Saturday, September 22, 2007

Today's Mire




















The adventurous spirit is with me today. I want to do something. If I think about staying in, I want to paint and come up with a design for the space over my cabinets. I want more if a European cabinet design. I should have gone all the way up with them. I'm sure I can add at some point...














My heart would really like to venture up to the Northwoods again. I still want to see my moose, or sit still and let nature come to me. Like the grayjays, and the red fox with his black boots, or the bear, or the buck...and hear the call of the loon and the pileated woodpecker with its bright afro.
















What a helluva week! It was crazy at work all week. Not a good time to go off the antidepressants. I was so irritable and I had the racing thoughts I just couldn't catch up with. I go back and forth on my desire to keep taking these. Do they suppress the real me? Do they calm me down enough to think at a rational speed? When all I want to do is sleep, can I really be living a quality life? Depression is such a prickly pest. It is the psychiatrist's new fad and quite lucrative for pharmaceutical companies. Are we a society evolving into this condition? In abnormal psyche, I learned that most psychological conditions can only be addressed by getting the beast under control. I can understand that. I don't want to be on these the rest of my life, but the rational thinking tends to go to the wayside when my mail-order company is in no hurry to dispense my meds. Oh, and can I ever get crabby! I hate that. When I do feel like that, I tend to shut up. I tend to just stay away from people because I don't like them anyway! I do realize that in the future, I will like them again, so it is best not to chomp their heads off!

The A.L. announced a writer's group finally has been started in the area. I may go to that. I need to hone my pen.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Double Take

I had to do a double take when I saw DUM's photo from (I believe) downtown Sioux Falls. It seems we have mirrored perspectives of different buildings. That makes me feel so unoriginal. Or so copied! Not really. I am sure I could never compete with the likes of a photojournalist like DUM.

The Carpenter Building ©2001 Theande Photos

This photo of mine from The Carpenter Building(?) is actually a minimized version of the photo I took years ago standing at the bottom of the Sears Tower and the building beside it in downtown Chi-town. The grid in those photos is more flat and appears as if you are looking at a tiled floor. If I had a working scanner, I would upload those images, but, as it were, I don't so I will have to go back to Chicago and take them with my digital camera so I can upload to the computer. DUM, how do you get your copyright on your photos? Perhaps my bro can assist with that...

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Mr. K and Bertha

An update on "Ben's Wild Ride"

When I was talking to people at work about Ben's wild ride, I also told them about the principal that thinks that it is okay to intimidate high school kids.

One girl said that he used to be at a school she went to and he was a jerk then. Another said that her husband was beaten by him with a 2 x 4 when he was in 5th grade. Apparently Mr. K. called said 2 x 4 "Bertha". J. didn't tell his mother about it until the 5th beating. She had words with Mr. K. and he didn't do it again. I told Ben about this and he wondered why they didn't file charges against him. That was 25 years ago, when children were beaten into submission and it was okay. But I wonder...if the statute of limitations hasn't run out on all those clergy that sexually abused kids, wouldn't it still be possible to press charges? It is unbelievable that he is still in the school system.

Oh, by the way, if you really want to piss him off, call him a turkey...(Freak!)

Wordsmith

Corporatespeak -

I hate it. It is the little words that are virtually meaningless that seem to bug the hell out of me. During meetings I used to have to listen to the words ala mode tossed from each seat at the table. The worst I have ever heard was at HTI. Goodness gracious - they even had a tone. Statements were intoned as questions. Try it....It is supposed to sugar coat the statement in a way that felt like fingernails down a chalkboard to me.

Now I listen to the current corporate speak and it has the same effect. "Going forward" is the new beginning of a "from now on" or "in the future"-type sentence. "That is a correct statement" or "it is a correct statement" is what is now used in lieu of "that's right" or "That's true". I think I need to think of counter-statements and I would like your input as well. I was thinking of saying, "Going backward" instead of saying, "In the past...".


Oh, I found out why she hates her mother. Her father used to beat the living hell out of her and her mother would never say anything about it. Of course, she in her adulthood would not understand the probable danger her mother would be in if she HAD said something. Not that it was necessarily the best way to handle it, but we are talking about years ago when things were a lot different. They really didn't have a Children's Inn or places like that. Women who spoke up about things happening in their home were "airing their dirty laundry" or "probably deserved it". Not only that - a family's livelihood depended on the man's income. Instead of understanding this, she judges and damns her mother.

I have a problem with people that don't speak to their parents. People that hold grudges for years and years and feel it is right to punish them. I think that I have the opposite problem. I can't stand it that my dad can only talk on the phone for so long...or comes over for a little bit and gets antsy to leave. I must be a freak! I think I want to get to know my parents.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Ben's Wild Ride

When I came home from work Thursday, Ben told me about his lunch hour. I signed a form earlier in the week allowing him to have open lunch. Open lunch allows the kids to leave school. This is a privilege for all students but only this year open to juniors. Anyway, Ben and three friends took off on open lunch and soon after were followed by a patrol car. A few minutes later when they were stuck in traffic, the lights came on.

I should first tell you that Ben and his friends are all conscientious young men. Their worst faults seem to be an addiction to video games and the swearing that often accompanies it. I know this, because we never seem to have just Ben here, but Ben and his friends. There was a boy that hung around them that got hooked on drugs last summer - through people he met at work. He was out of the group - they wouldn't do things with him and he had different friends, as those with substance abuse problems do. As things happen, he got in trouble with the law, and went through rehab. He is only now clean and will hang out with them again. They are shy boys and not the type at all that would go out of their way to do anything wrong.

The driver of the car, C., is also very shy. He is not one of the main group yet, but gives Ben and his friend E. a ride to school every morning. When I met him, he blushed. Yes, that shy. Anyway, picture a boy stuck in traffic, with a police car behind him with the lights on, trying to find a place to pull over when traffic wouldn't cooperate. I imagine he was quite nervous.
Finally he pulled into a parking lot, yet had to drive a bit more to find a place to stop that wouldn't be blocking parking lot traffic. When he was finally stopped, the officer came to the window with his hand on his gun, and told C. to step out of the car. He made C. lay over the top of his patrol car while he searched him. They thought he was trying to evade them. Soon another patrol car came and asked the rest of the boys to get out. They were asked for their I.D.s and Ben was the only one that had his. Then they accused the boys of truancy. They explained that they had open lunch. Two police SUVs pulled up with the police dog. The dog searched the car and it was clean. They finally let the boys go, but I think one of them accompanied them back into the school for a meeting with the principal. Apparently the only reason they said they were pulled over was because of a crack in the windshield and a loud muffler. They let C. off with a warning.

So then Ben had to deal with Mr. K.. Of all the boys, he said, Ben was the only one that didn't have open lunch. This confused Ben, because they had given him the form to fill out for it and I had signed it and he turned it in. The principal looked it up and Ben was one point short of being qualified for open lunch. So, he said he was truant. Ben was given after school suspension. Then the principal asked Ben if he was afraid when they searched the car. Ben said, "No, because none of us do drugs!"


I thought this was BS. Friday, the kids didn't have school, but I called anyway and talked to Mr. K. He is an asshole. He said he had to be consistent. Ben skipped school and had to be punished just like the rest. The suspension would be on his high school record. I asked him if being truant didn't imply intent. He agreed. I told him Ben was not like that. He wouldn't skip school. We argued back and forth until I got the suspension revoked and his sentence altered to a 1/2 hour study table that he could do before school and wouldn't be on his record.

Hmm...why do I have a problem with authority?