Tag Archives: ramblings

General Posts

Monday Morning Ramblings

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I had a pretty cool experience last night while talking to Collin.  On average, I talk to the boys 4-5 nights a week for about an hour each night.  Usually, Collin wants to play games that we make up, and most of those games are based on whatever video game he’s into.  Sometimes, he wants to talk to me “like adults,” meaning he wants to tell me all about his job, wife, and kids.  Currently, he’s an illustrator, an explorer, an inventor, and a construction worker; he’s also been married for twenty years and has two or three kids, depending on the day.  Finn sometimes wants to talk, but mostly, he just enjoys having me sing to him.

Recently, Collin has begun reading to me from a book he got about the most dangerous animals in the world.  He gets very serious and has already developed a reading voice that sounds like a museum tour guide.  He needs a little help on a few words, but for the most part, he’s becoming a pretty good reader.  I probably don’t need to mention how proud that makes me.  For the last four years, I’ve worried about him watching too much TV and playing too many video games, but now that he’s discovered reading for fun, he seems to be taking to it much like I did at that age.

Last night, Finn had already fallen asleep, so Collin and I started out playing a couple of games.  Then, he asked if he could read to me from a new book he had just gotten, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  If you know anything about me, you probably know that’s the book that got me into fantasy and writing, so it’s pretty special to me to begin with.  He had gotten to page 47 on his own and read aloud to me up to page 63.  For nearly a full hour, I just sat and listened to him, helping him with a few words but mostly just listening to my oldest son read to me one of my favorite books.  It was one of those ineffable moments parents get to share with their children that make all the difficulties worth it.  All I can say is that I’ll hold onto that memory for as long as I can.

General Posts

Thursday Morning Ramblings

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I’ve reached the point in my teaching career where I feel like I’m wasting my life.   The skills I teach, writing, critical thinking, and to a lesser extent reading, seem life relics of a bygone era, and every semester, not only are the students less prepared coming into class, they also tend to act more resistant to learning even the basics.  Sure, there are the occasional gems and the dedicated adults, but their numbers dwindle with each year.  Now, after 14 years in the classroom, I truly feel burnt out, used up, frustrated, and ready for a substantive change.

Those who have followed me for a while have heard me gripe about these feelings before, but now, I can’t stress loudly enough that I really, really, really need out.  I feel like I’m suffocating from the demands of the job, and with each passing hour of class prep and grading, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve lost yet another hour that could’ve been spent doing something more productive and more fulfilling for me.  Right now, I’m honestly only here for the paycheck, and considering how paltry the money is in comparison to the effort required, that’s simply not adequate motivation to continue.

The downside is that I know I’m stuck for at least another year and a half because I’m too close to having my retirement vested to walk away today, and while that amount of money may not be enormous, it is enough that I would be stupid not to tough it out for at least 18 more months.  But with every single day and every single essay graded, I feel a little piece of myself die and know  the time wasted on most of the papers is that much less time left in my life to write my own works.  I know there are some of you who feel trapped in your jobs and can relate to what I’m expressing.

The good part is now that my health is coming back, my focus is returning to the farm.  Without that prospect of hope, I’m not certain I could make it, but having the opportunity to get it going provides me with at least the sense of an escape route.  Over the next few months, I’m going to throw myself back into that project and make as much progress as I can.  With a little luck and a lot of hard work, hopefully it will become productive enough that two years from now I can walk away from education permanently.  One of the only things I know for certain is that I don’t have much more than that left in me.

Humor

Primary Ramblings

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BREAKING NEWS:  Today, millions of Republicans enter walk-in clinics to request anti-depressants as they begin to accept Mitt Romney will be their nominee for president.

“Well, I for one was hoping for someone who’s actually a conservative,”  says  Joseph Cartwright III, conservative talk-radio host and active blogger, as he nursed a bottle of double-malt scotch.  “Romney just doesn’t seem to hate enough sub-groups for my taste.  He’s so wishy-washy on gays, abortion, and minorities.  We need leadership with a deeply-rooted animosity towards these fringes if we’re ever going to get back to the good old days.  At least Romney seems to hate the average American, so that’s something to work with, I guess.  Also, he’s white, so that’s an upgrade.”

Other Republicans, especially Tea Party members, are more scathing.

“I’m just ordnary folk,” claims Cletus McOnetooth, after crushing a beer can on his forehead.  “I want pollytishuns like me running this here country.  Like Sarah Palin.  Where’d she go?  I don’t know the difference between North and South Korea, either, so she’s my kind of girl.  Give me guns and Bibles, not this Ivy League sissy.  I ain’t voting for nobody till she’s back in the race.  I will give him this, at least he’s white, even if he is a Yankee.”

“Now that Romney is almost guaranteed the nomination,” states Dr. Fullofshitz of Fox News.  “Our data show that Republicans are 97.8% fully supporting him.  We at Fox News have been behind Romney all along because we’ve recognized his whiteness from day one.”

“Dr. Fullofshitz is full of shit,” counters Dr. Lottastatz  of the Center for Researching Research.  “The data to which he’s referring shows that 97.8% of Republicans are begrudgingly accepting Romney despite prior affinities for Cain, Paul, Bachmann, and Santorum, and nearly 75% of those Republicans gauge their feelings for Romney as ‘Lukewarm’ at best.  Where do they get this bullshit?”

“Dr. Lottastatz is clearly a socialist,” retorts Dr. Fullofshitz.  “He’s part of the liberal elite who want to muddle simple facts with sophisticated nuances to confuse the average voter.  The Republican Party and Fox News fully endorse Mitt Romney’s whiteness.”

However, the mood at Romney’s headquarters can be described as joyously optimistic.

“The campaign clearly has some strong momentum now these pesky ‘other’ nominees have been out-spent to the point of oblivion,” states an anonymous insider of the Romney campaign.  “We’re now going to rally the conservative base and appeal to independents by spending millions of dollars on advertising that gets to the core of our message.  Here let me show you.”

With that he held up the prototype for the campaign’s general election poster:

MITT ROMNEY:  AT LEAST I’M WHITE

Editor’s Note:  This entry in no way implies that the Tea Party and/or the Republican Party dislike President Obama based solely on the issue of race.  Any inference of that on your part indicates that you, in-fact, are a reverse-racist with clear ties to the former Soviet Union and were born from a test-tube.