I should be reading.

Obviously, I am not. Dasan submitted his application for the scholarship to the Junior National Young Leaders Conference. We find out in two weeks. In the meantime, we have raised enough money for the plane ticket, but we still need so much more to actually get him there. Even if he receives the full scholarship amount he will need to get a week's worth of "business casual" attire in order to attend the conference. Ripped jeans and skate shoes full of holes are against the dress code. For real. These kids have a strict dress code.


In other news, I sent a nasty email to the company that runs the Walk Through the American Revolution presentation that happened at Dasan's school, and he talked to his teacher about it.

Slavery and genocide are not a "bummer." They are very serious and horrific events in the history of this country and should not be made light of. If you want to write to them as well, there is a comments section on their website at California Weekly Explorer, Inc.


And last, but not least, if you can... Donate! Dasan needs all the help he can get :)

Today was a pretty good day :)

So first off, thank you to anyone and everyone that has donated to Dasan's "get to DC" fund! He has almost $500 of the $3000 that he needs! For just 2 days, that's amazing... but we need to register as soon as possible so that space doesn't run out. So if you can, visit his facebook page and donate! And tell all your friends ;)

In other news... I had a phone interview today with the very lovely lady in HR at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. I was so nervous it's kind of ridiculous. Keep your fingers crossed though! I'm waiting to hear back to see if they will be calling me in for an interview with the department heads. I SO want this.

Also this morning Dasan was Thomas Jefferson in some kind of interactive history lesson/play at his school. It was LONG, but totally adorable. Though I must say I'm more than a little irritated that it was all about the original 13 colonies and there was nothing more than a collective "oh bummer" about both slavery and the genocide of Native Americans. I'm going to send that program a little something something because they literally just said "oh bummer" about it. Not cool.

Ok... back to work. I've got stuff to read and finals to study for. Oh, and a paper to write. Ugh.

It's raining... but the future is bright as hell :)

My amazing son has been nominated to take part in this summer's Junior National Young Leaders Conference in Washington DC!

The problem...?? We can't afford it. So we are fund raising. Starting now! The sooner the better, because even though the event is only open to nominated children, it is also first come first serve, and we just don't have any money. So if you can, help get my amazing kid to this amazing event!

Here is a link to a facebook page, that includes in the info section, a link to donate.
click here to change a kid's life

You won't regret it.

Stuff that's important

There are things in life that are more important than autopoiesis and pedagogy (sorry, the last article I read was all about that.)

One of those things is simply having someone to talk to. A good friend, maybe a couple of them.

I have been lucky enough in life to have more than one of them, in fact, I have quite a few and each of them offers both amazing advice and insight into my life, and also the kind of support that most people can only imagine.

So a little bit ago I posted about being rejected by the lab rat people, turns out they changed their minds. So tomorrow I am going to the clinic for my first round of tests to see if I really do qualify to take the drug they are testing. It's actually already FDA approved to help people quit smoking and they are now testing it to see if it has any effect on drinking. This should be fun.

I have so much reading to do, and a paper to write, but I can't focus on a damn thing because I just really need a job. So I spend all my time applying to jobs instead of doing my work.

I can't even sleep at night. My brain won't stop. Something has got to give.

Damn Capitalism

Being poor is hard.

I never really understood when I was growing up what it was like for my mom. We lived in a really odd sort of space, my step father's mother owned some property in one of the richest parts of Orange County, but we had nothing. So the old lady let my parents rent an apartment from her for dirt cheap, in a town where nothing was dirt cheap. I went to school with kids that lived in mansions, literally. The television show "The OC" was almost certainly based on where I grew up. The writer, I'm pretty sure, was a graduate of the high school I dropped out of.

So among the rich kids I always wanted what they had, not so much the pool slides from the 3rd story bedroom window, but I did want to have nice clothes. You know, the name brand stuff.

Now, I regret every "mom please" that I ever uttered.

Lucky for me, my son doesn't care about all that. He's grown up punk rock. Holes in your shoes just show character. But for me, it's hard. Holes in your shoes don't really show character, they show that you can't afford to get new shoes.

