New Form of Torture.....

Since my treadmill bit the dust (and unfortunately it couldn't be resurrected like the dishwasher), I've been going to the "Y" for my workouts.

I like having something at home, though, that I can use in the morning WHILE I get my Robin Meade fix and before I have to get ready for school.

So we bought an elliptical last night, and Hubby picked it up this morning. I've already used it once, this afternoon, for 30 minutes, and I really like it.

I fully expect to be skinny by Tuesday afternoon.

Dear Random Charitable Organization....

Dear Random Charitable Organization:

Enough with the return-address labels already. We don't write letters, we email. We don't mail bills, we pay them online. We don't send Christmas cards, we blog about why we AREN'T sending them. We don't send cheery little family updates, we post anything relevant to the family website.

I know you are trying to guilt me into sending you a check. If you are one of the organizations I deem worthy of my money, I ALREADY send you a regular donation. And I do it online. With a credit card, whose bill I also pay online.

The last packet of return-address labels I received had a nickel in the envelope. There was something on the outside about what a nickel can do for a blah blah blah, but I didn't read it. I almost threw the whole thing in the trash, but I felt guilty about knowingly (and LITERALLY) throwing away real money.

So I ripped open the envelope, peeled the nickel off the letter and dropped it into our Pepsi-bottle-shaped piggy bank, and then threw the address labels away.

How many of your donated dollars are you spending on those labels, anyway? And to mail them out? And to pay someone to glue a nickel to a bazillion letters? Why don't you just take ORDERS for the labels that people actually want, if they can't figure out how to print their own like I do on the RARE occasion that I need an address label?

Sometimes I keep the labels, but I honestly can't remember which ones go with which organization, so it's not like your attempt to remind me every time I use one that I owe you some money is working or anything.

The last batch was the worst. I know you probably meant well using our official titles, but you didn't have to take a swipe at hubby's manhood when you were printing the labels.

You didn't have to put "Dr. My Name" FIRST and "Mr. Hubby's Name" UNDERNEATH that. Jeez, can't you let a man have a little pride? Do you honestly think I'm going to put those labels on ANYTHING? I didn't even want them in the house.

How tacky.

Sincerely,

Bragger
(That's DR. Bragger to you)

What Do You Know? vs. What Did You Do?

As a teacher, I constantly question myself when it comes time to award grades and credits. This is particularly true in our non-traditional setting, where students sometimes go through a course very quickly, and I feel a little guilt associated with that old, traditional, 180-school-days-to-get-it mentality.

We have a student who came to us because he would like to graduate a year early. We don't encourage that, and the other two county high schools discourage the practice, because they don't want a mad rush of students coming to our school just so they can graduate early. This young man, however, is college material, driven, ambitious, hard-working, and very smart. Except for one thing. He got his girlfriend pregnant.

So he's working 30 hours a week, taking college entrance tests, trying to earn 8 units in a school day that normally accommodates 5 subjects, coming in early and staying late, and he does it all with a smile on his face. He says, "You gotta do what you gotta do" instead of "It isn't my fault and why did this happen to me?"

Then I get a report yesterday that says he failed AP Government at his home high school. AP. As in college-level course. He was genuinely shocked and said, "She told me if I passed the final exam, I would pass the course." He made an 80 on the final exam. AP final exam. As in college-level final exam.

I emailed the teacher to make sure the information I had was correct, and I received a VERY curt reply that of course it was.

This young man summoned all his courage and went by to see the old bit... the teacher.... yesterday afternoon. She was rude to him and said that he had failed because he turned in a project late, and she gave him a 50 on it. That was the difference in passing or failing the course.

That's not the part that made me the most angry, however. As he was leaving, he said to her, "Well I guess I'll see you at graduation."

Her reply: "I doubt that."

It. Is. On.

I'm damned determined he'll graduate. Short of doing his work for him (and he may be smarter than I am), I will do whatever it takes to help him get those 8...no 9....credits to graduate early.

Which leads me to the question about schools and teachers. What is our ultimate goal? What do we grade students on? How much they know? Or how much they do?

If this young man learned 80% of the material he needed in an AP Government course, why should it matter whether or not he did the required project? What lesson are we teaching him?

I know that in addition to teaching subject matter we are supposed to teach them work ethics and responsibility and fulfilling commitments and all that, but COME ON! I believe this young man could run circles around many a grown-up in every single one of those departments.

I'm guessing that many teachers out there would say, "Well it's not fair to give him the same credit as other students who actually DID all of their work."

Yes, actually, it is.

Because "fair" does not mean "equal." It is FAIR to this young man to give him the unit of credit he started working on before he learned that oh by the way, you're going to be a daddy. It is also FAIR to the other students who earn their own credits. I just don't think there has to be a comparison.

