Thoughts on Things

So, Syria has been in the news a lot for the past week, and while I'm not going to pretend I'm Jason and I'm overwhelmingly well versed in world politics, I have been thinking a lot about it.  That picture over there to the left?  That's Syria, taken recently and published in the Washington Post.  Seeing this made me think about how I recently watched the movie Elysium, and I was really uncomfortable when watching the conditions people were living in on Earth in the movie while the fortunate got to live on an immaculate space station.  I sat there wondering how anyone could live in the conditions shown in the movie, and I found that for that and a few other reasons, I just wanted the whole film to end.  On an intellectual level, I know people around this world already live in those conditions, and when I look at this photo of Syria, I'm brought right back to that film moment where I thought "People shouldn't let these things happen".  The sad fact is, however, that we do let these things happen.

I've been told pretty recently that I'm the sort of person who has a passion for things that most people can't understand.  I don't feel things in small, compartmentalized ways.  I can't do that.  I don't compartmentalize. I am more like this:

So when I see things like what's going on in Syria, I start to wonder why we have so much news coverage and no one is DOING anything.  In some ways, I feel like countries like the US, Canada, and most European countries are those people living on Elysium compared to what Syrians experience.  And we're all here, sitting around, drinking our lattes and bitching about how it costs so much to have your teeth professionally whitened, and these poor people are getting bombed with chemical weapons that are killing their children and we're all "Oh hey, no big deal.  They don't have oil".  And we sit around shouting that anyone would even propose the idea of a ground invasion there, or going to war with them for MURDERING INNOCENT PEOPLE WITH CHEMICAL WEAPONS.  Remember when we were all "Oh hey, we're not going to do this WWII thing because yeah....you handle that one Europe.  That Hitler guy, he's a real firecracker!" and then sat around shocked and appalled when we found out what happened to millions of Jews while we sat around doing nothing?  I'm not saying history repeats itself or anything, I'm just saying that maybe we've seen things like this before.  And don't misunderstand me, I'm not advocating for war, but I am advocating for life.  I'm advocating for some of these people to be spared the hell they've experienced at the hands of their own people, and if some other people have to get their hands dirty to help accomplish that, then maybe that's what we should be doing.  The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and all that other Star Trek stuff.

I think what struck me the other day while listening to the NBC Nightly News interview a six or seven year old boy in Syria about what happened, and how his father had to stay behind to fight with the rebels, and how he doesn't know if he'll see his father again, is how we as a society can be surprised when little boys like this grow up to be angry teenage boys with large guns and a very deep rooted hatred of others who would allow these monstrosities to happen.  We are so keen to fight these wars on terrorists, but we do nothing to fight the conditions that breed those terrorists.  I can't help but feel like if we have the ability to achieve some sort of stable environment in some of these countries with troops, and we began building more schools instead of dropping more bombs, we'd be giving these suffering children the ability to do more than be angry teenagers with guns.  We'd be giving them the keys to a different future, or at least the opportunity of hope that there could be one.  Today's kids are tomorrow's leaders, and if we keep dropping these bombs, or allowing others to drop them, we breed leaders who know no better than to drop bombs.  There's got to be a way out of the cycle, and I don't know what it is, but I wish we could all start to see that terror starts in the young, when they feel terrified and begin to turn that into anger and fight back.  

At any rate, I hope that little boy from the news broadcast finds another way and another future for himself, if he is allowed to have one while we all stand by and watch his homeland get blown to bits.

Supposed To

I don't write here often.  I look at people who have blogs who diligently keep up with posts and find something to write about, even if it's mundane, but for some reason I can't find it in me to sit down, even on a semi-weekly basis, and write something in this space.  Sometimes I wonder why that is, why I can't come up with even a few sentences to post that say "Hey, this is me".  The more I think about it, the more I remember that I used to write.  Constantly.  I had notebooks filled with stories, or poems, or ideas for things when I was in middle and high school.  I had this weird creative button that just could not be turned off.  I would sit at home tapping away at my computer every night, even after hours of theater rehearsal and homework, because there would be something in my head that just had to get out.  There was a voice that just had to be heard, thoughts and emotions that just had to be expressed, even if it was in fiction.  I had to get it out and let it live somewhere else.

