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Nose in a Book

the outside lane

I love how much Thor loves to read.  Since he’s been old enough to gnaw on them, he’s liked books.  And since he’s been old enough to aim a flashlight, I’ve been finding him reading under his covers.  Now, he is old enough to start enjoying books I read at his age, and that’s a special delight.  He’s in the middle of Henry Huggins right now, and I am enjoying his laughter and how excited he is by things he’s never really seen.

Last night, he asked if we could buy a sled.  God bless him.  I remember wanting a sled after reading about Henry and Ribsy’s fun on one.  I lived in snowy VA at the time, so a sled would have been apropos.  We live in flat, dry TX.  A sled would do him as much good as a speedboat.  But that’s not the point.  The point is that he’s learned something new through someone else’s eyes.  He is learning about ways to deal with antagonists and struggle through Henry, and he is learning new ways to think his way around a problem.

If you can read, you can learn to do anything.  If you love to read, or at least don’t mind reading, learning is easier.  It’s the one gift out of my arsenal that I’d have chosen to give him.  Given how much B reads (and he reads more than I ever have, and I read a little bit every day, and now that I have a Kindle and a Kindle on my phone, I blow through books), Thor was either going to rebel and refuse to spell his own name, or he was going to be that kid with his nose in a book.

Reading takes you places.

 

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Heat the Homeless with Ashton

the outside lane

I have a lovely friend, Charlcye, who is a bonus mom to three beautiful girls.  Charlcye and Mike are raising their daughters to be socially aware and to understand how their lives can positively impact the world around them.  When Charlcye posted about their daughter Ashton’s drive to help the homeless, I asked if I could share it with you all.  Here is their story:

At age 8, Ashton and I were in the car driving to Half Priced Book Store.  She saw a homeless man on the corner with a sign that said he was homeless.

She asked “Where does he sleep?”

I said I didn’t know…he didn’t have a home.

She asked, “What does he do when it’s cold outside?”

I said he tries to find a place to go inside or he finds a place to sleep next to a building and tries to bundle up under a blanket.

She asked, “Can we take him home to live with us?”

I said we weren’t able to do that but we could do something to help him and other people in this situation.

We went to the bookstore, I gave her $5 to buy a book. She found two books and showed them to me. She said, “I really want this book.” which was almost $5.   Then she said, “If I buy this book for $2 can I take the rest of the money to the homeless man?”

She bought the $2 book and we searched for the man. That night she told her dad about her day. She was sad… Mike and I discussed how to empower her in situations and how to teach her to create opportunities to make a difference in the world.

We  decided to start an annual coat drive that is “Ashton’s”. She makes the signs for the collection boxes, arranges where the collection spots will be, helps promotes the event, regularly picks up the items, and takes the items to the shelter(s).

Ashton is now 10 years old. She is empowered. She has the confidence and experience to know she can and will change her world.

She is collecting Nov 5th-20th at Bolsa Mercado, in North Oak Cliff. Two more collection sites (TBD) will participate as part of her 2012 “Heat the Homeless” drive.

If  you are local to DFW and are looking for a way to be involved, I strongly recommend Ashton’s Heat the Homeless drive.  I know Charlcye very well, and 100% vouch for any work in which she is involved.  Find more information on Facebook here, and check out Bolsa Mercado for a free coffee with your donation.

 

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BOO!

the outside lane

Happy Halloween, y’all!

I have a boatload of cupcakes sitting on my kitchen counter, waiting for a rowboat full of 2nd graders tonight.  Here’s hoping Thor’s classmates are hungry.

I love Halloween.  I love the costumes, and the candy, and the excuse to hang paper lanterns.  I do not love horror or gore, or being afraid, but it’s easy enough to spot which houses to avoid.

Why do I dislike horror so much?  Too much of it in real life to add to the awfulness in fantasy.  Also, I can’t help but wonder about the people left behind in horror movies.  All those imaginary kids at Camp Crystal Lake had imaginary parents, who would have been in imaginary mourning for the rest of their imaginary lives.  I’m not able to cut the bigger picture out of focus, and I am just mortified for the family and friends of all these fake victims.  I can’t find a thrill in the scare (and have never been able to) because I can’t get around oh-my-god-what-if-that-happened-to-someone-I-love?!  It just makes me sick and sad.

This is also why I am so bad at video games*. 

I had this one game that was actually fun, but I kept getting my guy killed before I could level up, and I felt so bad about how horribly he kept dying that I had to quit playing.  I am neurotically empathetic toward imaginary people.  Probably comes of having had so many imaginary friends as a child.

Be safe out there, people.  Be safe, and be good to each other.

*I did kill a lot of Sims on purpose, trying to get a Sims ghost.  I can tell you that I do actually and honestly feel bad about having killed those Sims.

