Lil Miss: Its not almost seven!
Me: Uh, yes it is, the clock
Lil Miss: NO ITS NOT
Me: Girl, are you arguing with me about *time*?
Lil Miss: …no
Me: I don’t make the time. The clock says what it says. Its not a matter of opinion.
Lil Miss: FINE.
*stomps off*
I saw a woman drag a screaming child outside, clap her hands around the girl’s face, bend down and yell in her face “YOU LISTEN TO ME! YOU WILL GET IN THAT CAR RIGHT NOW! I AM DONE WITH THIS” then she grabbed the girl by the arm and proceeded to drag her to their car. “Get in there or I will put you in myself!” she yelled at the child then once the girl was inside slammed the door. The little girl was still crying hard and yelling.
Then an old man came running up to the woman yelling at her.
“Hey you!” he screamed, pointing his finger at the woman, “take it easy on that child!”
Then commenced a shouting scene wherein the man accused the woman of hitting her child and threatened to call the cops. Eventually both drove away.
How does that make you feel?
Let me back up.
I saw a woman inside the grocery store, confronting her little girl. The little girl was screaming and wrestling with the woman. The girl was actually large for her age and the woman was having a hard time of it but she managed to get the girl by the arm and begin hauling her to the front doors while the little girl screamed. The little girl decided to take a roundhouse punch at the woman. The woman ducked, stopped and yelled “Don’t you DARE!” then proceeded to pull the girl by the arm again towards the front doors.
How does that make you feel?
Let me back up.
I saw a woman standing in the aisle of the grocery store holding two items heading towards the pharmacy to pick up her medication which she’d been out of for over a month because of financial problems. The little girl demanded the woman stop walking towards the pharmacy and walk towards the produce aisle because the little girl had decided she wanted to eat fruit. The woman tells her “no, we have plenty of fruit at home, and you had blueberries for breakfast. i’m not buyign anything else, I already told you” The woman turns around and begins to walk away. The little girl screams at the top of her lungs and runs around the woman, blocking her path. Then the little girl tries to strong-arm the woman into not moving.
“No,” says the woman, “I already told you. And if you keep screaming at me I’m going to put back that toy you wanted” She speaks in a testy but even-toned voice at normal volume. The girl becomes enraged and begins screaming again. Then she throws herself into the woman for a nice big body-slam. The woman reels back off balance for a moment but takes advantage of it by snatching the little girls’ toy from her hand. She then places it on the highest nearby shelf. The girl begins howling and screaming “NO! NO! NO! YOU CAN’T!” The woman walks to the pharmacy counter but there is now another customer there taking up the pharmacists’s attention so she will have to wait some more. Meanwhile the little girl runs after the woman screaming and waving her arms. People of course, begin to give them both side-glances. Eventually the woman decides she’ll pick up her medication later and tells the girl they are going home. “I want my toy!” the girl screams repeatedly as the mother walks out and the girl runs after her.
How does that make you feel?
Let me back up.
I saw a woman walking away from the pharmacy counter with her little girl next to her. The little girl was chattering about getting a toy. The woman says “Maybe, we’ll see,” over and over interspersed with “we talked about h ow to behave int he store now. You need to stop yelling at me. If you want something, you have to act nice about it” but the girl continues chattering about how she NEEDS the toy, she REALLY REALLY WANTS the toy and how mom just HAS to give it to her because she NEEDS the toy over and over. The woman rubs her head occasionally as they walk and continues her mantra of “maybe, we’ll see. You need to listen to me first. stop yelling at me” Occasionally the little girl runs in front of the woman and demands that they walk to the toy aisle immediately. The woman tells her, in an even-toned voice at normal volume, “no, you need to stop yelling at me and listen. I told you I would think about it and you are not being very nice to me right now. When you want to talk to me about it nicely, we’ll talk” and continues walking in a different direction. The little girl is getting more and more agitated. Occasionally she stops chattering loudly and smiles at the woman saying “oh PLEASE mom?” to which the woman replies “I told you, I will think about it”
All the while they were walking towards the aisle where toys are kept. Eventually, the child got the toy. But the scene went from “Mom, I NEED the toy” to “Mom, I NEED ice cream too” to which the woman continually replied a simple but emphatic “no. you do not get ice cream”
How does that make you feel?
