Crazy week # 1.

I find myself up an hour earlier than intended thanks to:

a) my contractor photographer texting me at 5:24 AM letting me know he received the itinerary for today (when I asked him to confirm this last evening) - yes, even low volume sounds wake me up. Even through earplugs.
b) my dd (damned dog, darling dog, darned dog - take your pick) ralphing in his kennel at 5:55 AM.

nice.... real nice....

And shame on me for going to bed so late.

so sue me....

I am owly in the morning.

even when I get up after my requisite seven hours of sleep.

I hate people who can do with four or five or six hours.

I am not one of them.

Last week was crazy. My dh (husband with 'd' starting adjectives in front) left Tuesday AM for a month long family related trip. On Wednesday morning one of my employees calls me and asks if it was OK for her to take her husband (too sick to drive and no car besides) to the doc as he was doing poorly.  OK. Not a problem. I'll cover for her for a few hours. Well, a few hours later she calls and tells us they are at the ER! The doctor thought he was having a heart attack and sent him straight there. Except it isn't a heart attack but an ever increasing range of serious symptoms and no diagnosis even as of Sunday night.  A specialist is in finding zebras is coming to look at him today, so hopefully he can help. Dr. House  to room 4425 please.

Obviously I didn't get to teach the kids this week, between Monday packing, Tuesday the kids Dad leaving and Wednesday through Friday covering for my employee at the office. My employee plans to come in late and leave early and work a half day  for the forseeable future so she can both be with her husband and not burn through all of her vacation time. This should allow me to get my children's education back on track.

Helloooooo, i'm baaaaack!

It's been a long time since I blogged. A number of reasons are to blame for this. I was quite busy for a long time between November and December.  A general feeling of inertia didn't help. What to write, what to say?

Frankly, today I don't have much more to say either. For starters, let me wish all of you a wonderful New Year. May the year 2012 bring you good health, creativity, and success.

2012 will be, for us, a year which will bring many changes. My father in-law will be coming to live with us. That is a big deal. And since we cannot afford a bigger home he will be making the family room into his bedroom. I've known for over two years this was coming and for over two years now I've been telling myself not to let my imagination run wild. Try that!

We are going to try and have our children enrolled in a nearby school.  Well, nearby is relative. The school is about 12 miles away and that distance peppered by a great many red lights, and roads well attended by hungry cops waiting for anyone going even three miles over speedlimit. And  to make matters all the more challenging....school starts there at 7:30 AM! Aaaack!!!
We also don't know if that school will accept our children. We are not in their district but that public school is the only one we are willing send our children to. The three 'ifs' here are:

1. Will they accept our kids.
2. Will they work with our kids abilities rather than age.
3. Will Missy's health be able to handle it.

Our reasons for attempting school again are several. We are a self employed family. The company needs to grow in order for us to survive the economy, and in order to do that I have to be there at least 3-4 hours a day to run product development and planning. We also feel that in order for Missy to access certain academic opportunities she needs to go to a school. There is a great local private school but the tuition runs about 10K per child and we cannot afford this any longer. Bear needs more interaction with children his age and so we have decided to try this.

Frankly, I am utterly torn up about this move. I don't really want to do it, and neither does my daughter. We love homeschooling and would love to continue doing this but in our small town we simply don't seem to have the co-ops here you might find in larger cities. We are academically very focused and it appears that the primary flavors of local homeschoolers are unschooling, Waldorf oriented, or Christian based. If we had some strong local homeschool options in terms of classes, lab time etc, we would probably be more likely to continue homeschooling especially with my father in-law at home. He would be able to oversee the children doing their independent lessons while I put in my hours at the office.

One thing is certain, unless I see with absolute certainty that the kids are thriving, this experiment will be short-lived.

Both of these changes fill me with much trepidation. But there is no way out of at least one of them, and so I need to charge forward.

This is a helluva time to reduce my wine intake....

As seen on other blogs and facebook.

A great post on Pagan Household titled Death sits next to us at supper.  Thought provoking and short. The best kind of stuff.

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How True.

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Oldie but still Goldie!



Culture of Rudeness

I am fed up of rude people. Lately that includes my children (at times anyway). And I can't fault them really. They are surrounded by a culture that approves of rude behavior. Just watch a few episodes of shows on Disney Channel and your head will reel. 

Except Phineas and Ferb.
Don't knock that show. It's hilarious and I love it.

Our children are raised watching shows where exceptionally rude behaviour is met, not with shock and disdain by the audience, but with laughter.  We teach our kids that it's cool and funny to be rude, selfish, mean and dumb.

Nice.

Let's look at what we adults watch and laugh at/with. There is an abundance of shows with rude actors, reality TV stars, anchors and other TV personalities. For those of you who watched Ricky Gervais during Oscar night... were you disgusted or amused?   Be honest now.  America has become a country that lauds mediocrity, rudeness and downright insulting behavior. We confuse rudeness and maliciousness with honesty and straightforwardness.