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I’m Into Threesomes–I mean third-partysomes

the outside lane

My first voting event was Bush the Elder v. Clinton the Male-r.  Ross Perot gave it a go in that election, and after the debate in MO, I was sold.  Sadly, he dropped out of the race before I could cast my first vote, and my first Third Party vote.  But, the damage was done to my Red v. Blue socialization, and I’ve longed for a viable Third Party candidate ever since.

What I want in a candidate is this:

  • Economic conservatism
  • Social liberalism
  • A foreign policy of peace and non-interference
  • Strong backing for State’s rights
  • and I want someone who doesn’t try to win my vote by waving a crucifix at me

I’m actually pretty excited about Libertarian, Gary Johnson, this year.  His mini biography from his website says this:

[Gary Johnson] has been an outspoken advocate for efficient government, lower taxes, winning the war on drug abuse, protection of civil liberties, revitalization of the economy and promoting entrepreneurship and privatization.

I like that.  Nothing not to like there.

I also like statements like this:

    • The government cannot pick and choose which of our constitutional rights it must uphold.
    • America is a land of immigrants. Legal immigration should focus on making it easier and simpler for willing workers to come here with a temporary work visa, pay taxes, contribute…
    • Civil liberties are so foundational to America that the first eight amendments to the Constitution address them directly. These amendments enshrine government’s duty to protect individual liberties, including the rights to free speech and free association.
    •  But today, government has created for itself sweeping powers to monitor the private lives of individuals and otherwise intrude upon our daily activities, our households and our businesses. The extent of the government’s reach today would be unrecognizable to the Founders.
    •  Much of the recent erosion in civil liberties has occurred in the name of national security. But we can – and must — combat threats to our safety while adhering to due process and the rule of law.

Again, nothing not to like there.  There are a lot of pros in Johnson’s column, and just a couple of cons.  The biggest con is that he is a Third Party Candidate.  Well, that’s a con to a lot of voters because there is a mythology that voting for anyone other than a Democrat or a Republican just helps the guy you hate win an election.

Johnson addressed this, and I’ll let the man speak for himself:

“Wasting your vote is voting for somebody that you don’t believe in.  That’s wasting your vote. I’m asking everybody here, I’m asking everybody watching this [debate] nationwide to waste your vote on me.”  From the Washington Post–great article, btw.

I can’t vote for a man who sends drones in to murder children, and who fought to retain the ability to indefinitely detain American citizens.  I can’t vote for a man who would further deny civil liberties to my fellow citizens based on their sex, or sex-preferences (or whose positions I can’t quite figure out in the first place.)  Gary Johnson is against drone strikes on innocent parties and indefinite detention of citizens.  He is for gay marriage and women’s rights.  He is against deficit spending, and for education reform.  He is Third Party, but he is top choice for me.

Let’s make it official:  The Outside Lane endorses Gary Johnson for President of the United States.

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Get a Job–no, really, try this!

the outside lane

Back a few years, when I was working a job with a stress level so high that I was getting anal fissures (you know it’s bad if it is making your arse bleed–nothing good makes your arse bleed–and, yes, my doctor said it was stress), I had someone who kept telling me to just quit.  I tried explaining mortgage, and diapers, and food for the child, and kept getting back, “Just quit.”  I couldn’t quit without finding another job first, and in 2008, no one was hiring for my line of work, at my grade of pay. 

“Just accept less money,” came back at me.  Easy to say, isn’t it?  But I was having a hard time finding something else that paid less, too.

I did end up getting laid off, and my severance package and unemployment helped us limp through the next 3 months, until I found another job–paying $10k less base than I had been making.  When you took away the bonuses, it was more like a $15k pay cut.  It hurt.  Although, I did use the time to potty train Thor, so that saved us about $200 a month in Pampers.

Because B has always been very good with our finances, and because we bought a house and cars below our means, we were okay.  We weren’t going to starve, and I never had to make decisions about whether to buy milk or diapers.  Still, we were extremely fortunate that B never lost his job, and that I was able to find one before things got bad.

Over 14 million Americans are unemployed.

PlaySpent.com asks you to imagine you are one of them.  Imagine you have lost your job.  You are a single parent.  You are down to your last $1000.  Can you get a job and make it til the end of the month, until your first paycheck?

I’ve gone through the scenarios 3 times and never made it more than 9 days–because I’m a rules girl and afraid of going to jail, and when I crash my car into someone else’s, I pay the damage instead of hit-and-running. 

Getting a job is not easy anymore.  Losing a job is terrifying now–maybe less terrifying than it was in 2008, but we’ve also gotten used to living on my pay cuts.  Unemployment isn’t just a lazy people problem.  Unemployment  happens to good people, to smart people, to well-educated people, to highly skilled and experienced people.  I challenge you to go to www.playspent.org and come away without a new empathy for the people who are struggling to get by.

“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”  Martin Luther King, Jr.