Our Election Day Adventures

At 7a.m. On the dot this morning, Kaleb and I left home heading for my polling location roughly a half-mile from the house. When we arrived at 7:03, we almost couldn't find a parking spot! Having voted at this same location numerous times before and having never seen more than 3 or 4 voters there at any one time, I was totally unprepared for the crowd. We pulled into a spot after waiting for another voter to vacate, and climbed out to join the line outside the polling place (St. Andrew's United Methodist Church on Michigan Ave.). Kaleb pulled the hood of his jacket onto his head and over his ears, and stood excitedly beside me in line as we waited for our turn, 15 minutes in the line outside and then another 10 minutes in line on the inside of the building.

During the entire wait, Kaleb was on his better-than-best behavior. I'd been coaching him for days on what to expect when we went to vote and what behaviors were and were not acceptable at the polling place. We had added new words to his vocabulary: polls, ballot, election, vote. I had told him over and over how important it is for grown-ups to vote, and how important it is for kids to learn about voting so that they know what to do when they get to be grown-ups. Kaleb had learned the names of some of the bigger candidates, and has been watching the news with me over the last few weeks. He has been asking intelligent questions (relative to his age) about the candidates and how voting works. As someone who takes a real interest in politics, it makes me proud to see Kaleb so interested. I honestly think he knows more about the voting process, at this point, than many of my middle school students!

We finally made it to the front of the line and the check-in table. I presented my voter card and my driver's license to the lady at the table, and Kaleb handed her his photo ID as well (it's actually his emergency info card). Everyone giggled a bit, and Kaleb beamed from ear to ear, feeling very grown up. The lady made a show of finding “us” in the book and having me sign the register. She handed me our slip to take to the next table and have our ballot issued. This time, there was no line, and we were able to hand the ballot issue slip right over to the lady at that table. She handed me my ballot, and went over the basics, as I suppose they are required to do with everyone. She then handed Kaleb a sample ballot (the kind that shows you how to shade in your selections), and we stepped away toward the voting area.

Women Who Want Equality But Won't Live It

To my fellow American women:  If you're going to keep demanding equality, it's time you start living it!

Let's face facts:  It's simply not fair for us, as modern American women, to demand chivalry and equality.  The two are almost entirely contradictory.  You cannot expect a man to think of you as strong when you cry out for help every time you are faced with a task that requires a tiny bit of grit.  You cannot expect a man to think of you as independent if you get visibly offended when he doesn't open the door for you.  You cannot expect a man to respect your employment income when you constantly assume it is his responsibility to pay for everything, on every date, regardless of how long you have been together.

If you want to be treated as equal to a man, then act as if you are equal.  If you play the part of the "weaker sex," you deserve to be treated as a weaker person.

Most often, I think about this when I hear about incidents of domestic violence.  I am not talking about those sad occasions when one person in a relationship is abusive toward the other, unprovoked.  That's wrong, regardless of who is the abuser.  Rather, I'm talking about those times when a woman hits, punches, or abuses her male partner and then has him arrested for assault & battery when he fights back.  Really?  How is that at all fair?

Ladies, it is no longer acceptable—really, never has been, in my opinion—for you to think that you can be physically violent toward a man and then expect to hide behind your femininity as protection from retaliation.  If you are tough enough to hit a man, then you better make sure you are also tough enough to take the hit-back.

In the end, I think that most of the focus of "Womens' Liberation" has been focused in the wrong direction.  We have come a long way toward equality, and we should continue to press onward toward full equality with men.  Along the way, however, I think we ought to be kind enough to liberate men from the unfair double standards of an outdated system of chivalry and "kept" women.

Jazzing Up Presidential Debates

Did you think the Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates were just boring?  Lots of folks do.  Well, here are some videos created by a couple of guys who wanted to add some musical style to the debates.  Check them out, and let me know what you think in the comments section!

First Presidential Debate


Vice-Presidential Debate

Lots of fun!  Can't wait to see what these guys come up with for the next Presidential debate next week!

The Wisdom of the Heart

Throughout my teen years and on into my early adulthood, I was on an on-again/off-again search for something that would show itself to be spiritual truth.  Every step I took in researching various religions of the world too me farther and farther from the narcissistic, dictatorial, puppet master God of the Bible and closer to the ancient spiritualities of Europe and Asia.

