Wednesday, December 4, 2013

We Don't Need no Education

My offspring attend a public school. Or, I should say, they did. When I realized the child with a penis wasn't finishing his homework, I instituted a new policy whereby he would approach each of his teachers at the end of each class and ask them to sign an agenda where his assignments were written down.
Then, because apparently the teachers in this particular public school were never actually taught the value of a decent education, one of his teachers had the balls to say to my son, upon the presentation of aforementioned agenda, that "You have an 85. What more does she want?"
Never mind the fact that the reason he doesn't have a 95 is that he isn't turning his assignments in- how dare that teacher presume to undermine not only my parenting, but also the value of an education- a system he actually gets paid to work for and help succeed?
How dare he?
If I hadn't already been considering pulling my children from public school and enrolling them in private, this would have sealed the deal for me.
Other reasons I decided to make the transition? There's a pregnant ninth grader, another wearing a police monitoring bracelet, seventh graders getting high in the bathroom, no anti-bullying policy which allows for plenty of racism and bullying in the school's building, and above and beyond all of that, a substandard expectation for learning.
So, next week my kid will start going to the private school his step siblings already attend.
I'd like to send a nasty gram to the public school they're no longer attending, but really, what's the point? It's not their job to care about the well-being and future of my children.
That, apparently, falls to me. I really wish someone had mentioned that in parenting handbook.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Shopaholic

We've all heard the super great advice about not signing your credit or debit cards, and instead writing "Please Ask for ID" on the backs. And really, go ahead and do that.
However, in my life, that has affected me in exactly two situations.
Both times, I was attempting to use someone else's card.
Before you get your panties in a bunch worrying about my alter ego being an identity thief, let me explain.
Man and I share finances, as do most couple who share an abode. However, we don't share checking accounts. This means, as the procurement officer for our family, that I am the one doing about 100% of our shopping. Or, according to him, 110%, because I'm also buying shit we don't need or even sometimes want.
Now, since I'm doing all the shopping, but there's not a joint account, I'm often slipping his card out of his wallet and heading out to buy whatever it is I feel compelled to spend money on this particular day.
Most of the time, I simply sign his name on the slip and walk out.
Yes, his card says "Please ask for ID". No, I don't have his ID, or even look a little bit like him.
Twice, two separate times, in over a year of heading out armed only with his card, a pen, and my list, has the card's back been checked and I stopped and prevented from using it.
You know where?
The beer store and the liquor store.
Stores in the mall don't care. The dude at the gas station doesn't care. Restaurants, big box stores, convenience stores, grocery stores and direct salespeople don't care.
The only people who care that as far as they can tell, I'm illegally using someone else's card, are the people who supply my booze.
Obviously, this is a hassle.
What this really means is that now I make a stop at the ATM before heading into the liquor store. Because Duh. Getting a joint account or sending Man for the booze is clearly not the answer.
Oh, and yeah, it's slightly annoying because I'm more than slightly forgetful. But you know what? These people are doing their jobs. As far as I can tell, they're the only ones who are.
Plus, I am not going without booze, so there's that.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Where have you been all my li-i-i-ife?

