Thursday, February 3, 2011

The price we pay.

Everyday in our lives we are forced to make decisions, some of them are snap decisions, some of them are "no brainers" and some of them are difficult. I had a philosphy professor tell me one time that in all things and in all situations we have a choice the choices may be between bad and worse but they are still choices we make. There are times in our lives where it seems as if we have no choice or that our choices are taken from us by others more powerful but this is not true. When we examine the situation we see that we do have a choice. In another online group that I belong too one that has always been very open and tolerant of other peoples differences we discussed this idea of choice. As parents in a capitalist society our choices are different from those in a communist or socialist one and we tend to have a sense of ownership over all of our choices whereas in a socialist or communist country much of your choices are made for you by the government. Fundamentally those parents still have a choice they can choose to defy the government or to lobby and work within the established system to enact the changes they seek. This is true of American parents as well and more so because we live and breath in a country founded on basic human rights and principles. We are taught that our government exists for us and that we are in charge of making it work or not work through the system of voting. Why then do so many American parents feel as if thier choices have been limited or in some cases removed by the same government that is in place to serve us? I've given the matter considerable thought and I come to the same conclusion everytime, When a government by the people and for the people grows larger than the people in question it no longer exists for them rather it dictates to them and the people are to blame for allowing the checks and balances to be removed with little to no consequences. I can remember being 17 and my birthday falling a few weeks after the presidential election. I was devestated because so badly I wanted to participate in my first MAJOR election. I spent months before hand reading all the voting records of the candidates and examining their platforms and watching thier debates all in preparation of this monumental right of passage into adulthood. You can imagine my dissappointment when i found out i was not going to be old enough in time to vote. It never occurred to me that other teenagers were out with thier friends talking about boys or sports or fashion or other high school drama. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this was going on but I tend to have tunnel vision when it comes to my own obsessions. I'm sure I bored my friends to death with talks about politics in the months leading up to the election and i'm just as equally sure they thought i was weird for being upset at not being able to vote. It would have been equally as hard for me to explain to them why it was so important to me. My mothers family is from what used to be communist Germany, that's right before the Berlin wall came down and I can remember very distinctly my PaPa Bricka telling me stories of what it was like to grow up in Communist Germany and what Germany had been like during World War 2 where he was forced to serve in the Nazi Regime. My PaPa Bricka, whether it was his intention to or not, left a very impressionable child with a very great respect for our capitalist system. He told me of how dangerous it was for him to sneak his wife and my Granny out of communist Germany and how he almost lost his life doing it. He told me how when the Nazi's were brought down how happy and relieved he was to be let go only to return home to find that Russia would not be in charge of them and that things would be equally as bad under Russian law as was under Hitler. Dear reader can you imagine what kinds of choices a parent must make in those situations? How does a father choose between oppression or death? How do a husband and wife choose make the decision to risk it all and I mean all because if you were caught they would shoot you on sight to smuggle themselves and thier children out of thier home country? Choose: bad or worse? My PaPa Bricka was a devout Lutheran he and his wife my Great Grandmama made the bravest choice and trusted that the Lord would protect them and thier children. Obviously they made it to West Germany and from there defected to the United States and sought asylum here. They could have stayed in West Germany but they wanted thier children to grow up in a free country not under the shadow and threat of communism. We parents here in the Unites States often take our freedoms for granted and sadly as is the case we demand more privledges and more freedom than we are responsible enough to handle and when we can't handle what we've asked for we turn to our govenment to fix it. Less and less I see people of all ages growing more and more lax in the voting and more and more determined to just "let the government fix it" we all seem to have forgotten along the way that WE are the government and on our shoulders rests the responsability for it.
We argue over who should get what and whose entitled to which priviledge but the constitution says we have only the right to PURSUE Happiness it does not garuntee that we will be given it. It says that we have the right to Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.A redress of grievances..do we not as parents have grievances about our educational system and yet do we make a petition to the government to adress these grievances? I say no we leave it to lawyers and judges and politicians who have do not have the same concerns we do and; in my opinion; do not make an impassioned petition on our behalf. We see groups of ordinary normale everyday people come together in Washington to make a statement such as the Million Man March and the Tea Party and do we do come together to do the same for our children future? No we do not instead we spend endless hours spinning our wheels accusing this faction or that one for the miserable state we find our public education system. Where is the million mom and dad march? Where is the Parents as Teachers Party? Why have we not stood up in force and made ourselves heard to the highest echelon of our land? We all have our reasons for being 'too busy' we have jobs we can't leave, we have children to tend to and homes to keep and husbands and wives to placate but when will we run out of excuses and reasons? When will we make the hard choice the unpopular choice to stand and be heard and fight the impossible fight for our children's sake? When will we stop blaming the rich or the welfare poor or the government for bieng what they are and start taking back the control we have so willingly given up?
I realize dear reader that my opinions are harsh and that you may take offense to much of what I have had to say here tonight in this blog. I also understand that you may dislike me after reading this and that you may not share my opinions but you know what that's O.K. because Thankfully we live in a country where we can be free to say and to believe and to practice what we choose without fear of imprisonment or loss of life. Isn't the Bill of Rights an amazing and wonderous work or reason and humanity! Vive La America!!!!!

