Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Why some animals eat their young

I have been way too busy these past couple of weeks. And right now I feel like I'm having a lapse in brain activity.

First of all, I've got 6 children, and am homeschooling three.

Second, I'm finishing my degree in college. I withdrew from the classes I was taking at my local university this semester because I felt, like a mother bird, that it was necessary to draw three of my chicks in under my wings.

Third, in order to complete my degree in an environment that is suitable for a homeschooling mother, I'm transferring from my local university to an online university.

Fourth, I have an ebay business.

Fifth, I'm sewing two dresses for my identical daughters who are going to a school Christmas dance on the 20th.

Sixth, SO, every day I'm:
  1. homeschooling my children
  2. telling my boys to quiet down
  3. filling out forms for transferring: credits, federal student aid, etc.
  4. telling my boys, again, to quiet down
  5. inventorying my ebay items
  6. sending my boys to their room
  7. scheduling the sale of each of my items on ebay
  8. sending my boys outside to do their rough-housing
  9. packing my ebay items
  10. calling my boys in the house because they're acting like fools outside
  11. cutting and pinning dresses
  12. waking up my husband from his much-needed nap (works graveyard shift) to sic him on the boys
  13. handing our household budget
  14. sending the boys to their room again
  15. paying bills
  16. thinking that I'm going to be in a mental institution if I have to tell my boys to calm down again
  17. .......
  18. ........
  19. .......
  20. ...............
  21. er.... blblblblblblblbl
  22. huh? ........
  23. OH, yeah...... uh......
  24. putting a hot compress on my head
  25. plugging my ears
  26. going to bed

Believe it or not, the boys actually get school work done every day, and I refrain from killing them.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

I still have my leg

Well, I managed to mail more packages today without severing my left leg.

I do, however, look pretty ridiculous with my toe bandaged the way it is...

At least I don't look like this:


And my husband doesn't like to lounge around the house in this:

Hot items from the 1977 JC Penny catalog



My son is on the roof measuring the eaves for Christmas lights. Hopefully, my next blog won't be highlighting the exorbitant cost of emergency room medical treatment.




Who's the bumbling idiot?

I can't believe what happened yesterday.

It was so gross.

I went to Wally World to get some packing supplies, and then to the UPS store to mail out a couple of packages (UPS is great for shipping, but hell on your wallet if they pack for you, too). Upon opening the door behind the driver's seat of my suburban, the large, tight, very heavy roll of clear shipping wrap fell out of the truck, right smack onto my big toe! (I had been wearing open-toed sandals since it's not exactly cold here in southeastern GA right now).

ARGH! I was in such a hurry, and my bubble wrap had also fallen out of and rolled underneath the truck. Not only was I in pain, but I also knew I didn't have time for pain... I was on a tight schedule! `;-) So, without hesitating, I grabbed the plastic wrap, bubble wrap and boxes, and ushered my two girls into the store so we could box and send my items. (items I had just sold on ebay... I'm sure my victorious auction winners would appreciate the extent to which I stayed on task!)

My toe was killing me... but I hadn't even taken the time to look down at it.

Arriving at the front of the store, as I lifted my foot to the curb, I didn't want to, but couldn't help but catch sight of my toe. It was a bloody mess! It was really gushing, too... and started puddling into my shoe.... I couldn't stop what I was doing, though, because I didn't have any first aid... so I just let it go, hiding my toe as much as possible from other patrons, so as not to gross them out, too... :-/ My daughters giggled and teased, while I secretly hoped I wouldn't bleed out :-! Now that would have been exciting! (It really wasn't that bad - I didn't leave a trail or anything)

Delightful, isn't it? It's nothing compared to the dream I had last night... I was a character in a SAW movie, in a woodsy sort of location. I've never even seen those movies! ... Just goes to show you how our minds cope with daily events!

