“Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she’s not really ill
There’s a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day”

Nobody in our family talks about it since she died, but my father’s mother had an assortment of doctors and a pill for everything. Until he lost his license, she was a patient of ‘Dr. Nick’. It was a family joke when she was alive. Everyone knew what my grandmother did and we all knew there was no point in fighting it. She took pills to wake up, pills to get through the days, pills to go potty, pills to go to sleep, pills for everything. The story that went along with it is that after she got married at the age of 16, she was nervous and tired, so a doctor gave her tranquilizers. They made her sleepy so she was given amphetamines. They messed with her digestive tract so she got more pills and she became obsessed with her weight and appearance so she got an assortment of meds to go along with every new complaint. With her very young husband working day and night, doctors gave her the attention that her teenage woes needed. Keeping in mind that we are talking about the 1940-50s, she played bridge during the day with other young wives and they all swapped pills. “This really helped me, you should try some.” An entire generation of chemically dependent housewives. What’s the point of this story Cathy? In spite of all this, there really are times when it would be handy to pop a tranquilizer and calm the stress that builds up inside of me until I feel like I am going to explode like a cartoon thermometer.

These two must have sent the children, dogs and cats to the grandparents’ for the night.
Wa-wa-wa-why Sharona?” apologies to The Knack

Does this happen at your house too?

I’m hungry now.

As promised, I tried using the random blog button for today’s Monday Walkabout. Don’t try this at home children. It is time consuming and slightly boring. The random button makes it feel like Singapore residents own most of the blogosphere. I am turned off by pop-ups demanding downloads, cutesy background music, anime and bloggers who talk in IM speak. The random blog button is like digging through a garbage dump. You know that people have put things of value in the dump, but you have to sift through a ton of useless, stinky gunk to find the good stuff. I hate yard sales, so I should have known this wouldn’t be for me. I did find
My Random Musings after clicking for an hour. Sit back and read and enjoy. After another pointless hour I gave up and decided to add
Marc’s Blog for my second addition because he found me first and we have square peg children in a round peg world. My third new blog is,
Sanity Adrift because Doug keeps talking about how much he enjoys it. My fourth addition is,
Austin Country Limits, which you have to see for the stunning photography. The last one today is
H.G. Wells who is less delusional than Hulk’s Blog but equally fun. Now I think I’ll try removing that horrible random blog button. If you’re lurking about and haven’t already done so, please make a comment so I can peek at your blog and add more to my daily “must-reads”.

Doug wird verwechselt. Tommy’s Verhalten kann uns beide Geschlecht nicht wünschen lassen. Ich benutze Geschlecht nicht als Waffe, weil die mich verletzen würde. Wir nicht sogar folgten der sechs Woche Richtlinie.

clowns - not as bad as mimes 

Genuine and Catawampus have posted some very intelligent commentaries on schools. Without the writing skills they possess I’ll add my two cents one cent worth of opinion on schools and the children who are different. Tommy spent his first year of school in a CDC (kids who don’t fit the mold) classroom learning how to get stickers on a behavior chart. I spent that year teaching him to read. I also spent my only year actively working with the PTA. I worked my tail off having a silent auction to buy a bigger, better playground. The silent auction raised $20,000.00 and the attached carnival made $5,000.00. They were quite annoyed that they had to spend extra money to make it accessible to children with different abilities. During that year on the PTA I was just a worker bee and none of the PTA leaders cared to even learn who I was or who my child was but they were happy to ignore my presence as they repeatedly criticized the CDC class. “Why do we have those ‘stupid’ children at our school? They should ship them to one of those schools where the parents don’t care who their children are exposed to.” My child is not contagious. Despite my mutterings that I would never volunteer to do anything on PTA committees ever again, I have offered to help with our current elementary school’s silent auction but they have turned me down repeatedly. PTA is like a country club and the women who run it pick and choose carefully who can help in the decision-making.

Skip ahead many years to the time Tommy spent at the Knoxville school that is a huge dumping ground for children who don’t fit in the system. Until two years ago this school had no books. The children spent their entire days earning and receiving play-time and rewards or punishment. They even had old showers converted into ‘cells’ for children who were out of control. A few weeks before the end of the year I was in the office checking Tommy out for a weekly therapy appointment. The office staff was reviewing the student roster. Every child in this school has an IEP and falls under the IDEA laws so they are only allowed 5 days of suspension before hearings have to be held to determine if their disability caused the misbehavior. Right before my eyes and ears they were actively making sure that they had used up the five allotted days on each child in the school. “We have two days left on him, next time he does anything, send him home.”

In my years working as a social worker I had many unpleasant tasks but one of the most frustrating was attending zero tolerance hearings. Children who are already struggling to belong are thrown out of the school for one full calendar year and that year is lost. No home schooling or other options, just a year tossed in the garbage can. The school system knows the odds of these children ever returning and they are very happy to get rid of the children who demand their attention. The children who need the schools the most are tossed aside in favor of the children who will thrive no matter how good or bad their teacher is that year. The good teachers know how horrible this system is but they are at the mercy of the political administrators and other parents. Those same parents who control the PTA want children who are different or difficult shoved out of their sight. Not in my school and not in my backyard are their mottos. Is it any wonder the schools are filled with children who hate, bully and torment their way to the top of the popularity polls? Has it occurred to anyone the cost difference between working hard to help children while they are still in schools versus a lifetime of supporting adults who can’t live up to their fullest potential because the schools failed them? I want to talk about what is happening to Tommy and my other children in school right now but this post is too long already. Since it’s Sunday in the bible belt, I hope you’ll forgive my rant.

All of our four legged friends are spayed females but if we had a male I guess he’d appreciate these.

When Amy can’t settle, Sarah crawls in bed with her. Aren’t they sweet?