Monday, January 31, 2011

Dissappointment

I got the e-mail today from H.R. that I was no longer being considered for the position that caused me so much anxiety last week. It was so much up and down and up and down but dear reader at the end of my second interview I was so sure I had that job. I was supposed to have recieved a call before the e-mail but apparently I don't rank a phone call before a negative e-mail. I am just so defeated right now. I didn't realize how much I wanted that job until after I met with the Dean and now, well now i'm sitting at my desk trying as hard as possible to keep from crying. I am trying very hard to stay positive but it's a rather huge blow. My family really could have used that extra money and I really need to be challenged. I'm so bored at this current job and I feel so underappreciated. I'm so upset and really I guess I should be reminding myself that the Lord has something better in store for me but quite frankly I don't much care right now what he has in store. That job would have been the answer to a lot of our families financial woes and worries and I can't seem to care if something better is lined up down the road.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

roller coaster week

This week has been on heck of a roller coaster. First we went to the bank to get a loan for a new car. I found out my credit is way better than my husbands but also found out that a cheap car payment is 275 dollars a month!! At this point that is just not something I can sign off on so disheartened we left. Then a friend of mine Elizabeth has a dad that fixes and sells cars and he had a five speed saturn that he would sell to us for 500 dollars..that was a hight point. First I got to drive out and see my friend and secondly we got a car we could actually afford and no car payment. That was a hight point..when we got home that evening I checked my phone messages and found out that I was selected for an interview for a very nice job that I really thought I had no chance of getting...another hight point but now a question..how to make it to this interview without anyone at work finding out that I have it? I know what your asking yourself dear reader and all i can say is there is a ton of politics involved. A tiny bit of back story may help you understand. This is by no means the first upgraded position i've applied for. I have, upon further review, applied for no less than 30 positions with the college in the last five years that i've held my position in this particular office. All of those positions I was more than qualified for and I recieved not one invitation to interview for any of them. At first I believed it was a "who you know" not what you know thing until a coworker of mine clued me into a little story. It was at that point that I began to suspect that my supervisor was conspiring against me to keep in the position I was in. On the suggestion of same coworker I applied for this upgraded position at another campus without my supervisors knowledge and lo and behold I was granted an interview. So you can see where, if not fully understand, where my trepidation came from. I was afraid if I told my supervisor that I had an interview yesterday afternoon she would find a reason to not give me the time. I was nerve wracked for many reasons. First because I had not interviewed for a position for many years, secondly it was during normal work hours, and thirdly I am a completely bad liar. Seriously I have trouble even playing hooky from work because of the guilt involved in calling in..I usually just give up and go in to work because the guilt of trying to come up with an excuse to play hooky is too great. So for all of those reasons I was both elated and terrified of getting that call for the interview. It worked out, by God's plan i'm sure, that my supervisor was off campus at meeting all day yesterday and so I was able to work out a deal with my coworker to take my lunch hour at the end of the day and go to that interview.
I felt like a child stealing from the cookie jar the entire time I was on my way to the Forest Park campus and was nervous just going into the interview. I was not in a good place mentally as i'm sure can all imagine. What followed was the longest half hour of my life and the toughtest interview I've ever sat through. I did my best to be honest and straightforward and just be myself which is hard to do when you are that nervous. My hands were shaking so bad I was afraid they could hear my jewlery clinking together as I sat and shorthanded a memo and then wrote it out as a mock memo to send out to the entire department as a whole. I was very sure I had bombed that interview and so saw not point in notifing my supervisor that there had been anything out of the ordinary.
As I was sitting at my desk enjoying a normal day at the office putting out fires with one crisis student after another my phone rang. I picked it up and asked the person on the other line if they would mind holding as i had another student ahead of them. When I finished with that student i picked up the other line only to realize, thanks to caller i.d., that it was the Dean of the department for which I had interviewed for that I had put on hold!!! Thinking that she was calling to tell me that I did not get the job I started running through my polite responces and thank you for the call only to have her ask if I could meet with her Friday morning at 10 a.m. for a second interview!! I was floored!! All i could think to say was "my supervisor is in a meeting would be all right if I called you back to confirm". Turns out that was the right answer to give as she was impressed that I didn't just ditch my job to go to an interview. She was very polite and we hung up and I sat there giddy with the success of scoring a second interview and plagued with trepidation on what to do now! I had no choice I would have to go in there and explain to my current supervisor that I had gone on an interview for another job yesterday. I tried dear reader honestly I did to work up the courage to go in there and spill the beans..is it my fault that she was in such a bad mood from her meeting? Or that she was pressed for time? I felt terrible for asking for the time off and when it came time to tell her I totally chickened out. I'm not proud of this moment I was weak and scareed that she would tell me no so instead I asked her if I couild take my lunch early tomorrow morning to take care of a personal issue. She seemed upset at first and asked me if it would interfere with the normal operation of the front desk. I told her no. She then asked if any of my coworkers would also be off tomorrow and I told no not at that time. Kelly had an eye doctors appointment but that wasn't till 2:20 in the afternoon. I could tell she didn't want to give me the time or let me move my lunch hour so I sat with baited breath thinking of all the excuses I could use to make this happen when she finally said yes i could go. Keep in mind I didn't tell her i was applying for this job or that this was the second interview or any of those things. I jumped up out of my chair and left as fastas I could before she could change her mind. I was assured by my coworker that this was the best solution and yet I feel plagued with guilt for lying. yes I realize it's not technically a lie but yet it is. it's a lie of omission and that is a lie just the same. I should be sleeping and getting a good nights rest so that I can be my best at this interview tomorrow and yet here I sit with a heavy heart and upest mind unable to do either. I haven't eaten since I got that call and truth to tell I have no appetite.
I have so many worries running through my head..what if they offer me the job and I totally fail at it and they let me go? What if i'm not as prepared for this job as they think I am. What if I get the job only to fail so badly that I make everyone miserable?? The alternative is that I don't get the job and my boss never finds out that I went on that interview and I'm still stuck in that same positoin. A position that is "somewhat" safe because no one really expects a lot from me. A position that has no chance of failure because there's nothing to fail at. A job that while sometimes rewarding is just as frustrating and really doesn't provide my family with the financial stability that we need to truly LIVE and not just survive from month to month. I know I have to face this fear and I know I have to at least try if not for my own sake for the sake of my children so that they can see that even when things are tough and scary and seem too big to tackle God is there to give us Eagle's wings and all we have to do is Trust in Him. I have to be this example to them but dear reader this is one of the hardest things i've had to do as a mother. This is when my actions must speak louder than my words and I must trust the Lord that he has mine and my families best intentions at heart.
Dear reader if I make it through tomorrow unscathed I will be so relieved I may just pass out! I will also be looking forward to the Moms Night In luau as a pressure valve to help ease the ups and downs of this week.
I would ask that you all wish me luck but I don't believe in it..instead I'll ask that Lords will and not mine be done tomorrow.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Snow Day Fun!