And then at some point, that voice disappeared.  It went silent, and I don't hear it anymore.  Moreover, I don't hear my own voice anymore.  Not really.  Somewhere on the path to adulthood, that creative spirit, that need to JUST BE got lost.  Maybe it was crushed under the weight of responsibilities, or maybe I became cynical and decided no one listened or cared so there was no point in carrying on with something that didn't mean anything.  It didn't pay my bills, or do my homework, or get me to and from my job, or push me toward any of the goals I was supposed to have as an upstanding and productive member of society.  That little light in me just....blew out.  And I think maybe more than the creativity went with it.  More and more, I find I second guess myself on what I'm supposed to do in any given situation.  I am not supposed to get angry about some things, and I am not supposed to talk to people a certain way.  I am not supposed to talk to people about my life.  And, inevitably, whenever I do something that feels right, it is always wrong.  Never what I was supposed to do.  So at some point I stopped doing any of it.  Sometimes I find I wait for someone else to give my opinion to me, because it's probably the one I'm supposed to have.  I don't make decisions because I don't know if it's the one I'm supposed to make.  I find when I actually do express a true thought or opinion to anyone, inevitably it leads to disagreement and I end up feeling like I'm wrong and I should have just listened to what I was supposed to do.  I share myself, and people almost always leave.  So I don't do that.  I actually started slowly deleting that "self" piece, and soaking up the supposed to from everyone else.  And when I stray from the supposed to, I hear things like "We will NEVER be on the same page about anything" and I stat thinking that there is something wrong with me, that I can't come up with the supposed to on my own.  In so many ways, it would be easier.  It would be easier and nicer to just have those closest to me tell me what to think and feel, so I could never be wrong.  It hurts to be wrong.  It hurts to know that the way you handle something is all wrong, or how you talk to someone is all wrong, or how you think is all wrong.  It would be so much easier if I could just know what I'm supposed to be doing.

The truth is, I feel like a lot of different people have this vision of my particular supposed to, which I'm sort of afraid is nothing like me, and I have so little self left that I'm afraid to give it up.  I'm often told I'm impossible to please, which I guess I'm not supposed to be.  From my perspective, I have high standards.  I admit that.  I expect a lot, but I also give a  lot and hold myself to the same standards as everyone else.  If that makes me somehow impossible to please, all I hear is that I'm supposed to lower the standards so everyone else can do less.  I don't want to do that, but it's what I'm supposed to do to keep people happy.  It's one of the few pieces of myself that I have left, and I feel like I'm supposed to give it up.  Maybe I am.

But I have a hard time writing here because I don't know what I'm supposed to write.  What do people actually want to hear from me?  What the hell do I have to say that is worth reading?  What voice is there in me that anyone gives a damn about?  What am I supposed to do here?

Milestones in May

The month of May seems to always be busy.  In addition to nature pulling out all of the stops to send everything into bloom, and send us out to mow our yard potentially more than once a week, May is full of holidays and events.  On top of Mother's day, we have my mother's birthday (often falling on the same day as Mother's Day), my birthday, and our anniversary all within a week or so of each other.  This year Jason and celebrated 8 years of marriage.  I'm not sure it really feels like a big celebration after 8 years.  Mostly it just feels like a day where we are still married, but we manage to escape the house and go out to dinner alone.  We're not big on extravagant celebrations.  I think both of us try to appreciate the every day stuff, so the huge celebrations don't tend to be a necessity.  Sometimes it's nice to just have some time alone.  As strange as it seems, we don't get a lot of that.  Even if we're alone in a room, we're almost never alone in the house, so being able to get out and spend time together is nice.  Sometimes little things mean a lot.

