Story #1: A couple weeks ago, a student of mine came to school after a long weekend and had done NONE of her homework. I was more than a little irritated and wanted to know the reason why. She told me it was a "long story." I told her a still wanted to hear it. She told me it was a "really long story." I told her I was listening. And so she related how her family had confronted her mother about her excessive drinking the Friday night before, and my student found out that her mom was going to be charged with stealing narcotics from the nursing home she worked at and could possibly face jail time. I was absolutely floored, having known - and liked - this family for years. Since then, my student has related that she may be going to live with an aunt and uncle in another town until her mother can get herself straightened out, how her mother would drive her around town while under the influence, and how my student was sometimes put into the role of watchdog with her mother to keep unsavory friends from having contact. This student is only 12 years old.
Story #2: A ten-year-old student has had a horrible past two weeks. Although he's a bright kid, he's often off-task, disorganized, and even defiant in the classroom. The past two weeks have been particularly bad, culminating with an in-school suspension for doing some play "stabbing" with a pencil with another student. Turns out this student, who lives with his mom and her boyfriend, overheard his mom, who is in the National Guard, talking about how she might be deployed to Iraq. My student doesn't know who he will live with if this happens - his dad lives in Virginia. As he told his teacher, he just doesn't care about school anymore.
Life just should NOT be this hard for kids who haven't even reached their teenage years.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
My life as a single mom
So, Jeff went on a camping trip up North for a few days. No problem, huh? Maybe... or maybe not. Here's what my life has been like the last couple of nights:
Monday afternoon: Pick up Caleb at high school after cc practice, pick up Maren and Chase at Kid's Club and get home at 5:15. Hustle Chase into his soccer clothes and turn around and leave for soccer practice, which starts at 5:30. Get home from soccer practice at 6:40, start dinner and eat. Try to help Maren with her homework but she gets mad and I tell her she's going to bed. Put Maren and Chase to bed, hound Caleb to get to bed. No, he can't watch the rest of the Vikings-Saints game. Try to watch a taped show. Fall asleep immediately on the couch. Eventually wake up and stumble upstairs to bed.
Tuesday morning: Maren cries about a missing folder. Maren cries about the possiblity of her teacher yelling at her. Maren cries because she wants cold lunch and I "wasn't listening to her." Maren cries because I'm yelling at her. It's pouring rain out so I drive the kids to school. Maren and Chase barely get there before the bell rings. Drop off Caleb and drive to work in the pouring rain. Slog through my work day in the pouring rain. It doesn't stop, not once, all day.
Tuesday evening: Pick up the kids at their respective schools. Get home at 5:30. Send an email to the sub basketball coach that Caleb is not going to practice because he has too much homework. Check work email that I didn't get a chance to read during the day and respond. Check home email and find a message from Chase's teacher that he was being naughty during gym. Talk to Chase about his behavior. Cook dinner and eat. Tell Maren and Chase multiple times to stop wrestling. Tell Chase he's going to bed because he's not listening. Set Maren up on the computer practicing her spelling words. Try to give Caleb some help with homework before reading story to Chase. Put Chase in bed. Sit down briefly with Caleb. See Chase, who needs to poop again, come down to sit on the potty. Listen to Chase cry because it hurts when he poops (caveat here: he's actually been pretty good about pooping the last month or so, but the stomach flu last weekend threw off his whole digestive system). Sit with Chase in the bathroom and try to console him, then finally send him back to bed with minimal success in the bathroom. Read stories to Maren. Sit with Caleb for an hour plus helping him study for his algebra test.
It's now 11:00 p.m. Time for bed, so I can start all over in the morning.
Monday afternoon: Pick up Caleb at high school after cc practice, pick up Maren and Chase at Kid's Club and get home at 5:15. Hustle Chase into his soccer clothes and turn around and leave for soccer practice, which starts at 5:30. Get home from soccer practice at 6:40, start dinner and eat. Try to help Maren with her homework but she gets mad and I tell her she's going to bed. Put Maren and Chase to bed, hound Caleb to get to bed. No, he can't watch the rest of the Vikings-Saints game. Try to watch a taped show. Fall asleep immediately on the couch. Eventually wake up and stumble upstairs to bed.
Tuesday morning: Maren cries about a missing folder. Maren cries about the possiblity of her teacher yelling at her. Maren cries because she wants cold lunch and I "wasn't listening to her." Maren cries because I'm yelling at her. It's pouring rain out so I drive the kids to school. Maren and Chase barely get there before the bell rings. Drop off Caleb and drive to work in the pouring rain. Slog through my work day in the pouring rain. It doesn't stop, not once, all day.