Ok i don't have fancy pictures to show the before's and afters mostly because i lost the usb cable to my camera :-( I lose cool mom points I know but I figure i'm so far behind in my scrapbooking it probably doesn't matter anyway. Yesterday was the first time i've had a snow day that was actually fun since well forever..lol. Anywayz it was nice to be off during the week and have an excuse to bury my kids in some snow.haha. It was all going good until as they say someone got some in thier face then the water works started. *sigh* so in went Magnus the Great brought low by nap time it was just a matter of time after that before the rest began to fade. Gavin the Mischevious decided that making snow angels was only so so and got outstandingly mad when a little snow was accidentally kicked in face..I have no idea how that happened..teehee. A few minutes more and some frozen tears later and he was stripped of his snow clothes and ushered inside for some much needed warmth and a nap. The die hard snow angel of the bunch Ms.A was reluctant to come inside until she got snow down her pants...this is why sledding is not meant to be done without a sled!! But as always no one listens to the Mama. Enter Ms.A and some hot cocoa and Valentine cookies later and you have a successful day spent romping in the snow. I did get some of it on Flip video and as soon as I figure out how to upload and attach that to my blog we'll be in business..lol.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

End of Year stuff New Year stuff

So last year we left off the Naming with some changes needed. I'm still not entirely happy and I've decided to retire this story until I can get with my writing circle to hammer out some ideas and a stronger time line. I'll probalby keep writing pieces of it here and there as the inspiration comes to me but; and this makes me very sad; my life is becoming very full. I guess I shouldn't say sad so much as stressed. I'm a glass half full kind of person and even my optimism has been stretched pretty thin lately. I'm still optimistic about my families future for this year. There are a lot of good things coming up things that are really huge and if they happen like they are supposed to happen our family will be in a much better situation financially and that kind of peace of mind is priceless!!!

So a recap of the year 2010!

