Random Collection of Thoughts

My awesome friend Christine posted this quote on facebook quite a while ago, and I saved it because it really resonated with me. 

"Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?  That's who we are!  We're not who we say we are, we're not who we want to be-- we are the sum of the influence and impact that we have, in our lives, on others."  -- Carl Sagan 

I love that so much.  I need to re-read it from time to time.

Sometimes I read obituaries or similar things where people say that the person never had a bad word to say about anyone, and it always makes me feel so bad about myself, because that will never be me. It's not that I like to badmouth everyone... more just that if someone annoys me, it's a definite possibility that I'm going to say something at some point. For the most part, I like people.  I'm easily annoyed sometimes, but I don't hold a grudge or spread untrue rumors or unfounded assumptions about people or things like that... but if for example my neighbors burn my grass and leave their garbage all over their driveway and it blows into my yard and their kids tell me that their dog got onto the counter and ate the cinnamon bread from Kneaders that I gave them for Christmas and I drive their kids home from school and sometimes go out of my way to take them when it's snowing and their mom refuses to get out of bed and drive them and they can't even say "thanks" or even "hi" and they for who-knows-why have a cooler on their porch that my kids tell me is full of spoiled milk and I come home and see that they drained it onto my grass... and then my other neighbor asks me how it is living next door to them... I'm going to say that I hate it.  I just am.   I'm not going to go out of my way looking to tell the stories to all the neighbors or call people up every time something happens, but if someone asks me about them, I will probably say something.  For example.  

Lexi:  Can I have an apple for my snack?
Me:  Sure!
Lexi:  Can I dip it in whipped cream?
Me:  No.  We don't have any, but still, no.
Lexi:  Oh, wait then.  I don't want that anymore.
Me:  Ohhhh... so you only wanted it if you could dip it in sugar?
Lexi:  Can that be a thing???

I've been doing this whole work-and-mom thing for over 21 years now, and I'm just tired.  So tired.  So. Damn.  Tired.  :::sigh:::  I hate when my kids are off track.  I wish I could enjoy the time with them.  They go back Tuesday.

Josh started with a tutor last week.  I hope it will help.  I love his tutor.  I found a parkour/free running class for him, and he's going to try a class and see if he likes it.  Will I regret this?  If he likes it, yes, I probably will.  I don't know.   He needs an activity and he can't think of anything he wants to do besides golf.  So I'm trying to come up with something indoor, and that was it.  He also wants to try a hip-hop dance class, but I can't find a good boys' class around here.

I had a debate tournament Friday and Saturday.  That always makes for a short weekend, but thankfully Monday is a holiday.

My principal called me Friday night at 9:15 all, "Sorry to call you on a Friday night..."  Um, yeah dude, I'm at a debate tournament and not going to be leaving for a few minutes yet, another hour ride home, then standing around waiting for parents to pick up their kids...  Pretty sure you're not interrupting my fun or anything.  Then he said, "Enjoy your long weekend."  Most of the time I don't mind that no one really knows what we do and when our tournaments are and how much time we spend at it in debate, and my principal is super awesome times 10 and asks me how our team is doing and he does know it's a huge time commitment... but sometimes I just sigh and think... if only people understood.  Maybe I could get paid more than $1/hour for it.  Probably not.  A former debate student from one of the other schools who now comes to tournaments to judge was saying to some of us that maybe if a former student who is now involved on the other end of things as well were to go in and talk about the time and energy involved in running a debate program, maybe they'd understand and pay us more.  Offering to go to the district and talk to them.  And we all just shook our heads.  Pay isn't decided that way, and no one cares.  Really.  My mom and I were talking about something debate-related and she said, "You need to go in and explain to them that if they want you to host a debate tournament they need to do XYZ," and I said, "They don't care.  If I don't host another tournament ever, no one would care."  We do it for these kids.  That's it, front and back, top to bottom.  It's done by us, for the kids.  When I hosted the one earlier this year, teachers be all, "What, you need to use my room?  Can't you just use a different one?"  We need 63 classrooms for this thing!  No, we can't just find another room.  We're holding debates in the Little Theater and the Foods room amongst the ovens.  The transportation department, who I'm sure has a crazy job to do, will screw up the buses sometimes, and I'm sure if there's a hierarchy of who gets a bus when there's a problem, Debate gets the shaft.  One of the high schools around here had their bus not show up, and when they called dispatch they were told that they couldn't go because there wasn't a bus for them. The coach told them... um, no.  I put in a proper request 3 weeks ago, it was approved, you're sending me a bus.  Would you tell the football team... sorry, there's no bus, guess you can't go.  He did get his bus, but he was late.

