Chill

They’re off.  I will not bother you with horror stories of children fighting all day.  The yearly, all-summer long You Hit Me First Fest.  The Hair-pull-o-ramas, and the she was looking at me defense.

Rule one for training human puppies:  teach them not to look at each other.  It can be interpreted as an act of aggression that spurs a violent battle.  It’s all fun and games until a poodle ends up in someone’s mouth.  Little girls are just like pitbulls (and other misunderstood breeds of dogs), but you knew that.

There have been some almost perfect moments so far, too.  Most of them involve intense distraction:  visits from friends, CHORES, even doing a page in the math workbook helps.  Math review is much easier to take than the fact that your sister’s ice cream cone is bigger.  And practicing the violin makes you realize how vile an inanimate object really can be.  That asshole of an instrument REFUSES to sound in tune unless you hit a flawless “first position” and place your bow “toward you,” and if your self-talk doesn’t have a Russian accent, you should just give up and do something hopeless like become a corporate lawyer or maybe a surgeon.  Saving lives is for losers, after all.  But this lesson is not lost on anyone who practices a musical instrument.  Law school and sisters will rip you to emotional shreds.  But violins process you into steaming, whimpering humility soup.

And then there’s the pool.  Yes, the pool, where there are no violins or ice cream cones.  Even the sisters are easier to take when they are bobbing, splashing and screaming beings, attacking you with nothing more offensive than chlorinated water from the squishy purple barrel of a pool noodle. God invented the neighbor’s pool so that summer be can good again.  Yes.  Yes, it can.

So, if you have kids and you don’t have a pool, I urge you to get a neighbor.  And if your neighbor doesn’t have one, demand a new neighbor.  The universe has a job to do in serving us.  Hold it accountable.

S'more Work

To the untrained eye, this is a s’more, but to the experienced mother, this is a doggy treat for human puppies.  With the help of a s’more I can get my kids to do almost anything.  The first rule, not unlike in the dog training world, is don’t give the treats up freely.  To prime the kids, I offer a weeklong menu of lackluster desserts:  cut up cantaloupe!  bananas in skim milk! sumptuous orange wedges!  chamomile tea (with honey)!  I make sure my kids experience severe dessert deprivation.

Then, I say, “Hey, we’re having s’mores tonight and just as soon as you clean your room/practice your instrument/read for 45 minutes, you will get one.”

“Two?”

Kid Biscuit

“Nope, one.”

One dangling s’more and our entire house breaks out in song.  Scales fly up and down, minuets are played faster than a speeding piano, and happy folk ditties are sawed angrily into the violin.

“And no crying or screaming or whining,”  I say.

The house buzzes on like a state college rehearsal hall.

I know I have a powerful weapon.  A weapon of mass production.  I am reckless with it.  With it in my hands, we are all in danger.

What will I next get my children to do?  Mop the floor?  Paint the house?

Wax on!

Margaritas: Lime juice is key.

People who think that they can spend the summer without the help of limes are reckless and arrogant, at best, and totally screwed up, at worst.  It’s really close to impossible to try and eke out a meaningful existence without the help of these citrus babies.

I don’t mean to pressure anyone into feeling like they don’t have what it takes to live right.  The truth is, most people don’t.  Thankfully, the local grocer often does.

Key Lime Yum

The local grocer most likely sells key lime juice.  In the bottle.  And, if not, BevMo does.  With the little bottle in the fridge, you can masterfully whip up margaritas, key lime pie, and, for the kiddies, a little limeade.  One bottle to make three perfect things to fill in where your neighbor’s swimming pool left off.  And if you think it’s simplistic to sum up summer awesomeness via three recipes, then you, my friend, are a cold-blooded snake.  Or a bank robber.

First of all, I am proud to live in a country that makes treasures like the following video.  This gem came from the musical theater world, Sunday’s 2011 Tony Awards.  Please, please watch.

CLICK!

Another treasure, made in this country, is my husband.  It’s his birthday today.

He is also of the musical theater world, a former musical theater professional in the regional circuit.  (A proud member in good standing of Actor’s Equity Association.  YES, THAT WAS A PRO-UNION STATEMENT.)  In fact, two of his former colleagues appeared on the Tony stage on Sunday night.  He gave up show biz, though, to stay by home to support his family.  How does he feel about this?  Fine.  Though the Tony’s might be a bit tough for him, especially when an acquaintance of his wins a Tony.  And she did.  Her smile extended from New York to Texas.  My husband’s smile went from one side of his face to the other.  But he didn’t punch our neighbor’s parakeet, not even once.  We’re birdsitting for our neighbor who is on retreat in Oklahoma.