So I pretend to shop. I go online and look at things that I would buy if only I had the money. I load up my online shopping cart and then..... CLOSE THE WINDOW. In a strange way it's very comforting. Knowing that the stuff is out there, and maybe soon I can get some of it. Knowing that someday I might not have to worry about it. Someday I might not have to choose between shoes and vegetables. Between batteries for the Wii remote and toothpaste and toilet paper.

Dammit, I'm making myself get all sad. Enough of this.



When I'm a rich lawyer, or forensic anthropologist, or professor, or whatever, I'm going to buy tons of shit and give it to poor single mothers. Cuz man, we need it.

Let's do the time warp again...

So trying to get the mamas to commit to a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a lot harder than getting a bunch of teenagers to do it. I guess that's one of the sacrifices of adulthood, going out at midnight just isn't as easy as it used to be.

However, we will try.

In other news, I'm in a very Bukowski mood these days, so I will share with you this:

escape by Charles Bukowski

the day you were starving and watching the
swans in the park,
it was truly not a bad day
watching them circle,
it was quiet,
you looked at their feathers, their necks,
their eyes.
for a moment you thought of
catching one, killing it, eating it.
but
you had nothing to cook
one on.
and you knew you couldn't do
it anyway.
there were many things you
couldn't do.
that's why you were starving in a public park.

then there were voices, a
young lady in her summer
dress, and she was with her
young man and they were
laughing.

you looked at them and made
them dead,
you placed them in their
grave,
you saw their bones,
the skulls.

then you got up from the
grass and left them there with
the swans.

you walked out of the park,
you were on the boulevard,
you began walking,
walking seemed sensible
and it wasn't a bad
day,
just another day,
walking the sidewalk,
the world slanting through
your brain -
a white shot of
light.
being alone you decided, was a
magnificent
miracle.
nothing else made any
sense at
all.

Productivity... Kinda

I got out of bed today and actually put REAL pants on! Usually on my days off I just lay around in my jammies. The thing is, all of my jammies were in desperate need of being washed. So I actually did laundry today too. In addition to that, I finally caught up with all of my reading! This is exciting because it means that I will have time to start research for my paper.

Ok, so maybe none of that is exciting.

Best part of the day though...? Yesterday I applied to be a lab rat in a clinical trial whose supposed goal was to help people quit smoking. I was rejected because I don't smoke enough. On the one hand, that's hilarious. On the other hand, I could have really used the money...

Zombie Day!

It's raining which pretty much means I will stay in my jammies all day and pretend like there is no outside world. That's what rainy days do to me when I don't have any need to leave the house. The kid is currently at an indoor egg hunt at a friends house and I am having an early glass of wine while listening to Silence of the Lambs on the television in the background and I think it's kind of perfect.

My silly boy totally thought that I would let this holiday go by without giving him a basket full of candy and so he was very pleasantly surprised to find one this morning and has been a lovely child all day long. I did wake up early to whip up some chocolate chip pancakes for him for breakfast, but since then napping has occupied much of my day. I always feel weird celebrating holidays like this. Growing up, my family was sort of half-non-practicing-non-church-going-catholic, but I'm straight up atheist so it just makes me uncomfortable, especially now that my mom runs away to Mexico for every holiday and my grandparents are all dead. But dude, my kid wants chocolate bunnies too! So I play along, grudgingly.

I need to finish reading a book called Prison Religion and write a short paper about it for Tuesday. And a billion other things to read. And I have to come up with three more poems to enter for this scholarship that I probably won't get, but am going to try for anyway. And I have to figure out my life.

Tonight, if I can get any reading done at all, I will watch Capitalism, a Love Story.

Tomorrow I might go apply for a job at the local brewery. I could be the hostess with the mostest and that would be better than nothing I suppose.

Happy zombie day kids, I'm going to try to get some shit done. Even though it's raining.

I need sunny days.

The nights where I sit around and realize that almost everything that has gone wrong in my life is because I am kind of a jerk really suck. They force me to recognize how alone I am, and that it is because I am distant and anti-social.

Also I am extreme and passionate, which I think are good things, but most others find to be really damn off-putting.

What to do...?