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Of all the stresses I anticipated relating to my son's 8th grade formal dance, I never imagined that our rooster would play a part. However, when you live on a farm, even a small one like ours, you never know when entropy will rear its head.
In the days leading up to the dance I ordered a corsage and convinced my son of its importance, while my husband took Alden shopping for his first real suit. Things were going smoothly.
The formal was on Saturday evening, but my husband had to work all day, so it fell to me to begin the dress preparations. Again, things appeared to be going smoothly. Joe got home just in time to help Alden with his tie and put on his new shoes.
They decided Alden needed to tighten his belt another notch, but then realized the belt was already on the last hole. The leather hole punch was needed, and quickly! Now, there is only one area of fashion in which a horsewoman can boast superiority over normal women, and that is in the area of adjusting leather goods. I rushed out to the barn to get the hole punch.
This set the stage for the trouble... me, rushing across the barnyard with the leather punch in my hand. I was only intent on getting back to the house and fixing the belt. I did not think about the fact that our rooster and his hens were running loose in the barnyard. Why would I?
In my mind, I was rushing back to the house to help my son prepare for a milestone event. In my rooster's mind, I was threatening his hens and then retreating (quickly) before his ferocious might. He zeroed in on my lower legs and feet, inadequately protected by the standard southern summer uniform of capri pants and sandals.
His first attack caught me off guard. I spun around and yelled at him, while he pranced and puffed up his neck feathers. I moved backwards as fast as possible while watching him. He moved in for another attack and I swung the leather punch, clocking him squarely on the head. This did nothing to deter him. In fact, he attacked again immediately. I swung my only weapon again, and then it happened... something, I couldn't tell whether it was beak or spur in the feathered fury, put a deep hole in the back of my right hand.
Fortunately by that point I was just a few steps from the back door of our house. I managed to get up the stairs and inside. Alden and Joe gave me a startled look as I shoved the hole punch at them and rushed to the kitchen for ice. Like a skilled acupuncturist the rooster had hit some kind of nerve center in my hand. The pain radiated out to my fingers and my grip was weak.
This is how I ended up going to Alden's formal: Nursing a wounded hand in the passenger seat while my exhausted husband drove. When we arrived I was just able to hand Alden the box with the corsage and take a picture of the smiling couple, who were blissfully unmindful of the strange sacrifice I had made for their evening. Such is country life and parenting!
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
According to Our Estimates, You're Screwed
Read the ebook Any Given Mom, Any Given Day for just 0.99 (free for Kindle Select members)! In which eternal questions are answered, such as, what is a surefire cure for a baby who is constipated? Why does your husband think watching the "Kill Bill" marathon is a good bonding activity? Is it possible to drive well when dirty socks are whizzing past your head? Click to find out!!
At one time I thought about having a third child, but had to drop the idea when my husband said we'd have to name it "OMG, Now I Have to Work Until I'm Dead." He had a point, especially since we both started on our careers a bit late. (Well, it's stretching things a bit to call my meandering path through the field of education a "career." It's more like a cautionary tale.)
Anyway, I see all these articles about inequality and the anxiety of the middle class. Now, too, all the presidential candidates are mouthing concern about us, this vanishing breed with the audacity to want an annual family vacation and a retirement account.
The vacation and the savings piece are linked by more than just money. They tie into another trend, which is our growing awareness that Americans spend considerably more time at work than Europeans, while still falling further behind economically. So time really is money, except only in the sense of taking time off. You'll pay for that. However, the 20-30 hours per week of overtime that you routinely give your corporate employer? There's no bonus for that, it's just running to stand still.
Don't even get me started about the time demands of teaching. I'm not talking about interaction with students, which I loved, and which is why I still volunteer at the school where I taught. I'm talking about the endless, often circular administrative tasks put on teachers. One small case in point: North Carolina, like many states, bought into Pearson PLC hook, line and sinker. Pearson provides the software to track student information, which in this age of 'data driven' education is supposed to link seamlessly with the testing software they also produce. The testing data, in turn, is supposed to interface with the teacher evaluation program with which one also develops multifaceted professional development plans (PDPs). Sounds good, doesn't it?
During the two years I used it the Pearson software it randomly deleted my PDP several times. And my students' test results? Well, as a special education teacher I had some students who took a modified end of grade (EOG) test. Many of them made significant progress, but their improvement was nowhere to be found, because the other software the state purchased to track and predict EOG scores didn't report on the modified test. It was as if my students' progress didn't exist.
After sitting through dozens of workshops and meetings in which the teachers were exhorted to use the Pearson software to "create 21st century learners," my colleagues and I set out. Let's just say, the implementation was not smooth. I saw seasoned data managers brought to tears as hours of work inputting schedules and student data mysteriously vanished, not just once, but time after time. We resorted to paper scheduling for the first several weeks of school.
Once the system was running, teachers began administering the "short cycle" and "benchmark" assessments that the district requires. These tests are supposed to track readiness for the EOG exams. Anyway, teachers quickly learned to make paper copies of the tests as back-ups, because the system would routinely freeze, lose student answers, or crash. Then, once the students had written their answers on the paper tests, the teachers would have to hand enter each student's answers whenever the system came back up. (Now that is ten hours of your life you'll never get back.)
In a just world, every teacher and school staff member who had to work through these fiascoes would be awarded some stock in Pearson as compensation for the company's growing pains. However, that is not how things go. How things go is that the plunder class complains about the under class, while seeming to make nice-nice to the middle class... but only around election time.
