Mood:  irritated

It's so often the rule of thumb:  It only takes a few to ruin it for everyone.  Too true.  And when it comes to kids, it only takes one.  Well, sort of.  It's been said to take a village.

Today the blond kids and I headed to a small riverside beach along the Chippewa River.  It's not a fancy beach by a long shot, with maybe three square feet of actual sand on top of an old boat ramp, but there's a sandbar allowing for lots of wading. 

Now, back up a sec:  Last week we went to same beach, and Tobey was beside himself that the family next to us had the foresight to pack toy trucks.  Really, it was brilliant; to a little boy, toy trucks are just the ticket at any scene, including one of water and especially one with sand (albeit not much).  But, being the attending parent that I am, I made sure Tobey stayed out of the other kids' toys.  Two-year-olds tend to have this thing about sharing:  They don't want to, plain and simple.  Out of fairness to the other patrons and their ears, I diverted Tobey's attention as often as it took to keep him playing peacefully and minding his own biz.  Good Mommy.  (And, honestly, Bad Mommy:  Last week's trip was riddled with Audrey pushing my buttons and receiving her due course of yelling.)

This week, I packed trucks.  And boats.  And floatie toys and pails and snacks and towels and mermaid Barbies and the iPod and also water guns.  We were pumped!  To the beach!  Whee!

We got there - this was a Tuesday afternoon, mind you - and had plenty of company.  We hauled our boon to the shore and unfurled our blanket...to find the place literally covered in cigarette butts.  People, it's not enough that we have to breathe their air in bars, smell their dirty scent, and put up with their driving up the costs of health care, but we also have to touch their butts?  Eewww.  Disgusting habit, I'm sorry, but it's my blog and that's my opinion.

Second, we had no sooner cleared the cig butts and put our blanket down than some rogue kid came schlepping up and RIFLING THROUGH *OUR* beach bag.  Um, excuse me?  Parents?  They may have been present, but they sure as heck weren't attending.  The boy then began to talk, broken English through bad teeth, with questions of the "what did you bring that for?" variety.  Hmm, let's see, I brought my kids to the beach because they were DRIVING ME NUTS AT HOME, and now I'm answering the pointless questions of a child not my own?  I probably don't even need to tell you that the kid was vying for our covey of toys, our snacks, and any attention he could get.  I probably don't have to tell you, either, that my nerves weren't up for it.  As politely as I could muster (through, you know, clenched teeth) I offered that maybe it was in poor manners to dig through other people's stuff, and that my kids just got here so could they please play with their stuff for a while, and anyway I'm going to tune you out now with my iPod.  Any idiot could've read "Scram, kid" all over that.  We had, however, a non-hint-taker. 

When it became apparent that no one was supervising him, let alone playing with him, I began to ask questions of the "and how long have you been here today" kind.  And it became obvious that the adults in charge of him were the ones dropping cigarette butts, as they sat afar and drank beer and played fetch with their dog.  Dear Readers, the dog was getting played with.  The kid, not so much.  So we come now to the part where I shamelessly let my guard down and hand the kid anything he wanted. 

Which was amply taken, and more requested.  Give an inch...take a mile.  That sort of thing.  Which is only tolerable until we get to the part about my having a two-year-old who isn't allowed to play with other kids' trucks.  Because of the sharing thing.  And so, sadly, the kids and I really had little choice but to pack up and leave, or else subject the entire sun-worshipping lot to howls and flying sand.

Dear Readers, if you happen to be a parent or child care giver, please listen:  Attend to your children, even in public and even when it isn't convenient.  They are not the rest of the world's problem, and leaving them to be is just begging for hurt.  Maybe it does take a village, but I've seen enough village idiots to know that's not a sure plan.  And, teach them manners.  Do unto others and the like.  Really.  Not eveyone thinks your kid is all that cute, especially when some of us happen to be at wit's end with our own kids (whose cuteness is all that's saving them sometimes).  It's simple:  Manners.  Attention.  Voila.

How preachy of me?  Tough shit.  You may complain when it's my butts you're stepping on.

