The Final Countdown....

This will either be the best election day ever or the worst election day ever. I have either just purchased a home and will have an awesome governor of my state and we will have a good USA president, or I have just put my livelihood and credit on the line. For if we get the evil dude for governor, I will more than likely have my job at stake because he hates public school teachers. And if that other evil dude becomes president, he hates independent women, school teachers, and most other folks. So that is gonna leave me up a creek too with out a paddle. We shall see. Papers will be filed tomorrow as the seller had a couple more docs to sign. Hopefully get keys tomorrow or Thursday!

THIC

I Should Be Grading Papers....

But I have not posted in awhile. I just thought I send a quick update and let everyone know I am still alive and I think I within 2 weeks I will have purchased my first home. Appraisal passed with flying colors. My agent had his handy man guy look at the dishwasher and he fixed it in like 5 seconds flat and even looked at all other appliances and cleaned out my sick garbage disposal (all at zero cost to me ~ all worked out in the purchase agreement).

The last word I am waiting on are the loan underwriters. My loan officer asked for August's pay stub and my tax returns for the last couple of years (they already had my W2s). As soon as I get word that they will, indeed, finance my home loan, I will tell my apartment manager that October will be my last month. I have started packing some things, but I need to pack more.

And as you can already see, I have started calling it my place. I hope it is not too soon, but I have almost the whole addressed except for the zip code memorized too. That is a great feat for me because I am trying to memorize close to 160 folks right now. Ok.. back to the grading papers. Or maybe I will just think about it. The stack is quit large and I am quit tired still.

THIC

I Went to this 5 Hour Seminar on Home Buying...

I went to this 5 hour home buying seminar. No, I did not do it on purpose or because I wanted to. I had to because of the government program I am using to be able to buy a home. A special teacher program where they loan you some money for a down payment. No free rides here peeps.

You would think in this 5 hours, they would show you step by step what buying a home looks like. The process, the things you have to pay (what some might call the hidden costs), etc. Oh no.

So here I am floundering with no money. Right before the school year starts trying to find escrow money, inspection money, and on the horizon it looks like appraisal money, credit check money, and anything else. On closing, I have to come up with 2 months of Condo dues money.

My complaint comes in the form that I was told by my first loan officer that the only money I had to worry about was the inspection money. I can't be too mad at him because I would have never been buying something if I had not run into him at the bank. He was the one who new about the government program. No other banks (BECU, USAA, etc) had a clue about the government program.

More on this later. I am tired.

THIC

When in Rome.... Should I Act Like Parents Do On FB?

There are very few knowns in the Animal Kingdom. One of them is that animals breed. Humans are animals. Humans breed. I am always amazed at how many Americans have fallen into this weird trap of Child Worship. Like birthing a child is some kind a unique thing that only certain human females can do. It drives me nuts.

I a firm believer in too much of anything is bad for you. So when applied to this situation, even keel parenting is the best. If you are going to pop out a child,  you better be financially and emotionally prepared to take care of it. Your life will not be about you anymore. But that does not mean that the world should stop for this thing you have (or your lady friend/surrogate has) pushed from her vagina.

The slippery slope to child worship is Facebook. Not all of these pet peeves leads to child worship, but some of these things could be classic signs. And they drive me nuts. So I have contemplated living my life on facebook like some of the parents. I sometimes like to label them on twitter with the hashtag #ParentsBehavingBadly. Here is a list of what I am thinking of doing:

1). Excessive Birthday Parties/Showers with outrageous gift registries. Have you seen this yet? A child is turning two. This snot nosed rug rat will not even remember this birthday and the parents are throwing not only lavish, thousands of dollars parties, but then they have a gift registry!!?? They seem annoyed if you decline and very upset if you don't bring a gift from the registry. The cheapest gifts are like $100!!! I don't have that kinda dough. It reminds me of the Sex in the City episode with the psycho mom friend where Carrie ends up having to marry herself to recoup her stolen shoes:

A Woman's Right to Shoes

I would of course only throw this kind of party once. And even though my registry would be hugely expensive, I never had any presents for my birthday growing up, so I must make up for lost time!Be prepared to open up your pocket books!

