What she said

Real Fur makes you a better skater? Why can't he just wear fake fur and be done with it?

Or, What She Said.

Cat logic

Why is it that the moment I sit down at the keyboard, the cat immediately wakes up from his 16 hour nap?

Why does does the cat insist on straddling the keyboard so that I cannot see the monitor, anus in my face?

Why does blowing a sharp gust of air on his ever-so-obvious anus elicit no response whatsoever other than a casual glance over his shoulder and a quick tail flick?

I LOVE this. Never late again.

Google introduces new option to Gmail.

I love that it can set mail to be automatically seen as Read or Unread in the recipient's mailbox. And that mail you send can be dated to appear to have been sent as far back as 2004.

Brill!






Have a lovely April Fool's everyone.

Various tunes

which are stuck in my head.



This one too.



But this one's the very best. And the one that won't get OUT of my head.

I do love me some Fry and Laurie

Love the line, "Are you sure it's not 'Fraud!' they yell at you in the streets?"

Been spending many hours over at James Randi's Educational Foundation website. This was after a friend sent me a link showing that ingestion of virgin cold-pressed coconut oil can be beneficial for autistic children. Not hot pressed oil (Bad Bad), not coconut products (Bad Bad), but only virgin cold-pressed coconut oil (Natural. Good. Good).

Okaaaay. Got any brilliant ideas about how to get said child to ingest this gloop?

This is why I end up hanging out at the JREF forums. The snark on stupidity is quite refreshing.

I just gotta say,

HIAWATHA???

Perhaps the most parodied poem ever?

Oh Cassie, you have taken this into a bizarre new place. Behind the Looking Glass even.

----------------

My grandmother had a *thing* for Lewis Carrol. She was also surrounded most of her life by other extremely intelligent women who were not allowed to work. But they were allowed to volunteer. Churches, community centers and, in Grandma's case, the Girl Scouts, all benefited from their crafty dedication.

At one point, while Grandma was on the National Council, she discovered that the most of the rest of the leaders of Girl Scouts in the USA were nuts for Lewis Carrol too. They traded quotes, they dressed up as him or some of his very obscure characters for parties, they were hooked. Towards the end of her term, in an homage to Carroll, they wrote their Council minutes in the metre of Song of Hiawatha. No one noticed. Hee! So they did it again. No comments. Hee Hee! (It should be noted here that Grandma took great pains to speak glowingly of Longfellow, and she was accomplished at reading "Song of Hiawatha" in a flowing manner that really was moving. These girls were doing an homage more to Lewis Carrol's "Hiawatha's Photographing" than they were making fun of "Song of Hiawatha".)

For decades after that, there were sections of Christmas cards passed around this group (ominously nicknamed "the seven", peppered with Hiawatha drumbeats. Grandma got so good at it that she could just start talking in (help me wiki, are they trochees or dactyls?) trochaic metre.

---------------

Wikipedia has the intro from Lewis Carrol to his parody, "Hiawatha's Photographing". This is so clever:

In an age of imitation, I can claim no special merit for this slight attempt at doing what is known to be so easy. Any fairly practised writer, with the slightest ear for rhythm, could compose, for hours together, in the easy running metre of 'The Song of Hiawatha'. Having then distinctly stated that I challenge no attention in the following little poem to its merely verbal metre I must ask the candid reader to confine his criticism to its treatment of the subject.

Anyway. Dear Cassie, you've brought back some humorous memories.

Practical experience? Who needs that?

There's a highly respected guinea pig organization and animal hospital in the UK that I've heard of from time to time. Never paid much attention, not living in the UK and all that.

Got involved with a troll dance on a guinea pig message board last night with a person who kept insisting that according to the person she most respected, it was NEVER necessary to anesthetize a guinea pig for dental work. Okay, that's just too broad based a statement, delivered with righteous indignation for me to walk away from it. Never? Dental work? Never? Yikes.

She had a few other odd ideas, and kept telling us that things were different in the UK (people in the UK do actually use common veterinary procedures, I'm sure of it), and that we weren't qualified to refute her expert (Okay, maybe I'm not qualified in that I don't have a degree, but I can surely state that anesthesia is common practice here. Right?).

She flounced off a number of times, as trolls are wont to do, and then we started chatting about who this expert was she kept referring to, and by the way, what's a "rodentologist"? I thought it was a British term for an exotics vet with a specialty in rodents.