Lucky for me, the SAW dude in my dream was a bumbling idiot ;-)

Part I

Sporadically over the next few days or weeks, I'll be sharing segments of something I wrote earlier this year. I'll title my work Part 1, Part 2, etc., so you'll recognize when I'm referring to my "official" writing. I'll continue to write as much nonsense as possible about my other shenanigans as a mother of triplet teenagers, and the 3 other darlings I decided to have - all within a 5-yr period (!....) - in the meantime, though. (I'm now in shock having realized what I've done! :-))

Part I:Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Disney & Humanity

We've heard it before, perhaps too often, those fateful words of Shakespeare from his play, As You Like It, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players." In the book considered by many to be the greatest novel of all time, War and Peace, (which unfortunately is known more for its volume than the words within), Leo Tolstoy penned similar words through the thoughts of Pierre, "... perhaps all these comrades of mine struggled just like me and sought something new, a path in life of their own, and like me were brought by force of circumstances, society, and race - by that elemental force against which man is powerless - to the condition I am in" (Maude, trans. 1942).

Words like these have a tendency to ring in our souls. As history reveals, many of us casually accept rolls in life directed by birth, while only a few create for themselves a new part. What ever the case of the individual, humankind has had to coexist in a political collective since before recorded history.

Whether we have lived nomadically or settled into relatively permanent communities, humans, for the most part, have recognized the benefits of living in cooperative groups with mutual respect being the ideal. Unfortunately, the concept of idealism and the reality of humanity rarely coexist in an unadulterated cooperative. Each of us usually struggle internally (and sometimes externally) with an innate drive for personal survival. As a result, for thousands of years, laws have been chiseled in stone, written on papyrus, scribed in Holy books, and inserted in national constitutions in order to protect society from the destruction that would come from raw, selfish ambition.

(to be continued... )

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

MY CAMERA!

I found my camera!

You'll never believe where...

In the newspaper recycling bucket, near the middle of the huge stack....

Of course, Nobody, Not me, and I Don't Know are the ones responsible. Sorry, Houdini, I was wrong about you... Next time I'll just round up the usual suspects.

Somebody at the recycling center would have been a very happy camper if I hadn't decided to go thumbing through the garbage to find the front page of the Statesboro Herald looking for the article I mentioned in my last blog (JAMA survey). Never found the article, but I gasped, gleamed and raised the camera high in the air, like Sponge Bob Square Pants when he found won the golden spatula!

Chiseling out more cogs in the machine?

I would like to thank my sister, Ceilon (http://ceilon.blogspot.com/), for getting me going this morning ;-) The following was taken from my comment to her blog, but I revised it as necessary and added a bit more:

Amen, Ceilon!

National media is dictated by the dollar - American newspapers and magazines are funded by the food, entertainment, pharmaceutical, etc. industries, so any potential threat to their profit is simply not allowed to be printed, or sponsors will extract their financial support. Newspapers and magazines have evolved into glorified marketing schemes with a few interesting articles between the ads just to keep our attention. This is why we don't see many of the scientific breakthroughs that are occuring behind the scenes.

For example, as revealed in the bonus material in the documentary, Supersize Me! (Morgan Spurlock), daily physical education for kids in middle and high school raised their overall math and science scores - Spurlock's highlighted school outperformed China in both math and science scores (on an international scale) as a result of requiring kids to partake in daily phys ed. Also highlighted was an alternative school (in or near Appleton, WI) for kids who had been expelled from the public school system for bad behavior. The alternative school provided organic food for the kids, sometimes grown by the kids themselves, which resulted in not only drastically improving their behavior (which, relatively quickly, became better than the behavior of many kids attending the public schools), but also significantly improving their grades.


As a homeschooling mother (homeschooling 3 with 3 in the public school system, whom I also continue to educate) who has studied sociology, I can tell you without a doubt that our "education" system is really bureaucratic basic-traning for chiseling out replacement cogs for the machine. (they teach, from kindergarten on, how to "line up," avoid questioning authority...) Schools don't teach what is vital for kids to grow up to become well-rounded, critically thinking adults, they train children in the status quo... in how to become cookie-cutter Americans. Only a "chosen" few are singled out and put on the fast track, like my daughter, for instance. Her intelligence and creativity were recognized as being untamable, so they stopped trying to make her conform, and put her in "accellerated" classes. Even in those classes, she doesn't learn what I teach her at home. Just basic stuff, people, like how to manage/budget their money (not taught in schools - but, now get this, schools do teach what a check is and how to write one properly), how to respect, but question authority, and know when the time is right to ask questions.... etc.