Posted by Amy at 6:11 PM CDT

Updated: 7 August 2007 6:14 PM CDT

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Mood:  accident prone

That I have an on-line blog may seem like nothing to you savvy folk out there.  For me, it's not so much the blog that's the problem as the on-line.  Because it implies that I must use my computer.  My computer, for what it's worth, is a 2004 model, which puts it roughly 3.5 years behind the times.  Not only that, but it's a Gateway.  Dear Readers, do people even still buy Gateways?  I didn't think so.  I'd probably be better off blogging on an abacus.

Which means every time I sit down with a thought-nugget for The Blond Kid Chronicle, by the time my computer actually quits churning enough to present the web browser, I've long since lost interest.  Probably poetic justice, considering the number of times I've handed my readers the opportunity to lose interest.  But STILL.

Right now, in another window (I know; that's just begging for trouble) I am trying to download the travel brochure off Wisconsin's tourism web site.  It's an 84-page booklet in vivid color photography.  Every time I scroll down, poor Cretaceous Gateway has to download some more.  Dear Readers, my grandmother moves faster than this.  She died two years ago. 

This brings me to my statement (finally, I know):  My computer has become so depended upon, so overused that it is almost unusable.  It is the paradox of technology:  Just when we think we couldn't live without it, we're proven horribly wrong.  Just look at VHS, at word processors, at dirigibles.  I know, then, that something better will come along - to some extent it has: iPods, mobile phones, even laptop computers are pushing that edge already.  And so I will wait.

Unfortunately, experience mandates that when something better does come along, it remains too expensive for me to afford it.  That is, until it has been proven both too popular...and too fallible.  On second thought, I'll just keep the Cretaceous Gateway and invest in a good stress ball.

Posted by Amy at 1:14 PM CDT

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Mood:  don't ask

It began like most camping trips do: everyone in high spirits, excited for a little R&R and family together time. 

It ended with serious thoughts of selling our camper.

We camped in conjunction with friends, another family with two young children.  It had the promise of a lot of fun; the kids had playmates and we had drinking partners.  Our plans went seriously awry.

Friday.  We should have seen the omen:  The highway leading to our campground was closed for construction.  Now what?  We followed the suggested detour to discover it was leading us far, far away from the campground.  After a phone call to the KOA office, we were told to take the closed road anyway.  So we headed back to the closed highway, a thwarted detour that nearly doubled our entire drive time and naturally doubled the amount of stops our excited kids needed to take, and steered our camper down a one-lane dirt road, dodging oncoming traffic and serious mud puddles.  Not a calming experience.  Once there, we were directed to a campsite the size of a postage stamp.  Everywhere we looked, there were dogs.  The camper next to us (a whopping three feet from our window) played non-stop polka music at full volume on their stereo.

But, you know, the evening did settle down, and we had a good time around the fire.  In other words, we were still caught unawares.

Saturday.  Rain.  Wet, drizzly, permeating humidity in the morning followed by downpours all afternoon.  It was impossible to get warm; despite our propane-supplied furnace, the very dewy dampness left all feeling chilled and soggy.  We gave up on our attempts to warm ourselves by the fire ring when a gust of wind sent a waterfall gush over the awning, flooding the s'mores and pretty much snuffing our spirits.  With nothing to do but hole up in the moist air of the camper, by 4:30 we were all venturing back down the dirt road for a warm, dry restaurant. 

Sunday.  One by one, every adult in our party came down with the flu.  I was the last to fall.  This meant that by the time I was weakening with nausea, everyone else had long since gone to bed.  With four little ones to consider (the fifth was blissfully napping), I had the pleasure of roasting hot dogs over a camp fire while turning several shades of green.  I should also mention that our camper does not have any plumbing.  There's nothing like the urgent need to hurl in the middle of the night, delayed by locating one's shoes, coat, and flashlight to dash across the campground to the public facilities.  I also found out that I have a curious case of stage fright; unable to puke in a busy restroom, I'd lock myself in my stall and pretty much do an autistic sway until I'd heard the door bang for the last time and the place grow quiet.  Talk about torture.  We should've all packed up and left early, but who had the strength? 