Uh, no. Someone posted a link to the certification course for rodentologists. (Click on the "Courses" section.)

Quick overview. 18 months of distance learning, no prerequisites necessary, and no animal care, medical, or veterinary experience necessary. Pass a written test at 80% and you're a certified expert. As of June of this year, they've added on additional course requirement. (Thank goodness. Let's hope it includes hands-on experience.) The new course includes three days of hands on internship with the designer of the course at her hospital.

Three days.

Three whole days of hands-on experience. Excellent.

I love this idea of setting up my very own area of expertise, based on my own thirty years of personal experience, developing my own certification course and professional organization, and then certifying others in my own interests. Wow. That's good. From the "Courses" page -- linked on the home page.

Apart from Veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses who's use of training is in conjunction with their existing occupations, qualified BAR students have to date gone on to achieve the following:

. Acquired Positions in veterinary practices, pet shop management and feed supplies stores.
. Free-lance animal care advisors, lecturing to private and state schools, giving demonstrations and forming rodent clinics at veterinary practices and holding advisory clinics at pet shops
. Set up their own rescue, boarding, grooming and health advisory establishments.
. Used their Knowledge to improve and sustain the health and quality of life of their own animals.

After paying for all the courses, get certified and you can work in a feed store. And with a small annual fee, you can have your name listed in their Annual Qualified Rodentologists Register.

Head slowly expanding. Danger of imminent explosion. Help.

Why bother to get an undergraduate degree? Why bother with residencies and graduate studies? Why bother with 24 hour large animal labs (overnight observations of colic and post-surgical cases, etc.)?

I have to set up my own certification house. I do.

The Political Retail Management and Knitting Credential. We can all be Retail-Political-Knittologists. Uh huh.


Problem is, this post is probably going to pull down some crap, because the founder of this rodentology thing is very well respected. No one says boo about her or her Cambridge Cavy Trust. I can't say that I really care, all things being equal. Besides, I need to go get some work done on my own course design.

(Last point. Professional organization: USE CORRECT GRAMMAR. "veterinary nurses who's whose use of" Gah.)

No time to take a breather. Munch to do.

Hat Tip to Disapproving Rabbits.

Jesus Christ is their CEO

A vacuum store in Texas, where Jesus is Lord and every woman gets a flower.

Clearly Jesus has much spare time on His hands after picking lottery winners, stamping out hunger and hatred, and turning all hearts towards the Lord. Running a vacuum center truly must be a high priority for Him.

I actually put this together on Tuesday, and then on Tuesday evening, I found this insanity, courtesy of Pharyngula. There's a group of Christians who believe that I-35, which runs North South through the center of the country is the highway referred to in Isiah 35:8. (Get it? Chapter 35? Highway 35? Get it? Huh? Huh?)

Here's the Bible verse:

And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

And here's the OMG, I can't believe I just watched that, video:



Christians, and I am one, so I know what of I speak, are so CRAZY sometimes!

Maybe I should send this entry to my neighbor with the big black and white banner over his garage (Black? Festive!) which reads in block letters: HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS

Maybe not.

Bad Joo Joo

When you're talking on the phone to an important official, who then puts you on hold to check a reference, and the entire phone system collapses, it is appropriate to take that personally?

No, probably not. But it does cause some chuckling.

Someone called me back on their cell to say that all the phones throughout the office now showed my name and home number, blinking that I was on hold, alternating with the warning message: "Major Alarm"

Hee hee. That'll teach them to put me on hold, you think?

8:59 pm Edited to add: Just got word that it's going to cost 60K to fix the system and keep it running for the year. Then it will all need to be replaced for a huge as of yet undetermined cost. Some days I'm soooooo glad to be stepping down. And I still think it's funny. Major Alarm. Ha!

Flashbacks and earworms

Had all the lyrics memorized to this as soon as I bought her first album.



And this was my favorite from that album.



And then I have to include this. (Add some Echo and the Bunnymen and some Buddy Holly and you've just stepped into my Smith College dorm room, circa 1987.)

Oreo songs and commercials

Did anyone play hand clap games as a kid?

I distinctly remember singing a song in camp with my hand slap/clap friends which was based off an Oreo commercial. (And it wasn't the jingle from the eighties -- Ice cold milk and an Oreo cookie/ They forever go together, a classic combination/When a dark delicious cookie meets an icy cold sensation., etc. That's a good lyric, but one we clapped too was about twisting them open.)

