The Rant That Never Was

Life keeps on rumblin' along.

Don't know why I said that, it just sorta came out . . . (diarrhea of the brain, maybe?) Life's not too bad at the moment; been lots (and LOTS!) of changes around the homefront over the last few months (i.e. dog, diet, school, work, writing . . .) but I think we're finally getting into the swing of things. Life seems to be (gasp!) settling down for once. I really hope we can get through fall and winter without any major changes to the schedule we've worked out. It seems to be working well for everybody (though The Wife cannot wait until The Dog is house-broken!) Which is actually funny as hell to me . . .

See, we had two cats for the last sixteen years, one of which spent her life ruining my carpets. Yea, I know, cats are supposed to be good about litter boxes and such - but not this one! My wife cleaned up the mess day, after day, after day, with no complaints. I used to freak out over it and she'd just shrug and tell me to chill out. Now, she's completely losing it when The Dog has accidents in the house (she's still only 10 weeks old) and last night she was yelling about it when I told her to just chill out. Funny how such things change, eh?

So, the ranting I warned you about is not going to happen. (I know: you're disappointed, right?) Wisdom comes with age and my ass is finally old enough to follow up on facts before I let my mouth get into gear.

The Boy did a project for his math class; a poster about the career he wanted to pursue in the future and how it relates to math. It was a nice poster with lots of pictures. I helped him work on it and I thought he did a really good job. The posters were to be hung around the halls of the school for Parent's Night (tonight, BTW: and The Wife is making me go!) Anyway, last week I asked how the project went and he told me he'd scored a perfect 100 on it. I thought that was great and told him so, then he says: "But the teacher won't hang it for parent's night." I found that strange and asked: why? "Because the teacher thinks it's offensive."

Now, this is the point where I nearly lost my friggin' mind. See, The Boy wants a career in the U.S. Navy. The idea that a teacher would refuse to display that career choice for fear of "offending" someone had me ready to start calling in lawyers, veterans groups, and every right-wing TV talk-show host I could think of! (I had offers from two separate family members who are in the military for their entire unit to show up in full dress tonight to protest! How cool would that be?) Well -luckily- I put the anger on hold and made a very polite call to the teacher to find out what the issue was. Seems The Boy had misunderstood her - she DID hang the poster but she'd covered a single one of his pictures (a shot of a battleship with all guns blazing) because there are going to be folks there with family on active duty -and some who've lost family members in Iraq- and she didn't want to show anything that might bring up bad feelings for them. Now, I think that's a sorta candy-ass approach but it's hard to argue it without sounding like an inconsiderate jerk, so I let it slide. My major concern had been her apparent disrespect towards the military but in our conversation she was actually a big supporter of the military and my son's desire to join.

So, no ranting . . . just a shrug at how effete a nation we are becoming. Well, work summons - gotta bolt.

Later!