Half the adult shows we watch are based on making fun of others, being rude and obnoxious. And we gobble it up. I notice an uptick in my children's rudeness depending on what they watch and I firmly believe that adults are just as susceptible to it.

When my son or daughter is rude or mouthy I call them on their bad behavior. Unfortunately we let adults get away with it. How often have we been faced with a rude person and said something? I bet most of us just seethe inside but keep our mouths shut.
I own a business and my staff and I have seen a considerable increase in our customers' rudeness over the years. And since we need their business we suck it up. I've even had my receptionist have to dodge a pen being thrown at her. That was you Mr. Durrant !!!!!  And guess what, we were dumb enough to let you use our services again. In fact you are a customer right now.  What kind of manners did your mother teach you? But your money is just as green and we have to pay our bills. So, we suck it up.

Entitlement Society At sometime, in the last 80 years or so, we have become increasingly demanding. The customer is king. Now, over the last few years, this entitlement notion, has been coupled with rudeness. We see it all around us. It's cool to be demanding and rude.  We often we have customers come at us with an aggressive stance regarding some demands they have. I wish they would understand that a polite and sweet demeanor would be so much more effective.  Be polite, be appreciative and you'll have a much better chance to get what you want and get it a lot faster than by being obnoxious and manipulative.  Man, I wish I could tell them that.

Internet Society The anonymity afforded us by the Internet has greatly contributed to the general tone we find among people. People are downright vicious, rude and malicious behind that perceived veil of privacy and anonymity called the Internet.

I've been accused of being rude. So has my staff. Surprisingly the people who call us rude are invariably the ones who come at us with unreasonable demands and then are surprised when we stand firmly by our policy. And I stand firmly by my staff. I've seen them stay calm and polite even when they had someone scream at them and call them names (and later complain to me that my staff had been rude to them).

I had three customers scream at me. I asked one to leave the building when she started to throw things around, denied another one service (incidentally she came back the next year much better behaved and a pleasure to deal with), and I hung up on the third. The one I hung up on called back and was incredulous.

"Did you hang up on me just now?"

"Yes, I did. And if you yell at me again I'll hang up again."

"Oh? Well, it was on a speakerphone so you probably thought I was shouting."

" No sir, you were shouting  at me and when you do that I cannot hear your words, only your voice."

Silence....

"Well, I am sorry."

" Good, apology accepted. Let's discuss this like adults now."

And we did. And it worked out so much better that way.

Being polite does not mean being a push-over, or a floor mat. I've seen parents shrug their shoulders when their little darling was rude or selfish and pass it off with a 'Oh, she's is so strong willed' or some other excuse of similar nature. We do not give our children the tools to maintain their position in an educated and polite way and so they become rude and obnoxious and we wonder what happened. 'Gee, I have no idea where he gets it from?' Have you looked in a mirror lately? Watch your kids. Our mirror is right there.

(And since we are talking about rude...when you go into a business or store and ask the employee questions could you please not talk on your cellphone at the same time and later on claim that your questions weren't properly answered?)

Taking my HEALTH for granted... a wake-up call.

I am forty-two. Yep, 42. There I said it. I am forty-two and overweight.  I was forty-one and overweight last year and this year I am forty-two and ten pounds more overweight. My yearly visit to our family doctor was a wake-up call this year. As I sat in the waiting room I observed the other patients coming in an out and what I saw was a lot of old folks with a LOT of health issues, many preventable. Like diabetes. And that, kiddos, is written in the stars for me. Diabetes is something I find on both sides of my family. Anyway, to stay on track.  As I was eventually whisked into the examination room (after the hated weigh-in) the nurse whipped out a full size piece of paper, sat down at the doctors desk and asked me for my list of medication.

'Nothing.'
'Wow, well, that makes my life easier then.'

We proceeded onto the next step, the blood pressure check.

'One-hundred-eight over sixty-six! That is marvelous'

I took that for granted. After all, I never have high blood pressure.

Eventually (and it was a looong eventually) the doctor came in and we talked. He told me that I had been gaining between eight and ten pounds every year  since he started seeing me.

What?

He also told me my cholesterol has been on the high side for the last two years, but since I don't have any other risk factors he didn't put me on statins. But now I am in my forties and that's when researchers believe plaque starts accumulating. You know, the kind of arterial plaque which sends us to the hospital or the morgue when we are in our fifties and sixties.

Gulp.

I don't want to sit every three months in a doctors waiting room when I am in my fifties or sixties. But it was clear that I would, unless I examine my life and change a few things.

'So, what do I do?'

'You are really asking me?'

'Who else should I ask? You are my doctor!'

