One of the most frustrating parts of trying to beat the ACCD (Alamo Community College District), specifically SAC (San Antonio College), into submission is that they power their servers down on Sundays. So I have an e-mail with a headline something about "information missing", but I can't get online to see just what information they're missing, or if anything at all is, since the body of the e-mail says nothing of the sort.
Oh, to have internet access at home again!
If all goes well, which it probably won't, I'll be starting at SAC on the 25th of August, mere days after my birthday. (I'll be 29. I know, so old. For a first-time student, anyway.) I've been getting one hell of a run-around on the financial aid issue, and unless it suddenly straightens out or I pull $300 out of my ass in two weeks, I'm not going to be able to start on time. But I'm trying to keep calm; I can reregister and start in October for their Flex II schedule, whatever the heck that is.
So wish me luck.
My eldest daughter is also starting in public school. Well, a charter school. It's a better solution than the elementary school over near us, but I'm not exactly impressed at the moment. I've been given no information, for instance, on exactly what constitutes a proper uniform (I know "khaki bottom and maroon top", but that covers a lot of territory), or minor details such as the first day of classes and what time school starts. We were assured when I enrolled her that info would be mailed out, but it's almost August, y'all, get a move on!
Other parents can relate to this, but it drives me nuts. School supply lists. No, my daughter's not going to need 2 pairs of scissors and four boxes of crayons and three boxes of Kleenex. Why on Earth do they expect us to supply the whole class? I can afford to buy her supplies, barely, but I'm not going to buy supplies for everyone else. I can't. This is a poor part of town, too, so somehow I doubt anyone else can afford to buy enough for the whole class, either. It's only going to magnify as I add more kids to the roster. (Not to mention the issue of coming up with uniforms and needing my own supplies...) I did, however, just buy 50 spiral notebooks at 5 cents each. God bless Wal-Mart.
In other news, I am still married. Last I heard of the divorce papers, they were sitting on my husband's headboard (he's got one of those cubbyhole ones so popular back in the '80s) being ignored, 'cause he didn't wanna look at them, they make him too uncomfortable or whatever. Dude, things to think about before you file! I'm in no hurry, though. I've got no plans to run out and remarry, or even date (got more important things going on right now, to be honest), so it's really all the same to me.
At least he hasn't been acting like a total dipweed lately. When he's upset with me, he avoids the kids...They've seen him several times during the week for the past two or three weeks, and we all had dinner together this past Friday night. So that's as good as it can be.
'Tis all from me for now, I'm off to read other blogs...
Sunday, July 27, 2008
The photo says it all.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
The serious stuff.
I heard on talk radio late last week that Sgt Jimenez & Pvt Fouty were found, and Murphy has a post and a link to a news article.
Byron Fouty apparently has a San Antonio connection. He will be buried in the National Cemetary here.
I know what I want to say, but not how to put it into words.
I support Operation Iraqi Freedom, have since it started. But I am a woman, a giver of life by God's design, and so even one death is too many.
There are, of course, no easy answers. But I want to talk about it a minute anyway.
I'm Episcopalian and every week part of the liturgy is the Prayers of the People. And in that we pray for peace, but not just for peace. We pray for peace and justice. Because although you can have peace--or at least, the absence of war--without justice...well, it's pretty meaningless. Without justice, without respect for human dignity and the right of every person to control his or her destiny, the fact that there's not an army fighting in the street doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot.
I hear a lot that we are fighting over there so we won't have to fight over here. And that's true, insofar as it goes. But I want you to consider something else:
There are American men and women fighting in Iraq not for Americans, but for Iraqis. They are giving their sweat, their blood, their brains and sometimes their lives so that, by the grace of God and the US military, total strangers half a world away can have not just peace, but justice and peace.
That's pretty damned amazing, isn't it?
I've been just close enough to the military, through my husband, to realize not just how wonderful these soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines are, but to realize just how much I don't know. How much I cannot grasp what all goes on. Every exchange has a sticker to the effect of "Navy Wife: the hardest job in the Navy." They always annoyed me. It's not the hardest. Not even close. Yes, you have the running of a household dumped on your shoulders. You have to pick up the slack of everything your husband did. You are essentially a single parent, and the fact that stuff starts to break the very day he leaves is so true it's an ongoing joke. It's not easy. But it's not the hardest job, not by far.
Hard is leaving your family. Kissing your wife and kids goodbye and taking your gear and your gun and going out into the great unknown without the slightest reassurance of whether you'll be back--or whether your family will still be there when you do return.
Robert was on the USS Boise, which enjoyed very brief fame as the first combat ship back from the war. They came back with a broom tied to the sail--clean sweep, all munitions fired, all targets hit. Two months gone, 13 Feb to 15 Apr 2003 (my middle daughter was born nine months, four days after their return, something that makes me laugh every time I think of it). Not much of a tour, but enough. Enough to change a person.
