School Districts' HR Policies Suck

One of my co-workers needs an organ transplant. She's been on the list for years, and previous to that time has had to take sick days for her congenital illness. I'm leaving out specifics for privacy.

She told me today that not only does she no longer have sick days, but that though our district has what's called a "Sick Bank" where you can get extra days when other people donate them, she may not use any more because of the arbitrary number allowed in something called a "lifetime benefit."

 HR has told her that it creates too much of a "tax problem" if other teachers, friends of hers, were to donate days so that she doesn't get docked. This woman is wearing medical monitoring equipment to school. I don't even know what to say.

I have to do something about this. I'm going to do something about this. I don't know what, but with all the activism in the air, I can't not.

Teachers, Unprofessional Whiners

So a someone came by to vent about something I wrote in 2005. And I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but this is for 6thand6, I'm going to take it point by point.

"It is my opinion that teachers are the most unprofessional of all of the professions."

Yep, your opinion and you're entitled to it. You'd be ignorant and wrong, but that never stopped someone on the internet.

More about this, if you're so inclined, after the jump.

NaNoWriMo

Am I a writer? I used to think so. I wrote 50,000 (not very good) words for NaNoWriMo in 2004.

I am not working. I am not writing. It's a balmy 80 degrees outside and I sit inside, unable to work on my current project or to come up with an idea for a new one.

I've written approximately 600 words for NaNoWriMo since the 1st of November. I feel like someone looked at me and said that I HAVE to write, and my response to that is the perverse impulse to do the opposite.

I told my father once that I never thought of myself as ambitious. He then proceeded to tell me the story of my efforts to get a teaching degree. The way he told it, I had ambition when it mattered. I wish that I could talk to him, if only to have him remind me of the way he saw me.

Would I be able to push myself to write things were my dad around to encourage me? Maybe. He and my mother seemed to like reading some of my writing.

I am having an extended self-pity party, brought on by my perceived inability to write anything non-derivative. On the project before this one, I found myself copying the opening sequence of another author's story without knowing it. Though being ten years younger, female and a different nationality might have imparted some difference in approach.

If I had any ability to follow through on goals (other than that one time), I might make some. As it is, I just want to not be a teacher until I retire. That's a goal, I guess.

Irony, It Does not Translate

So, in 2006 I had this idea to post something about how I believed that my mother had been a good mother and taught me to do things for myself. I was reacting to an eight year old boy who ruled his house instead of the adults in it.

Since then, I keep getting comments, almost always from "Anonymous" about how I should be grateful for what I had because their mom really was a selfish bitch or they didn't even have a mom so I should just shut the fuck up.

Except for this person:
"I took your writing for what it was. A bit sarcastic. A bit ironic. A bit humorous. A piece of your childhood and how you developed because of it."


Thank you AnonymousJuly27, for getting it. It made me smile, and also reminded me why I used to blog more, this feeling that I could write things that would connect with people.


In contrast, the next AnonymousAugust18 didn't get my point. Look at the subject and verb choices. They are feeling pain but at first distancing themselves from it.


From  "lifelong struggles [of] adult children", "they do better than anyone else out there " to the slightly more personal  "many of us have no idea what that is like" and "Denial and dishonest lacking authenticity and we are so done with that bullshit." 


It makes me wonder why so many people read what I wrote and feel the need to tell me, and the whole other three people who still read this blog, why my life didn't really suck and theirs did. My life did not suck, and I did not say in the post that it did. I have to agree with AnonymousJuly27, that it is one-upsmanship. Perhaps not consciously, because obviously these people feel real pain and maybe they're trying to work through it or let someone know how truly awful they feel about it. 


I have thought about changing the title of the post, and that then the comments about abuse and mistreatment might stop. But I realized today that I don't want to do that, and I will never consider deleting the post or changing the title of it again. "My Mother was a Selfish Bitch" made me feel better, and if it can make other people feel better by being able to comment on my life or their own lives, that's useful, regardless of my original intent for the piece.

Ladybrains, Tee Hee!

"We are no fan. . . of contemporary commercial YA; but we are not fucking dumb enough to argue that the problem is vagina."

"In the pink floral recesses of our tiny girlbrain, we seem to remember being told once that when a person makes his point using Studies, it is often helpful to use Actual Citations; otherwise he sort of sounds like he is Making Up a Lot of Shit. We would be especially interested to see the Study linking Joanne Rowling's choice of pen name to Biology. But what do we know about science! Tee hee!!!!!!"

I'm so Booooooored!

That going to Wikipedia and hitting the random article button seems more interesting than anything else I could do right now.

Can you tell that school's out?

Why the Arts Matter

"In a country built upon innovation, where we pride ourselves on pushing the next wave of global development, why are we so uninterested in creativity? Why don’t we fight tooth and nail to keep the great bastions of our history of our creativity alive and funding and staffed to the hilt? We are so cavalier with culture, so flippant about art and art education, I fear that it will slip through the sieve of time without our noticing its loss till it’s too late."