But let’s really look at what my husband’s life upon the bitter stage might have been like.  He would have gone out of town, and then on tour (after tour after tour) until he landed his Broadway gig.  He would eat heavy meals after midnight and wrap his jewel-toned voice in an impressive rotation of alpaca scarves.  A chorus line of stage beauties would dance through his life, many of them into his bed, littering it with false eyelashes and indelible lipstick stains, like sexy, bloody bites from hungry, waif-ish vampires.  The affairs would be showstopping, but would fizzle out on cruise ships, in new shows and while waiting in line for the national spot audition.  He would enjoy many nights of sitting and clapping at the Tony’s, maybe with a stage appearance as “that guy on the right” in the literal monkey suit.  For decades, his older sisters would begin every conversation with a detailed description of those glorious two-and-a-half minutes.

He would continue on like this until he was washed up, utterly un-castable at the tender age of 42.  And he would read the Playbill in the top bunk of his Brooklyn sublet of a sublet wondering if he should move to Hollywood to become a commercial star, serial extra or Eric Estrada impersonator at adult birthday parties.

Is it conceited of me to believe him when says he’s chosen right?

Happy Birthday, Mr. Koenigin!  We love you like a Broadway smash.  Your contract with us will not end for at least a lifetime.  We await word from our sponsor to see if we can negotiate beyond our deaths.

That’s one pesky thing about the Neighborhood School.  They hate eyeboogers.  At the HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET SCHOOL, it was eyeboogers all the time.

Do you know what it’s like to pick up sky every day?  It’s tiring.  Skies do fall.  And don’t get me wrong, they do have to be returned to the up-high position,  but this can’t happen every time that my kid forgets to carry the one.  She forgets to carry the one a lot.  I have more to do than mess with sky placement all day.  And to be buried in sky debris makes me feel overwhelmed.  Only God can handle this level of responsibility.

And you can’t hold up a sky by creating a suspension system of flashcards, and showing times tables to your kid every time she holds her head up to breathe while swimming or before she takes a spoonful of oatmeal.  Even though she was caught counting on her fingers numerous times in a HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET classroom at the age of six, we can’t submerge our lives in math facts, though a Math Facts duvet and sheet set might be in order.  And maybe Sight Words active wear.

Every day at the Neighborhood School, the sky is up in the air, where it belongs.  If a corner starts to sag, the school understands, has a solution, and, if not, they have a program or principal that will innovate that sky back into place.  They are in the business of stabilizing skies.  They are not the business of flagging skies that have a stubborn marine layer, and then folding them into little envelopes, sending them home to mother for some refashioning into a calm, blue umbrella over Cabo San Lucas.  The Neighborhood School teaches in all weather, hailstorms and breezy afternoons, alike.  Fortunately, all weather systems pass, save London’s, but who really cares about the British?*  I just need to provide one school-ready child so that they can work their Neighborhood School magic, which is teach the kids how to hurl rainbows and pots of gold all over the shop. And little, chirping birds that sing, “I’m okay, and you’re okay.  Now, GET THE HELL TO WORK.  WE HAVE STATE TESTS TO ANNIHILATE.  AND, BY GOLLY, WE WILL.”

It’s peaceful not to be operating in a round-the-clock, five-alarm-fire state.  Now, we live in a perpetual buzz of minor panic.

*J.K., U.K.

Motorcycles and boobs are linked.  Who doesn’t know this?

So I was walking through our high end grocery store in town, because I like to buy my milk there, and I see some race-goers.  They were PISSED.  They were grilling the butcher, who stood behind an array of glorious cuts of meat, at a price per pound that most people only eat in their dreams.  The butcher looked a bit intimidated because he couldn’t answer their question.  Was it a deer backstrap they were seeking?  Maybe a sustainably farmed ox ball?  Was his knowledge of five-star cuts insufficient?

The people were looking for Coke “or some other kind of pop.”

Really?  Coke.  What do they think this place is, Gateway Food & Drug?  Home of the hydrogenated snack made from unsustainably harassed cheddar?  This is Picadilly Foods.  If there were a soft drink-style beverage it would be immorally marked up and, in shame, hidden behind the Vitamin Water.

“We need like a twelve-pack or somethin’,” said the lady of the group with a gravelly edge in her voice.  She wore a leather jacket that made her look dangerous.  I wondered, as anyone would, at the color of her tank top hidden underneath that Arthur Fonzarelli cloak.  And with a sharp turn to off-gas her disgust in the sexily-scarred face of her manly, race-watching companion, her jacket opened to reveal that her tanktop was a classic shade of bubble gum pink.