Let me really back up.
I saw a woman bringing her child to a highly respected child behavioral clinic to make an appointment with a child psychiatrist. The little girl had already been to several play therapy sessions and it was agreed she probably needed a full psychiatric assessment and possibly medication. The medication wouldn’t happen for many months, but the process was in motion. The little girl would be seeing the psychiatrist for the first time in three months. It was the earliest appointment they had available. Prescribing medication for her (probable) condition couldn’t happen until the three-part assessment was finished and she’d had several visits with the psychiatrist. And the parents would have to attend therapy as well.
How does THAT make you feel?
Let me back up even more.
I saw a woman who was saying goodbye to her little girl like she did nearly every day of the week. The little girl cried and begged the woman to stay or take the little girl with her but the mother just said “I can’t” and kissed the little girl with tears in her eyes before walking away again. Like she did nearly every day of the week.
The little girl would sleep at home with her father who was gone all day at work but came home to put her to bed. Then she’d wake up and wait for the woman to come spend the day with her, like she did every day. The little girl could never know who was going to stay with her over the weekend: mom or dad? but it would never be both.
How does that make you feel?
Last back up.
I saw a woman attending a parent-teacher conference. The teacher went to great lengths to describe each and every difficulty her little girl was displaying. The teacher insisted the little girl was not up to academic standards because she refused to do the work and kept disrupting the class. The woman brought from home examples of the little girls’ writing, arithmetic and books the little girl could already read.
“wow,” says the teacher, “its good to know she CAN do these things but if she won’t do them in school, we don’t have any choice but to give her failing marks. Do you have any suggestions about how to deal with her behavior issues?”
The woman was speechless and kept looking at the evaluation papers with nothing but “unsatisfactory” in every column as well as copious notes about disruptive behavior.
Now, how do you feel?
Go back and read the first part again. Still feel the same?
I could tell you even more.
what good is a journal if you wait for issues to resolve before you write about them? that’d be a pretty obvious excuse for never writing, actually.
So, with that in mind…
Recall my last entry. Very important, very amazing, very emotional for me… finding out what direction your life has been pointing you in is a big fuckin deal for sure. So… here I am, figuring “holy moses, I finally know what i want to do with all this education I’ve been getting! I finally know what I’m “supposed’ to be doing!” – as I said, big fuckin deal for sure.
So, practically speaking I have about 60-70 credit hours total. THe problem is that about half of those is out-of-state. So here’s what I’ve learned… in order for credits to transfer they need to
1) correspond to the major i.e be the same credit hours as what is required of your major OR be part of a core curriculum i.e. English 101, American Lit, a foreign language
2) be from an accredited college
3) be from a class/subject that carries the same credit with the college you enrolled in i.e. most colleges won’t accept ASL as a foreign language credit
So I have a bunch of credits from a college in Pennsylvania. They are from nearly 20 years ago. Shouldn’t matter since it still an accredited college BUT many of the courses I took for core curriculum? Use a different ID system than the colleges down here. So when their system went looking at my transcript it didn’t “recognize” most of my classes from up there. Oh joy. Now, becuase I’m enrolled in a certificate program, it didn’t matter: I don’t need a core curriculum anyway, I just need to take the classes to get through the program. But because they announced the bachelor’s program, I needed all my credits to be brought here. I talked with the program director and she explained why my credits for core curriculum haven’t transferred assuring me “when we switch to the bachelor’s program, a counselor will have to go over your transcript manually and put all those hours in by hand. don’t worry about it” So I was going to be put into the bachelor’s program, have all my credits transferred then completing the 5 (or less) semester program I’d have a bachelors! I was expecting to just take these ASL classes and not need anything else. Concentrate on the ASL and get a degree then go straight into a master’s program. Fuckin awesome!