2). Belly Shots. Women who know me. Do you want to see photos of my large belly on facebook? Does the mention of this repulse you? That is how I feel when you show off your pregnant belly. It is the same thing. The world does not want to see your belly. Or your hand over your cooch and breats. I am at the end of my rope with belly shots. The next lady who is preggers who posts a belly shot, I am so tempted to take one of myself and post it on her wall. It won't be as fun when my Metabolic Syndrome is treated, but right now it will be epically awful.

3). The Stay at Home Mom "Boo Hoo It's Monday" ~ Stay at home mom's..don't get your panties in a bunch because my anger for your comments on facebook complaining it is Monday is out of this world; I almost can not handle it. I want to break the neck of every stay at home mom who whines about it being Monday. You have No Mondays. Since I have finally brought up the furry I feel about this subject, I will blog about it later, but everyday is a Wednesday for you. Everyday is a Friday for you. You have no boss you have to report to. And no, your child/children are not the boss. If you say they are, you are doing it all wrong and need to give your children up for adoption. I am not sure I have an equivalent facebook post to this. The only thing I can come up with is posting that I hate that it is Friday. Or maybe that I love Mondays because I get to be with children. hmmmm. I think I will do that as a comment under this ridiculous post.  

4). Sick/mangled friends. Why has there been a rash of parents posting photos and stories of their friends' kids who have been in horrific car accidents and look all mangled and beat up and bloody and then ask for money? I know I am guilty of asking for money for not-for-profits, but this is over the top. I am going to start posting graphic/gruesome pics and ask for money.

5). The 'age sign' in photo. First. Parents. Follow this simple rule. When a child is 1-11 months, you can say months. Once a child hits 12 months, you say 1 year. Got it? Every time a parent says, "Oh he is 14 months!" I want to punch him/her in the face. 1 year. 1 year. Get it right. The newest trend on Facebook is to post a picture of a child with a sign that says how many weeks/months/years the kid is. I can start doing this too. In fact, I am three days away from being 404 months old. How cool is that!! :-)

Join in with me and fight the absurdity of these parents. Because even if they are not child worshiping, they are jumping on a silly band wagon that needs to be stopped. Like Lynnwood hair or Ballard drivers.

THIC

Churched Think They have it So Hard

I have been wanting to write so much lately, but work calls. I have a great one about the Olympics and the IOC mob swishing in my head. We shall see if I can put it together.

But today, I want to talk about those fun organized religious folks. This stems, of course, from people posting about Chik-fil-a and their 'Christian' Anti-Gay stances. Most folks I know are outraged, but of course, there have been a few people who have taken the "its my religion so I am not hating" drum.

Hmmmm. Would they be so quick to agree if their religious leaders were saying black people really are not human? If the Pope came out and said that women should not vote or own property, would they follow suit? If Orthox Jews** who don't eat pork, started Anti-Pork eating initiatives, would folks call that freedom of religion?

Well of course, we actually have examples of this. Because of some the examples above have actually happened in history. And rarely to religious leaders look back to this. Today I responded to someone who said being hateful was his religious freedom with this:

Here is something else.... Churched people always act like they have never had to deal and change their beliefs. Never had to struggle with maybe they had to look at their religious texts differently. Lets see... slavery. Bible used time and time again to support. Women owning property, mixed race marriage. Christians all had pastors and people used passages from the bible to be against these things. And luckily there were brave people who could look past the black and white of a fallible text and could change their ways.

Any time you see a religious leader saying gay is bad, if you replace the word 'Gay' and put slave you have the arguments of the 1850-1860s. Women were considered property forever and Christians believed it was in the bible. Ordained by God. The same is true here. Nothing is going to be against the fabric of religion. What we need are the brave people who are churched to stand up to these bigots and tell them that you cannot, on one hand, promote direct translations of a text, but then, on the other hand, promote only using it as a guide and a metaphor. Because let's face it, if churched folks did that, men could still have multiple wives and women could not own property.

And while the arguments for this need to be laid out in another post, I will leave you churched folks to think about this. Next time your religious leader starts to get into politics: Which people to vote for, initiatives to vote yes or no, funding-raising for candidates, calling congress peoples, etc. Remember you are tax exempt because there is supposed to be separations of church and state. Remind your 'church' that if they insist on getting involved in matters of the state, then your religious group needs to start paying taxes and threaten to report them to the IRS!

THIC

**To get some of your panties in a bunch, I consider people who call themselves Christians part of the Jewish faith. Yup. Jesus was a Jew. The Jews who followed him added to Torah. They are a sect of Judea. Trippy huh! :-)

Americans = Gatsby = Lying to Yourself?