Good things came of the trip, too; while all the adults were down and out, after an invigorating swim in the "heated" 58-degree swimming pool I took all the kids on the free wagon ride the campground was putting on for the holiday weekend.  It really was pretty fun.  There was this jumping pillow - a cross between a trampoline and a bouncy house - that kept the kids worn out.  I broke out of my comfort zone by taking the kids fishing sans Jason.  Luckily, they didn't catch anything.  The worm I can handle; removing the fish I wasn't too sure of.  And I had a good reminder that mind over matter really does work; after all, I cooked hot dogs while coming down with the flu.

But let me tell you this, Dear Readers:  It will be a long, long time before I ever want another s'more.

Posted by Amy at 9:27 AM CDT

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Mood:  sad

The truth is, I don't want the details.

The Virginia Tech massacre is a difficult thing to ignore, but ignoring it I am.  Well.  More like avoiding it.  Despite what's populating my daily reading of the New York Times, despite the images popping up even on the main page of my hotmail account, despite the concerned discussions happening among my own friends, I've turned away.  It's not that I don't care.  No, it's that I can't bear to care anymore.  My heart has been on its way toward breaking for this world anyway - what with its wars and selfish greed and environmental slaughter - and enough is enough.  I'm on overload, at the tipping point.

So I have managed to completely tune out this whole news story.  I've chosen to not read the articles, learn the names of victims or shooter, or ponder why.  Here's the deal:  Without reading a word, I can guess that: 1) the shooter was pretty fucked up with anger and the usual suspect emotions; 2) there are lots of the usual outcries from the usual crowds; and 3) the news is having a hey-day, speculating things from mental illness to TV violence to ordinary odds (the population is bound to rear an occasional loon or two, right?).  Someone's going to play the "up the security!" card.  Someone's going to memorialize a so-called martyr among the victims.  Someone's going to create a controversy.

It's just so....been done.

Wow.  Now, that is a new low, is it not?  We as a nation of crime and angst have just entered the era in which we are so desensitized to the violent tendencies in our midst that, my goodness, not even a devastating, bullet-showering event?  Can stir much more in me.  Dear Readers, there's just not much more stirring necessary when everything seems already so mixed up.

And so this is what I'm going to walk away with, having not read or viewed a thing on this story:  The knowledge that our world (or just country?  How would I know?) is so out of control, so deep in its own taking-itself-too-seriously depression that I give up on taking it so damn seriously.  My actions, my philosophies, my moods absolutely must remain the same as they were the day before.  Why?  Because to do otherwise would be paranoia.  To do otherwise would be to mark another tally on the side of Evil Wins.  You know what?  Screw Evil.  And that, in my opinion, is really all there is left to say.

Posted by Amy at 10:08 PM CDT

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Mood:  incredulous

It's the classic kid mentality:  You're losing the game, so you change the rules.  But that's when one of two things is supposed to happen: 1) Your parents slap your wrist, or 2) Your friends quit playing with you.

Since the government is slow in imposing penalties, I guess we'll just have to quit playing.

In the last three days I've come across two different articles running the same theme: screwing the consumer.  The first, a report titled Aged, Frail and Denied Care by Their Insurers by Charles Duhigg of The New York Times shed light on a growing problem that many of us already found frustrating: the unwillingness of insurance companies to pay claims.  Do we not all have a horror story that starts with a necessary trip to the doctor and ends with us staring at a monstrous bill stamped "DENIED" by the trusted insurance company?

What the article specifically laid bare was the elderly being sucker-punched by their insurance companies.  Duhigg cited companies like Conseco, Penn Treaty American, Bankers Life Casualty (which is owned by Conseco), and others as offering a policy to an aging person, and then when it came time for that person to need it, they didn't pay out. 

Examples:  The insurer will send the wrong paperwork, and then deny claims because the proper paperwork wasn't presented.  The insurer will deny claims on the basis that they haven't received documents which aren't necessary as stated in the contract anyway.  The insurer will decide that the patient's care isn't necessary, despite doctors' urgings that it certainly is.  The insurer will deny a claim, stating the insuree "waited too long" - even though the patient submitted the claim within the stated time frame.  They deny claims based on terms that aren't stated in the policy.

Said a former National Association of Insurance Commissioners senior exec, in interview with Duhigg, “The bottom line is that insurance companies make money when they don’t pay claims. They’ll do anything to avoid paying, because if they wait long enough, they know the policyholders will die.”