The reason my principal was calling me Friday night was to make sure I knew about a district meeting on Tuesday at 8:00.  That's a teacher prep day and I was hoping to get some actual planning done for a change, instead of dealing with bureaucratic bullshiz and other assorted crap that doesn't have anything to do with teaching, but it is probably not to be.

I didn't realize I was so ranty tonight.  What's wrong with me?

From here on out I have tournaments every weekend until the middle of March.  We have 3 more tournaments, then Region, all the National Qualifiers, and State.  Then I will need a vacation.

The Broncos won today.  Time to start planning a Super Bowl menu.   Football is the only good thing about January.  I don't know how people who don't like to watch football make it through this awful month.

Friday was the end of the term.  End of the term is craziness.  Luckily all my grading is done, except for the term paper re-do's I told the students they could drop off on Tuesday.  That won't take too long.

I have an obsession with Eric Church.  My family just rolls their eyes at me.  I will be going to see him in concert this year.  If he doesn't come here, I will be taking a road trip.

I've been shopping for land.  I found places I want in both Kentucky and Montana.  Now to just convince Sean that we should do it.  He was asking me yesterday what I would buy if I could buy anything, probably thinking I would say a KitchenAid or a new couch or clothes or a cruise... I told him that I want a house on 60 acres, a big outbuilding where I can store my '57 Corvette, 2 cows, 2 horses, 4 chickens, a tractor, a garden, a big floppy hat, a shirt with UV protectant sleeves, and a front porch with a wooden rocking chair. You think I've thought this through a little bit?  Josh said I sound like a grandma.

I never posted about Christmas because I lost my camera.  I think maybe it's at mom's house.  We had nice holidays.  Courtney and Curtis spent the night on Christmas Eve, and that was fun.  We went to Hardware Ranch the following Saturday, and that was fun too.  Pictures will be forthcoming at some point in the year.

Josh's Birthday

Josh turned ten years old last month.  How weird.  And sad.  He's getting too big.  He had a good day at school.  He said he got to stand on his desk while his class sang to him.  He chose Subway for dinner and a giant doughnut for a birthday cake.

Musing

Not a-musing... just musing.

Just another post where I talk about boring things, post weird pictures of myself, and maybe piss off people with my perhaps over simplistic take on Christianity and on politics.

Lexi was sick all weekend.  She's doing much better, but still not up to going to school, so we're home.  I tried Zofran for Lexi for the first time, and I'm not sure if I liked that.  Her doctor always gives me a prescription for it, and last week when I was in I was telling her that Lexi had gotten really sick a while back and her doctor was like, "And you handled that on your own?"  And it didn't sound like a compliment.  She was like, she probably could have used some IV fluids.  Yeah, whatever, suck it, I handled it.  I know everyone loves Primary (or as her doctor calls it, Children's) but I have had some less-than-stellar experiences there.  I hate calling the after hours diabetes nurse hotline up there, which is what you're supposed to do, and I refuse to call it anymore.  I can figure it out on my own.  If I can't, I will come in to the ER.  Anywayyyy, so I tried the Zofran, and basically it made her stop throwing up... but she still heaved and gagged.  For about 24 hours.  So I mean, it helped her to not get dehydrated or whatever, but she was still miserable until the next day when she could finally throw up again.  Anywayyyyyy.... no one cares.  But sometimes I just feel like writing about things.

I wish Brittney would ditch her stupid internship (it really, really is stupid) and come home, bearing a delicious lunch.

Two weekends ago we had a debate tournament at Ogden High.  What a beautiful school!  We didn't do spectacularly, but we did OK. It was the novices' first tournament debating against JVs, so the competition stepped up a notch. We (the former coach at my school and I) are hosting a tournament the first weekend in December, and that is quite the undertaking.  We host one of the biggest tournaments in the state, and it's talked about and looked forward to all year.  Other tournaments are compared to it.  It's crazy and it's exhausting and it's fun.  And it's just a wee bit of pressure to live up to the reputation, but since I have help from the expert, it will be fine.  In fact, that was one of my requirements if I took over the job... he had to help me host this tournament because I wasn't going to be the coach that killed it.  We only have 2 tournaments this whole month because one was rescheduled and nothing else worked out in its place, and I was feeling a bit guilty about that, but now I think it was a good thing.  Give them a little calm before the storm, because things gear up again in December and go pretty strong for a few months.

One of the joys of teaching Honors:  We are reading Julius Caesar, and one of the characters made a joke, and kids in my 6th period actually laughed!  Without me explaining that they were supposed to!  It was beautiful.

