Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Gun Free Kids

GunFreeKids Legislative Scorecard
Seems like a cool organization, plus I like the idea of making legislators who support and take money from the gun lobby accountable.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

"I look cool / Do I look chubby in this jacket?"

My kindergartner always tells me when he gets in trouble at school, which is pretty rare, and also when other kids get in trouble, which is good because we have an idea of who we don't want him to hang out with, and it's setting a good precedent for the future, when the kinds of trouble kids are getting in is less cute or innocuous.
So he starts telling us about one kid that we know gets in trouble, who his teacher in fact has decided to not let our boy sit with because he prompted my son to tell some girl that she's not pretty. Which was the only time he's really gotten into trouble.
Anyway he's telling me how this kid called him poopy-something or other and pushed him. I ask if he told the teacher, he says yes but it was clean up time so the teacher didn't do anything about it. To get the whole story from young children you have to ask them the same question a few times often in different ways because they don't necessarily understand what information you are trying to get out of them. So I again ask why did he call you names, and my son answers, "Okay I'm looking in the mirror saying, 'I look cool' (as he reenacts smiling and pointing at himself in the mirror) and then he called me a poopy-head and I didn't stop looking in the mirror, then he pushed me."
Oh, I understand now.

---------------------------

My son has a cool Timberland jacket that he's been wearing since the weather has finally begun to cool off, so while we are driving to school today he asks me, "What does chubby mean?" so I tell him it means a little overweight, a little fat, but knowing that a question asked never comes from nowhere I ask him why does he want to know. He's like I just want to know, and I tell him it's okay to tell me, did he see something on TV, or did a kid at school call someone chubby?
He answers, "Okay, do I look chubby in this jacket?"
Me, "No! did someone tell you that, you're the least chubby person in our family." (He's lucked into a thin yet muscular physique)
Him, "Who's chubby in our family?"
2 1/2 year old son yells his own name in response to the who's chubby question, which is slightly true.
Me, "No one's chubby, but you're totally not chubby at all."
5 year-old, "No not me, I mean the jacket, do I LOOK chubby in the jacket?"
Me, "No you don't, your jacket is cool."
Him, "Okay."

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Daddy, Am I Going to Die?

My Five year-old asked me when is he going to die.
GREAT
I was like I don't know, heck maybe you won't die, maybe you'll go to heaven, so it's like you don't need your body any more but your soul lives on, so you can't really be dead then can you? Well at least that's what a lot of people think, and that's what they believe at the church you and mommy go to, but really nobody really knows.
"But you know daddy right?"
No I don't know, but I hope that's what will happen. Who told you, you were going to die, or did you just figure that out on your own?
"I just figured it out."
Oh, I don't know son, hopefully you'll just go to heaven.

Now I've noticed his wheels turning when we talk about humans and animals dying, and I knew that eventually he'd figure it out, and judge me if you must, knowing that I lean to the agnostic side when I'm not leaning to the Buddhist side, but I'll be damned if I'm telling my five year old that he can look forward to a life of trials, tribulations and travail* to be rendered meaningless by an inescapable death, I don't mind the idea of being worm's fodder, or turning to vapor and becoming one with the universe or whatever bullshit we tell ourselves in place of the self deluding comfort lies of religion, but I'm trying to give my son a few years before he crawls up his own arse via his inherited inclination for neurotic introspection.
Honestly sometimes I'd rather he live deluded and happy having some all encompassing lie that explains away all the evil and contradictions of the world, rather than being a compulsive seeker of truth, when the truth is life is pain and suffering that has to be accepted and overcome somehow without becoming totally numb.
Of course I don't really want him to run around totally deluded, because that will leave him easily lead by the likes of televangelists and politicians, and possibly result in his viewing others as "non-believers."
I hate that idea of "non-believer" I remember a co-worker saying, "Oh that's right you're a non-believer," to which I answered, "No, I'm not a non-believer, I believe in things, they are just different things than you believe in."

*travail is french for work

Student Family Housing?