I met LTC Hector Villarreal by chance at the HEB near my house. He is seventy years old, he told me, a veteran of Vietnam, the genesis of the book Back from War: Finding Hope & Understanding in Life After Combat, and an advocate for veterans. It was fascinating to talk to him. He put away his memories of Vietnam for a very long time, he said, due in no small part to the way veterans were treated upon their return. But in the company of others he'd been with, he found reason, meaning, hope. And he is sharing it. We talked maybe ten minutes, and I told him about how it took four years to even start connecting the dots, even in a slight way, between OIF and the end of my marriage--and this is textbook stuff, people!--and he told me, at the end, "Don't give up hope."
That last paragraph is a bit of a nonsequitur, but it leads me to this: so much of combat and its aftermath is treated like something to be ashamed of. Back in the olden days it was called "shell shock" and the men who were sent back from the front lines because of it were treated like cowards. Now we call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and somewhat recognize its validity, but it's still got a stigma.
And it shouldn't. Christ, there are people here who can't watch news reports of the war because it upsets them too much. Think about being there. Even in relative safety, you know what could happen. You know what others are dealing with. To be in combat...how could that not be something that affects you? And why do we expect men and women to come back from war and be the same as before, to be unaffected? We have a name for people who can deal with the suffering and deaths of others and not have it bother them: sociopaths. I don't think that's what we want. I think we need to recognize that something so life-changing is, well, life-changing. And the men who need help with PTSD ought to be able to get it without fear of risking their careers and the men who aren't, young as they are, need to hie themselves down to the VFW and crack open a longneck with the men who've been there before. This is one thing women tend to know better than men: talk with the people who know about it. Talk with the ones who did it ahead of you, because they know. Whatever you're facing, they've faced. Chances are they know what can help to fix a problem, and if it's one of those that can't be fixed, they can talk you through dealing with it.
And in the meantime: Thank you. At the risk of sounding really weird: Thank you, I love you. You are my husband's brothers, my brother's brothers, my friend John's brothers, and so you are mine, and I love you as a brother.
Seek out those who get it.
Byron Fouty apparently has a San Antonio connection. He will be buried in the National Cemetary here.
I know what I want to say, but not how to put it into words.
I support Operation Iraqi Freedom, have since it started. But I am a woman, a giver of life by God's design, and so even one death is too many.
There are, of course, no easy answers. But I want to talk about it a minute anyway.
I'm Episcopalian and every week part of the liturgy is the Prayers of the People. And in that we pray for peace, but not just for peace. We pray for peace and justice. Because although you can have peace--or at least, the absence of war--without justice...well, it's pretty meaningless. Without justice, without respect for human dignity and the right of every person to control his or her destiny, the fact that there's not an army fighting in the street doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot.
I hear a lot that we are fighting over there so we won't have to fight over here. And that's true, insofar as it goes. But I want you to consider something else:
There are American men and women fighting in Iraq not for Americans, but for Iraqis. They are giving their sweat, their blood, their brains and sometimes their lives so that, by the grace of God and the US military, total strangers half a world away can have not just peace, but justice and peace.
That's pretty damned amazing, isn't it?
I've been just close enough to the military, through my husband, to realize not just how wonderful these soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines are, but to realize just how much I don't know. How much I cannot grasp what all goes on. Every exchange has a sticker to the effect of "Navy Wife: the hardest job in the Navy." They always annoyed me. It's not the hardest. Not even close. Yes, you have the running of a household dumped on your shoulders. You have to pick up the slack of everything your husband did. You are essentially a single parent, and the fact that stuff starts to break the very day he leaves is so true it's an ongoing joke. It's not easy. But it's not the hardest job, not by far.
Hard is leaving your family. Kissing your wife and kids goodbye and taking your gear and your gun and going out into the great unknown without the slightest reassurance of whether you'll be back--or whether your family will still be there when you do return.
Robert was on the USS Boise, which enjoyed very brief fame as the first combat ship back from the war. They came back with a broom tied to the sail--clean sweep, all munitions fired, all targets hit. Two months gone, 13 Feb to 15 Apr 2003 (my middle daughter was born nine months, four days after their return, something that makes me laugh every time I think of it). Not much of a tour, but enough. Enough to change a person.
I met LTC Hector Villarreal by chance at the HEB near my house. He is seventy years old, he told me, a veteran of Vietnam, the genesis of the book Back from War: Finding Hope & Understanding in Life After Combat, and an advocate for veterans. It was fascinating to talk to him. He put away his memories of Vietnam for a very long time, he said, due in no small part to the way veterans were treated upon their return. But in the company of others he'd been with, he found reason, meaning, hope. And he is sharing it. We talked maybe ten minutes, and I told him about how it took four years to even start connecting the dots, even in a slight way, between OIF and the end of my marriage--and this is textbook stuff, people!--and he told me, at the end, "Don't give up hope."
That last paragraph is a bit of a nonsequitur, but it leads me to this: so much of combat and its aftermath is treated like something to be ashamed of. Back in the olden days it was called "shell shock" and the men who were sent back from the front lines because of it were treated like cowards. Now we call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and somewhat recognize its validity, but it's still got a stigma.