I have always been intrigued by F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby. Many people label it the novel that shows the great American Dream. I actually call it the anti-American Dream novel. Or a novel that shows when the American dream has gone bad or goes a  muck. If you have never read the novel, skimmed it, or only sort of read it once in high school and you are now at least in your mid 20's, I would suggest going back and reading it again. I think it will enlighten you.

Gatsby is a character that transcends all decades of American history. Why? Here is a man that was not satisfied with his situation at a very young age. Not unlike myself as a child. But instead of working honorably and hard to rise above his situation, he proceeded to create a fictitious Hollywood like hologram of himself. Very two dimensional in attributes and character. Some of this has to do with what he thinks he should be (versus what he wants to be) and what he thinks Daisy wants him to be. And of course he thinks he loves Daisy. And he never falters from that course even when he should have and maybe does recognize that he should re-evaluate his motivations. In essence, for whatever reason, he made some decisions as a 17 year old young man, and continued to "be constant as the northern star" to quote some good old Shakespeare (that is from Julius Caesar right before he gets stabbed to death in case you forgot). He lives his life as a complete lie. And my argument today (or should I say claim now because common core says I should use claim?) is that a majority of Americans are as stubborn as Gatsby and end up living most of their lives in spheres of facades trying to convince themselves that they are really trying to live for what they should be wanting instead of what they really like and dislike.

First, my simple Gatsby example. His extravagant parties. Notice how he doesn't really enjoy his parties. He doesn't drink, doesn't dance, doesn't even mingle among the guests. He throws these parties to try and attract Daisy because he thinks it is what she would like. He thinks it is what he is supposed to do and not what he really wants to do. Even having the goal of winning Daisy seems quite silly. She is married. That is like trying to buy a house that is not for sale. There are just some things you can not have. He needed to move on. But he lives his life in a lie and thinks he needs to win her back and thinks he knows what he needs to do and that will make him happy. And he is going to prove it to himself and the world. It doesn't make him happy. And we see such a loss in a human being.

How does this apply to the modern American? Oh, I see it every day. People's professions, child rearing, having children, where to live, clothes to buy, churched or unchurched, etc. Here is a great example from my science center days. I worked with a lot of folks who were just starting college and still living at home. They would complain and complain on end about the classes they had to take or their majors they were in. I had this one girl who hated living at home. I told her to move into the dorms. She was over 18 and she needed to be an adult. She wanted to, but her parents would stop paying for college. I told her fine! She was an adult, she had a job, she could get financial aid, and she could live on her own. But she did not do this because it would be hard. So I told her I did not want to hear her complaining anymore and cut her off anytime she started to complain about her living situation.

Same goes for field of study. One boy wanted to study one thing, but his parents would only pay for college if he became computer scientist. Instead of being true to himself (which indeed would have been a tad more difficult) he whined and complained, but did nothing to change his circumstance. So he got his computer science degree. I wonder how long he was going to work in that field... unhappy.

I always get grumpy around the holidays when people complain about having to visit their relatives. Why do you visit your relatives on holidays if you hate them so much? But their fammmmmmily is the common response I always hear. Who cares. You feel that you must do like Gatsby. There is some cosmic thing out there that says you have to be with relatives and family on holidays even if you hate it and they treat you bad, or it is just plain awful. Only being with people I enjoy on holidays has made my life so much better. I never feel uncomfortable and I have a super time. Why would you force yourself to do unpleasant things when you don't really have to. You are lying to yourself.

There are some people I have been very proud of that have been able to break the Gatsby mold. And in a very interesting way. And it goes against societal norms. I have known three people who were very insistent that they were going to be stay-at-home moms. They thought it was the right thing to do and the most healthy for their child, yada yada yada. They seemed to really really believe that. Baby comes along. And once they were in the 24/7 in your face, little to no adult stimulation/contact and no real work (not to say they don't have a job), these women had to face their truths and made a decision to go back to work for their health and happiness. One did it part time and the other two did it full time. This was not easy for them and was very hard. They had to face people who thought they were making selfish and bad choices. There was shame because what they thought was going to be the truth, turned out to be disaster. Now, when they realized that staying at home was not as fulfilling as they thought it would be, they could have stuck it out. Pretended all was rainbows and unicorns, but they would have been lying to themselves. How healthy is that to a child?

