False accusations made of eight year old girls...

The health aide marched up to me during my lunch hour. She handed me a memo.

"student came to the nursing office before lunch crying, with her friend. Her friend stated during recess four eight year old girls(names listed) wrapped a rope around the girls necked and choked her.

Checked her neck and saw no marks. Asked student if she wanted to remain in the nurses office and she said she wanted to go to lunch."

Four of my third grade students were listed.

The Vice principal trailed behind her.

"Your kids are out of control, her tone accusingly dangerous.

"I read the statement", I replied.

"I don't believe this for a minute. I know these girls and they are some of my best kids. They would never do this."

"I don't want your kids outside for recess, they are out of control.", she stated.

"Not a problem, I told her, if you don't mind my not doing my duty outside I will keep them inside."

I asked the girls about it and they were mortified. In tears.

"That never happened, said one.

"We were playing jumprope and she fell", stated another.

"We would never hurt her", another tearfully replied.

Later in the day the child in question admitted that is exactly what happened and no one tried to choke her.

But it is in writing, in someone's file.

And this old lady does not like that one bit. Those kinds of dangerous accusations can follow a kid through all the years of school and it better not.

I sent an e-mail expressing my concerns that such an accusation was documented before the truth was even ferreted out. I want that memo trashed, and any one who has a copy to return it.

My girls are owed a big fat apology and this kind of garbage needs to stop.

Not one of my students have been written up or sent to the office this year. Not one.

This place needs to get it's act together. School records are dangerous weapons in the wrong hands.

And sadly, we have too many wrong hands in education administration.

Fate: When you draw the horrible mommy card...

We don't get to choose the women who give us birth. I am not so sure I would have done such a good job of that if I could have preplanned my own entry into this world..

Face it, not all moms can love their kids, and usually those same moms have difficulty loving any person. I've ruminated over this throughout my years-from various angles and come to some conclusions. We can't really see the entire picture until we are adults. Even then, sometimes the trauma is too much to dispel the longing and those rigidly held myths that "moms are supposed to"...to what?

Turning trauma into understanding is what prompted my desire to become a practicing therapist for the past twenty years. It takes work and courage to acknowledge pain and the aftermath. Which is for eternity-( don't kid yourself it never disappears-)and if you are lucky it settles into an understanding, tinged with sadness, hopefully compassion. If you are very lucky an integration into your soul and very fiber which allows for loving relationships in the future, healthy ones-well, sort of, for the most part.

This is for all of you (-birth to those final breathing moments) who wander( bewildered, with a swiss cheese like ego) the universe, celebrating Mother's Day in some form 0f bittersweet, sadly, still confused or just resigned state.

No one wrote a recipe for Motherhood. Most women do their best and with as little scarring as possible, send their kids off to adulthood with mostly healthy skills.

Somewhere between Sybil's mother and June Cleaver, we survive our mothers.

My mother sent me an e-mail today. We don't usually maintain contact. It wasn't an argument, or a final say on my part that led to this vague separation. It was easy to just kind of trail off because my mom spent her life allowing relationships to trail off. Nothing had to be said.

I think I first realized she had her own problems when she spent eight months in bed. My father was a brutal man to all of us and she must have been depressed. I grew up quickly. For whatever reasons she spent her lifetime trying to disengage from the six children she had. At age 8 she told me she didn't believe we needed her anymore. That to six children under the age of nine. She married four times. She left each child behind in a ritual of anger-at times leaving us to fend for ourselves for months on end while she paid the rent on the house and gave us money for groceries. Kicking us out long before age 16, she did it for her husbands. Until no child was left. She proceeded to have two more children while I was having my first and left them behind at ages seven and five.

The list in my head continues-she was a lousy cook! Terrible housekeeper! Her method of dealing with her kids? Denigrating, jeering and taunting. Conflict? Slapping, name calling and her famous, silent treatment for days on end-which resulted in everyone of us, I think, on our knees begging for acknowledgement, something carried into adulthood for many of my sisters and brothers.

How did we grow up? Almost all successful-lousy marriages-relating with intimacy was such a mystery-we didn't even know it existed. I think we all thought every relationship was adversarial-until most of us got it right or recognized it would never be that way .

The most important lesson I learned over the years?

Don't waste a minute of precious time on the past. Not that it isn't a part of us but the joy that is in the world if one chooses to find it, live it and celebrate it is free! We are only prisoners in our minds -if we choose it.

I once saw a cartoon showing a man with a huge sack over his shoulder stuck in a doorway. He couldn't fit the bag through the door. When asked were he was going he yelled, "The future!"