Gavin the Mischevious had his first school friend birthday party in November. It was a real "big boy" milestone for him and I was very pleased and proud of him. We also had our first birthday party with one of our SLM friends at the Whittle Railroad and again Gavin was very excited and pleased to be invited.

Magnus the Great learned how to walk and eventually learned how say Mama..I was thrilled for about three days and then the magic of it all wore off after hearing Mama Mama Mama Mama over and over and over hour after hour. Now he is trying on new words like Dog, and pup pup, as well as Andrea and Gavin. No is his favorite answer to everything and he still loves to eat eat eat. At the close of last year Magnus was 29 inches long and 18lbs even.

Andrea turned 14 on the same day that I turned 32. If your counting that means we're exactly 18 years apart..lol. Andrea is often the daughter of my heart and if she keeps up the dramatic sighs and eye rolling she'll move from being the daughter of my heart to the royal pain in my ass! After having a year of teenage dramatics and hormones I now completely understand homicidal rage and why some species eat thier young. I've been a mother figure to this girl since she was five years old and I have to say the relationship we have now is a complex one. It would take a novel to explain it all. She can infuriate me one minute and then say or do something that shows her vulnerability and i'm instantly transported back to High School and can remember what it was like to be the "new kid". If you're the parent of a teenager just repeat this mantra "this too shall pass and patience is key". It's a challenge having a teenager in the home but at the same time it's a more mature and fun relationship. I do love the exchange of ideas as well as the more in depth conversations her and I get into.
Andrea finished her first semester at Parkway North Middle School with a 3.7 GPA. She was upset about the B's but as I reminded her it could always be worse and a 3.7 is not too shabby. Andrea was also reccommended for Honors English and Honors History at the High School level. We are both very proud of her academically and spiritually she continues to grow into a strong christian woman. She has worked hard to catch up to the rest of the confirmation class and is set to graduate with the rest of the confirmands. this is no small feat as she missed the entire 7th grade year because she was living with her mom in Tennessee. Andrea also chose to be baptised this year and there was not a dry eye in the church.
The new year brings new challenges for Andrea one of which is keeping up her grades at school and of course the continued adjustment from a slacker household to the ship shape one that Phil-do and I run. No judgement on her other mom either different strokes for different folks.

So what's new with Phil-do and I. Well last year was the roughest year we faced as a married couple. There was betrayal, loss of trust, and mucho counseling. We found out that Phil-do has adult ADD, which just means he had ADD all along but they didn't diagnose him till he was an adult, lots of counseling and adjustment of meds later we have a much improved Phil-do. I won't say he's "grown up" any as i'm pretty sure he'll always be a big kid but at least he's not running from responsability anymore and we're communicating and working together in a way we never have before. I can think of better ways to cry out for help other than having an affair but being the glass is half full kind of person that I am i'm just grateful for the improved relationship period. We went from having two kids full time under the age of five to having three kids ages 14, 4, and 1. We still struggle to balance the age gap between them all but i've found we are not the only ones in this boat..lol. The end of last year found us moving from our cramped two bedroom apartment into a spacious three bedroom house :-) complete with basement playroom/extra bathroom/and laundry room!!! Unfortunatly the New Year has found us without a vehicle..booo. I'm having faith that the Lord will provide for us as he always has. When we needed a bigger place to live he provided us with a house not a bigger apartment so i'm faithful that he will provide us with a safe and reliable vehicle for our family's needs. As they say in the bible Praise God from whom all Blessings Flow!!

That's your 2011 update peeps!!

Peace i'm out!

Saturday, January 8, 2011

inspiration

ok i know this won't make much sense but once I get the new story board done it will all tie in. I just need to get this down before I forget the words..lol.

It's time for bed
Lay your head
upon you pillow
soft and round.
snuggle deep
into your covers
sweet and Close your eyes
Tonight.

Dream a dream
let nothing trouble you
Mama's here to soothe
Rest my sweet 'neath the
stars on high
As the Angels keep
Their vigil my sweet.

As the words softly floated out on the night air Magnus could see Lilith's children pushed further back from the keeps door. With eyes rounded in surprise Page looked up to Kindyl and whispered "what in the world?"

"Whoa dude I'd hear about the power of a lullaby against Lilit's Children but i've never seen actually work" Gavin exclaimed.

"Keep singing Kindyl! The rest of you prepare to rush the keeps door our parents and siblings are just beyond" Magnus prepared himself to lead the charge when Page grabbed his arm.

"Are you sure this is such a good idea? maybe we should go in quiet and use a sneak attack?"

Annabeth rolled her eyes in exasperation, "I can't believe all the stories I heard about you being this great warrior. Obviously the sneak attack is out of the question Kindyl's already singing and pushing them back sooo yeah element of surprise is gone Page"!