Modern "homesteading" starts to look more and more attractive. I've been thinking that I'd better learn to make my own soap. Before the goat chewed the mail I thought I saw stamped at the bottom of my last pension estimate (the pension plan that took a mandatory 6% of my extravagant teacher salary) this statement "According to our estimates, you're screwed."
At one time I thought about having a third child, but had to drop the idea when my husband said we'd have to name it "OMG, Now I Have to Work Until I'm Dead." He had a point, especially since we both started on our careers a bit late. (Well, it's stretching things a bit to call my meandering path through the field of education a "career." It's more like a cautionary tale.)
Anyway, I see all these articles about inequality and the anxiety of the middle class. Now, too, all the presidential candidates are mouthing concern about us, this vanishing breed with the audacity to want an annual family vacation and a retirement account.
The vacation and the savings piece are linked by more than just money. They tie into another trend, which is our growing awareness that Americans spend considerably more time at work than Europeans, while still falling further behind economically. So time really is money, except only in the sense of taking time off. You'll pay for that. However, the 20-30 hours per week of overtime that you routinely give your corporate employer? There's no bonus for that, it's just running to stand still.
Don't even get me started about the time demands of teaching. I'm not talking about interaction with students, which I loved, and which is why I still volunteer at the school where I taught. I'm talking about the endless, often circular administrative tasks put on teachers. One small case in point: North Carolina, like many states, bought into Pearson PLC hook, line and sinker. Pearson provides the software to track student information, which in this age of 'data driven' education is supposed to link seamlessly with the testing software they also produce. The testing data, in turn, is supposed to interface with the teacher evaluation program with which one also develops multifaceted professional development plans (PDPs). Sounds good, doesn't it?
During the two years I used it the Pearson software it randomly deleted my PDP several times. And my students' test results? Well, as a special education teacher I had some students who took a modified end of grade (EOG) test. Many of them made significant progress, but their improvement was nowhere to be found, because the other software the state purchased to track and predict EOG scores didn't report on the modified test. It was as if my students' progress didn't exist.
After sitting through dozens of workshops and meetings in which the teachers were exhorted to use the Pearson software to "create 21st century learners," my colleagues and I set out. Let's just say, the implementation was not smooth. I saw seasoned data managers brought to tears as hours of work inputting schedules and student data mysteriously vanished, not just once, but time after time. We resorted to paper scheduling for the first several weeks of school.
Once the system was running, teachers began administering the "short cycle" and "benchmark" assessments that the district requires. These tests are supposed to track readiness for the EOG exams. Anyway, teachers quickly learned to make paper copies of the tests as back-ups, because the system would routinely freeze, lose student answers, or crash. Then, once the students had written their answers on the paper tests, the teachers would have to hand enter each student's answers whenever the system came back up. (Now that is ten hours of your life you'll never get back.)
In a just world, every teacher and school staff member who had to work through these fiascoes would be awarded some stock in Pearson as compensation for the company's growing pains. However, that is not how things go. How things go is that the plunder class complains about the under class, while seeming to make nice-nice to the middle class... but only around election time.
Modern "homesteading" starts to look more and more attractive. I've been thinking that I'd better learn to make my own soap. Before the goat chewed the mail I thought I saw stamped at the bottom of my last pension estimate (the pension plan that took a mandatory 6% of my extravagant teacher salary) this statement "According to our estimates, you're screwed."
Friday, May 8, 2015
Goats Who Stare at People
There is something funny about the human-goat connection; they look at you with such soulful eyes. Or, as in the picture above, a young goat will shyly duck behind a branch or its mother, perhaps going by the maxim "if I can't see you, you can't see me!"
Recently we purchased three Boer goats, and it has been interesting. It is also humbling, because after 40 years in horses I know a lot about equines: How to handle, train, and feed them, and how to treat minor medical problems. In contrast, I realized I knew nothing about goats. I did not even know until recently that they are the "caprine" class of animals.
Just getting the goats from their stall to the outdoor pen so they could clear brush for us was a challenge, because our goats had never worn collars or learned to walk on a lead. They are learning now, although me 'leading' the two nannies often looks more like me water-skiing behind two goats ash they charge towards sweet feed.
At any rate, like with most things on the farm, there is more involved than one might think at first. We bought goats because we wanted hardy livestock, but after reading my goat book I was alerted to dozens of possible health problems. Don't leave them on spring pasture too long, they might get so full of gas it will compress their lungs and they'll die! They can hang a horn in almost any type of fencing! A nanny with poor teat shape may not deliver enough milk to her babies and they'll waste away!
Thankfully, none of these things has happened and our goats appear to be flourishing. The vet was just here to do spring shots for my horses, so (erring on the side of caution) I had her vaccinate and deworm the goats. This cuts into any potential profit margin, but it does buy a certain amount of peace of mind. When the goats stare at me I can stare back with a clear conscience because I don't have to wonder when they last had their shots. Now in the evenings you can find me unwinding by reading my goat book, learning as we stumble down the path of another farm adventure.
********If you like this blog read an excerpt of my book here "Horsewomen in Foal and Other Equestrian Adventures" -- this comes with my exclusive Laugh Until You Pee Guarantee (certain exclusions apply: guarantee only good for women who have had at least two children)
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