Tuesday evening: Pick up the kids at their respective schools. Get home at 5:30. Send an email to the sub basketball coach that Caleb is not going to practice because he has too much homework. Check work email that I didn't get a chance to read during the day and respond. Check home email and find a message from Chase's teacher that he was being naughty during gym. Talk to Chase about his behavior. Cook dinner and eat. Tell Maren and Chase multiple times to stop wrestling. Tell Chase he's going to bed because he's not listening. Set Maren up on the computer practicing her spelling words. Try to give Caleb some help with homework before reading story to Chase. Put Chase in bed. Sit down briefly with Caleb. See Chase, who needs to poop again, come down to sit on the potty. Listen to Chase cry because it hurts when he poops (caveat here: he's actually been pretty good about pooping the last month or so, but the stomach flu last weekend threw off his whole digestive system). Sit with Chase in the bathroom and try to console him, then finally send him back to bed with minimal success in the bathroom. Read stories to Maren. Sit with Caleb for an hour plus helping him study for his algebra test.
It's now 11:00 p.m. Time for bed, so I can start all over in the morning.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
School supplies
This afternoon I decided I could no longer delay the inevitable and headed over to Target to purchase school supplies. I armed myself with the lists of "suggested" items our schools have so kindly published, and a pen for crossing out the items after I put them in the cart. Incidentally, I think "suggested" is a synonym for mandated.
Two hours and about $110 later, I headed home with 7 plastic bags full of glue bottles, glue sticks, folders, notebooks, pencils, pens, binders, rulers, pencil boxes, pencil bags, looseleaf paper, scissors, watercolors, washable markers, dry erase markers, colored pencils, crayons, pencil sharpeners, erasers, kleenex boxes, wipes (six canisters just for kindergarten!), and a non-perishable snack for 20 kids. And this is just the stuff from the lists. I still have to go to Office Max for the clear plastic protractor and the yellow three-ring binder, as color-coded notebooks, folders and binders are required at almost every grade level for the different subjects. At the checkout in Target I actually felt sorry for the cashier. The people standing behind me, an older couple, couldn't stop commenting on how many items I had. "How many children do you have?" "How many glue bottles could you possibly need?" (Answer: kindergarten requires four, plus two glue sticks, and second grade needs one bottle and two sticks).
NOW I expect I'll spend another two hours sorting through all the bags and figuring out who gets what, then labeling in permanent marker. Caleb will label his own supplies, and most of Chase's don't need to be labeled because the kindergarten classrooms operate under the communal property law. So that just leaves Maren's various paraphernalia needing a name afixed. Come meet the teacher night, we'll haul all the supplies to the respective classrooms (or, in Caleb's case, his locker). I guess this is all much more efficient for the teachers than in the olden days, when we just bought what we thought was needed and tucked it away in our school bags to bring on the first day of school. Kids nowadays have to hit the ground running... armed with all their "suggested"color-coded supplies.
Two hours and about $110 later, I headed home with 7 plastic bags full of glue bottles, glue sticks, folders, notebooks, pencils, pens, binders, rulers, pencil boxes, pencil bags, looseleaf paper, scissors, watercolors, washable markers, dry erase markers, colored pencils, crayons, pencil sharpeners, erasers, kleenex boxes, wipes (six canisters just for kindergarten!), and a non-perishable snack for 20 kids. And this is just the stuff from the lists. I still have to go to Office Max for the clear plastic protractor and the yellow three-ring binder, as color-coded notebooks, folders and binders are required at almost every grade level for the different subjects. At the checkout in Target I actually felt sorry for the cashier. The people standing behind me, an older couple, couldn't stop commenting on how many items I had. "How many children do you have?" "How many glue bottles could you possibly need?" (Answer: kindergarten requires four, plus two glue sticks, and second grade needs one bottle and two sticks).
NOW I expect I'll spend another two hours sorting through all the bags and figuring out who gets what, then labeling in permanent marker. Caleb will label his own supplies, and most of Chase's don't need to be labeled because the kindergarten classrooms operate under the communal property law. So that just leaves Maren's various paraphernalia needing a name afixed. Come meet the teacher night, we'll haul all the supplies to the respective classrooms (or, in Caleb's case, his locker). I guess this is all much more efficient for the teachers than in the olden days, when we just bought what we thought was needed and tucked it away in our school bags to bring on the first day of school. Kids nowadays have to hit the ground running... armed with all their "suggested"color-coded supplies.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Busy, busy, busy...
... playing Hot Dog Bush at www.addictinggames.com/hotdogbush.html Who has time to blog when there are so many hungry customers?
Friday, June 27, 2008
A much better movie...