While my studies of Buddhism were merely a stop-off on my journey, I find that many of the teachings of Buddhist leaders still hold, for me, some very perfect bits of wisdom.  Among my more favorite selections of Buddhist teachings is "The Wisdom of the Heart," by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

"The Wisdom

of the Heart"
 from the

14th Dalai Lama*

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1989)

1.  Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

2.  Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.

3.  Sleep is the best meditation.

4.  Spend some time alone every day.

5.  We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

6.  Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

7.  We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.

8.  Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

9.  If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

10.  The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.

*The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the spiritual and exiled leader of the Tibetan people. Born in northeastern Tibet, he was recognized at the age of 2 as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. After the suppression of the Tibetan national uprising in 1959, His Holiness escaped to India where he was given political asylum. Dalai Lama is a Mongolian title, which means "Ocean of Wisdom". "Dalai" means "ocean" in Mongolian, and "Lama" (bla ma) is the Tibetan equivalent of the Sanskrit word "guru", and is commonly translated to mean "spiritual teacher".

Our Teachers Are Afraid

Florida has long been a less-than-ideal place for teachers.  In fact, our teachers are some of the lowest-paid in the nation, yet they operate under some of the strictest scrutiny.  Micromanagement is an epidemic at every level of educational administration at the school, county, and state levels.  Gone are the days when teachers were made to feel as though they do an important job by educating our future generations.  These days, teachers are asked to do more and more with less and less and for smaller and smaller compensation.

This school year, the median salary for 10-month teachers in Escambia County is $40,187 (step 13 of 26 steps).  That may not sound so bad, but when you do the math, it gets worse.  Teachers in this county, on average, work 7½ hours per day at school.  While their contract guarantees them a duty-free lunch, high school teachers are the only ones who get that "perk" on any regular basis, meaning that they are on the clock for that 7½ hours each day.  Based on my own observation, I would say that it's not at all unusual for a teacher to spend 2 hours per night at home (or staying late at work) grading papers on weekdays and another 4-6 hours over the weekend.

$40,187 annually for a Step 13 teacher (32.825 on step 1 or 51.986 on step 26) (link) works out to a miserable pittance, once you take into account the hours that teachers spent "working" on their own time (working lunches, grading papers, and writing plans at home) during the school year and over the summer.  That is less than the average McDonald's employee (link)!  And those are the figures for a Step 13, veteran teacher!  Add to this the fact that teacher's pay is spread over 12 months, for most, instead of just the 10 months during the school year and you can plainly see that our teachers are being hugely underserved by the system that could not operate without them!

In addition to the low pay, most teachers spend their own money on work.  Teachers at several schools I know of each received a $100 budget this year to be spent on classroom and office supplies.  Teachers and aides also each qualify for up to a $250 tax credit on their annual income taxes.  Ask a teacher how much they spent last year on their classroom and work-related supplies.  It's very probable the number will tally far higher than $350.

And this is how our governmental system shows its appreciation for educators!

Accepting Un-Pretty

I spent most of my childhood being teased mercilessly by my peers, both at school and at church.  I have always been the fat, freckle-faced, redheaded, unpopular kid.  I didn't play sports.  I didn't have any particularly enviable talents  I didn't come from a "rich" family.  I rarely ever had more than one or two "friends" at any given time.  It didn't take me long to understand that I have never fit into the mold of what common society considers to be physically beautiful.  I probably understood this fact by the time I had finished elementary school—although acceptance of this fact would come much, much later.

As I grew into adulthood, I learned that it didn't really matter that I'm not beautiful.  I'm smart, I'm funny, I'm passionate, and I'm a hard worker.  I have learned that I don't need a hundred "best" friends, and I'm honestly much happier with a smaller, closer circle of genuine friends.  I have learned that who I am is good enough, and that I'm worthy of love and friendship and respect.  I've learned that I don't need to be beautiful, and I've come to realize that I'm not sure I'd even want the pressure that would come attached to maintaining a beautiful me.

Working around middle schoolers, these past several years, has given me the opportunity to develop an entirely different perspective on being "un-pretty" by watching it unfold through the eyes of my students.  While it's not something I point out to them, I have students who do not fit into the "beautiful" category.  Some of them may never fit into that category, and there's really nothing that they can do about it.  While the "un-pretty" seems to afflict both male and female students, it is the girls I worry about the most.

The problem I see is this:

When a girl goes crying to her friends, parents, or teachers, telling them that she has been harassed or bullied by someone who said she was "ugly" or "fat" or some other such derogatory term, it is almost always handled wrongly.  The first reaction or these friends and parents and teachers is to comfort the girl—and rightly so—and then to say something like "Just ignore them.  You're beautiful no matter what they say."