Said a second interviewee, Conseco and Bankers Life “made it so hard to make a claim that people either died or gave up” (Betty J. Hobel, a former Bankers Life agent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa).

In the 1990's door-to-door insurance salesmen were selling long-term policies by the droves; their particular targets were those approaching their golden years.  Then it became apparent that these companies had underestimated the life spans of their policy holder - many of whom were expensive Alzheimer's or diabetes patients.  The insurers were at risk of losing money; in fact, Conseco threatened to go bankrupt.  They raised their prices, but it became clear that the most direct way to keep their money was to not give out as paid claims.  Learning that presenting obstacles not only slowed the entitled persons down but often stopped them, they set up corporate processes designed to make people want to give up.  Conseco actually forbade company employees from calling each other about pending claims; this meant that each inquiry by the insuree was the equivalent of starting over.  Claims were purposely "forgotten" for weeks at a time, or lost. 

It doesn't take a sharp nose to smell this rat, and certainly lawsuits have popped up.  But how many elderly persons can afford the gamble of a lawsuit?  This is exactly what companies like Conseco are banking on.

Cell phone companies have found profit in similar loopholes.  According to Pioneer Press's Debra O'Connor in her article "Horror!  Won't someone save me from my cell?!" I'm not the only one (by a long shot) who has found frustration in the shifting fine print of cell phone contracts.  Numerous interviews exemplified difficulties in maintaining the promised monthly bill amount, blocking third-party expenses such as unwanted text messaging, and misrepresented service areas.  For our household, it was getting the damn thing cancelled.

In August 2006, Jason and I opened our Cellular One bill to discover a mysterious "late" fee.  Not only had we paid our bill consistently on time, but we had it from the bank that the checks had all cleared.  We informed Cellular One of the mistake.  They said:  Prove it.  So prove it we did, with faxed statements straight from our bank. 

The following month, we opened our Cellular One bill.  The late fee was still there, and now they were getting threatening about it.  We informed them of the mistake.  They said:  Prove it.  (With a sigh I ask you, do you see where this is going?)  Reminding them that we already did prove it, they said they never received any such faxed documents.  This time our bank faxed the photocopy of the cancelled check AND called them to verify receipt.  Got it, said they.

So imagine our frustration when our service was interrupted.  And our account not credited on time.  Oh, but you see, said the Cellular One rep, it took time to process.  It always does amuse me how companies have the luxury of time when it comes to money owed, but we consumers have no such luxury or illusion thereof.

Our contract with Cellular One was due to expire on October 31, 2006.  We delightfully informed them, 30 days prior to E Day as required, that we were dropping them forevermore.  But the 31st is in the middle of your billing cycle, said they.  You'll have to pay the prorated amount from Oct 22 to Oct 31.  Anything to get rid of you, said us.  And I wrote down the amount the Cellular One rep told me would appear on our last and final statement in November.

But the November statement came, and it was considerably more money than the estimate.  That was only a guess, said they.  The rep got out her calculator and got it down to the cent, said us.  Too bad, said they.  We're not paying beyond the estimate, said us.  You'll hear from our collection agency, said they.  Damn you all to heck! said us.

Then the DECEMBER GODDAM STATEMENT arrived in the mail.  One month's full billed amount.  Payment due upon receipt.  Excuse me? said us.  We're cancelled.  We threw the phone in a drawer; it hasn't been used.  This is bullshit.  The bill is necessary.  It takes 60 days for your cancellation to go into effect.  You have to pay it.  Then after your cancellation has been processed we will refund you.

What we said is not printable.

In January 2007 we received our credit from Cellular One.  In February 2007 we received a bill from Cellular One for the amount of $0.00.  Let's see, October was HOW MANY MONTHS AGO?

It turns out, according to O'Connor, that the cell phone industry is just loaded with these pranks.  All designed to do one thing:  Rob you blind.  There was one customer who canceled his contract at the specified time and got dinged with a $450 termination fee, because he had unknowingly renewed his contract upon accepting a lower fee/more minutes solicitation in months prior.  No one disclosed to him that his contract was extended.