We live in a society where when new information is given or new experiences happen to go and re-evaluate and change your mind and do something different is considered wrong. We are a stay-the-course society. Which means we have a society of liars. So many folks are wishy washy because they truly don't know what they want. They only know what they think they want. They are trying to live to an ideal which really means they are living in a facade. I can only imagine how confusing and frustrating a life like that must be.

What Ever Happened to the Art of Discourse?

What a boring world this would be if we all agreed and we all had the same beliefs. But what I am finding more and more in American culture is the lost art of discourse and discussion. The idea that you can have firmly held beliefs (or maybe not so firmly held beliefs) and you can have an intelligent, thoughtful, fact based, common sense like conversation and maybe not even come up with a conclusion or answer.

You would think with the invention of first Friendster, then MySpace, and then Facebook, you would see this type of discourse blooming even more. Alas, all you get are these chest thumping idiots who are quick to call anyone who wants to bring up a different point of view of being a bully, a socialist, or any other fill-in-the-blank term that is meant to be derogatory. While the demographic seems to fall into 3-4 very similar categories, I have noticed 2 other demographic categories that seem polar opposite. So I am not comfortable to say that it is only a specific group that follows this trend. It just seems to be people from all groups.

For example, If you post a picture that says something like, "when you eat meat an animal was killed so you support murder," I am going to post links showing that science shows the human body as being omnivorous and other links showing how people who have went vegan and such have ruined their bodies and have done real medical harm. Now, I know that person could come back and have some valid examples of people who have gone all vegan and have had huge medical success. My one token in my belt is they can not take away my scientific omnivorous argument. But, we can have a discourse. Do I really plan to 'win?' No, but I want to make sure people are seeing that there can different sides to every story, every thought. 


Another example. For a week or so, I saw all these people (some quite shockingly very supportive of President Obama) sharing around how he spoke poorly about small business. Some said it was a slip of the tongue and maybe he should have stayed on the teleprompter. Others were outraged and used it as proof he was un-American and hated small business. None of this made sense to me. Having no TV access, I went to my valid and reliable internet sources to see what was up with this speech. I found the transcript of the speech and saw nothing that was against small business. I actually thought it was a nice speech about how we were all interconnected to each other and we all had someone (or many) who inspired us to achieve, and he even mentioned teachers. So then I began to wonder if he was misquoted. It is election season. Low and behold, I found several articles on how Fox News and Romney misquoted the speech. Actually they spliced together certain sentences. Then it made sense. Those splices did make it sound like he was anti-business. But people acted like sheeple (sheep/people) and did not do their research. 


So I promptly started correcting people and trying to get them to read the transcript of the speech and look at the info about him being misquoted. A lot of people did. But of course, there were those who pounded their fists. Maintained that I was wrong. They didn't need to read anything. They heard it on Fox or CNN or Rush or where ever they get their stuff. He is a bad president. They knew it from day one. I don't care what you feel about someone, but if you are given false information wouldn't you want the right stuff. Even if you hated him? I would. 


And there have been other examples. Which has led a couple folks to get very very angry with me. I have since been called a bully, socialist, commie, union thug, bad teacher, worse than I was in high school, crazy liberal, stupid, uninformed, misguided, etc. All because I wanted to have a little discourse. To flesh out what someone was really thinking. But because I choose to poke at them with some facts that went against what they were saying, they could not stand up to their arguments. I became the bad guy. The bully. I just wanted to hear what they had to say up against what I know to be facts and figures. I even said that. It was not good enough for them. 


Since I have caused such harm to them and they continue to call me names, I have taken the liberty to block them completely. I usually don't to necessarily to this because I like to see lots of opinions and beliefs, but this total disregard for discourse gets old. I have an irony board and when I pull it out, I irony people into Flat Stanleys. The irony here is that they were the ones to add me on the Book of Faces. 99% of the time, I don't add people because I don't want to be responsible for someone getting offended by anything that I may say or do. So here they were getting offending and could not take the same initiative they did to add me to then remove me. Of course, like always, I have rectified the problem. 


Please folks, bring back the art of discourse. Discussions. Remove your emotion from a topic and pick and poke at it. Look at the other sides. Play devil's advocate. You will work your brain in a manner you never thought possible and be a happier person! Trust me! Sometimes it is called High Level Thinking.