But now I can't find either the lyrics, a video clip, or a sequence of the claps. But it was distinctive, and you would think someone in their forties would have remembered this from childhood and posted in teh internets.

It had to do with twisting the chocolate wafers off, as I've said. The hand slap started with your own hands clapped together. Then you brushed the back of your hands against the back of your partners, first on the left then on the right. Then you held the backs of your hands together, separated your hands, and clapped against your partners hands above, clapped your own, and then below, keeping your back-to-back hands stationary the whole time. I don't remember the rest of the sequence.

Both my girls are now doing Miss Mary Mack; Miss Suzy Had a Steamboat; Slide, Slide, Baby; Rockin Robin; and Cinderella Dressed in Yella. It's been fun, but the Oreo memory is making me a touch crazy.

Does anyone remember this?

Maybe it was only a Quinebarge camp thing? No. I remember the commercial -- one girl had long braids, hair parted in the middle.

What number Child is this?

I had part of a song stuck in my head for most of the morning. (I don't know what's going on this week, but some part of my subconscious is desperate to either make me crazy or break out in song and dance numbers.)

I had the third verse stuck in my head and was inept at working my way either forwards or backwards to figure out the name of the song. It's a folk song, that's all I knew.

And I have shoes for my love's feet
Beaten of the purest gold,
And lined with the velvet soft
To keep my love from cold.

And then I know that later on there's a verse which goes:

Oh I do love the ship, she said.
And I do love the sea.
But woe betide the dim mariners
That nowhere do I see.

I can hear my aunt singing those two verses -- she ALWAYS sang every verse, even if the song had thirty or more. The tune is INCREDIBLY familiar and it stuck firmly in my head for hours today. I hummed those verses over and over again, unable to get a hero, a heroine, or a plot to make themselves known in my head.

Then, all at once the entire song popped fully formed into my head. (But in an interesting twist, it was not THIS version of the song. The one that dropped in to say hello while I was sipping coffee was one of the *145* versions which is the most popular. Bob Dylan sang this version. Pentangle* sang an amazing but different version of this song as well with a oddly upbeat chorus.)


*Edit: Actually it was Steeleye Span who had the upbeat version
Answers on Monday.

Earworm

On the radio this morning they were riffing on Rick Springfield. At least seven times I heard parts of:

Jesse's Girl
I wish that I had Jesse's Girl!
Why can't I find a woman like that?
(Ba da da da da da.)

That was about three hours ago.
Help.

Paris the Redeemed.

Larry King interviewed Paris Hilton last night. Normally I wouldn't care about looking over the transcript, but I heard on the news about how she was really changed by all the reading she did in prison. Really? Huh. I wonder what she read.

HILTON: The beginning was really hard, really hard for me.

It's kind of a blur. It was so, you know, traumatic. But after being there a while, I had to accept that I could either make the best of it or make the worst of it. So I just went with the motto don't serve the time, let the time serve you. And I did that and that really helped.

KING: Did you read a lot?

HILTON: A lot. I read a lot of books. I received fan mail from all around the world, so many letters. I would literally sit in bed like crying, reading these letters. And it just -- it really got me through it.

Suisan -- Wait. You read fan mail? Huh. I wonder what the titles of the books were.
------
Later in the interview....

KING: You kept a daily journal?

HILTON: Yes, I did. OK.

This is one of the notes that I wrote: "They say when you reach a crossroad or a turning point in life, it really doesn't matter how we got there, but what we do next after we got there. Usually we arrive there by adversity, and then it is then, and only then, that we find out who we truly are and what we're truly made of. It's a process, a gift and a journey. And if we can travel it alone, although the road may be rough at the beginning, you find an ability to walk it, a way to start fresh again. It's neither a downfall nor a failure, but a new beginning."

And I also felt like this was a new beginning for me, just being in jail -- and I just used it as a journey to figure out myself and who I am and what I want to do. And there's -- there's just so much more to me than what people think.

Suisan -- Adversity, that's a big word. Maybe you were reading self-help books? The Secret?

------
And later....

KING: Are you a religious person?

HILTON: I've always been religious. I went to Catholic school as a child. And I've always had a sense of spirituality, but even more so now after being in jail.