In reality, Jason and I will have been together for 15 years this November, and what I've discovered in that time is that things will almost always change.  Jobs, priorities, housing situations, family, friends, ideals, pretty much everything.  Chances are you will go through periods where you make each other crazy, you will go through periods where you question whether you're drifting apart, you will go through periods where you think life cannot possibly get any more challenging, and periods where you think that every choice or move you are making is wrong.  Then there will be periods where you feel like everything is going so well that you can't possibly get any better.  The thing is, even in those dark periods, which may have nothing to do with your relationship at all, if you can find yourself still wanting to go home to your spouse at the end of the day and tell them everything, you're succeeding.  I find that even after 15 years, and even after an awful fight the night before, all I want in the morning is to wake up next to Jason and start again.  Even if the day brings more arguments because I'm a cranky bitch and he's about as stubborn as they come, he's still the person I'd want to be arguing with.  Even the struggle, as annoying as it is, is worth having if you want to move forward.  All I know is that at the end of every day, the thing I want most is to talk to Jason.  I want to go to bed next to him, and I want to talk about the day.  I want him to talk to me.  In the end, that's probably all that matters.  I just hope that as the years go, we can hold onto that, even if everything else around us changes.  I hope that some day, when he's totally gray, and I'm beginning to shrink and look more like a man than he does, we are happily walking around, hand in hand like those old people up there in the photo.  I hope that in another 15 years, all we want at the end of the day is to come home to each other.  That's all that will matter.

Sometimes I Hate Doctors

We like to talk a lot about healthcare and healthcare reform in this country, but this week I've realized that maybe we need a medical system overhaul while we're at it.  I went to my doctor to talk about how I've been getting headaches pretty consistently for the past year.  Most of the time it's a tension headache, which doesn't really worry me.  I know it's directly related to the fact that I carry all of my stress and tension in my shoulders and neck.  I can almost directly trace the headache from the back of my head, down my neck and into my shoulders.  It sucks, but it's not anything that has me horribly concerned.  It's the other headaches I get that have me a bit worried.  They're not regular run of the mill headaches.  They're headaches that localize themselves in one spot at the back of my head.  It's always the same spot, and the pain is always intense.  There's pressure, my left eye starts getting funny and seeing spots, I feel nauseated from the vision problems and the pain, and they don't go away for 3 or 4 days.  Nothing helps.  Advil doesn't help, sleep doesn't help.  Nothing improves the situation.  It goes away gradually after a few days, but still, really annoying.  It worries me mostly because it's always localized in one spot, and also because if I were to bump my head in that particular spot it hurts more than if I were to bump my head in any other area.  Even when I don't have a headache.  That's reason for concern, right?

So I go to talk to a doctor about it.  I end up seeing this guy in my medical practice that I've never seen before.  I start explaining what happens and he proceeds to NOT LISTEN TO A DAMN THING I SAID.  He kept focusing on the tension headaches at first, and I kept saying I didn't worry about those, they were just annoying.  Then as soon as I said I had a family history of migraines, he just jumped to "Oh then you're getting migraines".  No, I'm not.  I've never had problems with migraines or even gotten a migraine.  I have localized headaches that cause pressure in my skull and sensitivity in the area that the headaches appear.  That's not a migraine.  But he didn't listen.  Then he informed me that he is a "professional drug dealer" so he could put me on a variety of drugs to solve the issue, but never one talked to me about what might be causing them.  When I said I didn't want pills, I wanted to figure out why I was getting these sort of headaches all of the sudden, he got weird and asked if I had expectations that he would just send me for a CAT Scan.  I said I expected that someone more educated on the subject than I am would tell me if it was necessary to get any sort of scan.  I wanted him to tell me if I should even be worried in the first place.  I said I wanted to figure out why this started happening so suddenly, and so frequently.  He said "Well why does your mom get migraines?  We don't know.  We can't know those kinds of things".  Thanks a ton, doctor asshat.  He then offered to prescribe for me the following:

• Anti-Depressants
• Beta Blockers
• Blood thinners
• Imitrex
• Muscle relaxers

All because I said I get headaches more often than I think I should.  I'm not sure why I needed to walk around with that list of drugs in my system for a headache problem that I only came in to ask whether I should be worried.  I have no idea why he was so quick to just pull out the prescription pad and pump me full of enough chemicals to keep Pfizer in business for years.  Beyond that, why can't we talk through finding the root cause of something like this instead of just jumping on the pharmaceutical bandwagon?  He seemed annoyed that I refused all of the medications, as if I wasn't allowing him to do his job.  I don't want to have a "quick fix".  I wanted someone to listen to what I had to say, tell me if it was worth any measure of concern, and then allow me to decide how I wanted to combat the problem.  This guy just wanted to make some pharmaceutical rep really happy.

