• Posted By landismom @ 2/28/2005 05:06:00 PM (3) comments • • •
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Monday, February 28, 2005
public meanness
So yesterday, I wrote a long, ranting post about a fight that I had with my DH in the morning. You'll notice that it no longer appears on my blog. See, the thing is, I don't even know if he's noticed that I have a blog yet. But it seemed like not the best way for him to find out.
The thing I like about blogging is its total anonymity. I don't want to be one of those people who has comments written on their blog by their sister, or their next door neighbor. (Assuming, of course, that I don't get dooced.) I want to just be the mildly amusing blog that you read once in a while, and think, now why can't be as funny as her? Okay, I'd even like to think that about myself.
But is it fair game to pick on my spouse, and risk that he might stumble across this blog and have the first entry be my version of a fight that we had? I don't think so. I'm not saying that I'll never snipe at him here, but I think I should at least give him the opportunity to respond in person to any major character assassination.
Of course, this is not the philosophy that I espouse in my journal. We have a long-standing agreement that if he doesn't want to read anything bad about himself, he just shouldn't read my journal at all. Not that I'm tearing him a new one every time I write in my journal--on the contrary, I hardly ever write about him at all. But I learned, from a previous oh-so-bad experience with journal privacy in dating, that it's pointless to tell someone that you live with not to read your journal. It only makes them want to read it more. And then you're both stuck with the consequences.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Snow Day
Sigh...I am officially tired of winter. The Bumblebee's afterschool program just called--they are not opening this afternoon.
Because there is one inch of snow.
On the grass.
Seriously, I just looked out the window, and while there is snow in my garden & covering my car, there is not one iota of accumulated snow on either the street or the sidewalk. I was planning to take her to a fundraiser for a local kids' organization tonight, but now that is cancelled too. Blat. I guess we'll just have to go out in the yard and throw meltballs at each other!
Why can't it be one of those warm spring afternoons, where you just feel good to be alive?
I just turned the heat up in our house, which I'm usually too cheap to do, but the power bill came yesterday and was actually under $200, so I'm feeling splurgy. And cold. Splurgy and cold, maybe that's what I should have named this post. I'd do it, if I weren't nervous that I was spelling splurgy wrong.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Winter Kids
The Bumblebee and the Sweet Potato, sit in a giant's chair, waiting for spring.
Monday, February 21, 2005
oy vey!
What's worse than working at home and going crazy because I'm by myself all day?
Working at home on a day when the Bumblebee, the Sweet Potato, and DH all have the day off from school/work AND I DON'T.
Boy, am I productive on a day where those little darlings are running around underfoot. And oh, it's great to be calling people on the phone and have my daughter start an argument with me about when her quiet time ends. When does MY quiet time begin, for god's sake?
On the plus side, I can refer all decisions to her dad. Which is kind of fun.
On the minus side, I have to actually look like I'm working all day long, in order to maintain the pretense that I'm actually working when I say I am, and am not, in fact, reading the Carnivale forum on Television Without Pity. Not because the Bumblebee can read--she's not quite there yet (and given last night's episode of Carnivale, I'd probably get taken away by Child Protective Services, if she was reading that). But because her dad would see it, and he'd bust me for not working, while saddling him with the kids.
Oh the shame.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Bush + Walmart=BFF!
Nathan Newman reports that President Bush's Department of Labor is allowing Wal-Mart to investigate its employees' wage and hour complaints itself. Nothing like setting the fox to guard the henhouse--especially such a nice, well-rounded fox!
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
The Postman Doesn't Ring At All
Sigh...
I had a meeting scheduled for today. Honest-to-God real human contact, not just sitting at my laptop typing all day, or being on endless conference calls. But it got cancelled.
