69%

I just cruised on over to standup.org Have you been there? It's the answer to our education crisis. Small, focused, purposeful education. The Gates Foundation has done some amazing things with their "education experiments". It's sad to me that our own President can't fund public education, yet one man in Seattle can. Is that all it takes to change the face of this nation? Money? I know money certainly has worsened America.

I just found out that my state's graduation rate is at 69%!!! WHAT?! How can this happen? We are one of the lowest in the country and I have always thought of us as pretty progressive. What will it take to change the face of education. I can tell you that we are in for some serious shitty times ahead. Too tired to get into it now. It just depresses the hell out of me because I work my ass off every day to teach my students to be confident and successful.

Time Alone...at last!!

Husband and I have been married for about 9 months now. We've had our typical first year bumps in the road but we've worked a lot of them out now. We've been coasting on cruise control for a few months now; we've hit our stride. I was just thinking the other day, "Damn, those first few months are rough. They're right about the first year of marriage. Glad THOSE days are over..." Ah, karma. I knew the minute I thought that, things would go south.

We were on our way back from a wonderful vacation. Had a great time with Husband. Lots of adventures and moments, albeit brief, of relaxation. Then, came THE-FLIGHT-HOME. We new it was going to be a long hard flight. I bought the tickets on Hotwire (you know the cheap ticket web site. They place where they don't tell you your flight schedule until AFTER you have purchased the non-refundable ticket?) and we had a horrible flight schedule. It involved a 500 mile detour and a 3 hour layover. We also ended up flying on this shitty-ass 757 made it 1981 with plywood seats. But hey, our tickets were cheap. Yeah. Anyhow, Husband had already thrown a hissy-fit on the way out about the plane and I knew this trip back would be the same. To my surprise though, he was very flexible. Yes, we were on another wright-brother's plane and yes it was a red eye and yes we were headed back to rainy, cold weather but he took it all in stride. Amazing, I thought. Husband has really matured. I was so proud of him.

5 hours later, it was a different story. We get off the plane at our layover city 45 minutes early. I quickly check the departure board to see if there is an earlier flight. There was! We raced through the terminal carrying our 4 bags that Husband insisted we carry on. As we ran up to the check in counter I can see they are already boarding. We were too late. Something about this incident sent Husband into a hell-bend, 4 hour, take-it-out-on-your-wife rage. He started cursing and yelling about the "shitty airline". I gently reminded him that if our plane had gotten in at the regular time, we wouldn't have even known about this flight. Didn't matter to him. He was going to be pissed off about it anyway.

I'll spare you the details, but to give you an idea of what this layover was like, picture a typical 2 yearold throwing a tantrum. Mom just standing by, totally embarassed by the screaming, arms flailing tantrum. I'm thinking, "Is this really what I married? Are you kidding me this this shit?"

The final straw that broke the camel's proverbial back was when we found out that we weren't sitting together on the final leg home (YES!!) and we were both in the MIDDLE seat for the 3 hour flight. He barks at me, "Why didn't you change our seats? We've been in this airport for 4 f***ing hours and you didn't change our seat?" Priceless. All I could do is laugh at my 2 year old husband who had gone over to the darkside.

When we finally get home, he appologizes by saying, "Sorry I was 'Gumpy Bear' in the airport earlier...." Yeah...Grumpy Bear really describes that display. Good job, hun.

So here we are a week later and he is gone on a fishing trip and I have TIME ALONE AT LAST. YIppie!!

In My Own Words

I'm writing under an alias. Not the Jennifer Garner type though. Perhaps calling it a Ghost Writer would be more appropriate. I am not who you think I am or maybe I am exactly who you think I am. Confusing, I know. I got to thinking about this whole blog thing. I've got a couple of them going now. They each serve their own purpose. It's funny though, because I can't write certain things on certain blogs because of the audience that views it. This one is for me though. I can't write under the cover of darkness here. I can write the thoughts that I think but would never say outloud or at least say in front of some people. I find it is hard to write the truth though. To write personally. Hopefully I will get better at it.

I have been reading my husband's friend's blog and hers is Hilarious! I struggle to write as freely as her. I have never met her before. Only heard about her through Husband. She's funny as hell though. I have a feeling she is one of those people that when you meet them they never shut up and they always talk about themselves. Painful to be around in a conversation but it translates well in print!

So, here I go. I have so many things I want to write about but when I sit down to do it, the words leave me. Bear with me. I am trained as a writer too! I guess I struggle because I don't know who my audience is and I'm not good at talking to myself.
That's it; in my own words...