In the end I accepted the muscle relaxers, since they were on an "as needed" schedule for medication, and I know I have muscle tension problems, but I refused everything else.  I have taken one pill so far, and have decided I don't think I want to take more since they left me feeling groggy and light headed.  I also woke up with a headache.  Funny how it wasn't solved simply by popping a pill.  Shocking.

The System Is Down

One of the things about suddenly having a teenager in our care is that we have been given new insight into her education.  One of our biggest focuses since becoming fake parents has been her academic performance and getting her accepted to college.  In general, this is easy.  She's a good student, she's responsible, and she wants to go to college as much as we want her to go to college, so it's not like we're sitting around pushing her like crazy to do the things she's supposed to do.  What isn't easy is hearing about the state of the education she's currently receiving.  After seeing some of the assignments she brings home, and hearing about what goes on in her classrooms, I'm suddenly not surprised that her school is on a list of Persistently Low Achieving schools in the state.  We have a kid who is considered high achieving.  She doesn't pad her schedule with a lot of blow off classes.  She loaded her senior year with chemistry, calculus, a fourth year of French, and what is supposed to be a "college level" English class.  She's trying to push herself in difficult subjects, but what I'm observing is that her subjects aren't difficult.  As far as I can tell, her calculus class is the only one that involves comprehensive teaching.  Her assignments are challenging, her teacher is dedicated and each lesson takes up the entire class period.  He stays after to tutor students, and has been known to show up to study sessions the students have planned together in the evenings at the library.  Beyond that, I'm not sure what the rest of the classes are teaching her.  While her chemistry class is nowhere near the challenge I got when I took chemistry in high school from a teacher who was tapped to teach nuclear chemistry for the Navy and turned it down, there at least seems to be a lesson system in place.  I do think the teacher is more focused on making sure all the kids pass her class rather than putting an actual challenge in front of them, so the assignments are soft balled, but maybe that's the environment we have created in this world where teachers may be evaluated based on the success of students.

When talking to Jasmine about her previous history classes, she has openly admitted that she doesn't really remember much of her US or World history lessons, because they were handed a bunch of work sheets and told to fill them out, turn them in, and that was pretty much it.  Busy work that required absolutely no critical thought at all.  It's possible that she's learned more history from talking to Jason about world events than she ever did in her classroom.  Same with her health and sex ed classes.  When I found out how those were taught, I was horrified.  I'm suddenly no longer shocked by the teen pregnancy rate.  Then there are her English and Literature classes.  This year she is preparing for college, and her English class is being taught in a way that makes me wonder if I should bother sending her to sixth hour or if I should just write lessons at home and teach her myself.  She said that on a day to day basis, they do worksheets, and they take quizzes that test nothing of their reading comprehension.  They are asked questions like "What color shirt was Harvey wearing in chapter 3?"  That tests nothing aside from whether they read the chapter.  Right now they are reading "All Quiet on the Western Front" and I asked if they discussed the part where the Paul goes home on leave from his time on the front, and he has a hard time re-acclimating to the world he once knew, because the war has already changed him.  Her response was "We don't talk about the book.  We just do worksheets".  WHAT IS SHE LEARNING?!  Nothing!  She's learning nothing.  This is supposed to be a college level course, but answers to quizzes are only considered "complete" if they contain 5 sentences, and the teacher counts the number of periods in each answer.  If you can give a comprehensive and well thought out answer in 3 complete sentences, you have not followed the directions and will be marked down.  Additionally, when the kids are given writing assignments, they are not given a page limit, or a word count limit, they are told that their paper must be 8 paragraphs consisting of at least 5 sentences each.  Again, periods will be counted.  So, you might be able to write a really good paper in 6 or 7 paragraphs, but you have to throw in a BS paragraph to meet the requirements.  Plus, I'm not sure what the heck they've got to write about since there is nothing discussed in class.  No themes, no comparisons made, nothing.  Just worksheet testing basic low level knowledge, and nothing else.  Why should she even go to class?  All she's being taught is to read at the surface level so she can answer stupid questions about the color of a person's shirt, not to actually understand the book, or understand the importance of the literature.  This is doing her no favors, since in college she will be expected to be able to make these connections and she's had no teaching on how to do it.  I'm appalled, just as I was appalled at how little she retained from her history classes since they were never expected to discuss any of what they learned.  There's no scaffolding, there's no building on earlier lessons.  There's just a day in, day out routine of "Did you read this?" that they follow.  It's a waste of time.  It's not an education.  There is nothing that challenges any of the students and then the teacher is blown away that they have no dedication to class, or any interest in what they're supposed to be learning.