And it shouldn't. Christ, there are people here who can't watch news reports of the war because it upsets them too much. Think about being there. Even in relative safety, you know what could happen. You know what others are dealing with. To be in combat...how could that not be something that affects you? And why do we expect men and women to come back from war and be the same as before, to be unaffected? We have a name for people who can deal with the suffering and deaths of others and not have it bother them: sociopaths. I don't think that's what we want. I think we need to recognize that something so life-changing is, well, life-changing. And the men who need help with PTSD ought to be able to get it without fear of risking their careers and the men who aren't, young as they are, need to hie themselves down to the VFW and crack open a longneck with the men who've been there before. This is one thing women tend to know better than men: talk with the people who know about it. Talk with the ones who did it ahead of you, because they know. Whatever you're facing, they've faced. Chances are they know what can help to fix a problem, and if it's one of those that can't be fixed, they can talk you through dealing with it.
And in the meantime: Thank you. At the risk of sounding really weird: Thank you, I love you. You are my husband's brothers, my brother's brothers, my friend John's brothers, and so you are mine, and I love you as a brother.
Seek out those who get it.
PSA
Ignore the commercials for Axe body wash, please. That stuff isn't going to make women spontaneously writhe--unless it's convulsions as she's searching for her inhaler.
There was a newspaper article a while back about a middle (or high) school that's seeking to ban body sprays, because apparently adolescent boys are spraying themselves down instead of taking showers.
From what I've been smelling lately, I can believe it.
Men, do us all a favor, and if you're stinky Take a damn shower. Can't believe I need to spell this stuff out, but I can't count the number of times lately I've had someone sit down near me on the bus in his Sunday Morning Goin' to Meeting clothes (OK, his "Friday night I wanna get laid" clothes) and had to move just to breathe.
Way back when my husband bought some Old Spice body spray (the Red Zone stuff, I think) and sprayed it on before leaving for work. It woke me up out of a dead sleep, and I was one storey away from him. When I mentioned it to him, he threw it away.
That is how it should work, unless this is some sort of modern-era club the woman over the head and drag her off to your cave sort of thing. If it is, just remember that she's gonna be pissed when she regains consciousness, and the police frown upon that sort of activity as well.
There was a newspaper article a while back about a middle (or high) school that's seeking to ban body sprays, because apparently adolescent boys are spraying themselves down instead of taking showers.
From what I've been smelling lately, I can believe it.
Men, do us all a favor, and if you're stinky Take a damn shower. Can't believe I need to spell this stuff out, but I can't count the number of times lately I've had someone sit down near me on the bus in his Sunday Morning Goin' to Meeting clothes (OK, his "Friday night I wanna get laid" clothes) and had to move just to breathe.
Way back when my husband bought some Old Spice body spray (the Red Zone stuff, I think) and sprayed it on before leaving for work. It woke me up out of a dead sleep, and I was one storey away from him. When I mentioned it to him, he threw it away.
That is how it should work, unless this is some sort of modern-era club the woman over the head and drag her off to your cave sort of thing. If it is, just remember that she's gonna be pissed when she regains consciousness, and the police frown upon that sort of activity as well.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
The fat lady has sung.
Dan Cook passed away last week. His funeral is tonight.
I grew up watching Mr Cook on KENS, just like thousands of other San Antonians. Not being a huge sports fan, I don't have as many warm memories of him as a lot of people in SA do, but I was saddened to hear of his passing all the same.
"It ain't over til the fat lady sings," was coined by Dan Cook (actually, what he said was "The opera ain't over til the fat lady sings," but the other's the enduring version) back in the '70s, when Spurs fans first learned the hard way not to celebrate the championship til the trophy is in hand. (We relearned this lesson this year, after teaching it to the Hornets.)
Ken Rodriguez had a wonderful column yesterday. It speaks well to exactly how important Dan Cook was to sports.
I grew up watching Mr Cook on KENS, just like thousands of other San Antonians. Not being a huge sports fan, I don't have as many warm memories of him as a lot of people in SA do, but I was saddened to hear of his passing all the same.
"It ain't over til the fat lady sings," was coined by Dan Cook (actually, what he said was "The opera ain't over til the fat lady sings," but the other's the enduring version) back in the '70s, when Spurs fans first learned the hard way not to celebrate the championship til the trophy is in hand. (We relearned this lesson this year, after teaching it to the Hornets.)
Ken Rodriguez had a wonderful column yesterday. It speaks well to exactly how important Dan Cook was to sports.
Sports writers of the future, Cook wrote, would do well to study economics and law. They would need to dig deeper, report harder, learn their way around the police department and not just show up for games.This hurts more than AT&T moving its headquarters to Dallas.
Cook envisioned a new order in the toy department: multidimensional journalists who could investigate, write breaking news, put stories in the context of national issues and pen colorful prose in the press box.
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