Maren and Chase and I went to see "Wall-E" today - I think the first time I've ever seen a movie the day that it's opened. I'm not one to go to the movie theater in general (think "no captioning"), but the critics were raving about "Wall-E." And they are absolutely right. "Wall-E" is a FANTASTIC movie. Admittedly, its message was way over Chase's head, and Maren needed quite a bit of explanation to understand the story line, but... wow. Pixar really did itself proud.
The movie takes place in the future. Wall-E and his cockroach friend are the only inhabitants of a trash filled earth, where Wall-E patiently compacts the endless detritus and occasionally picks out an item to take home at the end of the day. When a droid is dropped off by a spaceship one day, he falls in love with her and offers her numerous items from his treasures. One of these treasures is a single, small plant he found, the only one apparently growing on the face of the earth. The droid immediately takes the plant back to the space station where humans are currently living, Wall-E tagging along. The rest of the story is about how Wall-E and his droid-friend bring about a revolution among the overwight, passive humans who can't function outside of their computerized, technology-filled environment.
Although "Wall-E" is essentially a love story, it's also much more than that. There are multiple themes: We are slowly destroying our planet by overloading it with waste. We are becoming fat, lazy beings who will eventually be unable to pull ourselves out of a reclining position due to our apathy and over-indulgence. We are becoming too dependent on technology to do our work for us. But the movie isn't preachy. It just tells a story and lets the audience draw its own conclusions.
When I leave a movie teary-eyed about a robot, well... maybe I'm sentimental. Or maybe it was just that a good of a movie.
The movie takes place in the future. Wall-E and his cockroach friend are the only inhabitants of a trash filled earth, where Wall-E patiently compacts the endless detritus and occasionally picks out an item to take home at the end of the day. When a droid is dropped off by a spaceship one day, he falls in love with her and offers her numerous items from his treasures. One of these treasures is a single, small plant he found, the only one apparently growing on the face of the earth. The droid immediately takes the plant back to the space station where humans are currently living, Wall-E tagging along. The rest of the story is about how Wall-E and his droid-friend bring about a revolution among the overwight, passive humans who can't function outside of their computerized, technology-filled environment.
Although "Wall-E" is essentially a love story, it's also much more than that. There are multiple themes: We are slowly destroying our planet by overloading it with waste. We are becoming fat, lazy beings who will eventually be unable to pull ourselves out of a reclining position due to our apathy and over-indulgence. We are becoming too dependent on technology to do our work for us. But the movie isn't preachy. It just tells a story and lets the audience draw its own conclusions.
When I leave a movie teary-eyed about a robot, well... maybe I'm sentimental. Or maybe it was just that a good of a movie.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Doug Grow called my house!
Yes, it's true. The esteemed columnist, most recently of the StarTribune, spontaneously called our house yesterday. Caleb took the call. Doug Grow wanted to talk to Jeff! As Jeff wasn't home at the time, Caleb took the name and number with no idea who he was talking to. A few minutes later, I happened to see the note. Doug Grow! Was this the newspaper columnist? What did he want to talk to Jeff about? Are we famous? How did he get our unlisted phone number? Is this another Doug Grow? A quick search of Dexonline showed that there is only one Doug Grow in Minneapolis, with the same number Caleb took down. It must be THE Doug Grow! Even though Doug Grow took the buyout at the Strib last year and no longer writes a column for the paper, he still has the name, prestige and voice that make him well-recognized in the Twin Cities. When Jeff finally came home, I insisted he call Doug Grow back right away, explaining that this was a famous person he was calling.
The conversation was brief.
Doug Grow wanted to talk to the OTHER Jeff Blodgett, campaign manager to the late Paul Wellstone.
PS: This isn't the first time Jeff has been mistakenly identified as the OTHER Jeff Blodgett. A year or so ago we received a Christmas card from a DFL candidate thanking Jeff for his support, inviting him to lunch sometime, and providing him with a receipt for his $10,000 campaign contribution.
The conversation was brief.
Doug Grow wanted to talk to the OTHER Jeff Blodgett, campaign manager to the late Paul Wellstone.
PS: This isn't the first time Jeff has been mistakenly identified as the OTHER Jeff Blodgett. A year or so ago we received a Christmas card from a DFL candidate thanking Jeff for his support, inviting him to lunch sometime, and providing him with a receipt for his $10,000 campaign contribution.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The.. Worst... Movie... Ever
Or, at least the worst movie I've ever seen.
"Facing the Giants" bills itself as an "inspirational tale of courage on the gridiron and the power of God's word." Being that this is a movie with a Christian message, I almost hesitate to be critical. But at the risk of being labeled a anti-religion reprobate, I have to spread the word that FTG was just plain crap, for the following reasons:
1. The acting is atrociously bad. It is so bad, in fact, that I actually thought maybe there was some hidden meaning in the lack of expression that I wasn't quite understanding. But nope, no obscure subtexts. Just lack of talent.