Well guess what? My college was denied creating their Bachelor’s program. Which means I can get an associate (I have enough credit hours for more than one AA) then transfer to a 4yr program. Except I don’t have most of my “core curriculum” credits here. Which means if I can’t convince a counselor to do this for me, i’ll be expected to redo those fuckin classes in order to graduate. In any case, the cert program is 5 semesters (2.5yrs) so if I want to finish the program, I am committed to another 2years here. When I thought those 2yrs were gonna net me a bachelor’s that was fine because I could go right into a master’s program after 2 years. Now,when I go to another college, I won’t be going in two years to go into a master’s program, I’ll be going in to do another two years towards a bachelors. Geeziz wept.
As you have read from the previous entry, I have been going to college for about twenty years. Its nobody’s fault (and really, who cares about Fault?) but honestly I’d really like to FINISH. Here I finally figured out exactly what I want to do and how to go about doing it… and now I have to change that plan YET AGAIN.
Then my beloved volvo died. The upshot is that I broke it without meaning to. Shoulda woulda coulda but doesn’t matter cuz the volvo probably has to be scrapped. Ugh. I should be glad since we have a second vehicle but that was whole POINT of buying the volvo was that we could retire the gas-guzzling about-to-die-any-day-now van. I didn’t even get a year out of it!
*le sigh*
Cat: YOWL!
me: what?
Cat: YEWL!
Me: what?!
Cat: M’ROWL!
Me: you’ve got food, water, WHAT??
Cat: YEOW!!
Me: (opening door and gesturing outside) Feel free to go outside if our humble abode does not meet your approval
Cat: …
Me: (slamming door shut) I thought so
Cat: yewl?
I’ll probably construct a scathing long ranty-rant based on this story:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2012/08/16/the-campaign-against-amy-davis-roth/
But right now, I’m just gonna say a couple of things for people to cogitate.
Atheist Guys (and I do mean that in a literal sense), please reflect upon how this is going down and the inevitable outcomes. Regardless of where you fall on the asshole-meter, you’ve got to admit that hounding someone who has been a staunch (un)believer in your geekery is bound to essentially piss-off, scare-off and otherwise offend scads of women who might potentially be a staunch supporter of your geekery as well. Let me put that in even simpler terms: regardless of whether you agree with the hounds or not, it is hounding. 4Chan/anonymous style. Why? Because you really want to ensure no more women get the radical notion that they can complain about being harrassed? Are you honest-to-gawd defending your right to be an asshole?
ASK YOURSELF WHY.
WHY is it important to hound and harrass a member of your group because they don’t like the way they are treated? Are you trying to prove that they are “wrong” about being treated badly? You’re treating them badly because you think they “deserve it” or “asked for it”? Do you think they secretly like it?
WHAT IS THIS FOR?
Because other than making damned sure you get less and less women joining your group (of Atheists? really guys?) I can’t see what the point of this whole shit-storm is supposed to be.
I’m not touching the whole point of Skepchick and anti-harrassment. You know why? Because CLEARLY male atheists who group together specifically with other male atheists don’t give a rats ass about whether women feel comfortable or not. OBVIOUSLY sexual harrassment isn’t something that makes a dent in their self-righteous simian craniums.
So let me leave you with this little nugget: the reason you people (Grouped Atheists) are so fucking unpopular isn’t because everyone’s stupid. Its because everyone’s too socially intelligent to join your pathetic little circle-jerk excuse for a life. Other Atheists who would only admit to being atheists under torture avoid you jackasses like the plague you know why? Because you’re assholes.