KING: Did you read the Bible in jail?

HILTON: Yes.

--------
And at the end of the interview....

HILTON: That's something I was actually thinking a lot about in jail. I feel like, you know, being in the spotlight, I have a platform where I can raise awareness for so many great causes and just do so much with this, instead of, you know, superficial things like going out. I want to help raise money for kids and for breast cancer, multiple sclerosis and...

KING: You want to get involved in all of it.

HILTON: Yes.

KING: What's your favorite Bible passage?

HILTON: I don't have a favorite, but...

KING: You read it every day?

HILTON: In jail, I read a lot.

KING: Going to go to mass?

HILTON: Yes.

KING: All right. We're going to see a new Paris Hilton.

Oh yeah, Larry. Definitely. Because fan mail will lift you up and give you a whole new focus on life. Nothing like adoration to make you re-examine your life, walk humbly in the face of God, and dedicate yourself to making the world a better place by working towards peace and compassion by the fruits of your labor.

(By the way, I'm not sure we all have to have a favorite bible passage memorized so that we can whip it out to prove our faith, like a little business card, but I'm of the opinion that maybe, just maybe, our dear Paris did not actually READ the bible. It's actually a little hard to read if you're out of practice at such things. And by the way, if her faith has transformed her, if she has been changed by reading the bible, why does she talk about walking through adversity alone, all by herself? Isn't that one of the central tenents of Christianity that GOD will help you through adversity if you believe in him and pray to him for assistance? Good reading comprehension there, dear. But I am convinced that she is using the bible as a tool, a media tool, to show people how very, very different she is. Ha! Wouldn't it be great if she never ever gave another interview?)

Classical humor

Hat tip to James Randi's Swift newsletter on the James Randi Educational Foundation's website.

Rachmaninov had big hands


Mozart Bond


Igudesman and Joo are tremendously funny. I wanna see them in the States! Why are they only touring Europe? I thought WE were the center of the universe!

Love in the Muck

Anybody else think that this is a particularly useless image?

Clearly it's from Amazon from the obnoxious orange arrow. I found it while scrolling through various recommendations. That black circle is, um, not so appealing, no? Or is it green?

OK, so the lady's wearing green and there's a present. Yeah. It's a Christmas Anthology.

I went to all four author's websites to see if the black/green/pondsludge circle scanned any better for them.




On Edith Layton's website I found this.


OK then.

Not sure what all that proves, or if there's a point to this post at all.

Except that I was drawn into researching the websites of the authors of a book I had never heard of because the Amazon scan was so ugly.

(Nancy and Gayle, I tried to find a website for you, m'dears, but NAL was the best I could do.)

So does this mean that ugly attracts attention? Because I surely wasn't looking for a Christmas anthology. Uh uh. And I wasn't even looking for a Regency romance, come to think of it. I was looking for an audio edition of an abridged version of The Three Musketeers for my son. And then that blackish green smudge just drew my attention away.

So easily distracted these days.

Milestone 351

When I signed in this morning to the blog I learned that I have 350 posts to my name.

350?

Whoa.

That's fairly amazing.

But what I was going to say when I first go the urge to sign in is that I'm going to have to seriously consider what in the hell I'm going to do at the end of this summer. Yes, I know it's April. But I have to start thinking about summer and fall now.

My political term ends in November. Which means that I'll need to run for re-election during Fall if I'm going to stay on the Board. And if I Run in the Fall, I have to declare in the Summer, which means I have to pull together my campaign committee and volunteers in the Spring.

Which is now.

I bitch a lot about serving. It IS a hard job. But I also know myself well enough to know that I'm obsessed by the school board and public education. I've been tapped to run for City Council, but I can't see myself doing city politics, or larger politics in general. (Although I'll admit to harboring a secret desire to work in some politician's local office. A mini-West Wing? That would be something.) I don't see myself staying away from the position if I were to decide to step down. I'd turn into one of those public cranks who haunts every meeting, just bitching and making trouble.