So here's something weird... I woke up a few mornings ago with scratches on my neck that I have no idea where they came from.  It was really... unsettling.  I didn't feel them at all.  I first knew they were there when I took off my bathrobe and saw them.  When I touched them they stung.  I tried to figure out if maybe I had done it in the shower somehow... but how would I scratch myself in that pattern, and how would I not feel it?  I thought maybe I did it while blow drying my hair... like maybe the brush scraped me?  But I was wearing my thick terrycloth bathrobe which has a collar, so that's two layers of terrycloth right there.

Really weird.  It's hard to tell from the pictures, but they were bright red.  Honestly, the first thing I thought is that my house is haunted by evil spirits and that I need an exorcist.  If it happens again, I'm moving.

Something I've been thinking about for a while... I guess I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a Christian, or rather, if it really means anything anymore.  How many people now days are actually followers of Christ's teachings?  Not nearly as many as claim to be Christians.  I'm not a religious person, so I'm not an expert, but I do know something about Christ.  And I listen to people every day who identify themselves as Christians say things that Christ would never condone. And do things that He would not condone.  And hold beliefs that are in direct opposition to what He taught. And I just wonder... what does it even mean anymore to be a Christian?  I think it's almost more a political ideology than it is a religion or a follower of a set of teachings.  Sometimes when people who I know to identify themselves as Christian talk about shunning certain groups of people, or mock the poor, or treat others with condescension and disrespect, or justify lying and cheating and being less than honest in business, I just want to quote The Princess Bride... You keep saying that word [Christian].  I don't think it means what you think it means.  I mean, I know that nobody's perfect.   I'm saying that I think there is a large population of people who don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about what Christ taught and what He stood for and then trying to model their lives after that as His followers.  Like, at all.

On a somewhat related note, I'm baffled by people who support things that are not in their own best interests... and then are shocked by the outcome.  I have spent so many lunch hours talking to teachers who are die hard Republicans who lament the anti-public education Republican legislators in Utah.  Yet they will still vote for them every election because they couldn't possibly vote for one of those dirty, Godless Democrat baby killers.  Right after No Child Left Behind was enacted, I was teaching special education, and the law had some unsavory implications for us.  I sat around the table with all of the other sped teachers in my school, and our department head shook her head and said, "Well, we all voted for him so I guess we can't complain."  I didn't want to be a jerk, but I wasn't going to agree with that, so I said, "Not me.  I didn't vote for that guy."  And there was silence and then we moved on.  But I've had shades of that conversation many times.  Lately it's been tea party supporters (or very conservative Republicans) who work for the federal government or have jobs dependent on federal dollars flowing into their business or the local economy.  They support people who want to shrink the federal government, yet somehow don't realize that this would... eliminate their jobs?  This last go-round with the government shut down...  All year my facebook feed contained tea party rhetoric posted by people who then turned around and lamented the government shut down.  I don't understand that!  If you support the tea party, shouldn't you be fine with a government shut down?  Shouldn't you believe that only the most essential government services should be funded anyway?  I'm so tired of people complaining about the debt, complaining about the deficit, complaining about how much the government spends, complaining about how much they pay in taxes... but then any time spending cuts are proposed that would affect them and their own livelihood, President Obama sucks and it's all his fault. That happened with the sequester.  All these people who support people like Cruz and Lee start talking about how Obama sucks for letting the sequestration budget cuts happen.  I do not get it.  Another example: before our scandal-ridden crook of an attorney general was elected, the Democrats were saying, "Hey!  This guy is not to be trusted!  He's a lobbyist for payday loan companies, which are pretty much just modern day legalized loan sharks!  Our candidate is the Weber County prosecutor!   Why would you vote for a payday loan company lobbyist for attorney general when you could vote for a good upstanding county prosecutor?"  But it didn't matter.  The Republican won in a landslide because this is Utah.  I've talked to several people since all of these scandals started coming to light who have said, "It's a shame, but there's no way we could have known he was going to turn out to be dirty."  Um, some of us had an idea. And as taxpayers, we now get to pick up the bill for a $3 million investigation of the guy, which may or may not lead to his impeachment.

Having said that, I realize that politics is complex.  Just because a person registers with a party, or votes for a candidate, it does not mean they have to agree with everything that party or candidate does.  But that's not what I'm talking about here.   I mean, I don't agree completely with any party.  I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal.  If the Republicans ran a Jon Huntsman, a fiscal conservative and businessman who doesn't seem to hate poor people and is also pro-gay rights and pro-choice... man I could totally go for that. Anyway, enough of that.

