raising loki in okie land
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Say Mike, what did you do this weekend?
Me? Oh I only laid a floor in my living room. BAM!
We had a nasty brown carpet (it was even nastier than we thought - the bottom side was beyond gross). The Linoleum was underneath, I laid the new, laminate floor overtop that. I got it down in about 6 hours, but of course then I had to replace all the trim - so that took me into Sunday. I am so sore from putting it down so fast, but it was worth it - this floor would make Bob Villa weep.
Liam’s Birthday is coming up and we have a request by anyone considering getting him a gift. 1 million toys have been recalled by Fisher Price that were made in China and found to have excessive amounts of lead in their paint. Due to the many recent Chinese recalls, we’re simply not going to buy anything made in China anymore (which could prove rather difficult, but I think we just want to be more aware of of where our stuff is coming from - especially things for Liam.
You know…it’s incredible how quickly your dreams and aspirations can take a back seat to the every-day routine. You spend so much time thinking about the future - a future that always seems to far away, the horizon seemingly never in view. Not only do your dreams and goals take a back seat - you almost forget you ever had them in first place. And then something happens; you take a giant leap forward and the horizon comes into glaring view and despite all the talk about the future, despite all your planning, you are literally knocked breathless with realization that the future you planned for is actually coming to fruition. It’s frightening and exciting and nerve-wracking all at once.
We just took out a $10,000 loan (using Carl’s money as collateral) for home improvements. We’re getting new windows, a new floor throughout the house, remodeling the bathrooms and replacing the countertop in the kitchen (among other things). We’ve talked about this for so long as the single thing holding us back from moving away from here, and now that this time is here, I’m a bit frightened. Mostly because I’ve never been in this much debt before, and I’m really going to have to bust ass to get everything done that I want done. Once this house is finished Carleen can finally start seriously looking for jobs elsewhere and I can finally start looking into Massage Therapy schools.
I had sort of lost track of Massage Therapy as a future career - it just felt so far away. We’ve been talking about moving away for so long it was starting to feel like a pipe dream. Now that the last few hurdles are in view, I’m a bit apprehensive about making the decision to start classes again. After all, I was so sure that photography was the career for me. Am I choosing Massage Therapy because of the money? Am I choosing just because it happens to be the Career of the Week for me? Once bitten, twice shy, you know? I like the sound of it, I like the idea of having a flexible schedule and Biology was always a strong suit for me, I just can’t help but feel just a small amount of worry.
The end is near, and although the next few months are going to be severely trying - the end result will be worth it. I’m feeling unusually optimistic about the future, so I’m just going to ride that feeling while I can.
My brother just sent me a rather disconcerting article from a Norwegian newspaper. My Norwegian is extremely sketchy and I’ve probably got most of the details mixed up here but if I’m understanding this right, a teenager wanting to renew her Norwegian passport was denied because she’s now a resident of Sweden (statsborger..right, mom?). She was born in Norway and raised there as a child but moved to Sweden later. This actually sounds like something the Norwegian Embassy in Tulsa was telling me the last time I renewed my passport just before we left for our honeymoon. Apparently another girl a few weeks before me tried to renew her passport but was denied by the embassy because she hadn’t lived or visited Norway since she was a baby. I think there was some kind of ten year limit that you could be away before they decide that “well, you haven’t lived here, bothered to pay our outrageous taxes, or even attempted to visit so you can’t be Norwegian anymore”. My Norwegian citizenship has always been very important to me, it’s part of my identity despite the fact that I can’t speak the language fluently or feel a little foreign each time I’m here. That’s just part of being cross cultural. Multi-culturalism was something I always thought Norway embraced. But this idea of stripping people of their citizenship simply because they haven’t been or lived in their Norway for awhile stinks of some sort of weird nationalism.