But fuck, you guys. Running a campaign is an INSANE task. Campaigning, except for public speaking, does not rely on ANY skill required by a School Board Trustee. Asking people for money. Ugh. Cold Calling asking for support. Ugh. Tracking yard sign placements. Ugh. Filing campaign finance paperwork. Ugh. Walking precincts every weekend without fail to knock on doors. Ugh. Re-organizing, highlighting and collating precinct lists after precinct walking is done. Ugh. Asking your friends to show up on Saturdays during September to walk to precincts you missed. Ugh. Stressing that they'll say something stupid to an angry homeowner and misrepresent your opinions. Ugh. Stressing that you should have done that precinct already. Ugh. Stressing that you're doing all this work and still you won't be successful. Ugh. Wearing makeup every day and driving slowly and carefully so as to always make a good impression. Ugh. Staffing phone banks and asking your friends to cold call other people to gauge support. Ugh. Sending out thank you notes to the people who showed up to cold call for you. Ugh.

From June through October this goes on.

Now. It only happens every fourth year, and the first time I did it I won the election. Came in first over candidates who had lived in town for twenty or more years. So I'm pretty good at it. But it doesn't feel like it when I'm in it.

And I worry about this blog. I think I'd have to take it off-line for a while. (I know that everything I've ever posted is cached somewhere. I've said it before: If someone who were running against me were to find these and try to embarrass me with them, it wouldn't work. I've only ever been honest. But I worry about the casual voter stumbling into this morass of opinions and discussions of sex and books and loss and frustration and not knowing me well enough to incorporate it fully into my political objectives. Which are only to better the schools and to get the infighting to stop.) But still -- I'd feel less worried if I were to pull it off line for the duration. But then I'd miss having a place to vent and to get some support back in comments.

I dunno about this campaigning thing.

Dear Butcher says that I'm just worrying too much. That I already have broad based support, and that I already have tons of yard signs left over from the last election, so I don't need to raise as much money as I think. That I just need to announce the candidacy, put out yard signs, sign up volunteers to walk precincts for me, send out an announcement mailer, attend the four candidates forums and sit back.

I dunno.

I've watched a few other candidates do that: "I'm on the ballot but I'm not going to spend a lot of money running." They never do well. Two of them came in dead last. (Except in the last election where there were three seats open. Two candidates campaigned hard and the third came in by only attending the forums and putting up about six large yard signs. But I think their campaigning helped her.)

Then there's the shift from poll voting to absentee voting. We've seen a significant shift there. Which means that you have to get the bulk of you campaigning in before October 10, when the absentee ballots are mailed. School starts in late August, and people don't want to hear about campaigns before then. So to hit the absentee voters (about 25-36% of our most-likely voters) you have to make contact with them between last week of August and first week of October. For campaigning purposes, contact means either one phone call, or one personal visit, or four mail contacts. (People throw mail out, but absentee voters have been shown to collect mailers to refer to while voting.) That four mailers in one month?? No way I'm doing that. I'd HATE a candidate who did that to me.

So we come back to the importance of precinct walking and phone banks. Which will require volunteers. Whom I'll have to recruit now, before school lets out. Because by the time they get back into town in late summer, I'll have already needed their services.

Once I get this far into my train of thought I come up against, "Good lord, woman. Are you trying to kill yourself? You have three kids to take care of, one of whom needs a lot of attention and doctor visits. You have no reliable babysitters to depend upon for any precinct walking you want to get down after school. Your husband runs his own retail business, which means he'll have commitments during the weekend. Just who are you expecting to be taking care of the family, Hmmmm? On top of which, you'll still be ON the school board, with all of those commitments during the Fall. This is insane. Step down. Become a cog in the wheel behind the scenes."

So I can't decide whether I'm actually GOING to run. But for example, I know that the GATE program isn't functioning in this district. Bright kids are getting NO extra accommodations, just trips to the ice cream parlor. And Neo's bright, so I need to be in a position of power to see that this program DOES get changed for her benefit and mental health. For all the kids who are bright. And then there's the Special Ed program, which is going to need more administrative personnel. But no one WANTS to hire administrators--it's not sexy. But if we want functioning programs, we cannot expect change to happen with one full-time Director and one part-time secretary. That is NOT enough staff. And this is the case for two other departments as well.

And then there's the drug use at the secondary level which is out of hand, allowed to be swept under the rug by parents who refuse to acknowledge that even their own children are using. (Can I just point out here that the Mormon parents are THE WORST in this regard? When all of your kid's friends are using, so is your very own angel. OK? Got it? If your kid is in the upper parking lot with all the other potheads, guess what: You've got a pothead for a child. It's not the end of the world, but please don't pretend that your child, your very own little darling is just up there watching the blunt pass on by.) We need real programs, not this Every Fifteen Minutes crap.

