Queen of Rambles

I have no coherent thoughts today, so you get tidbits. As a bonus, the tidbits are illustrated. No one here still uses dial-up, do they?

I mentioned before that I wanted an interesting quilt block to use as my focal point during labor. Honestly, I’m not quite sure how much faith I put into such a thing. It’s a little too touchy feely for me, but I have noticed that when I am in pain if I stare at my wall hanging it helps me focus on not being in pain. I didn’t think I’d be able to make one thanks to the sciatica inhibiting my quilting fun, but since it has actually been pretty good the past couple of weeks I went ahead and indulged. Guess why the sciatica has been good the past couple of weeks. Guess! Guess!

Because I stopped doing things that would irritate it!

So now I’m in pain and I have a quilt block that doesn’t make me all that happy. For the curious, you can see how I did HERE. Since it’s so small (8 inches), every little error is glaring to me. I don’t know if this will calm me down during labor or piss me off and beg for a seam ripper. I didn’t do so well with my meandering quilting. To give credit where credit is due, I got the pattern HERE.

Yesterday we (mainly Mike) did a lot of work around the house and it is almost presentable. I know some people have asked for pictures of it, so we took a couple of the living room. Doesn’t it look nice and clean? Notice how the doors are shut? We didn’t want to spoil the illusion. I don’t think it’s ever going to be possible to have more than one room cleaned up at a time. We just have too much junk. LIVING ROOM and MORE LIVING ROOM.

I think that’s the first time my boobs have ever actually looked small. That is one big belly. Want a side view of it? I live to serve: 38 WEEK BELLY. I really hate how almost all the maternity clothes I’ve found are clingy instead of flowing. I am to the point where I can’t where my normal fat lady clothes at all, even though in general they look a lot better. I try to put them on, but about an inch of pale belly flesh shows and that’s just nasty. I’m not a pregnant starlet. No one needs to see my stretch marks.

We had a very weird mail weekend. First, we got two packages that we were supposed to get weeks ago. The rental complex office accepts delivery of packages and they are not on the ball. Back on August 25 we got a package slip, but we never found the package. We went down to the office several times to look and to inquire, but it just wasn’t there. Our friends told the company that shipped the thing and they sent out a replacement, but we never got that either–not even a package slip. Then on Saturday we had a note on the door from the office saying we had a package. Guess what! Both packages mysteriously appeared, so now we have two baby bath tubs. UPS and our office people are incompetent.

Then we got money! I love money! The money came from two really weird sources, though. First, we got a refund on part of our auto insurance even though our rates went up. Makes NO SENSE but whatever. Four bucks is four bucks. Then I got a $13.78 tax refund from Sweden. That’s by far the weirdest thing, since I haven’t lived there for almost two years.

Or maybe the weirdest thing was the gas bill addressed to my maiden name and Mike’s real first name. I wonder if we should call them about that.

Back to the Swedish tax refund.

I think I’ve probably said that I never had a job when I was in Sweden, so that may confuse some of you. I actually did sort of have a job for a very short time but I try to put it out of my mind. It was horrific. I was a substitute teacher.

I love subbing here in the US, but the school system in Kiruna was the most screwed up, noneducational, out-of-control thing I’ve ever seen. The people in charge have lofty ideals, but people are not ideal. Teenagers, in particular, are not ideal. Though there are many things I don’t like about the educational systems here in the US, at least the teacher still has a nominal amount of control if s/he is willing to take charge and use it. I am very willing to take charge and use it. I believe that my classroom is a dictatorship. I am the supreme ruler of all. I do very strongly believe in giving the students lots of choices and listening to their input. When I had my own classroom I’d let them vote on which units they’d prefer to do and arrange tests around the days that worked best for them. Ultimately, though, I was in control. It was not like that in Kiruna. The school system was set up as a democracy and the teacher didn’t get a vote. One of my Canadian friends got a job as a teacher in the school system and told me that she was supposed to ask the class what they wanted to do every day and then bend to their will. Her class just wanted to watch movies. I thought she was exaggerating or didn’t understand or was just plain crazy. She wasn’t. I did a two week stint for one teacher so met with her and she told me the exact same thing. I could make lesson plans or she could leave lesson plans, but they were just “ideas” and if the students didn’t want to do the planned lesson they could watch movies or do something else. High school attendance isn’t mandatory over there, so the kids were wandering in and out of the classroom as they pleased. To me, non-mandatory attendance would mean that you either go or don’t go. It would NOT mean that you come in to class 30 minutes late and then leave 15 minutes early. I’m a hard ass, though. If you’re going to be here, be HERE. If not, stay away. The students also got to chose whether or not they would listen to the teacher. Most of them chose “not.” I told several of the classes that they were the rudest group of students I’d ever encountered, which prompted two students to thank me after class. They said they couldn’t learn anything because no one would ever listen. The rest of the kids just sneered at me and went back to being rude and disruptive. The teacher was SHOCKED that I would dare speak to students like that and warned me I wasn’t likely to be called back to the school. I was shocked that the students were allowed to behave in such a manner and would never go back to the school.

I don’t know if all of Sweden is like that or not, but from what I saw the really have the adults by the tails and they know it. Granted, I was located in the hickiest of all hick towns in the world. I grew up in Hickville and taught in another Hickville, but neither of those towns had anything on this town. In my high school it was not at all uncommon to see shotguns in the back windows of the trucks in the parking lot (this was pre-Columbine). The school I taught at actually had a fish hatchery in the back. Both places were very rural, but at least there were people who valued education. That didn’t seem to be the case in Kiruna. It was just so isolated from everything else that I don’t think the majority of the people saw any need to learn anything beyond ice fishing, dog mushing, and moose hunting. The schools all let out early each and every Friday so families could get the heck out of Dodge and go spend the weekend at their cottages in the woods. Education was not a priority.

See why I try to forget about that job? I have never really failed at anything before, but I failed big time at subbing in the Swedish school system. I consider myself pretty intrepid when it comes to facing down a classroom full of strangers. I faced down much scarier characters here in the Alexandria school system, but none of them drove me away. I can handle a bad seed or two or five. I can’t handle a system that doesn’t recognize bad seeds exist.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 26th, 2005 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.