There have been many times during the Bush Administration which I have felt disgusted at being an American; but never so much as after hearing this news story on NPR. The First Lady visited a school in Mali, Africa this week for a photo-op. In preperation for the visit, the U.S. embassy came to the school and gave it a significant face-lift. The front door, where the photo shoot would take place, was painted. Nothing else was painted, just the front door. Two water fountains were pulled out near the entrance because they weren’t visually appealing. Electrical outlets and a generator were installed in order to power fans to cool Mrs. Bush and the crowd. The trash in the courtyard was picked up, new gravel was laid in the driveway so that Mrs. Bush wouldn’t slip in the mud (only the part of the driveway that Mrs. Bush would see, of course) and bushes and plants were planted.
The photo-shoot came and went - it only took a few hours. The trash from the First Lady’s visit - water bottle lables and donut cartons - was left on the ground. Electrical outlets, generators and fans were yanked out. Would it have been so terrible to, at least, paint the whole building and maybe clean up after themselves?
This week starts my first full week as a Stay At Home Dad. Whoo Hoo! It’s been great so far, if a bit awkward for me and Carleen - we have, like, time to do stuff together. Liam has been a bit rough over the past few days, not eating so great, only eating certain foods and being generally difficult to put down to sleep. He doesn’t go down with a bottle anymore, he only goes down (for me) with a walk in his stroller. Carleen is able to get him to go down with a little rocking, but she also generally puts him down at night, where I have taken over days. We’re hoping it’s just teething. It’s kind of upsetting to me, since he’s so squirmy and fidgety it’s hard to rock him, that’s something I miss from when he was younger - rocking him to sleep. He doesn’t even like to be in bed with us anymore, he is squirmy, wakes up often and starts crawling around half-asleep, banging his head into the wall. Carleen brought this great book home called Good Nights which discusses co-sleeping with your child(ren); it talks about how great co-sleeping is for children and how it develops this great bond between parent and child and how much better children sleep in bed with mom & dad. And our boy wants nothing to do with it. To be fair, it could just be a phase of independence, maybe when he’s older he’ll be more interested in co-sleeping.
It’s good, in any case, to be away from Central States. My hands haven’t been this clean since I started working there. I don’t think I’m completely acclimated to daytime hours yet, but it should be very soon. I’m a bit overwhelmed at all the various things I can do, now that I’m back on daylight hours. I really want to have a barbeque, I think I may have to set that up soon.
There’s been some interesting development in the superhero front…kyptonite has been discovered and…check this out…some Italian scientist has developed a super duper super glue made from the feet of a gecko lizard that would allow for a real-life spider man suite.
Comic book nerds rejoice…
….or so says Mike…and according to a study ordered by Congress it looks like he may be right.
Just spent the last hour chipping ice off the roof of our sun-room after I noticed several rather large leaks coming through the ceiling. Have I mentioned in the past, oh, 24 hours how much I hate this house? I can’t wait to be rid of it. Owning a house is not easy, that I have learned, but neither should it be this hard. I still have to fix our shower which is leaking, once again, and it’ll cost me in the neighborhood of $50-$75 to fix it, not to mention an afternoon of cursing and busted fingers. This because our fixtures are so old (”How old are they?!”), they’re so old they don’t even stock the parts anymore, plus they’re Kohler, which apparently is the Cadillac of plumbing, so they’re extra expensive. We’ve already pretty much decided that we’re going to pay a little extra in order to ensure we get a well built, solid house - if that means we have a mortgage, then so be it.
We spent Christmas Eve visiting with Carleen’s parents, so we had one of the few opportunities to watch cable television. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, I’ll leave the reader to decide (bad, if you want my opinion), but one of the programs we watched was Dateline’s To Catch a Predator. Dateline has joined forces with Perverted-Justice, in an effort to bring online sexual predators to justice. Carleen has told me about this show, but I had never seen it. It’s a really neat show, not to mention catching some serious low-lifes. Here’s the setup if you haven’t seen it: People from Perverted-Justice pose online as under-age teens to lure online predators. They give an address where the predators can meet the “teen”. When the predators show up (from what I saw, usually with beer and condoms), they are greeted at the door by a young looking woman, coached on what to say. After some pleasantries, the host, Chris Hanson enters the room and begins grilling the predators on why they are here - holding in his hand the saved transcripts from the online chats. Hanson allows the men to leave after a short while, however, the police are already on the scene, ready to arrest the men.