New Discoveries in an Old Routine

As I begin this post, it's 11:20p.m. on Tuesday evening, and I already know that I'll be dragging when the alarm clock starts buzzing in the morning.  But, I've had some thoughts circling my mind in a never-ending loop the last few days, and I need to get them out, so here I sit, on the couch, blogging when I should be already asleep.  Alas.

About 6 weeks ago, Kaleb was diagnosed with ADHD by his pediatrician and began taking a daily dose of Adderall to aid him in regaining control of himself.  To say the least, it feels as if our lives have been transformed.  It took a bit of trial and error to settle upon the correct dosage for Kaleb—just enough to get the job done, but not enough to turn him into a pre-school zombie—but when the right dosage was tested, it was like a magic spell!  He's not a perfect kid, and we still aggravate one another immeasurably sometimes (he's 3 years old, and we are both redheads), but pretty much everything has improved by the introduction of this little pill into our morning routines.

================================================

Many people who know me already know that Kaleb began Pre-K 3 at Escambia Christian School yesterday (Monday) on the first day of the 2012-2013 school year.  It wasn't something I had really prepared for, and was arranged on relatively short notice—the reasons behind our withdrawal from Malena's Mini School will be the topic of another post.

Remembering Bob

At some point, some person will become a part of your life for a short time, but will leave a very lasting impression on your heart.  This is an experience that most everyone will have, and it can be a unique experience, to be so affected by someone you've barely gotten to know.

This is the story of the brief time that Bob* was a part of my life.

From October 2006 to October 2007, I worked in the administration and monitoring positions at a residential facility here in Pensacola where newly-released inmates were court ordered to attend drug and alcohol abuse treatment.  Up to 60 of these clients at a time lived in our facility, taking part in individual and group counseling and working to get back into the job force.  Each week, some clients would rotate out and others would rotate in.  Though I spent 50+ hours a week working among them, I never truly got to know the majority of the clients as there was a need to maintain a clear separation between profession and personal life.

But, try as I might, I did still get to know occasional clients very well—nothing remotely inappropriate, but some of these people.....you just couldn't help but like them.  Yes, I knew many of the more troubling and disturbing details of their individual pasts, but I also knew that many of these people were struggling with addictions that had taken away their self-control along with their self-respect.  The majority of the clients were good people who had made very bad choices and ended up in very bad situations.  Then they had landed in our facility.

That's the Thing About Having Friends...

I've never been the kind of person who had—or wanted—bunches and bunches of friends.  I've always preferred to keep one or two close friends and simply maintain others at the level of friendly acquaintances.  I know this might not be typical for a woman, but there's a reason behind it.

You see, there's this thing about having friends: you have to open yourself up emotionally.

It doesn't sound like anything big or scary, but opening up emotionally leaves you open to being hurt or disappointed or mislead (intentionally or not) or embarrassed.  And none of those are things anyone likes, really.

Throughout my life, nearly every time I have opened up to a new friendship, at least of of those things has happened to me, and I can tell you that it is never any fun.  And each time it happens, I have to take a break and decide if that friendship is worth saving or if it's better to just let go.  Most times, I end up deciding that the value of the relationship doesn't outweigh the emotional toll it takes on me.  On rare occasions, I step back for a while, swallow my opinions (I know, hard for you to imagine), and push on through with a business-as-usual friendship.

Some of you may have noticed that I've been on a bit of "internet silence" the last few weeks.  Partly, this has been because work is pretty hectic this close to the end of the school year.  But mostly, I've been nursing a spot of hurt pride/embarrassment caused by a couple of friends.  I went out on a limb for someone, and it ended up biting me in the ass.  That old familiar sting came back, reminiscent of so many hurts and wrongs in the past, and I needed some time to myself to reevaluate.

I've had plenty of time to think now, and I'm back in the public arena of the internet again.  I haven't made any definite decisions about the status of this freshly-wounded friendship.  And, though I won't name the other party or even hint to their identity, the ball is now squarely in his or her court.

Friendship.  It's tough.  But for the opportunity to find those rare, true friends, it's totally worth it.

A Servant's Heart....?

I've been hearing—more accurately, reading—more and more people lately labeling themselves as having a "servant's heart," and it got me thinking about what that really means.  In the days before internet, such a curiosity could have meant days of research in a library.  Now, however, Google and I can team up to find answers to many of my queries in only minutes....or at least to find some validations for thoughts I might already be having.