Brittney's Birthday

We needed two days to celebrate Britt's 18th birthday.  Sunday night we went out to dinner, then Monday night we had dinner at home with cupcakes and presents.  Katie and mom baked and decorated a really cute cake for her, too.  

Halloween

Carving jack-o-lanterns:

Trick-or-treating:

Song Of the Day

I need to have some non-country songs of the day, but this is my favorite song right now.  I love it.  It's been a discouraging day.  Listening to this smooths out the rough spots, just a little.

October, Redneck Style

Reading over this, I think this may be the most redneck post I've ever written.  It's got deer hunting, target practice, 4wheeler riding, moonshine, barns...  Oh well.  I like rednecks. Whatever.

We had a debate tournament two weekends ago at the University of Utah.  Over the course of Friday and Saturday, I spent about 21 hours at the University of Utah.  I  got about 3 hours of sleep Friday night before I had to be up and ready to meet the bus.  It was pretty brutal.  By the time it was all said and done, I didn't want to be a debate coach anymore.   But I recovered and am back at it.  I'm really proud of how well my students did.  Out of the 19 students I took, I think I had 12 in finalist rounds. These kids are so sharp and talented.  None of it has anything to do with me, sadly.  I love watching them develop their talents and have success.  They love it, even the ones who aren't doing so well.  They asked the other day if there are more tournaments we can go to than the 10 or whatever that are already on our calendar.  Yes, there are, but no.  Heaven help me.  One of my administrators asked me if we were doing a trip to a tournament in another state this year, and I said no, I'm too overwhelmed.  I hope the students don't hear that this is actually an option because these kids would LOVE to do that.

Today after school we had a little novice tournament in Bountiful, and it was short and sweet.  Not too bad, and the kids did pretty well. They liked the shorter rounds and getting home at a decent time.  

While I was at the UofU, Sean and Dennis took the kids on a road trip to scout out potential deer hunting areas.  They stopped here and there to get out and walk around or shoot Josh's pellet gun.  Then they stopped at Cabela's on the way home, where Josh bought a BB pistol and Lexi bought a Barbie fishing pole. She is really good at casting that sucker, too.  I didn't think a Barbie fishing pole would actually work, but I think she's going to catch a tiger muskie with that thing.

Testing out the ice fishing shacks for dad

When Lexi gets older, she is going to ask me why I never combed her hair.  In my defense, I wasn't home this day.  But in general, she hates getting her hair put into pony tails or barrettes and will only do it if I fight/cajole/bribe her.  And even then it still is just crazy looking.  Most of the time I just comb it and pray for people to not know who her mother is.

I was off work Thursday and Friday for the UEA conference, which I never attend.  Don't care.  I pay a crap ton in dues.  That's enough.  It wasn't really a vacation so much, because I spent about 12 hours+ grading papers and entering scores and other school-related business.  And then cleaned the house and grocery shopped and the usual type chores.  But I didn't have to wake up early for 4 days in a row, and any day that I don't have to wake up before 8:00 is the best day ever.

Sean took a few days off, and he and Josh and Dennis went deer hunting last weekend.  They came home with the truck and trailer in one piece, lots of crazy stories, and no dead animals.  Win!

I think riding his 4 wheeler all over the campsite was Josh's favorite part of the trip. 

In other random news:

Sean's been building a shed in the backyard, and I told him that when it's finished I'm going to use it to make moonshine in.  I'm going to turn it into a still.  He asked me if I would drink the moonshine I make.  I said probably not.  He asked me why, then, did I want to make it?  I don't really know.  It's just something I've been wanting to do for a while now.  I found a recipe for homemade rum.  It just seems like a cool science project.  I don't know.  I don't want to blow myself up, however, and I also don't want to go to jail. Perhaps I need to think this all through. Do a little research.

I'm in the mood to have a dance party. I was trying to think of a good venue, like a Footloose-style warehouse, and then I decided a barn. When we were planning Courtney's wedding we were looking for a barn. I can never find a barn when I need one. And then it hit me. I should just buy myself a barn! Then I can rent it out for weddings and dance parties and make money and get to use it whenever I want.

I have been looking for a good concert to go to, but I can't find anything I want to see/can afford.  I looked into buying some tickets to Pink, which would be totally fun, but for tickets for my girls and me it was $250. That's a little too steep for me. Maybe Joan Jett down in Wendover, I guess. She's fun, but just not really what I'm looking for.  I really, really want to see Eric Church.  Hopefully he'll come next year.

Sometimes I read what I write and decide that it's all too random and weird to publish, even on a blog that no one reads, so I delete stuff.  Today I just said screw it.  This is what I was thinking about today, unedited. Done.