So I'm doing research into getting a Masters of Social Work and have learned that only a few schools in my college rich area offer MSW's. One of the schools is my Alma mater, which has two campuses in my general area, and another one that is one county south of where I live, anyway, I'm looking at the requirements of the one county south one and it says I need to have taken classes in biology and statistics, which I have no recollection of taking, I vaguely remember one Senior Psychology course that involved statistics, but no straight up statistics courses and no biology since high school, so shit am I going to have to go back to college to go to grad school?
(I've had a reoccurring dream all of my life where I'm about to either start college, or graduate from college and somehow they missed that I didn't complete some course work in High School or Middle School, depending on the dream, and I have to go back as an adult and take classes with kids. That would be totally weird if I would now actually have to go back and take undergrad courses, I'm nervous enough as it is about going to grad school pushing 40, under grad courses with 19 year-old's is not how I pictured launching my mid-life career change. My other reoccurring dream for years was that I was going to die in a car crash, so I hope this isn't the start of some kind of trend.)

So I go to my Alma mater's web site, search out the transcripts page, fill out the info, they have me on record, which is cool that they transferred files from the dark ages into their current system, but what comes up but a note about there being a HOLD ON MY TRANSCRIPTS, having something to do with the Department of Student Family Housing? What the fuck, I went to college for an extra year after I moved out of University Housing, why wasn't I made aware of these issues then? Shouldn't they have held up my diploma or something, isn't that what they do when you don't pay parking tickets and shit like that?

Yikes, now I'm starting to vaguely remember getting some kind of notice from the university about some kind of fine or something that I went down to contest and they couldn't find it or something and just let me leave without paying anything ... honestly this is a super-fuzzy memory, a lot has happened since 1992, so I can't be sure of how on point this memory is, either way, now I've got to call them and have them track down what these two ancient holds on my transcripts are.

I can picture it now, "You have two $50 fines to pay, but with 15 years of interest that totals to ... $7,780, payable in person by travelers check or money order only."

Don't they know I'm the one of the least motivate people on earth, and hurdles might as well be great walls of China so far as my inclination to scale over them.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

20Gs is 20Gs

I'm pissed off, we put an offer on a house that is a block away from our townhouse, it's beyond the top of our price range and I'm not sure how our finances will work out if we get the place, as in our day to day finances.
I told our realtor to bid $X00,000 which was 19,000 under what they were asking IF there were no other bids on the house. She said that they said they were expecting two other bids, so we upped our bid by 20,000.
It turns out that no other bids came through, but she didn't double check before putting in our higher bid.
Now they haven't accepted our bid because it's contingent on selling our old place, which the sellers don't like, plus they are nervous about whether we have the money in place to pay, to the point of asking about how much money we make and asking about our credit rating.
We were approved for a loan, and we have a deposit that is well over 20%, so I don't know what the fuck they are stressing about, I wonder if it's because I'm a stay at home dad? I wonder if I was the one who was a compensation manager at a huge ass corporation rather than my wife, and if she were the one who stayed home if they would be stressing so much about whether we can pay or not?
They may just be greedy and expected their house, which is really nice, to be the object of a bidding war rather than just getting one bid, I don't know, I just know that that combined with our realtor not doing her due diligence has me in a pissy mood, plus I don't really feel like moving / selling our house during the Fall, which is my favorite season.
Our house is a disaster and will take literally weeks to get into shape for a good "showing," which means tons of work on the weekends or not getting what it's worth because it looks like shit.
I have to weight this against the house being a decent deal for the money, though since no one else bid on it, it makes me feel like a sucker for bidding 1G over asking price, though it was done on false pretenses.

Jazz

Lots of heavy things going on, which you could tell by the fact that I haven't been posting very often. That of course sucks because I miss out on recording a lot of intense moments, but I guess it's better to live life first hand rather running up to my computer every time I feel an emotion, like people who spend their vacations behind the lens of a camera, video or otherwise, so worried about capturing the moment for posterity that they miss out on experiencing the actual moment in real time.
blah blah blah

So while I was feeding my two and a half year old son I was listening to WBGO, the straight jazz station. My son says, "Is this the music upstairs that I go to bed?" at first I didn't get it, but then I realized he was talking about the jazz music, because I put WBGO on "sleep" when I put my boys to bed, so he was asking if this was the kind of music / or the music station that he hears when he goes to bed, which was really cool.
I guess he noticed because I usually listen to the jazz station upstairs and sports radio or Air America when I'm in the kitchen.