(Although, as an update to that post from May of last year. I have great news. The policy committee -- which I chair -- passed a policy requiring all drug prevention education programs to be scientifically based. Hee. AND the Superintendent has agreed to get rid of Every 15 Minutes. Hee. I did do some good for the schools this term, after all. Of course, the downside here is that the organizers of the program have not yet received word that their program will not receive approval when they request it. So the backlash has not yet begun. This reminds me, I have to ask the Sup on Monday to put out a letter to them explaining the impact of the new policy.)

Even just typing that out, I realize that I HAVE done good things for the schools. This week we approved an integrated Arts, Music, and Drama program for K-12, complete with a dedicated Music teacher and professional development for existing teachers. I participated in that. I helped negotiate the re-use of our closed elementary school for use as a community center, and that deal brings in revenue to the District. And I have pushed forward all sorts of policy revisions and renewals. I keep forgetting what good things I can do for the District in my weariness which comes on from the enterprise itself.

SO I guess it comes to:

Don't run: Sit back and watch the system dissolve back into personal rants and favoritisms and wild-on political maneuverings. Learn to live with the funding decisions others who sit up on that dais decide to make. But know that I did my part and that my voice is a respected one should I step forward to comment on the proceedings.

Run: Lose my mind in the Fall and know that for the next four years I'm going to maintain this same level of stress in my professional life. But know that after the campaign is done, I can be part of the decision and policy-setting process.

What to do. What to do.

Maybe I've got another 350 posts to work it out. Stay tuned.

Newsies

Various bits of news I've been meaning to share.

The circus is coming to town. Eeep.

A fundraising group has contracted with a circus to set up a big top on school property on the last week of school. (Yes. While graduation is going on. What excellent planning.) So the Superintendent tells me that the Director of Maintenance is looking into it (as in Who Exactly gave this approval?) and is concerned about safety, etc. I'm practically choking on my salad, and the Board Member to my left, who knows that I met my husband while we were both in a circus, is chuckling and rolling her eyes. I sort of sigh and tell the Superintendent one of my TWO BIG SECRETS. (1. I lived at a circus for a year when I was in my twenties and 2. Although I'm a Board Member for a public school system, I have never spent one day of my educational life in a public school. Private all the way, Baby. That second one is a closely guarded secret, although at this point, I think a lot of people have an inkling.)

I ended up speaking to the Director, asking a lot of pointed questions. (Turns out that in his former job, he had a lot of experience from the city side overseeing a big Shriner's production. Which means he's actually got more administrative experience than I do.) We're cool. But it is a weird thing to have one set up in my town under my jurisdiction.

I have a new keyboard.

And this one has a spacebar key which works. Yay!

Eldest Daughter (Who says she'd like to be 'Neo' on my Blog) is on the Honor Roll.

Although, can we just say here that she's not happy in Middle School? Well, she's doing fine socially, except for the crew of about five "Mean Girls" who won't let her alone because she's smart, but she's bored out of her mind. She's a GATE (Gifted And Talented Education) student, but since the GATE program operates after school, more as a reward incentive than as a true educational program, she's not even getting the extra boost that GATE should be giving her. (And she won't sign up for any of the after school offerings because none of them interest her.)

I love and actually admire Neo. She's much more pulled together than I was at that age. She's smart and funny and brutally honest, but she's also entering into that perfectly age appropriate stage where Life Sucks And There's Nothing I Can Do About It, So Just Leave Me Alone.

Dear Butcher and I got into a hell of a fight with Neo over her choice of electives for next year.

Ye gods, do I remember the fights I used to have with my parents. Screaming, weeping, "Why won't you LISTEN to me?" Makes me ill.

Neo brought home a form for elective choice for next year. Short version:

"What do you want to take?"

"Nothing. There's nothing on that list."

"OK, but you have to take SOMETHING. What if we cross out the ones you don't want, and we'll work backwards."

(A few minutes later.)

"So that leaves us with Mixed Media [Art] in the Fall and Industrial Technology [wood shop] in the Spring."

"Yeah, but I don't want to do Industrial Technology."

"I know. But it's paired with Art. Hey. I bumped into Nikki at the supermarket with her mother. She says she's taking Leadership. You want to do Leadership with her? At least you'd be with a friend."