Now, I don’t question what this show accomplishes, to be sure, as of the date of last nights program they had caught over 160 online predators. And obviously the way in which they lure the predators is perfectly legal. What got me thinking is the legal system in general, and this concept of luring criminals into illegal behavior. I’m not terribly familiar with the legal system in this respect, so I’m really just considering this as a mental exercise. To me it’s a question of intent versus action. If I walk into a convenience store with a concealed gun with the intent of robbing it, but I don’t, have I done anything illegal? Other than carrying a concealed weapon, that is. Shouldn’t I have the opportunity to rethink my actions before being arrested?
It’s things like this that sorta make me rethink wanting to have a girl. I mean, it’s bad enough trying to teach a boy not to be a creep, but having to worry about all those out there that never got taught?
We’re at week 2 of Massage Therapy as Career of the Week, so it seems to be sticking. I gave Carleen a 1+ hour full body massage last night. I used some techniques from a book I’ve been reading and discovered that massage cannot possibly be learned from a book. A lot of the techniques felt awkward, plus I had to use the kitchen table as a make-shift massage table which helped my back none too much.
I’ve been getting all kinds of catalogs from various schools in the Northeast and they all seem to have very good programs, we’ll just have to wait and see where Carleen can find a job. I’ve been thinking about the initial interview for admission into these schools and have been trying to answer the inevitable question: So why are you interested in massage therapy? You mean reasons beyond making $60+ for an hour’s worth of work? I still have no answers but some other issues did come up. First off, I tend to be less than comfortable touching other people - I’m not a touchy-feely kind of person. However, I’m certain with practice, I can break down that barrier. I want to break down that barrier, in fact. The other issue is that I also tend to respect people’s privacy, such that, I don’t ask people about their health - which is something that would need to be done in this profession. It seemes like most of the schools have that as part of their curriculum - teaching students how to aask questions and what questions to ask. So again, I feel like I can leap that hurdle. And sciences always came easy to me in school so Biology, Pathology, & Anatomy should be a breeze, I’m not terribly concerned about those.
Carleen is soon finishing up school (sometime around Christmas) and is even now sending out resumes to prospective Libraries in the NY/MA/NJ areas. This gets me thinking about what I’m going to do once we move. The ultimate goal being that someone is able to stay home with Liam. Something clicked inside my brain and I decided to look into Massage Therapy as a career. Turns out it’s currently one of the hottest professions right now. Schooling is minimal, typically ranging anywhere from 6 months to 2 years, depending on the school and state you wish to practice in. Average salary is around the $51,000 a year range.
It was never anything I had thought about before, but now that I look into it, it sounds more and more like something I would enjoy. The freedom to set your own schedule, NOT working on a machine (yippiee!), and lots of career options. I’m currently considering (depending on where Carleen lands a job) the following schools:
I’ve said all this before, but I’m really excited about this possibility. The interesting thing is, a good portion of my family on my dad’s side are in the Nursing/Physical Rehab field. My Uncle Dennis, Aunt Mickey, Uncle Greg and Cousin Josh are all in this type of field, maybe we have a certain knack for it, who knows? All I know is I really need this. I can’t keep doing what I’m doing for the rest of my life, and this feels genuinely exciting to me. It’s too bad I have to wait - I’d start taking classes now, if there were a school nearby I could go to, even if there was, the certifications for each state are so different getting my degree in one state and moving out of state may mean taking the entire degree over again. Or continuing education at the very least.
Ah yes, a trip back home. I returned just this afternoon from watching my sister Kim become Mrs. Kimberly Kozlowsky (or is that Kozlowski? - ugh). I was actually a small part of the ceremony, reading the Blessing of the Apache’s - something me and Carleen had the pastor read for our wedding, so that was kinda neat. Though nerve-wracking. My 2 grandmothers seated behind me kept rubbing my back thinking I was shaking from the cold. Nope, that’s why I got a D in Public Speaking.