The good doctor sat down, pulled out a calorie and weight calculator and discussed things with me and gave me some plans. He also cautioned me to go slowly and change things a little at a time rather than crash and burn.

Good advice.

So, here is:

Change #1 - Eat smaller portions.
Change #2 - Prepare snacks in controlled portion ahead of time and eat only those.

I was a skinny kid. My nickname in highschool was 'Ribs' because I was so bony. Now its more akin to 'Beluga' whale. But the problem is that my parents never stopped my snacking. I was always eating, what-ever, when-ever, where-ever. It didn't matter. If it was within reach and fit side-ways in my maw it was gone. Now I seem to gain weight reading anything printed in bold. I love to snack and it has been a life-long habit. So the smart thing here would be for me to cut down on my meal intake and have healthier snack options available rather than eat whatever the kids are eating.

It sucks and I don't like these kind of changes. But these kind of changes are probably a whole lot better than the drastic changes which would accompany a serious and long term health crisis.

I informed my husband about these changes and told him that there are two things I will not compromise on until the bitter end.

My cup of tea and two cups of coffee in the morning

and

my glass of red wine in the evening.

You can try and pry them out of my cold, stiff, and dead fingers.

Atheists are right!

Nooooot! 

A dear family friend of my parents passed away a weeks days ago. He and my mother loved to have philosophical and theological discussions. Incidentally one of my favorite discourses as well.

He was an atheist and so is my mother.

What differentiated the two of them was the fact that he would practically shove his beliefs down anyones throat. My mother is private about it. And the two of them would have the biggest squabbles about that. Her take on the whole thing was that personal beliefs are just that, personal. And whether it is a deep belief in God of what ever flavor you choose, atheism or the spaghetti monster, it isn't something that is meant to be forced upon people. She used to tell him that he was just as bad as the Jehova's witnesses and Evangelists who would come pounding on our door with regularity. His response was irate to say the least. And he could be irate at great length and with gusto.  >Grin<

I completely agreed with my mother. As much as I disliked it when complete strangers felt it necessary to try and convert me (and there was something about my mother and me that attracted religious nuts) I felt that it was just as bad when our family friend ambushed people with his particular brand of religion. It was inconsiderate and rude and for some reason atheists have lately delighted in shoving their convictions into peoples faces.

My children are raised in an agnostic home. My husband believes in God. I am purely agnostic but make sure that my children understand that this is merely my point of view and that they are welcome to build their own. I tell them about different religions and encourage them to be respectful and considerate but not ever be scared or bullied into any sort of faith or belief. I cannot stand some of the atheist activities I've been reading about over the years. What bothers me is that they can be so incredibly intolerant towards people and symbols of faith. Why do they feel so threatened I wonder? 

Do you really need to be a person of the same  faith or at least any kind of faith to reply in kind when someone wishes you something like 'God be with you?' What do you think?

A day at the Zoo!

Not many words but mostly some pictures of a recent outing/Fieldtrip to the zoo. It's a dinky little zoo but it's better than nothing. For us it was a big event as it is the first time in 5 years that we were able to go. Missy's allergies handled it fairly well with an extra Benadryl for good measure and a puff or two of the rescue inhaler.

We had no idea how windy and cold it was at the zoo and poor Bear was freezing. Missy had two layers on but Bear only one. After taking this picture it was clear we weren't going to enjoy this day with Bears teeth chattering and so we went to the souvenir shop and purchased an overpriced but warm sweatshirt hoodie for the boy.

A gibbon. We saw this chap and a black Gibbon in this enclosure.

By a large pond we saw all kinds of water fowl.

Here in the USA these fellows are a big deal, in Europe they are pretty common.

Feeding frenzy.

And this strange beastie was found petrified by the water's edge. Did Medusa get it, we wondered?

Born at the zoo, this little fellow is quite the star. It's a girl actually.

Mom and Dad keeping a close eye.

This interesting beastie is called a Rock Hyrax.

One of a pair of Fennec Foxes. Native to Northern Africa, they are the smallest foxes in the world. They live in an extremely hot and arid desert and even have fur on their paws to keep them from getting burned. Their large ears allow body heat to dissipate and keep them cooler.

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, Merry, merry king of the bush is he...

Presenting Mr. and Mrs. Hornbill

Nigel's better looking cousin.

I wuvvvv you.....

Yep, that's the spot.... thaaat's the spot, now a little to the left, my left, not your left....

Where'd she go? Where'd she go?=

Mountain goats

What is pink and has black stripes? A Zebra with sunburn, of course...

A cotton tamarin enjoying lunch.

A wallaby

Spot the red wolf.

Nagini's cousin, twice removed.

Llama at the petting zoo. Except they make sure you can't pet these cantankerous animals.

King of the jungle.