The butcher looked scared.  “Is this a redneck I see before me?” I could hear his thoughts whispering in a bizarrely Shakespearean way.  It was probably the first non-surgically-enhanced face he had seen that week, and the rarity of it made him nervous.

“I don’t think we have that,” he said.  “Sorry.”

“No?  OH MY GOD,” the lady was outraged.  Outraged.  She was a steaming chunk of shapely Bubilicious.  There were no twelve-packs to be found in this store, and half of all the mascara in the world, which was apparently coating her Herculean eyelashes, couldn’t save any of us from despair.

At that moment, I wanted to point out that there was an overpriced six-pack in the aisle ahead, but I though she might punch me in the face, “just for the fuck of it.”

No.  Coke.

And I was shocked by the scene, but my affection grew as she went on.  “Yeah, man.  We need to go to another store.  I need some cigarettes.  And Cheetos.”

And just as I was composing the next line in my head, she said (at the same time as my brain), “and some DONUTS,”  as if someone handed her a script and said, “Okay, lady, you need to be as stereotypical as possible with this.  Read this in the direction of that camera, and I’ll pay you a hundred bucks.  And sign this release.”

DONUTS.

You don’t understand.  NO ONE IN THIS HIGH-END PATCH OF THIS MEDIUM-END TOWN BUYS THAT.  NO ONE.  And I wish I had the font to convey this to you.  Sadly, Steve Jobs only gives us a so many tools.  I know, I should just be thankful for the Papyrus type.  And the iCloud.

And it was the lady’s outrage that I found so endearing.   Because where I live, there is a matching level of outrage over things like Nabisco, Crest, and getting fluoride treatments.  The same level of outrage ensues if you wear perfume to your music theory class at the community college.  Once, a four-time re-entry student in her late 60′s tore up the floor to scootch away from me over my wearing a cloud of Vanilla perfume.  It was an all-too-Republican choice, I know, but I liked smelling like a cupcake.  I was in my 20s and very lonely.

And I realized that if you just go to the right coordinate on a map, you are sure to find a kindred spirit, one who shares your particular variety of outrage.  There are places where Coca-Cola and donut people congregate, and they express deep anger towards those who drink water.  And though I try to to avoid extreme Coke and donut behaviors, I can understand the frustration of those donut people.  Some folks take sprouted foods to a level of fundamentalist Christianity.  In fact, a lot of things that have nothing to do with fundamentalist Christianity are taken to a level of fundamentalist Christianity.

And if I ever feel isolated in my point of view, I need to remember that if just hit the right Starbucks in the universe, I am sure to find one where people have gripes that are the long lost twins to my gripes.  And through our matching grievances, our souls will bind together into next Tuesday.  I just might have to sample a lot of vanilla lattes in the process.

In what part of the country, and at what type of sporting event, can I find people who believe in inclusive housing?  And neighborhood schools?  Maybe a hackysack tourney in Gary, Indiana?

Neighborhood Schools are Old School*

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post, in which I was discussing, among other things, our test score obsession and the ensuing phonemonon of SCHOOL CHOICE and then the development of the most absurd and shoppingest trend in pubic education:  THE PUBLIC SCHOOL TOUR.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL TOUR.

REALLY?

Yes, I went on fourteen of them.  What can you possibly tell in a fifteen-minute walk-through of a school?

“It felt right.”

Well, isn’t that nice?  But, why are we now basing school choice on feelings?  I thought we liked data. Test scores, don’tcha know.  And the data says that I live near a particular school and I’m gonna have to go there because, you know what?  THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA IS NOT MY BITCH.  It’s not.  Even if I could purchase a staff of bitches, it is not my personal bitch.  It can’t be, and it never will be.

If I want to send my genius baby to a school landscaped with rows of lavender and bouncing bumble bees and an “advanced” curriculum advanced by parents, then I have to GO BUY ONE.  I have to send my children to a private school where I can pay for my kids to learn what they learn in public schools for free (near dried up lawns and inelegant, non-climbing bushes of ivy).

LADY IN LEXUS: (pounding the steering wheel, tears streaming down her cheeks, washing away the skinny latte crust on her left cheek): Pay for private school? No School Choice? No Fair!  I’m saving up for a Kate Spade Bag!  How this makes my life feel so hopelessly Communist today.  Scratching my eyeballs off would hurt less than this does.

[Enter SCHOOL CHOICE, stumbling in from Offstage Right, knocking over props and people and ripping a Buzz Lightyear-sized hole in the backdrop. (Yes, this show is expensive to produce.)]