I hid under a rock, but I wasn't alone.
In case you missed it in my super informative and enlightening and hilarious introductory post, I'm not exactly a new blogger.
So why the new blog?
Well, I'll tell you, since you asked so nicely.
I happen to be surrounded by people. All the damn time. Many people are also surrounded by people, but not all of the people are surrounded by small people. I'm actually not even surrounded by small people, since all of the young people in my life are actually big people.
I haven't yet decided how to refer to the children I live with, so for now, we'll just go with children, shall we?
Anyhow, I have many of them roaming freely about my house like they have every right to use the living room whenever the hell they feel like it.
One of them creeped my Twitter page, found my old blog, and told another adult about it. That child was a little freaked out by what she read (apparently I do a pretty good job of hiding the crazy from the kids) and therein laid the problem.
The adult that the child showed the blog to contacted a lawyer, and suddenly it was off to the races.
In case you were wondering, the things you put on the interwebs? Yeah, they're there forever, and also are admissible in court. Or at least I'm guessing they are, since I wasn't actually allowed in the court room during the hearings and appearances that all hinged on whether or not I was too unhinged to keep kids safe. But the blogs and tweets and facebook posts I had made under the old name were all hauled in like some sort of Deep Throat proof of corporate espionage or something (I also have no idea what Deep Throat or corporate espionage actually are) and even though I wasn't permitted to actually defend myself in person, I was required to submit to having my medical and mental health history put under a microscope.
After several weeks and many hundreds of dollars, it was decided that I am, in fact, not going to go ballistic and choke a bitch. How lucky for everyone involved.
In the meantime, my old blog, which was a safe haven for me to let my crazy out, suddenly became the site of my own personal hell.
You'll learn this quickly enough about me, but I don't actually like most people. The old blog was a place where I could cherry pick the people I interacted with. Most of them had something in common with me- a deep-seated desire to not be known only as someone's parent, a diagnosis that included letters and abbreviations and required medication, a willingness to poke fun at any and every single small and large thing that ever occurred in life, or just a desire to use technology when attempting to avoid housework.
These people, who usually had something in common with me, became my friends, my confidants, and my Twitter followers. Suddenly, they were wrenched from my life- by my own hand's clicking "delete account" on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and Wordpress.
I no longer felt safe, and therefore, overreacting neurotic crazy person that I am, I felt my only recourse was to disappear from the internet.
And then.
Depression reared its ugly head and the only thing I could think about was pretending to my family, including the eleventy dozen children around me, that I wasn't completely bananas.
Now?
Now I'm back. I'm still depressed. I still have OCD and anxiety. I still have DID and bipolar disorder. But you know what? I'm no longer ashamed.
My special crazy is as uncontrollable to me as being born with green eyes. Hating those parts of me are like hating being left handed. Which, actually, I think is awesome, because left handedness is rarer than you think and also means I am using a special part of my brain that the rest of the world doesn't use the same way I do.
Depression? Yeah, that uses a lot of my brain, too. But I'm not alone, and I'm not ashamed.
I've been, mentally, to hell and back, and the conclusion I came to was this: fuck them.
Fuck people who stigmatize mental illness.
Oh, and also? My friends live in my computer, and I missed them.

In the Beginning...

Ah, the dreaded first post of a new blog. When you are positive you have something important to tell the world, but don't feel like you can just jump in with the telling. The world, after all, doesn't know you yet.
Your special kind of crazy needs a little introduction.
But you don't want to make it feel like an awkward first date where you're spilling all sorts of weird little factoids about yourself into the other person's ear holes (I have one brother), or even worse, one of those horrible Match.com profiles where you're obviously trying really hard to make yourself seem much more interesting than you actually are. Like we all haven't Googled "Witty ways to describe your boring self online".
(Sidenote: Watching Top Chef doesn't actually mean you can check the box marked "cooking" on the 'Interests' page. Stop doing that, people. Your interest is television.)
Hmmm, back to the topic. Which, in case you were wondering, is just exactly how hard it is to sum yourself up in one post without it sounding like a personal ad or a desperate written explosion of every thought you've ever had.
It needs to reflect who you are and what you're going to write about. It needs to be catchy and entertaining if you have even half a shot at gaining followers. It needs to seem like you're amazing and wonderful.
You probably are. But can you seem that way, on cue, without any further information being given?
I don't think I can, so your best bet, dear reader, is to keep clicking. Eventually the amazing and wonderful will show up.
Or, you know, it won't, but the crazy and dramatic will be around. Either way, you get a glimpse into someone else's corner of the interwebs, and isn't that voyeuristic freedom and morbid curiosity why we all read blogs?

This is not my first blog. My first blog was a dismal failure with exactly three readers. I'm pretty sure my mother was one of them. Then I had another one, but major depressive disorder kept me from keeping that up. Instead of picking up where I left off, I started a different one, which failed after I met a guy and got happy. Seems I'm only funny (even if just to myself) when I'm miserable. Also, moving and such took up all my free brain space that wasn't already occupied with obsessing over the windshield wipers. Then I started my last blog, which was super cool. I made friends and gained loyal readers and was all sorts of happy with my burgeoning internet fame. Until a family member found it and it totally changed the course of history.
Plus, lawyers were involved.
However, writing is sort of my thing. It's my escape and outlet, my creative passion, my avenue for self-expression, and my coping mechanism.
Writing for an audience, however small, motivates me, keeps me centered and honest, and also feeds my out of control narcissism that demands I be loved and revered and treasured among the masses. Even if the mass is one person who doesn't live in my head.
So, here I am, again. Stick around, because even if it doesn't get better (spoiler alert: it probably gets worse), it will be (for at least as long as it lasts) real.