I have pretty much decided that I am going to home school (well mostly unschool except for math) the kid for the next two years. His middle school experience has turned a kid with an IQ that makes school boards salivate into a depressed little monkey who hates school with a fiery passion. Once he’s a high school junior he can start taking classes for free at community colleges here that apply towards graduation credit.

The Kid has some motor skills issues (hypotonicity- it’s like his nerve endings don’t get the same amount of electrical current that they should so he gets worn out physically pretty fast) and surprise! He has my families tendency towards depression. So I have had an Individual Education Plan (IEP) with his school since he was in 2nd grade to try and address these issues. It’s like a legal contract saying that the school will provide specific services to help the kid achieve as much as he’s capable of.

This worked very well in elementary school. But it has bombed in middle school because they spend more time trying to get out of doing anything helpful and blaming me for it.

So our next little IEP meeting is set for early February. And since I no longer feel the need to be even the tiniest little bit diplomatic because the Kid can’t get hurt by a school system he’s no longer a part of, I am going to bring the smackdown. I think this meeting is going to turn out to be a long bitch fest about the school’s classist and racist tendencies. I think i am finally going to get the chance to confront them about their institutional problems. It won’t do a damn bit of good for the kid, but I think it might help some of the kids behind him.

If you have ever been to the lovely welfare reform, American version of a job center known as Work First (cough snicker snicker) then you will recognize Pauline and the uselessness that is “Worker training”.

My crappy governor (who I only voted to re-elect because Dino Rossi is sooooooo egregious) has decided that poor women need to get punched in the face so she can balance the budget. Ok, punched in the face is hyperbole. It’s more like punched in the uterus, since most of the cuts she is proposing cover prenatal care and birth control.

Let’s see how Gupta as Surgeon General is playing out, shall we?

Melissa at Shakes thinks he’s a fat hater with a thing for misogyny.

I think anyone trying to be Surgeon General should have enough knowledge understand that fat people already know they are fat. Trust me. Everyday those of us with ample bodies are confronted with clothes that don’t fit right or stupid comments from “helpful” friends and associates or massive media campaigns to get us off our fat asses and into the gym. I think that a dude with a medical degree should have enough brain space to figure that out on his own. Really. And if all fat people needed was a good shaming session with their doctors to get them to be skinny for life then there would be no need for Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers.

Gupta also has a stick up his ass about universal healthcare.

I think that any Surgeon General in this time and place is a raging idiot if he can’t see that lack of universal healthcare is one of the most damaging things in our country right now. Not only does it sink families and large companies alike, but I am pretty sure that we could do away with a fuckload of depression and heart attack causing stress if everyone knew they could take their kids to the doctor for their annual checkups or ear infections.

Dear gawd I miss Jocelyn Elders. I would soooooo much rather be debating talking to kids about masturbation than trying to get another Village Idiot to shut the fuck up and pull his head out of his ass (and off the TV news bunny screens).

My life seems to be a bipolar rollercoaster of events lately. After the high happiness of help I got in October with move in costs, plus new boy toy, plus awesome friends comes December and Janu-fucking-ary.

I started receiving child support on a regular basis in November. YAY! Because I was now receiving about $400 a month (at that rate my ex will pay off the $40,000 he owes sometime after the Kid retires) I lost $380 a month in food stamps and I lost my health insurance through the state. I end up with a net loss for receiving child support. Fuck.

Moving on

Because of the snow, work was closed for most of Christmas break. Which means no paycheck. When school finally reopened on Monday, hurray. Paycheck. Rent was late, Ruth picked me up so we could rush to the bank to cash my measly earning so I could pay most of the rent. Then the bank tells me there is a problem with the check and I have to talk to my employer. So Ruth figures out how to cover the rent using her tuition money until I can get things straightened out. School says it’s the banks problem, bank says it’s the school’s problem and meanwhile I am stuck with a useless piece of paper and my job has become basically a volunteer gig since they keep issuing these worthless pieces of paper that say i have money but that I can’t actually use to pay for stuff.