The trip there was a bit of a story. Thunderstorms in Chicago wreaked havoc all day Thursday. I would have basically been stranded in Chicago till Saturay at 10:30am. After a few frantic phone calls to Carleen, who put her reference librarian skills to good use getting me a bus ticket. A 16 hour bus ride. Ouch. Interestingly, though, I had 2 Religious guy experiences. The first guy was in the bus terminal in Chicago. This was the typical bus station religious creep. Stinky, pompous, and “holier-than-thou”. One of those guys who, saw Hell in one form or another and decided the alternative was better. No true belief, he just wants to be sure. Yet, he still held this attitude like he was better than everyone else. Even going so far as to compare me to the “suicide-bombers” in Iraq. I was far too polite with this jerk, but I was:
so, many different scenarios played in my mind at what would happen if I blew up at this guy, none of them good. Being the natural diplomat, I feigned Narcolepsy. This back-fired a bit in that he neither left, nor stopped talking to me, believing that I was merely praying for redemption. I was praying, but not for redemption - I was praying to lose my sense of smell.
My second “religious -guy” experience came on the bus trip. I was sitting next to a guy also heading to Syracuse. He was attending Ministry School in Knoxville Tennessee. I can’t remember why he was heading home - my brain being so befuddled from missing out on sleep for 2 straight days. He neither preached, nor asked me about my beliefs, of which I was grateful. He simply engaged me in pleasant conversation, telling me that me and my family ( I told him about Liam) would be in his prayers. He also gave me his phone number and address, which was really amazing of him.
This whole thing gave me a tremendous idea for a book. I would take a cross-country bus trip (stopping at hotels along the way), writing about all the people I met along the way. I’d have to be a far more “people-person” than I am, but it’s a good idea. What was the story with the truck driver wearing the Panama Jack straw hat? What about the Amish couple who got on in Erie, PA with their newborn child? I think that’d be a lot of fun!
Anyway, the wedding. It rained all day, but it did stop just long enough for the ceremony, which was nice. Tears were shed all around, heck, I almost lost it while I was reciting the Blessing. I can’t not cry when I see my mom cry, plus my sister was leaking like a sieve. The food was excellent. I didn’t mingle at all, for that I’m disappointed with myself. There were so many of my family that I hadn’t seen in so long, I really wish I had talked with everyone at least a little. I’m just not a mingler - even with family. I did, however, get a chance to talk with my cousin Cara and we exchanged emails, so perhaps that’s the first step to reaquainting myself with my family.
Ok, so you made it this far and you’re now wondering, “Why the subject, Wedding Bells & Trash Cans? Where are the trash cans?” Here, my friend. While I was away, Carleen discovered that our trash can in the garage has holes in it. It leaked, and our garage smells like sour milk (my assessment) or carcass (Carleen’s assessment - which leads me to wonder exactly what she was up to this weekend….). So obviously we need a new trash can, but that begged the question, How do you throw away a garbage can? You can’t set it out by the curb, the garbage guys will never take it. You can’t write “Trash” on it, they’ll just think, “Duh!”. So, how do you throw away a trash can?
I recently got the news that my little sister, Kim, is getting married! I just wanted to write a post congratulating her on this happy news. Here’s a pic of them together:
Arundhati Roy was recently awarded the 2004 Sydney Peace Prize.
http://www.spf.arts.usyd.edu.au/news.html
I just started reading her book, The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize for 1997. Currently, Roy spends her time writing articles to promote world peace. Some of those articles can be found as links on the sites below.
http://www.chitram.org/mallu/ar.htm
http://website.lineone.net/~jon.simmons/roy/
When I get a little weary of reading internet news sites, I like to catch up on current events by reading blogs written by people in Iraq. It’s nice to have a completely different perspective on things. Here are a few of the ones I I’ve been to lately:
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/
http://iraqi-dude.blogspot.com/
http://nabilsblog.blogspot.com/
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/
http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/
http://www.blogjam.com/wires/
If you want to help kids in Iraq by donating $60 a month so they can go to school click here.
