Burned Out!

So when is enough, enough.  How much is good, well, I say school wise we hit that mark about eight days ago.  I remember when I was a kid the last few weeks of school were pretty much throw away's.  These days were packed with field trips, May Day activities and pretty much parties.  They probably had the highest attendance during the last few weeks of school than the rest of the year.  Who wants to miss the fun.  I think they knew we were wasted, the staff was wasted too, both literally and figuratively. 

My how times have changed.  Suddenly everyone is in crisis.  Our kids are failing and falling further and further behind.  According to whom, I don't know.  I do know that the math they are cramming down kids throats in sixth grade, I didn't hit until high school.  Come on! this is the information age!  Schools are no longer allowed to waste the last few weeks of school.  Every second is planned and significant.  No Second Left Behind.  Parties,  phew!  None of that.  No longer is it fun to be in school the last week of the year, it is not even fun to be in a school for any reason at this time of year.  I have spent the better part of the last six weeks testing junior high kids brains out.  If there is any information left in there, we will soon have it sucked out.  What a drag.  Thank goodness I was educated when the value of a completely useless, no point, wasted day was acceptable.  Not just acceptable,  Expected!  Hang in there kids,  eleven days to go.

Dodge ball!!

You haven't truly lived until you have experienced the sheer chaos and animal abandon that goes on during a game of sixth grade dodge ball.  I am sure you have all played dodge ball before.  You remember it, where there was a hard red rubber ball and the huge boys in the school would troll along line dividing the gym floor, and the teams in two.  They were waiting for a chance to nail you with that stinking ball with all the force they could muster.  I can still remember what it felt like to be hit by that red ball.  I remember the sound as it smacked against my bare skin with the force of a Mack truck.  I remember the checkerboard welt that it left.  Talk about PTSD!

Dodge ball now, is nothing like that.  They have gotten rid of the hard red rubber ball.  They now use purple foam balls.  Great! you may say, they have come to their senses.  Well, they don't just use one ball anymore,  they use thirty.  This new dodge ball cannot be effectively played with any less than forty students.  Forty students and thirty purple balls.  The rules are, if you are hit, you are out, unless you catch it.  Another change is, you are allowed to go to the 'yellow' line.  This line extends about ten feet in the opposing teams territory.  As the students get out, they line up on either side of the teacher until someone makes a basket on the opposing side, then their team all returns to the floor.  If the teacher yells jail break, they all go in. 

It is sheer chaos.  Purple missiles fly back and forth across the room, looking like a purple sideways snow storm, or hail storm would be more like it. The noise level is deafening.  This is actually an advantage though, because it drowns out the voices of the three or four students who are inevitably standing around the teacher,  plying for a Solomon decision about a horrible injustice that has just happened to them and they are 'not really out'.  I just shake by head cup my ear, and mouth  "I can't hear you".  With a sad shrug, I then yell..."Jailbreak".  Problem solved.

After a long day of watching dangerous, deafening, chaotic 6th grade dodge ball, I have come to one conclusion, I am getting old.

Up and running again...I think..

Well the happy day has come and gone.  Karlee and Alex have ridden off into the sunset (or down just off of Main Street anyway).  I couldn't be happier for them.  It is interesting how sometimes all that it takes to make you happy, is for your kids to be happy.  I miss my girls terribly,  I find myself reminiscing about the time when they were still small and underfoot.  I think of them sharing a bedroom with their pink bunkbeds with  horses stenciled on the sides.  I remember how absolutely trashed their room used to get and the hours it would take to dig it out.  I remember them playing all kinds of fantasy games with tails and veils and whatever it took.  All of their cats and dogs and birds and rabbits and lizards etc etc etc.  I find that I can actually get a wee bit sad if I dwell on it too long.  I then realize that if it wasn't for me taking wing and leaving the nest like my girls have done that I wouldn't have any of those experiences.  I wouldn't have the wonderful kids that I have now.    

 

I  remember talking to my mother shortly after I had married and my husband  I had  moved away.  My sister had also just left home to serve a mission in France.  It was the holiday season and she was missing her girls.  I can relate  to her and how she  better now  than I ever could before .  Sometimes you can miss your kids so bad it brings tears to your eyes, but not for long.  I find that the melancholy is soon replaced with joy.  The joy that they have made good choices in their live, that they are happy and content. The joy that someday, they will know of the overwhelming love that a mother has for her children.  I find that the tears are always quickly replace by a smile.  This is how it should be. I am happy.

Mother of the Brides

It started innocently enough.  Just a lady wanting to have a kid or two or six...  They were such beautiful girls, they would never grow up, I made them promise.  Liars!  We tried to hide them,  keep them ugly, turn them mean.  No luck, those boys were more vigilant than expected.  Of course it didn't help that my girls wanted to be found.  Kristine started the whole thing.  Karlee was waiting for a missionary, but he was never coming back, it was for two whole years, and the guy that was chasing Kristine around lived four hours away from her. 

"mom, I have some news, were love and want to get married." 

It hit me like a thunder bolt,  my kids were actually going to get married!

"We want to wait six months though, probably October"

October!,  Karlee's missionary was coming home in October, and they were still writing.  This could be bad.  Two wedding in six months,  they would never do that to me.  Would they? 