SCHOOL CHOICE:  Fear not, Awesome Americans, and you all know who you are.  We have Super Turbo Mega-Monster School Choice in America!  For your school shopping pleasure, we’ve created public-funded, population isolation factories!   Where choice and competition create a fabulously dichotomous two-tier system!  Well-to-do-turbo-charged-awesome and low-income-meh.  Apple and Atari!  Winner goes to infinity, beyond, and back to infinity again.  Some kids win the lottery!  And some DON’T!  SOME DON’T EVEN GET ENTERED!  I will take my high-fives out in the lobby.

[SCHOOL CHOICE prepares to take flight via faulty rope system created by a carelessly assembled group of billionaires who know as little about creating rope systems as they do about creating school systems.  SCHOOL CHOICE then steps on his Westminster Abbey Rug-sized cape, chokes, collapses, and dies.]

[Curtain.]

But back to that school system of which School Choice spoke…

The truth is, most low income children do not transfer from their neighborhood schools into choice schools.  School Choice = Most Have Nots Left Behind.  Literally.  Shrugged off as impediments to the advancement of the well-to-do.

And, yes, I know that I chose school choice, but I UNCHOSE IT, and like any recovering ass-wipe (yes, recovery is possible) who went through 12-steps of ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME, THIS IS THE METHOD? (MOM+FLASHCARDS=DON’T SUCK), I’m on a soapbox.  This let’s-isolate-the-kids-based-on-parent behavior isn’t too wonderful an educational philosophy/practice/method in a nation “committed” to offering egalitarian access to education.  And the simple joys of learning in The Camp of Haves (most choice schools) is no reason for my children to not attend the school in our backyard.  The dear, precious Neighborhood School, that took my children back into its loving, public arms (because it had to!), even after we dissed it for three years to be in Turboland.

So, my kid is doing her homework.  Without fail.  Both kids are.  And just as soon as I can talk about this subject without blacking out at the keyboard and going on an HPMS tangent and writing an unwatchable one act play, I will try to explain this.  Just a few more zombie posts.

[Lights up full.  Orchestra plays Barber's "Adagio for Strings" followed by Katy Perry's "Firework."]

[Jesus appears on the stage, and in the worst use of a deus ex machina in theater history, he raises SCHOOL CHOICE from the dead (don't hate on Jesus, he loves everybody).  And SCHOOL CHOICE continues to ruin props, backdrops and people until he's killed decisively in the U.S. Supreme Court in the year 3081.  And only because the stenographer, who couldn't bear to transcribe one more hearing on the subject, was packing heat that day.]

[Lights Fade on the stage.  All actors dance as "YMCA" plays.]

*The original photo was taken through Bill Garrnet’s cool ass photostream. Click HERE to view Bill Garret’s Cool Ass Photostream. Views expressed on this blog and the use of the phrase “cool ass” do not necessarily reflect the views of the photographer.

Old School: Neighborhood Schools*

Note:  This is the first of a two-part series.

Not sure what happened in the past few months, but my daughter turned from The Great Homework Avoider to The Unstoppable Homework Demon.  It’s true.  No matter how many times I say, “No time to read tonight, honey,” she says, “No, Mommy, I have to do it or I’ll get BENCHED.”   And like a budding Nobel Prize winner (which she, like all kids, likely is), she sits with her face two inches from the page.  She reads.  She writes.  And, AND! no more whining.

What happened?  Did the Neighborhood School happen?  Is it because “it’s so much easier there,” as people say?

I can assure people, whoever people are, that the levels of academic torture at the Neighborhood School are the same as at the HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET SCHOOL that we left earlier this year, save the round-the-clock screams of the 100-foot-high academic siren tower (converted from its original purpose as an air raid siren), that stands on the front lawn of the HPMS, warning us and a few others that our children are “behind.”  Behind what?

(Note:  While bowling the other day, I ran into the HPMS vice principal who told me that the constant warnings were actually a misunderstanding.  The siren’s alert button had been stuck in the “on” position.  They didn’t even notice the soul-crushing sound because, as the vice principal, stunning in her eggplant-hued bowling shirt with matching feather earrings, put it, “We use the alarm so often that we are quite accustomed to that broken-soul feeling, and we feel at home operating in a high-anxiety zone.  It’s a wonderful appetite suppressant.”)

But there is plenty of work at the Neighborhood School to cause anxiety.  There is enough academic challenge to CRUSH the kids’ self-worth.  I think School Choice parents would be delighted to see how much opportunity there is for the kids to feel, “Holy, Silly Bands.  I’m screwed.”

