Hypocrisy...

Here's something confusing to me. How on earth can someone blabber on to me about how damaging homeschooling is for my children, discredit or argue every stance I take, and then in the next breath complain that their children are calling each other "pimp" or cry every morning about the bullies at school? How can they flatly state that I am in no way qualified to teach, and then complain to me the next day about the worthless and cruel teacher of their child's class? Do they hear nothing I say?

I pulled my son out of public school in the middle of second grade. His teacher was mean, and spent most of the day yelling at her students, especially those targeted troublemakers such as my son. I complained to the principal, but since I was the only one complaining, she was positive I was just some crazy woman defending my obviously guilty child. The bad part of this story is, I've discovered worse things about this teacher since my son was out of school than when he was in her class.

Fast forward two years. My cousin has a son in the second grade of the same school. My cousin is a preschool teacher, and prime defender of public school. Her son has a different teacher than mine did, and apparently a much nicer one. She's told me of the other kids in Evil Teacher's class; how they complain of her yelling. My cousin has even told me about her son's teacher closing the door to her classroom so they wouldn't have to hear Evil Teacher yelling down the hall. All my cousin says are things like, "My son is so lucky to have this good teacher," and "If your son had had her in second grade, I doubt he would have had the problems he did in school."

What about the kids that do have her? Why doesn't the good teacher complain that her colleague is verbally and emotionally abusing her students so loudly half the school can hear it? Why have no other parents complained? Why, when parents and teachers know that such teachers exist, and being fully aware of the arguments about bad teachers, is nothing done about them?

And how can they all continue to argue that public school is better for my child? They don't care about the children suffering through an entire school year of yelling and degradation, why do they care so much about mine?

This blog sucks (but I like it)...

I was thinking about those cool blogs. You know, the blogs with a zillion readers and product companies begging the writers to review stuff on their blog.

Well, this isn't one of those. I'm not good enough for that kind of blog. Not because I'm not smart enough, snarky enough, or witty enough. I'm not good enough because I'm too bitchy. I complain a lot. I'm looking over my blog today and noticing most of my posts are bitching about this thing or whining about that thing. That's fine. That's me.

I bitch a lot because I don't often have anyone to bitch to. I tried bitching to my husband, but somehow that always turns into him bitching about his own problems, so I don't feel any better. I can't bitch to my kids because, not only are those problems none of their business, they really could care less. I could bitch to my friends, but.. well, I don't have any of those. Any worth bitching to anyway. So I come here to bitch. I do have a lot of good things to talk about, but I can share those with any number of people. And honestly, the good things I do are pretty much only exciting to me.

All that being said, I apologize for anyone who may have been subjected to my endless bitching, and promise to try to post more enlightening and entertaining stuff. I am making an effort to make this blog a bit more positive instead of just using it as an outlet for my frustrations. I can't promise I won't bitch again, but I can try to make this blog a bit more worth everyone's time.

And for my second wish...

My husband took me shopping last night and surprised me by grabbing the sewing machine I'd been asking for off the shelf and sticking it into the cart. This is the sewing machine I've been hinting about for the last year or so, and did a teeny bit of complaining about not getting for Christmas.

I'm so excited I can hardly control myself. All I can think about are the things I can sew! I could make new curtains for the girls' room. I could make a new comforter for my son's bed. I could make a thousand summer outfits for my kids. I could make new pajamas, bath robes, hats, tote bags... The possibilities are endless!

The sewing machine has yet to come out of the box. The plan is to put the sewing machine on an old desk we got from a friend in a corner of my bedroom. The corner of the bedroom currently has an unused gun cabinet and some boxes of clothes, so that has to be cleaned up. The desk is currently sitting outside in the shed and has to be cleaned up as well. So it looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me today if I'm ever going to sew.