Dear Readers, would you like to know what legislation is doing about these bullies?  Not enough.  For one thing, the lawsuits brought against these companies are settled with the stipulation of confidentiality.  They are paying extra for silence.  Additionally, says Duhigg in regards to the insurance companies, state governments aren't investigating.  Why is this?  Do officials not recognize that these denied claims result in reliance on tax-paid Medicaid?  As for the cell companies, Minnesota (the state in which O'Connor was reporting) is considering a consumer protection bill.  However, new legislation is expected to be rebuked by the concept that state-to-state government differences will send cell phone costs up.  Oh, also they don't think there are that many problems.

So, Dear Readers, we go back to my original statement:  In an unfair game of shifting rules, the parent can either slap wrists (not happening) or the cheaters can find themselves playing alone.  Herein is your challenge:  If you have your own blog, please tell your own insurance or cell phone horror story.  List the name of the offending company.  If you'd like, tag your post link here under the comments.  For those without blogs, write your story write here under the comments.  (Um, here's the part where I have to tell you that the comments don't work for everyone - thank you, Tripod - and, I'm told, it has to do with your "browser.")

The fact that come Friday my Comments will still read zero doesn't daunt me (I'm a realist), but the point is this:  We can only get revenge by standing together.  Write like the wind, Dear Readers.  Get your message out.

Posted by Amy at 9:38 AM CDT

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Mood:  a-ok

The conclusion to the Hot Dog Incident came Friday afternoon with yet another phone call from the lunchroom teacher.  In response to the note I'd sent along with Hunter's parent-signed pink card, the school marm fell all over herself in apology. 

The teacher apologized for the alarming phone call.  She apologized for calling it a sad event; she claimed that those words came from the fact that Hunter was upset.  Nevermind that Hunter was upset for being humiliated, but we were still getting somewhere.  The teacher apologized for the taboo she placed on the word "penis" and agreed whole-heartedly with our correct terminology.  She claimed that in similar incidents with other children, the sight of "penis" on the pink card sent their parents into orbit.  Her remarks were little short of congratulatory that we are raising our kids to speak unabashedly about their anatomy.  (It's amusing that she still couldn't really bring herself to say "penis," but she agreed with our saying it.)

And she even started going too far by reducing Hunter's guilt in the tacky display.  There were other boys around egging him on, if not enacting the joke themselves; Hunter, the poor dear, was unlucky enough to be caught.  Oh no, I caught myself saying.  I don't care if the Pope was egging him on; he needed to keep himself in check.  Why is it, Dear Readers, that the point is so often nearly lost in such exchanges?

A line from a Charlie Brown movie keeps popping up in mind - the one that quietly tries to analyze, in 2D cartoon, the events at Omaha Beach on D-Day while maintaining a gentile, watercolor aspect for the child audience.  That line is:  What have we learned here?

It's a bit obscure to put the Hot Dog Incident in the same frame of thought as the Peanuts recalling the storming of the beach (which in itself is oddly obscure), but perhaps the message isn't all that dissimilar:  When it comes to people, the fine line between sensitive discomposure and declared conflict is at once fuzzy and shifting.  No event happens to just one person; no moment or act within can stand alone.  What may be a third-grade guffaw to one person may be a huge embarassment (however removed) to another.

What may be the winning of a battle to some, may be the creation (or recreation) of a ghost to another.

But it isn't Normandy, or Iwo Jima, or Iraq that brought the fourth grade teacher's voice to my ear three times in one week:  It was a little boy, discovering the joy of making others laugh, while simulataneously learning that sometimes, to some people, the joke isn't funny. 

And, maybe a little bit, that Mom's your biggest fan.  No harm in that?

Posted by Amy at 10:08 AM CDT

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Mood:  loud

In the end, I couldn't sit on my hands.  Having myself sunk to the over-zealous stirring up of things trivial, I couldn't let the Hot Dog Incident rest as it was.  Initially, handing out an overreaction to an overreaction held me back.  We've all seen the newspaper articles in which one small grain of sand in the shell of an uncomely school-child exchange festered into an unswallowable pearl of he-said-she-said, he-did-they-did. 