Yes they would.  Kristine had a beautiful wedding, great day, good party, frazzled mother.  Karlee showed up with her Alex, home

for less than a week,  in love and plotting. Needless to say,  I am in the throws of another wedding,  Just call me wedding planner extraordinaire.  I have another wedding in two weeks and I couldn't be happier.  I think I  may actually pull this off.  I have had more sewing, cross stitching, wedding cakes, mints, flowers, centerpieces, tulle, lights, table clothes, bridesmaids dresses, invitations, pictures, etc.  than I ever thought possible, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  My girls are happy, they found great guys are starting their own families.  I guess that is what the goal was all along.  I guess my husband and I were able to teach them to use their wings after all.  So bring it on Mindy,  I think we can handle anything, just give me six months O.K. 

Indoor Recess

I have spent the last two weeks subbing in elementary schools.  This is a little out of my element, I am usually at the Jr. high or high school.  Part of the reason I took the jobs at the elementary school was because it is was orchestra and fifth grade (not too bad, and I am smarter than a fifth grader, especially with the answer books) and my daughters class.  She is in third grade and her teacher had to leave town for medical treatment.  I can't even imagine what it is like for my third grader to have her mother as a a teacher for a week.  She was actually a pretty good sport about the whole thing, but did expect some perks.  She got bent out of shape if I didn't call on her first.  She got to come in and eat lunch with me every day.  She used this to her advantage too by going around the playground before lunch and inviting certain student to come eat with me as her exclusive friends.  On Thursday, I was a bit surprised when one after another, the whole class trooped into the classroom with their lunch trays and sat down. 
She had invited the whole dang class to come and eat with 'us'.  It was actually fun though, it gave me a chance to talk to them in a non authoritarian manner and see me as a bit more human.  Today, was interesting, because the weather was bad, and the sign was black.  Of course having had kids in this school for the last eighteen years straight, I knew what this meant.  Indoor recess.  I don't know what it is about those little fifteen minute breaks during the day, but when they are gone, they are truly missed.  An hour or so after the missed recess, I took the kids down to the library and dropped them off.  I hurled myself into the faculty room and shut the door and slammed my back against it,  "They are in the library!"  I said, more to myself than to the lucky, free faculty members lounging around the table.  They just smiled and nodded, they knew.  After lunch recess, when the kids were lining up to go get their food, my daughter came up to me and whispered, "do you want me to announce that they can all eat lunch in here?"  "NO!" I found myself saying a bit too loud.  "I think they need to go to a different room for a little while".   Subbing my daughters class was fine, even fun, but I miss the fifty minute class periods with two of them free.  Where the kids who drive you crazy are gone in less than an hour, and no one comes in to   eat lunch with you, and the indoor recess, is  the librarians problem.

I think global warming is saving my life

I was reading the Drudge report last night, and saw a report about Obama and Al Gore (what a name), collaborating to make sure that we don't parish from global warming. It sounds like we are in for a good scorching and then a drowning as the ice caps melt and cover us all with water. I read this article while tucked under my electric blanket, because it was flipping -21 degrees below zero outside and creeping in. As I finished the article and clicked back into the Drudge main page, I noticed that the next two articles were about record freezing temperatures in Colorado and also the northwest. Hmm... there seems to be a disconnect! What would these horrible cold temperatures be if we irresponsible, selfish, uncaring, fossil fuel burning, huge SUV driving people hadn't ruined our environment. WE WOULD BE FROZEN SOLID. Thank goodness for those methane belching cows. Thank goodness for large families, with large cars and large carbon foot prints. Without them, we would not have the two hour school delay like we did today because the busses he wouldn't start, we would have buss sickles, they would never start again. Do these politicians not realize that -21 below is cold, really cold. I don't get it, where is the warming they are barking about. It seems like a really hard sell to me, and to be quite frank with you, when it is double digits below outside with no end in sight, I don't care!

Starving teenage boys

This kid said the funniest thing today in one of the classes I was subbing . I was in a seventh grade science class, and the teacher was kind enough to just have us watch movies all day (this teacher is a family friend, so I get special treatment). The movie was on whiz kids who were at some national science fair thing. They took a few minutes during the film to give a little expose on some of the kids. One girl was trying to genetically alter food so that it would grow more efficiently and end world hunger. The kids in the class though this was ridiculous. I agreed with them, unaltered potatoes are the least of our worries. Another kid piped up and said "yea right, they aren't going to be able to end world hunger, I'm hungry right now". The conclusion we came to is... as long as there are teenage boys, there will never be an end to world hunger. Who says the raising a generation are idiots. NOT I.

Christmas season is well under way and we are preparing, as usual, for a riotous party. I have the eight foot inflatable yard art anchored outside the garage for all of my loving neighbors to appreciate. It even lights up at night and serves as a beacon for anyone who has lost their way. We are also very happy to have recently discovered that a local grocery store here in town is finally selling Apple Beer. So what is the big thing about Apple Beer you might ask, notice that it is capitalized. Well, Apple Beer is a Hokanson family thing. Like Pickled Beets and leaving the last piece to rot (you can cut the last piece in half and take that, but you can't take the last piece). It's like wrapping a blanket around yourself to watch television, even in the summer. It is a tradition, It's a compulsion, it's the Hokanson Family way. So here's to us, the few, the proud, the Hokansons. Raise a glass of Apple Beer, and toast the coming holidays, toast to the end of world hunger, well, maybe with all of the teenage boys our family has produced, that would counterproductive. Have a great one!