Back when I had an office job, I would have been delighted to have a meeting canceled. "Cool," I would have thought. "Now I have more time to blog, or shop online." But those days are over. Now, I'm running to the front door to meet the mailman, just to have a little face-to-face chat during the day. And while I do enjoy Stan's conversation, there's only so much you can talk to your mailman about without incurring James M. Cain-ish suspicions from my husband. Who once caught Stan kissing me (on the cheek, after his Christmas tip), and has mercilessly teased me about it ever since.
Fortunately, on Friday I take a four-hour round trip to attend a two-hour long meeting. It's sick that I am almost excited by that prospect, especially since it means that I will get home from work too late to eat dinner with the family and my FIL who will be in town, and possibly even too late to read them stories and put them to bed.
On the other hand, last week I was asked to run for VP of the PTA at my daughter's school, so evidently the extra time that I now have to attend school-related meetings is paying off. If being the VP of the PTA of a failing elementary school can be considered a reward.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
surprising aspiration
We took the kids to the zoo today. Thought it would be empty (it's the Superbowl, doncha know), but it was (pun intended) a zoo.
On the way home, we drove by a huge old school building, prompting my 5 year-old dd to announce that she might want to be a school janitor when she grows up. That is, if her dreaming of being Beyonce doesn't work out. Not a Beyonce-like singer, btw--she actually thinks she will become Beyonce. But that's a topic for another post.
I suspect that my dd knows more janitors than the average 5 year-old, due to my having worked for not one but two unions that represent them. But I was still a little surprised that this was her backup plan for adult employment. I wasn't even aware that she knew that schools had janitors, so I'm pretty happy that she gets that someone has to clean up the mess that she and her friends make every day. (As opposed to at home, where no one ever cleans up any of the mess. Hell, she's lucky to have clean clothes to go to school in.)
We had a conversation about blue-collar vs. white-collar vs. pink-collar work the other day. I guess that really motivated her more than I thought it did.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Whither the US labor movement?
For those of you not in the know (probably about 90% of the population of the US), there is a massive debate going on in the labor movement right now about labor's future. There are many union leaders who feel that to continue in our current vein is to invite a world in which no US workers are represented by unions. Chief among those is Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees' International Union, the largest union in the AFL-CIO right now.
Click here for last Sunday's NY Times magazine profile on SEIU president Andy Stern.
Are you a union member? If not, why not? If so, what do you think about this and other proposals made to reform the labor movement?
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Not quite Das Boot
I went to a pretty big suburban high school--you know, the kind that they're trying to get rid of, in the post-Columbine years. The kind where there are so many students that they have four vice principals, one for each class of the school. The vice principal who was associated with my class (to anonymize him, I'm going to call him Mr. Braveman) was a member of the so-called Greatest Generation (although we weren't yet calling them that yet).
Anyway, I worked on the student paper, and another student and I were sent to interview him about his experiences in WWII. He told us a long, involved story about his service on a submarine, and how at one point, his sub had to stay underwater for 86 days in the North Atlantic. He said that the sailors were so bored (and dirty) that for fun, they would pop each other's blackheads.
That story has stuck with me for nearly 20 years. And while the current wretchedness of our winter hasn't lasted for nearly 86 days, I'm still feeling like a trapped sailor, with no way to get out.
The cold sucks.
The snow sucks.
My house, which I normally love, has one major winter flaw. The back steps, which are completely out of the sun for most of the day, become a sheet of ice, which appears on the first day of snow and doesn't melt until about mid-April. It does, however, get worse, because the little porch that overhangs it does get sun, and then it drips water onto the steps during the day, which freezes at night.
The first year that we lived here, we just put out rock salt on our steps, and that worked great. Turns out, though, that if you put rock salt on brick steps, you destroy the mortar, and the steps fall apart. Oops! $500 of re-mortaring later, I'm cursing every time I come in the back door.
The kids, of course, think its hilarious to see me and their dad trying to hack off the three-inch thick pieces of ice that form. Naturally, they themselves also want to climb the stairs. It is not a good idea for an 18 month old to try to climb a sheet of ice. Especially while he's carrying Mr. Bear. Just in case you were tempted to let your own kid do it.