Two nights ago, I stumbled across a post that echoed many of the things I had been feeling but had not yet been able to verbalize.  Because I could think of no words better to sum up my thoughts than those already written by the author of that blog, I decided to ask that author for permission to republish her post for my own readers.

So, posted below is the July 30, 2009 post written by Laurinda Bellinger [about] over at Laurinda on Leadership.  Text in yellow is where I have injected some thoughts of my own.  Those thoughts do not necessarily reflect the thoughts of the original post's author, Laurinda Bellinger.

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Do you have a Servant's Heart or a Slave's Mentality?

July 30, 2009

In Corporate America servant leadership has become popular form of leadership. I believe it's only true leadership form. I see people struggle with the term servant, especially those of us in the black community. Servant and slave are terms that don't sit well with us. Although we will sit in church on Sundays and hear how we are to servants and slaves of Christ. Many of us will serve in church, but it stops there. One reason is because having a servant's mentality, which I equate to a slave's mentality, is different than having a servant's heart.

A Rather Sad Day.

At 8:00p.m. last night, I arrived home.  Work had been fairly awful, and Kaleb and I had gone to spend some time with good friends to try and salvage a positive end for the day.  For the first time in many months, I was simply not in the mood to write.  My spirit is slightly damaged, and I needed to head to bed to escape into a dream that has become a constant welcome addition to my nightly slumber.

I believe that my Facebook status update fairly well summed things up, so I will leave you with that for today:

"Today at work I learned that people sometimes drop a lot of garbage as they walk the path toward their happiness. Sometimes, I have been guilty of this. And other times, I have the arduous task of being put onto the chain gang responsible for cleaning up others' garbage and restoring things to the way they ought to be. It has been a disheartening day, to say the least, and I am glad it is finally over. I pray that the clean up will go quickly, before these shackles cut to the bone."

My Boys

It's not at all unusual for me to see a few raised eyebrows when I make reference to "my sons" or "my boys."  Most people know that I'm a single mom with a little boy, but those plural nouns often throw people for a loop.  However, even when I was pregnant with Kaleb, I already had one fuzzy child—my big orange cat, Morris.

In 2002, I was married and living in PPV military housing in a little town in Northern San Diego County called Ramona, California.  One day while I was home alone, there was an unexpected knock at the door.  I opened the door, and there stood a sleep-deprived Navy wife with a Radio Flyer wagon containing a basket of mewling orange furballs and several dozen cans of kitten formula.  She told me that her cat had had these kittens and had taken off and not returned.  She had been trying to take care of all 6 kittens herself, but was finding it impossible to keep up with them and her own children.  She was looking for families to adopt the kittens.  I had always wanted an orange cat—it seemed a redheaded woman should have one—so I agreed to take one.  We already had 3 cats, and I knew my then-husband would be none too happy when he came home....but he was rarely very happy anyway.

I [Don't] Enjoy Being A [Stereotyped] Girl.

I don't know about any of you, but I grew up watching movies that were musical classics: Singin' in the Rain, Shall We Dance, Holiday Inn, The Sound of Music, White Christmas, The King & I, and Flower Drum Song among them.  While I loved the musicality and exuberance of these movies—and still do—I have, as an adult, begun to see things in these movies that I never noticed as a kid.  Primary among these more recent observations is that these movies, to great extent, seemed to celebrate "girly" women, women who loved dresses and lace and being taken-care-of housewives.

And this one simple observation has caused my first feeling of complete disconnect from these movies.

Of these movies, Flower Drum Song is the most obvious in it's display of these traditional gender roles, highlighting them in all their somewhat-outdated detail in the musical scene shown below.

I got to reading the words to that song a few days ago, and have been unable to stop comparing my real life to the realistically fictional life detailed in the song's lyrics.  As a formerly-married single woman, a single mom, and a woman with a full time job, my life seems to stand in near-complete contrast to these lyrics.  Below, I have listed the song's lyrics and contrasted them line by line.  Enjoy!

A New Direction in Life

Seven years ago, on a random day in the middle of a very cold January, I was on my way to visit a friend and happened to drive past a homeless man by the side of the road, shivering noticeably, holding a sign that said, "I'm cold and hungry. Please help me if you can." 

On that particular day, I was pretty broke myself.  I also instantly realized that I had eaten both breakfast and lunch that day and was driving down to road in a heated car on my day off going to visit a friend and hang out watching television all day.  Surely, there was something I could do.  A few blocks down the road, I pulled into a parking spot at a McDonald's restaurant and started digging in my purse, the ashtray, and the floorboards for change.