But at least i have child support- right?

Well no. That $400 a month has just been reduced to $73. WTF?

But now I think I go back to being eligible for food stamps and healthcare because I’m not receiving as much child support . Which is good because my birth control rx is up and that shit costs $65 a month, not including the lovely annual exam.

Fuckles.

Ann Coulter is 100% sure that my kid is going to grow up to be a stripper.

The Kid has other ideas though.

You don’t really want peace ever, do you?

In talks I’ve had with Zionist types, I’ve heard Israel described in a lot of the same ways colonists to the Americas described things here. They describe it as an open, empty land without any actual inhabitants or with inhabitants who were to primitive and stupid to know how to cultivate a desert climate. (Rightttttttt, no one lived in Israel before WWII, just like no one lived in the Western hemisphere before Columbus). And we know how well that turned out for us native folks, what with the death and reservations and everything. Do you really want to be the harbingers of death to the local population?

I am starting to side with some of my friends who think this lynchpin of religious real estate needs to be nuked till it’s molten glass. No more religious shrines of any flavor. Nothing left to fight over but an unlivable patch of rock and sand.(And I say this as a giant fan of archeology who was heartbroken over the Iraq museum lootings). Or perhaps we just need an army of secular humanists to come in smack some sense into you all. You have more money and certainly more (US supplied) weapons than the Palestinians. You control access to vital resources like food and water. Perhaps it’s time you stopped corralling people of a different faith than you into urban refugee camps and bulldozing homes? Perhaps it’s time for you to act magnanimous.

You are becoming the thing you fear the most. You are becoming genocidal maniacs intent on wiping out an entire people through actual death or creating conditions so miserable that they will be forced, again and again, to give up their homes and property rather than risk another bombing.

Jews deserve to be safe from mass exterminations. But so does everyone else. You are becoming the thing you hate, aggressive, hate mongering bigots who would rather kill innocents than find a real solution. Is it any wonder then that the Palestinians turn to Hammas? You are the ones with the power and the weapons. You are the ones that came into a land that was already occupied by Arabs and Sephardic Jews and Coptic Christians and pretended that your home had been invaded by these people while you were on a 2000 year vacation. You must be the ones to make the real sacrifices toward peace first.

But I don’t think you really want peace. I think that after the horrors of Hitler you have burned into your national psyche this capacity for violence, not unlike the abused child who becomes a bully. Is that what you want to be known for?

I’ve been a wee bit absent lately. It’s not that I don’t love you anymore internet, it’s that I seem to have a problem.

And I’m wondering if anyone else has this problem too.

I was all set to write a long piece today on evolutionary psychology and why it is that men started with the whole dominant patriarchal bullshit (hint- I am fairly sure that masculinity is secret dude code word for high maint insecurity)and then the Puppy walked into my lab and started talking to me about Battlestar Galactica. And all my deep thoughts went right out of my head.

What I am realizing is that relationships with grown men make me as tired and boring as being a new mother made me. It’s exhausting. Sure it has it’s moments of joy, but I keep equating projectile baby spit up and pearl necklaces in my head.

Is it just me? Am I the only one who finds new love about as thrilling as diaper changes? Am I the only one who thinks that sharing a bed with a grown up furry man is as sleep interrupting as a nursing infant?

I feel like my ability to think clearly has been short circuited. And it’s not a problem of finding the right guy. Hell, I believe in the law of numbers when it comes to dating. Even though I have a type (dark, foreign, skinny, graduate degree and successful) I certainly don’t stick with that type (see Puppy- blonde, blue eyed nordic type with a vocational degree who works with his hands). So I have dated, and dated and dated. And the same thing keeps happening. About 3 months in I get so worn out that I become dull. I hate being dull. I know the old saying- if you’re bored then you’re probably boring. Blech. Why does being in a relationship make me feel like an overworked and underpaid babysitter. It’s obviously a problem with me.

But I can’t be the only one.

Right?