Testing in Texas

"Texas paid $90,665,041 to a company called Pearson on standardized student assessment for the 2010-2011 school year alone. The same site reported when the Texas Education Agency renewed its contract with Pearson for 2010-2015 to develop the new STAAR test, it was to the tune of $468,392,617, Duncan said."

I think I might move to Austin and see if I can work for Pearson. I could probably figure out a way to split $90 million dollars. And $468 million is only $93 million per year. Wait, that's an increase. Maybe they forgot to check the Greensheet.

I guess that state acted preemptively to get that figure locked in, right? Good on them for going for the bargain. I bet they brought in their best lawyers to negotiate that contract.

I bring this up because we're doing field testing for the new test at my school. Which is all online. But we don't really have enough computers for it. And, they're kicking me out of my room to put computers in it for testing.

Next year, the new state test will occur in the same two week period as AP testing. So apparently the TEA called the College Board and asked them to change the dates of AP testing. I think I cried when one of the administrators told me that. I would have LOVED to have heard that conversation.

Surprise! There is such a thing as:

Rabbit showjumping.
You're welcome.

I Am a "greedy, chalk-dusted succubus."

Jon Stewart has me pegged. I have nothing else to add.

Car Trouble

Seven am.
Walgreens.
Bought Coke.
Car died.
No phone.
Ask clerk.
Call friend.
Picked up.
School starts.
Tow truck.
School ends.
Ride home.
Money please.

Reading Time

At the high school where I teach, we have a daily reading time. Research suggests that kids who have the opportunity to read each day will do better in school, on tests, one of those things, I forget. Probably tests, because tests? My life.

I've been reading a book out loud to my students and trying to do voices. I'm not that good at it, but I'm trying. One of them told me the other day that she liked the voices that I did, that it helped her to tell the characters apart.

I got to the end of the book yesterday, the climax of this story, and had only two pages of the book left. So I start reading the two pages, and the lead character has to say goodbye to the people with whom he's lived and the place where he's spent his childhood, and I had a hard time reading the words.

I started to get choked up, and cry a little. My voice would not come out right, no matter how hard I concentrated on not sounding sad. And those kids? Those high school kids that apparently I as a teacher (or so the news says) am failing? Those kids looked at me and didn't laugh. They didn't look uncomfortably away.

They shared with me the names of stories that made them cry, telling me that I wasn't alone. And then they asked me to start reading them another book.

Vampire Diaries

I find that I can't stop watching Vampire Diaries. And not just because he's so pretty.

It's also got more plot in one episode than many shows have in a whole season. People die, new people come on. It's got a revolving door, except for the core cast. Though, at least two people I thought would last for a while didn't. In a 'omigod did that person really just die?' kind of way. This week UPN is playing the first part of this season, and though I have seen them already and plenty to do, I'm watching a lot of it. I'm a TV junkie. But I also bake.

Captain Trips

So, I've got Captain Trips. I may be exaggerating.  I feel like I'm not exaggerating, because I took two *gasp* days off from school. Not consecutive days, mind you, because that would be madness! And I've already used two boxes of tissues. I called my sister to tell her that I'm dying, and her response was NOT "You're not dying, you just can't think of anything good to do." I'm so disappointed in her for not giving the right response. To be fair, she's kind of sick too.

I've been in bed for the last few days and now I'm looking for stuff to do that doesn't involve watching the idiots on the TV news talk about how much I care about the deficit. Honestly, I could give a crap how much money we owe right now if it means that people who don't have jobs won't get either jobs or unemployment. But the boredom led me to my other email accounts.

 I started this blog in June of 2004. That's six and a half years ago. Then I look at the number of posts this year and that's only five. Most of those in January. In the process of looking for something in my email, I went to my stat counter and found that I still get visitors. Most of those visitors go to one of two posts: My Mother was a Selfish Bitch or Teachers Get Paid Too Much. The Teachers post is number two on Bing search. That's where all the traffic originates.

Sometimes I think about deleting it all. That thought passes swiftly. But recently I've been using a site called 750 Words, and it reminds me how I used to write for fun, not because "exams are due and that essay question doesn't capture  the essence of what they should know." If you haven't seen it before, 750 Words is based on the idea of Morning Pages, from the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. At the beginning of your day, you are supposed to write three pages of stream of consciousness. Ms. Cameron specifies long hand, but I don't think that's necessary. The amazing thing about 750 Words is that you get all sorts of data from this, and can even create your own metadata.  I am completely fascinated.

Here's a screenshot from today:

It's too late to join the challenge for December, but I'm trying it, and I wrote for half of the days in November. I've already got four days in a row for December. It's funny, I like the little badges you get for completing things, and I want more of them. If I complete the challenge for December, I plan to donate some money to the site. If it's not PayPal.

Now I just have to remember that this blog exists. But don't get your hopes up.

Possible Book Titles

After not finishing National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November and wondering why none of my stories seem to have a sense of humor, I've decided to write some story titles.  I saw a title for this book yesterday called "Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse" and thought it was great and funny, so I tried to come up with some of my own.