"No!"

Dear Butcher asks, "Why not? You like Nikki, and you've been complaining this year that you don't have her any classes. Besides, Leadership would look great on a transcript!"

"No! I don't want to BE a leader, and Leadership isn't about that anyway. It's a bunch of cheerleaders!"

"But you also didn't want to do any of the other electives when we started this. Maybe Leadership would be fun."

"No!"

(This dissolved into hysterical screaming and crying within about fifteen minutes. When did she become a teenager? When did I become the sort of parent who tried to convince her to be happy with what I wanted for her?)

Everyone is happily diagnosing my son without ever having spoken to him.

In order that Kaiser can see its way clear to prescribe meds to my son, I had to attend a "class" for parents on Medicating Your Child, held by the psychiatry dep't. OK, fine. (Once you're there, you can sign up for an evaluation appointment with the psychopharmacologist. The first one I could get was for April 26. He was diagnosed as needing meds in February. School is going to be OVER by the time I get a single pill into him, so we won't be able to see if anything works in a school setting until the Fall, at this rate.)

We sit down, and the Psychiatrist asks each parent to please give the symptom (or diagnosis) which is causing the parents to consider medication. Three people say anxiety, one says "sleeping", five say ADHD, and I say, "Uh. Mostly anxiety, but there's Explosivity too. We were looking at Asperger's or maybe Early Onset Bipolar Disorder, neither of which we've completely ruled out, but his most recent evaluation from UCSF says that he's got generalized anxiety disorder."

The psychiatrist has written next to my son's name on the white board in the front of the room (How very much like House we are!):

Anxiety
Temper
Bipolar
Depression
ADHD ??

So I say, "Excuse me, but everyone's been pretty clear that it's not ADD. His teachers, his psychologist. All the evaluations have come back pointing towards Asperger's, or maybe depression, but not ADD."

He circles "ADHD??" on the board, points to it, and says, "Your son is eight, right? In this age group you're going to find more often that we're looking at ADD more than any other issue." He points to a child's name with the label "Anxiety" next to it. "You see, up here? In the 15 year old range? There you're going to find Anxiety. But really, what we're seeing is that in most cases, it's untreated ADD from down here, in this younger age range. It develops INTO Anxiety when they hit that High School."

You know what?

Fuck you.

You have never seen my kid, never read a single piece of paper relating to him, never heard any of the family history. I walk into a room so that I can jump through a hoop to get some sort of relief for my kid, and you tell me he's got ADD? Tell me to send him to an anger management class next, why don't you?

I bit my tongue really hard and sat through the rest of the hour. And got my appointment.

This of course was the end of the trifecta of "Let me diagnose your son!"

Part One was when my Brilliant Brother weighed in, and Part Two was when my Mother weighed in.

She's been obsessing about my son, and talks to her psychiatrist about his prognosis frequently. (I'm fairly conflicted about her psychiatrist. He's been very helpful in the past, and knows a lot about Asperger's, but he's not completely trustworthy.) She's very worried that the HMO is taking so long to medicate him. How can I speed this up? What can I DO?

I tell her I'm frustrated too, but on the other hand, the medication isn't going to FIX him, just modulate the behavior and the anxiety enough so that he can learn how to deal with his triggers. That's not what she wants to hear. He needs to be fixed Right Now.

She tells me on the phone the other day that she had told her psychiatrist, Dr. R., that UCSF said he had "Anxiety Disorder NOS." She asked him, "What does that mean?"

According to her (Oooo, take this with a HUGE grain of salt folks, she's totally not trustworthy when it comes to relating conversations), he said, "It means Juvenile Delinquent. It's too bad that they didn't come back with an Asperger's Syndrome diagnosis. So many options open up for an AS kid which you don't get with a simple anxiety label."

She wants me to bring my son to Boston specifically to meet with Dr R. so that he can diagnose him with Asperger's. (Apparently this will guarantee that he will never become a juvie.) Well, fuck. If he already KNOWS he has AS, then why not just write up a report from Boston? And what would I do with this report? What sort of medications are generally prescribed to AS kids? Small doses of anti-anxiety medications. OK, then. And where would I get this prescription filled and his reactions monitored? Oh yes. At the Psychiatry Department of my HMO. Right.

