Ranty Ranty
Is it wrong to laugh at my husband’s rising anger as he talks about his book frustrations on the phone with another obsessed weirdo? I think he’s the ranty ranty one.
Still no word on what’s wrong with Granny. She has hardening of the arteries in her kidneys and brain (the reason she is getting goofier and goofier), but they still don’t know why her stomach is bloating, the source of her internal bleeding, why her sprained groin has been hurting for over a month and is only getting worse, why her oxygen level keeps dipping dangerously low and why she keeps running out of potassium. They do know that she doesn’t have cancer.
I managed to talk to her for a few minutes today and she was crying as she told me that her body is just wore out and she’s going to go to heaven to be with all her loved ones. She tried to sound brave and happy, but she just sounded scared and miserable. My mom says she is not in any danger of things going that far, but who really knows? For the moment I am not planning on going out there, but I suppose that could change at any time.
I do want to go out there to help my mom with the burden of being the responsible adult. There’s a reason the local hospital is known as Murder West. The quality of care is known for being . . . uh. . awful? They have a severe staff shortage and patients really need to be aggressive about their care or have an aggressive advocate in the room the majority of the time. My mom is the only responsible adult available for the role since my sister is working and is a far cry from responsible and my dad can’t drive and is not anywhere near responsible in that sort of situation either. You’d THINK that my uncle who lives a mere three hours away could come and help shoulder the load. I guess members of the Asshole Supremeus family don’t understand that concept. He’s planning on visiting for an hour or two this afternoon since he had to be in the area for a hunting club meeting, but then he has to go back home so he and his family can spend the weekend camping. His family? Him, his wife and a 21 year old daughter. It’s not like he has little kids that he would be disappointing. I’m sure he’s actually going with a bunch of his buddies on a drinking binge. Can’t miss that, now can we? If I knew how to get ahold of him I would call him and give him a piece of my mind. I will see if I can finagle the number out of someone tomorrow. I tried to get it from my mom tonight but she wouldn’t give it to me since she knew what I was going to do and doesn’t want to cause trouble.
Sometimes I really hate people.
You know what else I hate? I hate discovering the realities of race relations/tensions. Until moving here I never really understood the complexities of the race issue in the United States. I honestly didn’t really believe there was a problem. I grew up knowing a few black people and there was no tension that I was aware of. We all got along. I guess because there were so few black people in the town they couldn’t really band together and form their own community.
Here it feels like I am teaching in a segregated school. You see kids of all creed and color in the halls, but when you enter a classroom it is either 90% white or 90% black. The other 10% are a hodge-podge of everything. I don’t understand it and I don’t have a solution for it, but I don’t like it. I don’t like a kid looking me straight in the eye and tell me I’m picking on him because he’s black. And least I can look around the room and ask him why I’m only picking on him and not the other 15 black students in the room. It was no different in Astoria, but the race card wasn’t thrown in. Kids would accuse me of picking on them because they were jocks or they were wearing pajamas. The volatile race card was never thrown in.
The world is a much bigger place than I ever imagined.
What else can I rant about?
How about how un-relaxing water aerobics is in this place? I was thinking about how I lived my life last year at this time and am very sad that I seem to have lost most of my good habits. Last year I was riding my bike to school every day, then spending 30-60 minutes on the elliptical machine 6 days a week and doing water aerobics 4 days a week. Here? Three or four workouts a week tops. Why? What is the difference? First, I have no Mike time if I work out. He didn’t have a job when we were living in Oregon so I had plenty of Mike time in the afternoon. Also, water aerobics here are totally NOT relaxing. There’s way too many people and way too much other stuff going on. I like to go and work out and get lost in my own little world. That’s hard to do when you have thirty fat women sharing three lanes, and a bunch of little kids SCREAMING SCREAMING SCREAMING. Good Lord, the SCREAMING.
I think I would be happier if I got more workouts in. I need the endorphins.
And I would tell you what else I hate (teachers who leave shitty lesson plans, people trying to make me join the JuicePlus family, and people who don’t know how to drive) but I have to go to sleep now.