What I found was enough to buy three double cheeseburgers—they were still on the dollar menu then—and a medium coffee.  I drove back the way I had come, found a spot in a nearby parking lot, and walked toward the man with the food and hot coffee in hand.  When he spotted me, and realized that I was intentionally approaching him, he came in my direction.  Completely unsure of what to say, I wordlessly handed him the bag and cup.  He smiled back at me and turned to walk back and collect his sign and the old milk crate he had been sitting on.  By the time I had walked back to my car, the man had silently melted away into some nearby woods.  I never saw that man again, but I have also never forgotten the genuine smile that crossed his face at the gift of fast food and coffee.

In the years since that day, I have helped when I could.  Sometimes it has been a dollar or a handful of change handed out the window of my car.  Other times it has been a sack of fast food or a few cans extra purchased during a grocery store trip.  The feelings that come after such a small donation last for days, and these encounters make very lasting impressions on my heart and mind.

A Darn Good Christian

A co-worker friend of mine said to me today, "You know, you'd make a darn good Christian....Well, you know, if you believed in God and stuff."  I must have had one pretty quizzical look on my face, because he then looked at me and added, "I meant that to be a compliment, just so you know, 'cuz you're always doing nice things for people and stuff."

At first, I thought this entire concept was somewhat silly, since if I remember correctly, belief in the Biblical God is the primary defining quality of a Christian.  And, while the reasons for my non-Christianity are a topic for another post coming in the near future**, I can say for now that I do not identify myself as a Christian—and never have.

What a crazy thing it seems to me that because I make an effort to affect change in the world—on whatever scale I am able—people will assume I must be a Christian.  I know I live in the Southern dip of the Bible Belt, but have people really begun to believe that Christians have a monopoly on doing good?

If this were the first time this has happened to me, I might assume it was just a random occurrence and dismiss it entirely.  But this has happened to me for years now!  When I've done volunteer work, people always ask me what church I'm affiliated with.  When I reply that I'm intentionally not affiliated with any church, they look at me as if that thought is incomprehensible.

Really?!?!

So, let me just set the record straight, in case there are any questions.  I don't need a Bible to tell me that helping people in need, even if I can only do a little, is the right thing to do.  I don't need to be a church member or be church-sponsored to see a need and do what I can to fill that need.

So, to those of you who keep asking, let me put forth the suggestion that your time might be better spent helping the less fortunate rather than concerning yourselves with my chosen beliefs.


======
**Update 3-20-2012: You can now read more at my latest post, "Why I'm Not A Christian."

Responsibility, Part VII: Workplace Behaviors

Back in January, I wrote a series of blog posts about responsibility, the first of which can be found here.  However, over the past couple of weeks, I have realized that I forgot about something that is a major aspect in the lives of most of the people I know: work.

Most of the people I know are not wealthy enough to stop working, not old enough to retire, and not lucky enough to have a spouse who can/will work 3 jobs simultaneously so they can sit on their fat rumps at home all day.  And so, most of the people I know work.  And for these same reasons, I work too.

But before I launch into a post centered around responsibility in the workplace, let me first share a bit of my own employment history.  I have had enough jobs to create a resume several pages long, and those jobs were a bit random and totally varied in their types.  Some of those jobs are experiences I look back at with fond memories.  Others are places in my past that I'd rather not spend much time thinking about.  Among the latter, you will actually find the highest paying job I've ever had.  During my 2nd stint working at Waffle House (most people working there have worked there more than once), during which I did double duty as cook and waitress, I brought in more income than I ever have with any other job I've held.  When I waited tables, I was good at what I did and brought home fistfuls of tips.  When I cooked, I was good at what I did and earned a grill bonus nearly every shift.  In fact, that one single year, I claimed more on my income taxes than most teachers at my school will be claiming on their 2011 taxes this April.

Yes, you read that right: Many of the people whose job it is to serve you double and triple mountains of greasy, Scattered, Smothered, Covered, Chunked, Diced, Peppered, Capped, Bitted, Spiced, Country, & Topped hash browns are bringing in MORE income than the teachers who work in our public schools providing students with the education necessary to keep them from lifetimes of serving  double and triple mountains of greasy,   Scattered, Smothered, Covered, Chunked, Diced, Peppered, Capped, Bitted, Spiced, Country, & Topped hash browns.

Honesty: It's More Than Just Words

Looking innocent in the winter of 1992.