What drove me to ultimately pick up my pen was, in all probability, ego - Hunter's and mine.  I can admit to the thrill of intimidating others with a canny flourish of ten-dollar words, of blinding the enemy with Confucious-like philosophies and liberal arts candor.  But mostly (I'd like to think) it boiled down to the question:  If I'm not the advocate for my child, then who is?

The counterattack that resulted was impassionately concise, horribly Anglican.  The temptation to draw conclusions of presidential-hearing/generation X/doctrine-bashing proportions was strong, but phrases like "Kenneth Starr" and "school marms" just don't belong on the same page.  That it would have soared over the teacher's head was both an enticement and a determent. 

What was sent along with the pink card* was, thus, a sheet of notebook paper on which was the message:

I'm not sure which was the most distasteful: Hunter's behavior which unquestionably earned him the pink card, the phone call to home with the preface of a "sad event"; by the time the hot dog joke was revealed I was nothing but relieved; or the blatant omission of the word "penis."

From there I said that the school was the first to offer Hunter the notion that the correct terminology we'd taught him from birth carried shame.  I rhetorically asked if the language surrounding the lewd act was part of the crime, or just the lewd act itself.

Worth mentioning is that I never showed the note to Hunter; it was slipped into his folder among all the other parent-to-teacher communications.  Not wanting to convey the message that he was the victim (what first-born child doesn't love to play the role of victim?), my Kenneth Starr vs. Bill Clinton thoughts had me remembering that, though Mr. Starr was over-the-top in his passionate allegations, Bill Clinton really did wag his wiener from Little Rock to D.C. - though on a much larger, more impacting screen.  (The Hot Dog Incident still, to me, comes down to Hunter being a typical 9-year-old.  President Clinton can hide behind no such excuse.)

My sincere hope is that I won't get any response at all (see: sand/pearl reference).  But it sure felt good to stand tall between Hunter and the school marm.

*Cards are used at the kids' school as measures of character (God, I presume?):  Blue cards are used for acknowledging positive character traits, pink cards for the upsets.  I won't even comment about the pink/bad, blue/good gender connotations.

Posted by Amy at 10:33 AM CDT

Updated: 23 March 2007 11:01 AM CDT

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Mood:  irritated

Ironically, or maybe just innocently, it was because the Pastor was here that I didn't initially get the call:  With the phone blissfully on Do Not Disturb, I was concentrating on the walls of Nehemiah while my son was simulataneously seeking the sound of my voice, and fearing for it.

The call at 2:30, however, brought me up to speed.  I recognized the number on the caller ID as the school's and thought "stomach ache."  The voice on the other end was not the nurse I've come to know on a first-name basis; it was a fourth grade teacher speaking so quickly and vehemently that it took me three attempts to ask her to address herself.  She had called to report a "sad event" (her words) regarding Hunter, a hot dog, and a tacky lunch room scene.  Being a third grader in every sense of the word, of course when Hunter's lunch fell in his lap it became the source of a joke.  (I very nearly said "butt" of a joke, but it isn't really the backside being spotlighted here.)  Clearly, the lunchroom teacher wasn't laughing.

I'm raising a boy.  Two, to be exact, and the most brusque little princess known to feminism.  Antics like this, my goodness; my reaction to the teacher's tirade was utter relief.  No one was maimed, murdered, or even bruised.  So a wiener was seen as a wiener; what else is new?  When she led up to "and he used his hot dog as a..." I beat her to the punch with Well of course he did.

Being the mom that I am, I listened with a growing sense of momma bear grrr as the teacher explained her disgust.  It absolutely defined ill behavior, sure.  He shouldn't have done it, absolutely.  But.  Suddenly the Hot Dog Incident started to stink.

For one thing, the teacher could not bring herself to say penis.  If I hadn't have interrupted with "Well of course he did," I would've caught on to this sooner.  It was for all intents and purposes labeled a body part.

Second, THEY CALLED ME AT HOME under the premise of a "sad incident."  They scared the holy crap out of me!  OVER A HOT DOG!  Welcome to the toilet-bound humor of a 9-year-old.  As if they didn't know about this phase in a school with 75 other 9-year-olds?  Undoubtedly, Hunter is the first to express his immature mockery of the male anatomy.