When it comes to my thoughts on the war in Iraq I usually stay pretty quiet. The majority of my family and friends are in agreement and we have our little discussions every now and then, but for the most part, I live in a very republican state and my views can cause a lot of confrontation. We had a patron come in yesterday who wanted to speak to our director concerning an issue that arose during a dinner party she attended. Apparently the dinner conversation was very focused on political issues and current events and through various discussions this lady discovered that she was the only Democrat among them. I guess another lady in the group was such a strong Republican that she swore she would have no problem checking out every book in the library that was left wing, democrat or liberal, and not return it. Our patron was concerned and wondered if there was anyway we could prevent this from happening. Obviously, there isn’t. She can check them out, keep them. We can charge her for the books and if she doesn’t pay then we can send it to a collection agency. If she pays, that’s good because then we have money to buy the books again. If not, well, we’ll have to dig into our budget and re-order.
Up until now I’ve been able to stomach most of the war. We don’t have cable so we don’t get CNN but I manage to keep up most of the time through the internet and the newpapers that come into our library. I also have to thank my brother who is much better and keeping up and sends me anything he feels is important to know. He sent me the slide show from the New York Times showing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners about a week ago and I’m afraid that was a bit too much for me to take. One of the reasons I don’t want t.v. is so I’m not constantly exposed to these images because they affect me so much (that’s why I don’t like horror movies). Besides, my imagination does a well enough job most of the time anyway. But, I haven’t been able to escape those visuals these past view days. With Katherine gone, I’m in charge of checking in mail and almost every newspaper has got those pictures spread over the front page. The execution of Nick Berg hits a little close to home since he apparently attended the same university I am now before he transferred to Cornell. Not that it should make a difference but it just feels closer for some reason. Maybe it’s because his interests and personality remind me a little of Mitch. The fact that he attended several different universities so he could get four different degrees and traveled around the world wanting to make a difference and to help people. So, needless to say, all of this and the recent events at work have left me feeling rather hopeless. My mortality has once again been thrown in my face and the cruelity of our kind has left me questioning my own existance.
For the most part, I don’t really understand why Americans are so shocked by the abuse. I find the response to be rather naive. Besides the glory and the patriotism, I’m not sure what kind of perception our nation has of war but it’s obviously not a realistic one. I’m not sure what made them think our soldiers would be immune to the savage affects of war. These people are surrounded by death and brutality everyday, they watch they’re friends ripped apart by bullets, burned alive and who knows what else. Not to mention they are in a foreign country, immersing themselves in a foreign culture that most of them know nothing about and conversing with people who speak a completely different language. Maybe everyone thinks we’ve “come a long way since Vietnam”, that things are different now because we’ve supposedly developed ways to have a “peaceful” war. War is war. Liberator’s, enemies, emancipators, antagonists, friend, foe. It makes no difference. We’re all the same. Don’t they get it?
I read a USA Today article that had an interview with a well known Stanford psychology professor by the name of Zimbardo. He apparently conducted a semi-secret experiment back in the 70’s. He set up a “mock prison” situation in his basement, hiring people to play prisoners and soldiers. His instructions to the soldiers were very vague and he left them there for about 6 days, observing them, before they started to exhibit some very disturbing behavior. This kind of experiment would be unheard of nowadays. Anyway, the results are rather interesting and were remarkably similar to the situation with the Iraqi prisoners. I’ve never really given experiments like this much merit just because no matter what you do they are still “controlled” in some way and there are always other external factors affecting the situation. But it was still interesting. You can read about it on Zimbardo’s website.
An interesting topic was debated today on an NPR program called Justice Talking. I’ll have to comment on it later. My brain is still hurting and I need to spend time with my husband. Here’s a link: Civics Education: Patriotism or Scepticism?.
I highly recommend listening to the broadcast.
~C
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