In third grade at the Neighborhood School, they’re working on LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATORS.  Uh-huh, in third grade.  Usually that concept is reserved for fifth graders or School Choice parents when they describe the students or the teaching methods of Neighborhood Schools:  “They teach to the lowest common denominator.”

Have you ever given birth to a lowest common denominator?  It’s not a great thing.  All that labor and eating well (sort of), and then being told you’ve only got a bottom number of a fraction of a kid.  There is NO WAY that a piece of a fraction of a child could be so noisy and impact the food bill so definitely.  I’m pretty sure that these are whole kids we’re talking about.

But it’s not really the fault of the School Choice folks.  They’ve been raised on a steady diet of data, spoon-fed to us by newspapers, politicians, and the sewing circle that these days looks much more like an auction committee.  Children aren’t humans.  They are future embroidery canvases for the plastic surgeons of America.  They are numbers that make up scores that gave rise to the most absurd development in public education:  THE PUBLIC SCHOOL TOUR.

Tune in tomorrow for the sequel to this post: More Peace Through Neighborhood Schools II:  When School Choice Never Dies, It Dies Harder The Second Time And Then Lives Anyway

*The original photo was taken through Bill Garrnet’s cool ass photostream. Click HERE to view Bill Garret’s Cool Ass Photostream. Views expressed on this blog and the use of the phrase “cool ass” do not necessarily reflect the views of the photographer.

Grandfather Time

If you are reading this today, I appreciate your generosity.  But in the interest of time, I’m going to ask that you stop squandering it here, and that you seize and savor it in the company of someone or someones that you love.  And if you don’t love anyone today (and who could blame you?) or if the one you love can’t be with you because he/she works retail or happens to be on a military boat protecting your country’s coastline, I suggest you take yourself someplace fabulous because the clock is ticking.  As Mercutio says, “We burn daylight, ho!”  As Woody Allen says, “Don’t knock masturbation.”

Time Peace

And we just realized at our house how much we like having time.  Time to sit with, talk to, and ignore each other, activities that have been scarce lately with our intensive driving routine that the very bossy softball schedule has imposed on us.  All those voice lessons and monologue workshops, and all I ever needed to know was there for me in Driver’s Ed.

But the softball season has ended.  Trophies have been awarded to every adorable, undeserving child.  Cute little kids with award-winning eagerness to possess awards.

But back to time.  It’s Memorial Day weekend, and most of us are in need of some serious living.  So have at it.  Don’t waste all that good freedom out there.

The thing is… NO EXCUSES!  I am (was) a teacher.  Teachers don’t believe in excuses.  It’s a crucial part of their training.

But in the interest of a blog post, I will tell you.  I’ve been busy rehearsing a play, and I’ve been working at a great big middle school in that great big major metropolitan area bordering on rural South Dakota, all because it’s the end of the school year and the regular teacher is so very, very sick of herself.

So I’ve been trying to learn lines for the show I’m in, and by learning lines I mean locking myself in a room and staaaaring at the book and thinking about how hard it is to memorize lines.  And then about how I’d like to write a play, but also mop the floor, and wash the towels and DAMN IT I forgot to request a teacher for my kid.  Note:  I have never requested a teacher for my kids.  I like to let the universe (and the recommendations of the previous teacher) work the magic.  BUT!  this year, one of the teachers had the best Halloween costume ever AND he stayed in character THE ENTIRE PARADE.  Anyone with this level of commitment to useless ridiculousness is (in my estimation) clearly a genius of the highest order.  If there was ever a time to pull out my HPMS tendencies (driving my Lexus across the toes of the weak to get my kid the BEST IN THE WORLD) this is that time.  I doubt I will ever meet another teacher that does Halloween so well.

But back to the lines.  I don’t have them.  Not like I should.  And now all my memories of scolding high school drama students for not having theirs (It was my job) are haunting me.  What’s next?  Phone calls from parents asking for their tuition back?

And I told Coach Koenigin, my husband who handily reverts to coach mode whenever I’m feeling weak, that I truly think I could get an ADD diagnosis far easier than I can get these lines memorized.  And then I said something about taking Ritalin for adults (with a Metamucil chase?) and he said with terror in his voice, “I don’t think I can handle you on speed.  If you start doing speed, then I’m going to have to take drugs, too.”

Is Ritalin speed?

So here I am, fighting my neurological shortcomings without the benefits of over-the-counter, prescribed, or street drugs.  Just me and my lines.  My lines and me.  And this blog post, which didn’t help my cause at all.

And my little ladybug of a kid STILL won’t get the Awesome Teacher That Does Halloween So Well.