Then she tells me that he hands out assignments with comments like "Most of you might want to consider taking credit recovery while taking this class, since you have no hope of passing", or makes allusions to how stupid all of the students are while he's giving directions.  Things like "You have to laminate your poster.  I'm sure most of you won't because you can't understand or follow directions".  What is that teaching these kids?  For kids who are already struggling, it teaches them that there's no reason for them to continue trying.  For kids who are generally good students, it leaves them bored and uninterested in class.  But to demean students openly in front of their peers as a way of shaming them into motivation, that's just unacceptable.  It's a horrible practice, and it accomplishes nothing.  It's amazing that he's been teaching for 15+ years and he's never discovered that this tactic does nothing to improve student performance.  What has me more upset is that HE HAS BEEN TEACHING FOR 15+ YEARS AND NO ONE HAS STOPPED THIS BEHAVIOR.  I understand that it's a challenging district to teach in, but for goodness sakes, someone needs to do better.  I'm just so disgusted.

Then I start thinking about whether we should tie teacher pay to student achievement, and while I am against that practice in general, I wonder if these teachers my kid is suffering under would step it up if it meant they might lose pay.  Or maybe her school is just fundamentally damaged, and they need to purge and start over.  I just find myself worrying about what college will look like for her, since high school is literally teaching her nothing.  I also wonder if the principal, superintendent and school board know this is what's going on in her classroom.  Having dealt with this particular school a lot in recent years, the frightening thing is that I'm not sure they care.  I think they protect their own at all costs, even when the teachers clearly do not deserve protection.  And where are the parents?  Why aren't they beating down the doors to the superintendent's office and demanding better for their kids?  How is this allowed to continue, year after year, without someone saying that there has to be a change?  Shouldn't the school care that their students are getting more comprehensive lessons on literature from Youtube than they are from their teachers?  I know they are, because I've heard what's happening in their classes and pointed them to full lessons on Youtube for the books they are reading, and I've had students tell me they wrote papers based on that Youtube lesson because it taught more in 5 minutes than their class did in 3 weeks.  I feel like someone at the top should care, and should be removing people who can't teach a better lesson than Youtube could.  The whole thing makes me sick.

Writing Prompts: Part 2

So the last writing prompt I did was kind of fun, and I decided that I'd work my way through the list for a little while, just picking the ones that I liked the most rather than trying to write one entry for every prompt on the list.  Not everything is going to jump out at me and spawn some sort of idea, so why beat my head against a wall to write something against a prompt that I don't find inspiring?  I guess that could be part of the challenge, but I'm just doing this to remind myself that I can write when inspired, and sometimes it's not total crap.  Plus, it's mostly for fun.  So I'm going to take the same approach each time.  Pick a prompt, write what comes to mind and then publish without re-reading or editing.  If I ever want to use it for something, I can go back and edit, but I tend to over-think when I write so it's best to just send it out there raw and untouched at first.  So there it is.

Today's prompt: The garden was overgrown now.

The garden was overgrown now, untended by anything but nature and time.  Its paver paths, once maintained in such a meticulous manner that a blade of grass would not dare grow too close to their boundaries, were now overrun by moss, grass and debris.  Looking at it struck me as a metaphor for the lives of those who once spent their time here.  When we stop showing love to the things we care about, they quickly become unkempt and show signs of neglect.  I sat on a wrought iron bench, my toes scuffing the edge of the path, clearing away a fraction of the moss to reveal smooth stone beneath.  My fingers brushed the soft petals of a wildflower that had pushed its way through the intricate curlicues of the seat as it pushed its way skyward, seeking to gain more affection from the sun than its fellow flowers.  Maybe I was the wildflower.  The strong survive when they are willing to push themselves skyward despite the iron hard obstacles.  I laughed at myself and my newfound philosophical nature.  Maybe sometimes a flower is just a fucking flower, and I'm just myself.