Wake up, America!

My anti-fascist alter-ego is about to sport a 'tude:

America is not a democracy, it is a well-disguised totalitarian oligarcy. It is controlled by big business, which perpetuates the illusion of democracy by instituting a virtually impotent congress, senate and presidency, and ensuring its control by making it possible for only the extraordinarily rich 5% of the population to run for "public" office (because it takes millions to run for the Senate, and scores of millions to run for the presidency), many of whom are extraordinarily rich because their money is invested in the food, pharmaceutical, oil, etc. industries. Therefore, our country will never produce adequately educated or healthy citizens. (Our only hope lies in the House of Representatives, where "average" Americans still have a chance to run for office. Even then, not many who make it there have the balls to stand against the big dogs. - The Supreme Court, however, ROCKS, really doesn't put up with anyone's shit.)

Controlling as many aspects of the average American's life as possible is an ongoing trend: I have no doubt that profit also drives insurance companies away from supporting the practices of natural medicine like chiropractic, holistic, orthomolecular, etc. It is more profitable to keep Americans sick than it is to promote the maintenance of good health.

I read an article in the associated press not very long ago (that somehow made it past the big business sponsors - thank God for small towns who are not yet locked within the vise grip of the -ahem - sovereign dollar) in my local paper, the Statesboro Herald. It reported on a survey posted in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA - find the article in a Sept, Oct, Nov volume, can't remember which) - It reported quite significant results from a survey sent to administrators of 125 medical schools and other continuing education avenues for physicians - approximately 2/3 of administrators responded, and 2/3 of those who responded reported having a financial stake in the pharmaceutical and medical supply industries. They admit leaning in the direction of their heaviest pocket when they decide what medical students should study. - Hello! No wonder we're always sick. The sicker we are, the more meds doctors are compelled to prescribe, and the more meds they can prescribe in order to counter the effects of the meds that are making us sicker than we were in the first place (!), and the more ridiculous "procedures" they insist we need to undergo - in order to ensure an increase in their dividends. The hipocratic oath to "first, do no harm," seems to have been abandoned a long time ago. (I'm not an absolute antagonist, I do believe there is a vital place for pharmaceuticals, but not the way many doctors rely on them - it seems they're relying on meds to take care of business than they relying on them to take care of people).


I could go on and on.... Stay tuned, I think I'm going to get out some of my old papers and let it stir me a little more .... >;-)

Thanks for the jumpstart, Ceilon!

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Poof!

Today was a great day... much better than yesterday...

Here are the possible explanations for the events that occured:

Houdini performed the greatest escape by exiting the afterlife and materializing in my house in order to perform one more disappearing act - "Pay attention, look very closely at my hands... Now you see the $300 digital video recorder/camera.... [poof].... now you don't. - Thank you... Thank you. I'll be performing here everyThursday and Saturday. If you know of any other potential gigs to help me get my name back on the bill, here's my agent's number" .... [poof].... Houdini then exits via a mystical, yet very impressive pyrotechnic display masking some sort of portal located in my living room floor. I'm still feeling around the carpet looking for it! I know it's there! It's got to be! (There was a portal located behind my dryer in my other house.... took exactly one of every sock I owned... It must be the portal to a monopod sector of the gallaxy)

or...

My three invisible children, NotMe, IDon'tKnow, & Nobody, conspired together this time (as opposed to separately, as it usually happens) transported my camera to the invisible realm in which they live. After all, they're the ones who do everything around here.

and after that....

NotMe, IDon'tKnow & Nobody conspired together again, to break my $400 electrolux without leaving any evidence as to how they did it. They are the most clever of my children. They have the ability to cause things not to work and make it look like they should work. There is absolutely no physical evidence to support that my electrolux shouldn't work... except that it actually doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's not working.... It should work, but it's not working. Work! Work! ....

What? Hmm?... Uh... OH!

Where was I?

I think it was Houdini that poofed my camera.