The label on the sack? "The past".

I remind myself of that cartoon when I find myself trying to drag that old stuff into the future with me.

The greatest beauty of adulthood??

You get to choose! Yes! You get to eat dessert first, put your feet on the coffee table-or dining room table if you want! Go for it! You get to decide where and how you want to live.

Most importantly-you get to decide your own fate-not your parents.

Lousy parents give us a precious gift. A window into what we do not want to be, live or become. Most people don't get that glimpse and those, I think, become most like their parents. And bless you if you had great parents-we need more of you!

But us? We get to be more!!

We get to be ourselves. Because we learned to become discernible at a young age. We get to pass on the importance of relationships to our children. We have the gift of knowing love is never something to be taken for granted. Knowing how precious love, support, approval and encouragement is for children, we have the honor of bestowing it all on our children.

Such richness is for sultans-and we have it!!

Most importantly?

We know better.

Appreciate your teachers, lunkheads...

It's teacher appreciation week you lazy, bland, uninterested adults. Try and show it.

Greedy old white men.....

Enron, payday loans, Bush administration, Halliburton, mortgage brokers, student loan corporations, credit card companies, oil companies, utility companies, Banks, ...see any correlations here?

Greed. Short term gains for long term falls.

Another permission slip from our current administration to rape the people who live here.

Have you noticed the more anonymous we become in this huge overpopulated world the less we count?

What do we do about it?

Ignore it.

Millions of people cannot collectively throw these assholes out the door .

Overpopulation should sure count for something.

Like rats in an overcrowded cage. Killing each other instead of solving the problem.

Tut Tut Tut

What math do you really need to know???

Does math really hurt?

I pondered this as I drove to work this morning. My students and I worked two weeks understanding and exploring equal and mixed fractions. One of my kids actually stated, "This hurts my brain!"

Understanding fractions is an important skill. We use fractions in all kinds of daily thought-money exchange-figuring out all those 10 for a dollar-figuring out how much your mortgage is in proportion to monthly income.

What do we really need, I asked myself? Do we need to know the standard two years of algebra now required of most freshmen? Do we need to understand geometry and calculus-to get by in daily life?

We used to offer courses in consumer math. We covered balancing a checkbook developing a budget, writing checks, figuring taxes, bookkeeping-understanding division and multiplication in the context of daily life.

I sure don't remember what algebra skills had to be used-although I can understand the importance of geometry, area and perimeter. How will understanding various angles help unless one is planning some kind of project?

It is those elite educated who develop a curriculum -needless and not essential for survival-we have too many computer skills and technologies available to do our work for us-teach students how to access those..

I remember studying for my private pilots license and without calculator, having to figure weight and balance of the aircraft, fuel projections based on mileage, wind speed and direction. Now computer models take care of all of it. I remember having to do the work of the now standard GPS .

Perhaps I might need to know some of this in an emergency-but that is what landings are for..

I believe high standards are important-I do-I also believe that elitist ideals do not help the average worker survive day to day life. Ask any English lit major who works at McDonald's or sells insurance how much that degree helped..

Spring-the fickle bitch

The desert doesn't hold a candle to the beauty and scent of the lilac. There is something heady about them. A scent creating a longing like vanilla, apples and cinnamon and fresh baked bread. If you are from the Midwest you know what ई'm saying. Spring is such a fickle visitor with a cruel sense of humor. No one in the Midwest should ever trust her. She breaks your heart every time...

Another Pissed Off Old Lady diatribe

I am going to start dressing my pissed off old lady self in commando garb. This sweet old lady shit is nauseous stereotypical bullshit that we should not have to resort to -to spend our money or receive the services anyone under the age of fifty easily receives as courtesy.

I do not believe sucking up is ever the way to accomplish anything interesting, unique or competent. Why, then, does this seem to be the natural inclination of those with little experience in the world?

Think about it. Our fears since 9-11 have transformed us into a bunch of "get by" cowards. We indoctrinate our children into a mode of never questioning authority and then we have blatant- absurdly blatant abuses of power by our own government. We are so afraid of the "public" meaning "us"such that our avoidance creates isolated, twisted individuals, who can exist in a void -a void we create by ignoring antisocial and bizarre behaviors. We tolerate mediocrity by accepting less than stellar services from our government and private enterprises. We give away our money to huge profiteer oil companies by keeping our mouths shut. We criticize those who question. Is this not one of the scariest times in our history aside from the paranoid Nixon administration?

Get a backbone, my beloved nation, get a backbone and stop this slide into the slimy abyss we have created , devoid of our Constitutional beliefs and all we have fought for.