The last time I was in that garden, I was fourteen.  It was summer, but the curtain of oppressive heat never fell that year, and we found even midday outdoors to be perfectly enjoyable.  The entire estate was manicured perfectly, not a flower out of place, not a weed to be seen, not a blade of grass too long.  It was fragrant, with bees humming occasionally nearby as the sun filtered through the trees to dapple the lawn below.  Everything was exactly as my grandmother mandated it should be, perfection even under her sharp scrutiny.  My grandmother never could tolerate anything but perfection, as I was all too well aware.  I would not have been surprised if she lined up the bees each morning and dictated to them which flowers they should and should not visit as they set out to work that day.  She was from another time, when the perfection of a garden reflected so much more than the ability to hire a skilled gardener. She clung to her traditions and sense of normalcy with fierce determination as the world around her refused to heed her commands to remain familiar.  Each summer I spent with her was like a walk through the past, where I could easily imagine my mother's childhood.  Nothing changed, not here.  It did change, though, eventually.  When the money was gone, and the despair set in, the change became inevitable.  The staff were let go one by one, though the gardener was the last to go.  Then there was nothing.  No more parties.  No more entertainments.  No more pristine paths to wander in the afternoon hours.  All that was left was a shell of an estate, and the shells of those who had once been so happy in it.  A graveyard of dreams, that's what this garden had become.  And yet, there were still flowers who pushed forward, determined to carry on.

Ran of of steam.  That's all you get.

Fun With Writing Prompts

I thought it might be fun to write something creative instead of whining on and on about my life and what a mess I am on any given day.  You know, break things up a bit.  Whining peppered with moderately bad creative writing for flavor.  So I looked up some writing prompts, because I always seem to get stuck coming up with ideas, and then I get stuck when it comes to structuring a plot.  Then I get stuck when it comes to actually writing an adequate ending.  But the point is, start somewhere, so I found some writing prompts here and decided to pick the one that jumped out at me the most when I glanced through the list.  So, here it goes:

#3.  The city burned, fire lighting up the night sky.

The city burned, fire lighting up the night sky.  The smoke choked the air as the sky turned red, reflecting the death and destruction below it.  Screams of pain, fear, and panic could scarcely be heard over the roar of the flames, and most of the time the smoke smothered the screaming before it had run its course.  That's where I found myself, staring in a daze at the chaos around me, unsure of how I got there or where I was to go next.  All I could see was flame, and soon the human noises were dissipating and being drown out by the groan of buildings struggling to hold their form against forces stronger than themselves.  I felt like one of those buildings.  I felt like I was struggling to hold myself together while the world had been wrecked and was attempting to tear me apart.  I staggered forward.  One step, I kept telling myself.  One step, start there.  Then another.  Soon my feet were listening to me and the dislodged gears of my mind were beginning to fit together again, whirring me back to life and to action.  It was an explosion, the memory moving from a fuzzy shadow to a sharp focus.  An explosion that lit the sky on fire before the city ever ignited.  Larger than a bomb, or at least I assumed it was, having never experienced a bomb before.  That's when I noticed the smell.  Mixed in with the smoke and flames, there was something acrid.  Something chemical that was burning my eyes and throat as I forced myself to continue breathing, fighting the urge to choke against the burning I felt in my lungs each time I forced in another gasp.  I kept moving, I don't know where I was going, but I had to keep moving.  I had to move away from the twisted metal, from the growing flames, and if I kept moving then maybe I could move far enough away from my fear as well.  That's when I realized that I was the only person moving.  Anyone who could run must have done it already, because all around me there was only death, and the wounded waiting to die.  I kept moving.  I don't know how long I stumbled through the streets, meeting no one, seeing not one friendly face to help me, and I began to realize that maybe there was no one left.  By dawn, I had reached a large expanse of open space that had been a park only hours before.  As the sun rose, I sat on the curb, watching ash rain down around me.  There was an eerie peace to it.  The soft, gentle fall of ash against a city that was just beginning to fall silent.  I sat there, letting the ash fall all around me, watching the sun rise slowly over the horizon.  I think a piece of me hoped that the new day would somehow erase the terrors of the night, and that everything would be over.  I never realized it was just beginning.  I was six years old.


So that's it.  That's what I came up with.   I haven't read it over, I literally just typed it and hit publish (this is an amendment from after publishing it, though I still haven't re-read it) so there are no edits, no polish.  Just my first instincts as I started writing.  I don't know if it's any good, but writing it felt good.