoid an ill-advised romp across the road. Maybe I'll just hit it.

Of course, then I'll need a sedative for the guilt. Sedatives are not necessarily bad things.

Blessing My Nest

My horoscope yesterday told me to "bless my nest" and "dedicate a room or corner as my office". I'd been planning to do just that, and before I knew it, I was cleaning out my closet as a way of procrastinating on the hard stuff: i.e, moving furniture and cleaning away four years of whatever had been growing/living in the previously inaccessible space.

I'd even made a special trip that morning, before I read the daily prediction, and purchased a desk blotter. It's more of a protector so I can put my computer on the surface of the table in use without scratching it.

Right in the middle of my cleaning and purging efforts, the overhead light died on me. The room I was working in is one of the larger rooms in our modest home and has a high ceiling and only one window which faces north. It was also overcast today, so when the light went out I truly was in the dark. Usually when I'm in the dark it has nothing to do with the ambient light.

I am a "natural" blonde after all.

Lucky for me there are other light sources in the room and I continued until I got tired of trying to figure out what to do with all the crap.

After moving stuff around, I realized that the original layout would work the best if the table was just pulled away from the tight little corner.

Now if only my husband would move out his crap, we'd have a nice serene space that might be conducive to some creativity.

I can dream can't I?

Excavations

I'm trying to get off the gardening kick, but I found several disturbing excavations in my garden early this evening.

SOMETHING had been digging there. Perhaps attempting to burrow. Maybe looking for food. Or the mother ship.

I'm not sure if it was the Dill Aliens (see previous post), since the excavations weren't near the dill and the excavator apparently tried to do its digging close enough to the driveway to run away quickly, if need be.

There are plenty of chipmunks and squirrels and other rodential types in the neighborhood. Maybe the mulch looked like an easy in for them. The digger did not seem to make much progress once it hit dirt.

This does not a happy camper make. It's fodder for a cranky camper. Because I've invested too much sweat and pride in my attempts at landscaping beautification. I thought I did very well as a novice.

Maybe this is a test. By the local rodent garden club.

Curse their cute rabid little rodent selves.

Speaking of Gardening and Aliens...

I'm starting to see myself the way some people see a former smoker. Y'know, the type of person who smokes two packs a day for 150 years and then one day they stop, do a 180 and become banner carriers for quitting, lecturing about how bad smoking is for you and complaining about other people's second hand smoke and how it's making them sick.

That's how I am starting to perceive myself in relation to (cue bad-thing-happening music) "the garden."

I'm so proud of my efforts and the end result of my little pathetic plot of land that every time I walk by it I stop and stare. Sometimes I water it. But I take in the little blue spreading flowers, the sunflowers getting taller daily, the lavender, and the awe inspiring dill.

I planted the dill because the old lady at the garden center said it would attract butterflies. She didn't tell me I'd have to name it Audrey II and that it would overcome the surrounding spaces until it starts swallowing people whole.

If she had, I wouldn't have planted it. Especially the one, the little 3 inch dill plant, that I planted in a container and is now well over 2 feet tall.

I'm starting to fear for my life and am concerned about the communications it may have established with its home planet. No need to worry about the oil spill in the Gulf. The invasion of the Dill People is imminent.

But I digress. Again. My pride in my little garden is palpable. Even with the prospect of alien invasion. So I need to talk about it. Especially now that the hard work with that one is done. There are several other areas waiting for my attention. I know they'll look good when they're done too. So check back with me in 2012 and hopefully I'll have some good pics to post.

Until then, prepare for the dill.

Eating Greens

The vegetable garden is bearing fruit, so to speak. And tonight, because it's so hot and I'm a bad planner, we're having dinner from the garden.

Salad.

Or, more appropriately, lettuce.

Filthy, dirty lettuce. I can't believe how much I have to wash this stuff to get off the dirt and the insects looking for a free ride. I am not one of those people who finds it exotic and exciting to eat insects.

And then there's the broccoli. Yes, broccoli. Broccoli from the garden. Hard to believe. It's a little less voluptuous than the grocery store broccoli, but it's actual broccoli. I have to say I find all this fresh produce a little awe-inspiring. Just go out to the garden, cut what you need, wash off the worm poop, cook the shit out of it, and eat it.

Yum. I'm salivating.

The thing about organic gardening is that it's probably way cheaper to buy your produce in the store. This salad we're having tonight, along with the broccoli, is probably a $26 salad.

I guess I'd better throw a little goat cheese in there.

Maybe, with the goat cheese, I can charge $28. Of course, on the children's menu tonight is leftover chicken tenders.

Yum. No worm poop on those tenders.

What a good mother am I!

But while I'm on the subject of gardening (I know, you thought I was done), aside from how our Victory Garden might put us in the poorhouse, it's a wonderful thing for the boy to experience. He goes out there with the "Farmer" (I use that term loosely) and digs in the dirt, shovels the dirt, and uses the Awesome Auger (it is!) to dig holes for little animals trying to escape from larger animals. What a learning experience. Better than private school. And way better than Sponge Bob.

Sponge Bob has been banned from this house by me. But I sorta forgot to mention it to the necessary parties.

Where was I? Oh yes... farming, planting, growing, healthy food, eductional, blahblahblah, priceless.

The End.