Sick Days

It's rare for me to get sick. Until The Pumpkin started high school this fall, it was rare for anyone in this household to get sick. But after homeschooling his entire life, he joined older brother by jumping right into the pool of viruses that live in a school of nearly 3000 students (plus faculty and staff). He struggles mightily to fight them off, but some are just too much and he ends up taking many trips to the nurse's office, and staying home more often than either of us wants.

So now it's my turn to join him in his misery. Bleh. 24-48 hours of Bleh deserves some mindless channel surfing. But I don't have cable, just an antenna for free broadcast tv. It's fine when I want to watch a specific show, but pretty limited for channel surfing. I end up flipping from one negative political ad to another. It's not helping my headache.

"Negative ad" is really just a euphemism for outright lies and blatant distortions of the truth to influence your vote. Just another use of mass media to hack away at what's left of democracy. It's not about electing the best candidate for the job at all. Only taking sides, and promoting one set of ideas over all others, and winning. And shouting down truth-tellers so that voters only hear the stories that will promote the status quo.

When I think about all the voters who don't get their information anywhere else, it's no wonder our government always seems to be a mess. Who could work with any of these characters portrayed on tv?

It's no wonder so many people feel depressed this time of year. You feel like your vote doesn't count, like your opinion doesn't count, and your way of life doesn't count, unless you have enough money to donate to the right causes and the right candidates. And all the screaming about the end of the world if the wrong candidate should actually win.

But every year, every "day-after-election-day", life goes on. Those who did not win their race pick up the pieces and get back to business. The rest of us breathe a sigh of relief as the commercials go back to hawking prescription drugs for what ails us.

Good thing there's still radio stations that play music.

School sucks

This homework is gonna be the death of me.

Wait, let's address the elephant in the room. Yes, it's been two years and some months since the last post, a rather pleasant suzy-homemaker post about homemade english muffins. Shortly before the shit hit the fan and the world came crashing down around me. So it took awhile for me to pick up the pieces and put some of them back together in a way that may or may not work. But I'm trying, making it work for what's left, making something new out of the mess that was. So now ...

back to the goddamned never-ending homework.

Homeschooling was never this much work. I rarely stayed up past my bedtime for any school-related assignments. If the boys had to stay up late to finish something, well, then they got to sleep in the next day. We Did NOT Lose Sleep for School!!!!

But now the almighty Algebra regularly keeps me up at night. English essays are worth losing sleep over? Yet another Packet for (this is ridiculous) PE. Yup, even PE assigns homework and tests. Because public school has to suck the life out of every single student, every single hour of every single day.

Back when my oldest was a freshman, he quietly did his homework until ... he didn't. Just stopped. For three years. Pretty much until he found classes, and teachers, who realized that overwhelming the students with tons of homework doesn't accomplish anything.

Now, the freshman of the hour regularly falls asleep while in the midst of his piles of homework. I can't help but wonder exactly who thinks this is making him into a better student? And to top it all off, the sleepy one has become quite clumsy and accident prone as well (but nobody thinks it has anything to do with a lack of sleep).

I'm a firm believer in natural consequences. So what shall they be for the perpetrators of our torture? Too tired to come up with anything good right now. But later, after coffee ...