It reminds me of a Bible story, Matthew 20:1-16. And those of you who know me are probably sitting there with your jaws slack and your mouths gaping open. Relax -- I didn't know where the story was, I Googled it. Then I looked it up in my (dusty) Bible to make sure. And I'll be back in my regular seat at Happy Hour tomorrow afternoon.

Basically the story is about a vineyard owner who pays some men to work for him. Some men were hired to work all day and agreed on a fair wage. There's that word again: fair. Some other men showed up later and were paid the same amount of money even though they only worked one hour. When the first dudes got pissed off about that (okay, so that word is NOT in the Bible), the vineyard owner told them if they were satisfied with what THEY got, then what anyone else got was NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS.

That's my point. If the other students are happy with the credit they earned, it shouldn't bother them at all if my guy gets a credit for doing less than they did. I wonder how many of THEM made an 80 on the final exam? I'm not suggesting we just start handing out credits willy-nilly, don't get me wrong. There has to be some basis for assessment and some accountability. But I just think that anyone who can get an 80 on an AP final exam from a teacher who was obviously a B-I-T-C-H and made life hell for her students anyway deserves a break. Possibly two.



This rant has been brought to you today by the letters N and W and by the number 7.

It Just Ain't Right.....

The "high" temperature here today was still below the freezing point. That's just wrong. God did not put me in the South so I could endure temperatures below freezing. It was 60 in Billings, Montana today, for Pete's sake! (Who exactly is Pete, and why does he have his own sake?)

I was actually forced to take a coat with me today. But I left it in the car. I figure as long as I can make it from the car to the door.....

Resurrection......

If you'll forgive the blatant sacrilege, I am celebrating the resurrection of the dishwasher I wasted a whole blog entry lamenting over last night. But I guess one way to look at it is that she provided me with TWO nights of blog entries instead of just one.

Hubby, being A) the world's last perfect man; and B) ONE of the world's cheapest men, repaired the dishwasher himself. We thought something was wrong with the drain, and the dirty water couldn't get OUT. Or the motor was going. Do you realize how hard it is to ascertain whether or not a dishwasher is actually producing water? It's sort of like trying to see if the refrigerator light goes off when you shut the door. I did discover that you can make a dishwasher run with the door open if you strategically place a butter knife in the mechanism on the door. I also discovered that it helps to have some towels and/or a mop handy.

Seems that actually the hose that was responsible for bringing water INTO the dishwasher was hopelessly clogged and that's why the dishes were dirtier than when they went in, if that's possible. That hose is now clear and free and is on house arrest for the next two weeks for causing me to have to wash dishes by hand for two or three days in a row.

I was so grateful to have the dishwasher back that guess how I rewarded Hubby?

(Get your minds OUT of the gutter, please. Thank you.)

Dinner tonight was ham and cheese sandwiches on paper plates.

*****************************************************************************

Oh, and Hubby's not really cheap. He's just like me in the sense that he'd just rather spend money on toys than something that is a necessity but not really fun, like a dishwasher. After hearing me slam dishes in and out of the sink for a few nights, he decided maybe it wasn't a luxury after all.

Mourning the Loss.....

She passed so quickly. And unexpectedly. And although she wasn't very old, I suppose she had a hard life. She fought to the very end, still carrying on gamely and never complaining. She sounded like her old self, but her heart just couldn't keep pumping her life's juices through her anymore. A bottle of the clear blue liquid should have helped, but the effects were negligible. A procedure to clean out the old pipes, if you'll forgive me, was likewise ineffective. Her cycles just didn't...... cycle anymore. I feel terrible that I used her and, yes, probably abused her, and I never told her just how much I loved her. How she was as necessary to me as air. I never expressed the feeling that I didn't know what life was like before she came into mine. I will miss her musical roar and her stately silence. I will miss her steamy breath and her sweet smell. I will miss the fact that she was willing to work as many times a day as I asked her to, even when we asked her to do her work after we went to bed so we wouldn't be disturbed.

I miss my dishwasher.

My Six-Word Memoir.....

I heard about the concept of Six-Word Memoirs and became fascinated by the book Not Quite What I Was Planning. Some people attribute the fad to a contemporary folk story that Earnest Hemingway was challenged to write a short story in only six words (or as few words as possible, according to the source). His response: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

While neither has it been established that the challenge actually occurred OR that Hemingway wrote those words, the concept is an interesting one. The book Not Quite What I Was Planning has a wonderful mix of memoirs, from the poignant to the hilarious.

Here's mine:

I don't "please wait" very well.