Third, and this is the important one:  Hunter is humiliated.  I know this, and he isn't even home yet.  Because upon checking my cell phone, I discovered a voicemail message bearing the heated voice of the same lunchroom attendant, followed by the beaten-down voice of a little boy whose dignity had been stripped, standing there in confession in front of school office grown-ups who were seething at the very essence of his 9-year-old gutter-stricken mind.

When what I smelled became vile stink, though, was when I heard his choked-up voice telling me, in the words fed him by the teacher, "..and I used the hot dog as my...(pregnant pause here)...body part."  The boy that has referred to his entire physical being with the clinical correctness of a county coroner has been reduced to believing that the mere mention of a penis is a sin.

This.  PISSES.  Me.  Off.  (No pun intended whatsoever.)

In the course of trying to curb what I consider the real crime - bad table manners - the school authorities, in their grandiose overreactions, have taught my son that his behavior is nothing in comparison with the acknowledged, albeit distastefully represented, existence of his penis.  Do I agree with him waving a hot dog at below-waist level?  No.  Do I think he was sexually harassing his classmates?  Um, no.  Do I think the teacher had a bigger problem with the lone imitation of a penis (by a hot dog!  What do you think a boiled school-grade wiener looks like?) than with the pencils Hunter's classmate has been stealing from him all year?  Bingo.

There is certainly a part of me that sees in this incident the hint of a young Clarence Thomas.  Did Anita Hill overreact?  I don't think so.  But her hearing did not take place in a third grade lunchroom, either.  While the teachable moment in Hunter's misdeed could very appropriately be the respect of those around him, including the future women in the lunch room, I'm afraid instead he has learned that, as a young boy in a school full of female adults, he had better blend in with the female adults.

My reaction to Hunter is thus:  Undeniable pity.  Heartfelt compassion.  And the understanding that we need to work on those table manners.

My reaction to the school will be, embarassingly, nothing.  What good will it do to suggest a less institutionalized response to the upholders of an institution?  But it is, perhaps, the very conventionalism behind their reactions that puts the mustiness in this stink.

Posted by Amy at 3:38 PM CDT

Updated: 22 March 2007 3:47 PM CDT

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Mood:  chillin'

Who opened the deep freeze?  This morning we woke up to -22 degree temps, a severe wind chill advisory, and schools closing all over the county. 

Which means:  1) All the kids are home; 2) It's too cold to go anywhere; 3) 2) My sanity will be nill by noon.

That Hunter is currently trying to teach Audrey to play Chess indicates that they have lost their sanity already.  If you count backwards from 10, when you get to one you will practically hear the fight break out from wherever you are.

WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE TURN OFF THE ANNOYING PBS PROGRAM WITH THE MAN DRAWING STORY ILLUSTRATIONS. 

This day has bad news written all over it.  All we need now is a diphteria outbreak. 

Posted by Amy at 9:17 AM CST

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Mood:  d'oh

Chewbacca is not a jerk.  But his costumed impersonator is.  The Chewie-garbed man charged with harassing Hollywood tourists and one guide could either stand to take a chill pill, or step up to some community service in Kashyyyk or something.

(It reads like the opening of a bar joke:  Superman, Elmo, and Chewbacca walked up to a group of Japanese tourists... Can anyone really expect it to end well?)

Last night Jason and I watched the latest Harrison Ford movie ("Firewall").  Good movie.  But I kept looking at Mr. Ford's wrinkly face and picturing the young, rebellious Han Solo superimposed there.  I thought of all the "Firewall" actors whose credits read something like "Bank Employee #2" realizing they were in the presence of a member of the original "Star Wars" cast.  How do you top putting "Star Wars" on your resume?  You don't.

And yet, Chewbacca.  DUDE.  Even if you're not Peter Mayhew.  If you don the Wookiee suit, you have to respect your inner Wookiee.  You owe it to yourself.  You owe it to, well, Harrison.  Not to mention the rest of us.

Whatever the outcome, it begs the question:  What do you get when you cross a Wookie with a Hollywood tour guide?

No really.  I dare you to answer that.

Posted by Amy at 9:34 PM CST

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