Isn't that where I am right now? Gee, thanks Mom. And thanks so much to Dr. R. for bring up juvenile delinquency. That was so helpful and calming for your fucking INSANE patient.

Ahem.

Sorry.

My mother makes me nuts sometimes.

(Update. My mother just called to tell me that Dr. R. is ready and waiting to see my son. Sigh. Of course my turning the offer down has no effect. I know that. You want to know when his earliest appointment is? An hour for me without my son, and hour with my son, and then an hour with me again without my son. Ready? Really? July 11, 2007. Oh yeah. I'm so there. Thanks for all you do, Dr. R. Here's a tip: you may want to up her lithium now. I'm seeing signs here that her Zoloft, Klonopin, Tofranil and lithium cocktail may need an adjustment.) (At last count the woman was on 12 different medications. Good to know that simply taking medication takes away all clinical symptoms, no matter what the disease is. Yeah.)

OK, enough of that.

I went to an anniversary celebration for our elementary school

The organizers had invited back as many of the staff who had opened the school as could attend. Most of these teachers are retired, including one retiree who now sits on the School Board. There's something about retired elementary school teachers of a certain age. My Mother-in-law is one of these. She wears "an outfit" and her hair is done and her face is done and her nails are done. (I'm lucky if I show up somewhere in clean pants.) Most of these ladies are real straight shooters and have seen it all, but they'll tell you essentially to go to hell in the sweetest voice imaginable. All the while patting you on the back for being "as good a parent as you can be."

I admire these ladies a lot.

So each one in turn was asked to tell the students what they were doing now that they were no longer teaching.

We heard a lot of, "Well. I don't teach anymore. But I spend a lot of time with my grandkids. So I still see young boys and girls every day, just like I used to. And I read. I read every day."

"I miss teaching young boys and girls just like you. But you know what? I have so much time to READ now. I read every day."

"Mostly I read. And I visit my grandchildren."

So the "pull no punches" Board Member stands up, the only one wearing rubbed corduroy pants and a flannel button down, the one who always says exactly what she thinks, and damn the consequences, the one I want to be when I grow up, she leans into the microphone and says, "You know. I decided I needed a rest a few years ago, so I retired. I like being retired. I take naps. I figured out though, there are only so many crossword puzzles you can do in a day. So I go to the casino. I play blackjack a fair bit, and my husband and I play bridge. About a year or so ago, I decided I was getting bored, so I ran for school board. Boy, was I surprised when I won. But anyway, now I read a lot. But it's all School Board stuff. Not what you'd like to be reading. But I do it. You know, when I'm not at the casino."

I almost hurt myself holding in the squeals of laughter. That's one funny broad right there.

Law of Unintended Consequences

OK, this makes me laugh.

Conserve electricity, folks. It's vital. We'll even give you rebates and such to encourage conservation.

OOPS! You did that so well, that now we have to raise rates. Doh!

Toronto Hydro seeks rate hike as consumers cut usage
Last Updated: Thursday, March 22, 2007 | 3:49 PM ET
CBC News

The popularity of energy conservation programs is hurting Toronto Hydro's bottom line and the utility is now seeking to raise electricity rates as a result.

However, the company is urging people to continue to conserve, because otherwise there might be even larger expenses to pass on to customers. To meet extra demand, for example, it would cost more to upgrade aging infrastructure.

"It's important to the electrical grid and certainly to the province, air quality and all of that that we push this aggressively," Toronto Hydro-Electric System Ltd. spokesman Blair Peberdy said Thursday.

Toronto Hydro-Electric System Ltd. has applied for a rate increase of 6.3 per cent on May 1 to recover a $10.4-million drop in revenue.

If approved, customers using about 1,000 kilowatt hours per month would see an increase of $2.07 on their bills, the utility says.

That's about equal to the amount an average household saved thanks to conservation efforts. Peberdy says the average home cut their electricity bills by $25 a year by using less hydro.
The utility blames the revenue loss on the success of conservation programs over the past two years and the cost of buying and installing thousands of smart meters.

Peberdy said the province and regulators recognize the dilemma facing utilities: conservation is "needed desperately" but "eroding" the revenues of utilities, leaving them struggling to provide reliable electricity.

The utility says electricity loads in the city fell by 178.5 million kilowatt hours — enough to power 178,000 homes for a month — between spring 2005 and the end of 2006.