Here are a few:
I Was a Fury - My Life as an Avenging Goddess
Teddy Bear Massacre
The Fates Take a Vacation - How to Survive Having No Destiny
Sibyl Uncensored - Teenage Prophet Tells All
Gingerbread Corpses
Pixie Dusted  - How a Faerie Princess Got Clean
Cyclops Eyeglasses
How to Adopt a Fury

So far Pixie Dusted is my favorite.

Hiding

Maybe if I crawl under the covers.
Maybe if I stay off the computer.
Maybe if I don't answer the phone.
Maybe if I don't make any phone calls.
Maybe if I go to sleep.
Maybe if I concentrate hard enough I can go back in time.
Maybe.

Maybe then I won't have to hear the bad news.  That will mean it didn't happen, that will mean everything's fine, that will mean I can get in my car and go over to my dad's house and he will be there, reading the newspaper.  That will mean he's not in the hospital on a respirator, fighting to stay alive, through pneumonia, through pulmonary emboli, through the cancer.

My Dad is Ill

So you might know my mom died in June of 2007.

It seems my dad is having some problems too. About a month and a half ago he stopped going to the movies with us every Sunday. Then he wouldn't go to lunch either. He showed us his leg, which had swollen to twice its normal size. We tried to get him to the doctor and he said sure, but didn't make an appointment.

Then about two weeks after that I noticed that he seemed yellow. I told him so and he called me crazy. I asked my siblings to look. Brad said he didn't see it, but Jenny went and saw him the day after that and she said she saw it too. We finally convinced him to go to the doctor after he stopped leaving the house to go grocery shopping and was calling us to bring him food.

Jenny took him to his regular doctor that he's been seeing since his stroke last March. ( I don't remember if I've written about that before. Dad was walking funny and holding his arm weird and told us he'd fallen down in the garage. We thought that maybe he'd cracked a rib. Turns out he'd had a stroke and didn't go to the doctor for almost 10 days after. I spent most of Spring Break taking him to different doctor's appointments.)

Anyway, all the doctor did was give him a diuretic for the swelling in his legs, but nothing about being YELLOW, almost like an Oompa Loompa. When I went to check on him after, he yelled at me for telling him that he needed a second opinion and more tests, but I convinced him to see another doctor. I made an appointment with a geriatric doctor. What I didn't know is that he had stopped moving almost entirely and also wasn't eating. Plus still yellow.

On Friday December 18th, Jenny called me at work to tell me that Dad had called Brad at their house and said, "I think you should take me to the hospital." I got the message during my conference period and called Jenny back, but she didn't have any information. I called Brad, but Jenny answered his cell phone because he'd left it at home. So I called the first hospital I could think of, and they only transferred my call three times before I got someone who could tell me that Yes, my dad had been admitted, but No, they had not done any tests yet.

I stayed at work until the end of the day and left right after and got to the hospital around 3:15. Brad was on his way out to go home and shower, but Jenny and Chloe were in the room with him. The doctors gave him antibiotics and I think some glucose, and said they were going to run some tests. They've done a bunch of tests. He's still in the hospital and they still don't really know what's wrong. Fortunately, they did correct the narrowing in his bile duct that caused the yellow. Unfortunately, they think he has lung cancer, but none of the tests have shown cancer, but they still think that he has cancer. Yay, medicine.

He's down in the rehab wing of the hospital, getting PT and Occupational Therapy too, but he's not eating and he doesn't seem to be interested in much. He won't eat the hospital food because he says it's crap, so we've been buying him things like organic soups and such. He doesn't seem to like that either, but he made some new demands yesterday for chicken, egg and tuna salad sandwiches and fruit. We'll see.

Stay tuned, and tomorrow I'll tell you what happened when Jenny fired Dad's doctor.

Total Dork

Look what I got for Christmas:

And, it came with the doll I mean action figure below:

My brother rocks. I've been wanting to watch the miniseries over again, but I may have to use it as a reward to get some of my work done that I need to finish by Monday.

Happy New Year 2010

I suck at resolutions, and I'm not so good at goal setting.  I've put together goals of all kinds in the last few years, following very few of them to their conclusion, even if I wrote them down.

But.  I have been missing blogging.  I miss the people that I met while blogging.  Unfortunately, every time I start to compose a post, I re-read it and decide that it's crap.  I have no idea where this fear originated, but it's got to go.  Fuck that noise.  So if I have one non-resolution, one non-goal, it's to start blogging again.  I'm not going to make any promises about how often or how long the posts will be, but I'm going to blog again, for me and perhaps my two favorite readers (and honestly better writers than me) because I miss it.

So, Happy 2010 to everyone (both of you), and though posting has been sporadic to say the least, I'm glad that I can say that I've been blogging since 2004 and I don't intend to quit.

Serious Things

A woman in Raleigh wants to play tennis against men, but the men don't want to be beat.  She's suing the city alleging discrimination.

" 'One said he had a jealous wife, and he couldn't play females," Griffin said. "Another said he heard I made people run too much.' "

One of the commenters said, and I'm quoting here:

"Yes, it is a very serious thing to be in the same company as a woman other than your wife, when your wife is not around. Some people choose to avoid that kind of temptation."

There are some scary weird people in the world.