When I was a child, honesty and I were near-complete strangers.  Right or wrong, it's the truth; and it's one truth that I have spent many years pretending didn't exist.  I lied as naturally as I blinked my eyes and nearly as often.  The older I got, the better I got at lying and getting away with it.  Sure, there were plenty of times someone figured me out, but there were plenty of times that no one did, and I learned from those "successes."

Over the years, my lies resulted in hurt feelings, disappointments to my parents and family, the losses of friendships, and some not-so-fun punishments.  Was it worth it?  At the time, I was fully convinced that the benefits outweighed the down sides.  However, as I became an adult, I began to see that there had been nothing gained from any of it—not the lying, not the deceit,  not from any of the dishonest behaviors.

I admit, I'm still not perfect.  Lying can become as addictive as any drug, and I spent well over a dozen years in the grips of that addiction and in denial of the problem right in front of my eyes.  Now, however, I see those faults in all their damaging detail, and I actively work to be honest with friends, family, and anyone else with whom I come into contact in my life.

P52, Somewhat: Week 9, "Distance"

This week's post topic is "distance."  I could think of plenty of distant objects the photograph: a setting sun, a tree in a field, a storm looming on the horizon, a boat heading out to sea.  And any of those shots, along with a multitude of others would be great practice for a photographer using this photo-a-week challenge to bolster their photography skills.  I, however, am not a photographer; and while I may see some improvement in my amateur photography skills by the end of this project, it is not my primary motivation for participation in this challenge.  Rather, my motivation for attempting this was to help bring some added variety and diversification to my blog and give me a chance to further build and exercise my writing skills.

So rather than deciding on what photo to write about, I decided instead to write about something that I could find a photo to complement.

What comes to mind when I think of the things in my life that are meaningful yet distant?

Jack.  Of course.

Friendships worth having require a great deal of shared work and mutual responsibility to keep them healthy.  And maintaining such relationships over long distances grows exponentially more difficult.  For it to work, you must care enough to work for it.

Frequent readers of my blog will already know who Jack is and how we met.  (If you missed that post, you can catch up here.)  Jack and I share a relationship that neither of us quite know how to properly label.  We are friends, for certain, but there is more too, and it is the addition of this "something more" that makes our friendship so valuable to us both.  And even over the 10,122 miles (16,290 km) between here and Jack's current home in Japan, that "something more" gives a reason to stay close.

Duh, Mommy.

Alright, so maybe Kaleb doesn't actually know the word "duh" yet, but that doesn't mean his eyes don't say it from time to time.  Today was one of those days.  Today, for the first time, I got a glimpse into the inevitable future where Kaleb will think I'm an absolute moron—as all children think of their parents for a time—and I will be unable to comprehend how he could think of me as such.

Today when I got to Kaleb's daycare classroom to pick him up, there were several "artworks" in his cubby.  Among them was this:

The other works of art were vivid, neatly-scribbled coloring pages, so this one stood out as being very different.  This was something original Kaleb had created, something his mind told his fingers to do.

I asked him to tell me about the colors, and he correctly identified them as green and purple.  And the paper was white.  He's got his colors pretty well learned now.

I turned the sheet around and around, examining it from all angles, hoping ti see some small detail that would give me a clue as to what (or whom?) Kaleb had been attempting to create on his paper.  After several minutes without finding an answer myself, I knew I would have to ask him and hope for an answer I could understand.

"Kaleb, what is this?" [pointing my finger at the largest spot in the middle of the paper]

He looked up at me, and I saw that flash of thought in his eye that said "Mommy, you're a plumb idiot!"

Luckily, Kaleb doesn't talk that way.  Yet the answer he gave me was no less deflating.

"It's PAINT, Mommy!"

Duh.

Humanity & Poetry: My Ordinary Day

My day to day is generally
Fairly ordinary
I come; I go; Sometimes I stay a while
           in between.
Perhaps because I'm a writer, though
I see instances of poetry
In my ordinary day—
Not that perfect letter poetry
As might flow from the soul
          of one more literary than I,
But a style of poetry with a different soul
          and a life of its own.

I awaken most days
To a wet nose or furry tail
Tickling my cheek.
Then a musical "Good Morning, Mommy"
Follows soon after.
Through a rush of hair brushing
          and shoe finding
          and and the gathering of essentials
I move in routine to the soundtrack
          of a groggy cat
          and an impatient little boy.
And in those moments,
My movements make rhythmic poetry.