So if you’re one of the rare male atheists who groups with other atheists and actually thinks women are people who deserve to feel comfortable and don’t walk around with a boulder ‘o’bitter on your back, then do yourself a favor: don’t associate with these cretins any longer. There’s plenty other geeky events you can go to that have Atheist panels and the like (although personally I don’t understand the need for Atheists to sit around together talking about being atheists) that are quite open and honest about their desire to make sure all their attendees are comfortable.
And Amy? Quit. You’ve surely suffered enough. You won’t get anywhere with this crowd. Stop trying to get the neanderthals to act like men. They’ve shown their maturity level. Stop thinking they are the epitome of Atheist representation. Surely there are enough decent humane Atheists who won’t descend en masse like a pack of adolescent weasels who found a rabbit in a tunnel whenever another atheist dares to talk about uncomfortable things like oppression. Go find decent polite atheists who actually care about other people’s comfort and have fun with them. Please. Because this shit is just horrible and you shouldn’t think you are bound by some kind of feminist honor code to continue putting up with it. No such code exists. When men as a group decide to treat you this way, its time to let them have their little clubhouse and go make your own.
I wish you every success Amy.
I was at the first monthly stitch-n-bitch that my Alterna-mom group had put together when I got a call from the husband. Truth be told, when I’m out on social business I tend to “ignore” his calls because he’s got a history of calling about frivolous things on the spur-of-the-moment. However, in the past two years he’s really turned his history around (like to the point of “are you really the same person?” sometimes. I said SOMEtimes) so he’s knowledgeable about the fact that I will ignore his call if I’m socializing. So he called my best friend. For future purposes we shall henceforth refer to her as LaFemme. Cuz she is. Anyways, Baph (that’s husbands sobriquet) calls LaFemme right away and she answers cuz she knows if he’s calling HER it must be actually important. She hands me the phone.
“I fell off my bike” says Baph and immediately I envision him standing on top of the seat doing some kind of balancing act to the cheers of his friends and then falling down. This, of course, is ridiculous and not at all what he meant. I can tell because his voice sounds tense and shaky, just like someone who’s been in a wreck.
“I think I broke my leg” says he.
‘oh gawd,’ I thought,’ not another hospital co-pay’ because I am a devoted and loving wife like that. Meaning I’m so loving I thought that but didn’t say it at all.
“where are you honey”
“North Carolina”
“uh… do you want me to come and get you?”
“no, Lou’s going to drive me down home so you can take me to the ER”
“Honey, dont’ you think that if your leg is broken maybe you should go to the ER sooner? like NOW?”
“I called the Blue Cross Nurseline and she said I can put ice on it and come home”
“uh, okay I guess I’ll see you in two hours”
Well his leg wasn’t broken. Which is great because that’d really mess up a lot of plans we both have been making for the next few months. Like I said, I’m a devoted loving wife so I can tell you right now that I’ve been taking care of everything around here and filled with happiness to be waiting on my husband while he lays up his incredibly bruised and hideous-looking leg.
Well, I would be if it weren’t for the fact that this accident came about because SOMEBODY just HAD to go on a motorcycle ride with his pals while it was raining. yeah, see I am not particularly antsy about him riding, but I do get somewhat displeased when he rides in the rain. Every time he rides in the rain I can’t decide whether I want to brain him for being so stupid or disable his motorcycle until he promises to stop doing that. I know sometimes its really inconvenient to wait out the weather but you know, we DO have another vehicle so there’s always the option to call me and come get him. If he’s on a mountain ride? What is so outrageous about the idea of waiting once it starts to rain? I am willing to bet that any rain that happens is of the brief variety. Even if “brief” means 3 or 4 hours: I’d rather have him be late than have him make a call like that to me again.
So while I’m trying to be helpful and sympathetic, I have to admit to a certain amount of emotional salad: bitter “I toldja so”, anxious “why did you do that!?”, and angry “you DUMB SHIT!”
yeah there’s maybe a little relieved “well I’m glad you’re mostly okay”
maybe
smibbo 