2. The plot is predictable and unrealistic. The movie is about a football coach at a Christian high school who has had six losing seasons to date. Everything is going wrong in his life - his star player transfers to a different school, his house is falling apart, his car doesn't work, and he just found out he can't give his wife the children she wants because his little swimmers aren't up to the job. When he learns that some of the parents of his players want a new coach (and he's surprised after six losing seasons?) he's ready to give up. But a night of soul-searching, prayer, and reading the Bible gives him a new purpose, and from that point on, nothing can go wrong. His team, the Eagles, starts to win their games! He's mysteriously given a new truck! His wife gets pregnant! His players all find salvation in a spontaneous all-school revival on the football field! They win the championship against all odds!
3. The cliches and stereotypes are nauseating. Example #1: the father of the new kid is confined to a wheelchair, but inspires his confidence-lacking son to not only join the team, but to kick the impossible game-winning field goal in the championship game. Dad painfully pulls himself from his wheelchair to a standing position so his son can see him in the end zone. Of course, the confidence-lacking, smaller-than-average son who manages the impossible 51-yard field goal is named David. Example #2: the big, bad, undefeated Giants not only wear black uniforms, but have athletic black players who are ultimately defeated by the all-white Eagles.
4. The movie's message is that living a life that glorifies God has brought about all these good things. But what if the opposing teams also live lives that glorify God? How does God decide who wins? Is life a contest of faith, with the winners being the ones who demonstrate the most? If you're a "loser" in life (you can't get pregnant, you drive a crappy car that you can't afford to fix or replace, you lose your job, you don't win the championship game), does that mean your faith is lacking?
One will hardly be surprised to learn, as I did, that the movie was conceived, directed and produced by a couple of Southern Baptist pastors (0r, as I accidentally referred to them in a little slip of tongue during our dinnertime conversation, Southern Bastards). According to one of these pastors, "God is a better director than Steven Spielberg, a better producer than Jerry Bruckheimer, a better writer than George Lucas." Hmmm. Too bad they didn't let God take charge of this movie.
"Facing the Giants" bills itself as an "inspirational tale of courage on the gridiron and the power of God's word." Being that this is a movie with a Christian message, I almost hesitate to be critical. But at the risk of being labeled a anti-religion reprobate, I have to spread the word that FTG was just plain crap, for the following reasons:
1. The acting is atrociously bad. It is so bad, in fact, that I actually thought maybe there was some hidden meaning in the lack of expression that I wasn't quite understanding. But nope, no obscure subtexts. Just lack of talent.
2. The plot is predictable and unrealistic. The movie is about a football coach at a Christian high school who has had six losing seasons to date. Everything is going wrong in his life - his star player transfers to a different school, his house is falling apart, his car doesn't work, and he just found out he can't give his wife the children she wants because his little swimmers aren't up to the job. When he learns that some of the parents of his players want a new coach (and he's surprised after six losing seasons?) he's ready to give up. But a night of soul-searching, prayer, and reading the Bible gives him a new purpose, and from that point on, nothing can go wrong. His team, the Eagles, starts to win their games! He's mysteriously given a new truck! His wife gets pregnant! His players all find salvation in a spontaneous all-school revival on the football field! They win the championship against all odds!
3. The cliches and stereotypes are nauseating. Example #1: the father of the new kid is confined to a wheelchair, but inspires his confidence-lacking son to not only join the team, but to kick the impossible game-winning field goal in the championship game. Dad painfully pulls himself from his wheelchair to a standing position so his son can see him in the end zone. Of course, the confidence-lacking, smaller-than-average son who manages the impossible 51-yard field goal is named David. Example #2: the big, bad, undefeated Giants not only wear black uniforms, but have athletic black players who are ultimately defeated by the all-white Eagles.
4. The movie's message is that living a life that glorifies God has brought about all these good things. But what if the opposing teams also live lives that glorify God? How does God decide who wins? Is life a contest of faith, with the winners being the ones who demonstrate the most? If you're a "loser" in life (you can't get pregnant, you drive a crappy car that you can't afford to fix or replace, you lose your job, you don't win the championship game), does that mean your faith is lacking?
One will hardly be surprised to learn, as I did, that the movie was conceived, directed and produced by a couple of Southern Baptist pastors (0r, as I accidentally referred to them in a little slip of tongue during our dinnertime conversation, Southern Bastards). According to one of these pastors, "God is a better director than Steven Spielberg, a better producer than Jerry Bruckheimer, a better writer than George Lucas." Hmmm. Too bad they didn't let God take charge of this movie.
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