Dog Days of Summer

 

It's still The Dog Days of Summer here in Florida.  Here's a tidbit of history regarding how we came by this summer appellation, courtesy of Wikipedia.

The Romans referred to the dog days as diēs caniculārēs and associated the hot weather with the star Sirius. They considered Sirius to be the "Dog Star" because it is the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major (Large Dog). Sirius is also the brightest star in the night sky. The term "Dog Days" was used earlier by the Greeks (see, e.g., Aristotle's Physics, 199a2).  The Dog Days originally were the days when Sirius rose just before or at the same time as sunrise (heliacal rising), which is no longer true, owing to precession of the equinoxes. The Romans sacrificed a red dog in April to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather.  Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time "the Sea boiled, the Wine turned sour, Dogs grew mad, and all other creatures became languid; causing to man, among other diseases, burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies." according to Brady’s Clavis Calendaria, 1813

We're lazy these days.  The temperatures are generally in the low nineties and the humidity is high.  After almost fifteen years in Florida we've learned that in the summer the time to get things done is early morning, before the temperatures rise and the almost daily afternoon thunderstorms roll in. We have a pool and we use it daily.  Taffy likes to swim, too.

This morning we decided to go out to one of our favorite places for breakfast, The Big L.  It's a small local cafe open at 6AM and closing at 2PM daily.  Nope, none of that wimpy fruit, yogurt and granola for me today.  I have that six days of the week.  Today it was bacon and cheese omelet and a toasted English Muffin.  Since this will be my only meal today, I ate it without impunity and with much gusto.  Life is one big trade off. 

We hadn't been to the Flea Market for a while so that was our after breakfast stop.  They were out of fleas so I got fruit and veggies.  In the winter it is  jam-packed at the market,, but in the summer it's locals only and is so much easier to get around.  That being said, John managed to somehow disappear even though he was right behind me as we enter the inside shops from the outdoors vegetable stalls.  We spent the next hour looking for each other.  Once reconnected, we spent the next thirty minutes debating who got lost from whom.  I know I wasn't the one lost because I was in the lead.

Now, it's 7:33PM.  There's rolling thunder and heavy rain.  A dog is jammed in beside me as I type on the laptop.  Another Dog Day of Summer nears an end.  Life is good.

They May Not Be Fast But...

Warning for dog owners: Taffy is forever crunching on snails and eats them shells and all. Also, fellow Americans, the English say 'garden' for what we call 'yard' so nowhere outside is exempt. I might have to consider giving up my love for escargot, but will do some research on that front first.

I'll Have Some of Whatever She's Having

Choosing Sad Over Cynical

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

I recently had a short discussion with someone I care about a lot.  We were talking about what I do for kids now that I'm retired.  The other person at one time was a first responder who worked city streets in the Northeast.  I guess we started out maybe talking about the disturbed kids I used to teach and that they lived in the urban inner-city ghettos.  As conversations tend to do, this one wandered a crooked path and became about what I do now and about how I don't hate the mothers, about how I agree that the primary goal should always be reunification between parent/s and child. The other person said, "I guess I'm too cynical."  I said, "A long time ago, I decided I'd rather be sad than cynical.  Being sad only hurts me.  Becoming cynical affects others."  He said, "You should write about that on your blog."  And, here we are.

Way back when I was a newly minted Special Ed teacher, I remember listening to veteran teachers talk in that proverbial den of negativity, the faculty room. Any time I'd say something positive, some veteran teacher would say, "Oh, you'll get over that soon.  Wait a couple of years."  I'd notice how miserable these teachers were, how much they hated their jobs, the mean things they'd say about kids and parents.  When I'd walk by their classroom, they'd be sitting behind their desk, kids doing seat work.  If they weren't behind their desk, they'd be yammering away at a bunch of glassy-eyed, bored looking kids.   Even worse, I'd hear them yelling loudly at elementary kids.  They'd say stuff to me like, "Those SPED kids of yours ought to be the national poster kids for the pro-choice movement."   I decided I'd stay away from the faculty room and began eating lunch in my classroom. 

Back then, the kids I taught were difficult, to say the least.  But my job was to be there every day to teach them and love them.  I did love them. The kids were from the mean streets of Camden NJ and Buffalo NY.  They wouldn't be classified as emotionally disturbed or behaviorally disordered today. They were kids who were or would soon be juvenile delinquents.  They were poor, most often African American and came from terrible homes.  Schools are predicated on middle class values and taught pretty much by middle class people.  These kids didn't have a clue about any of that.  They'd always be in trouble at school, fighting, stealing, talking out whatever.  Their behavior prevented them from learning.  They were frustrated, the teachers were frustrated and they prevented other kids from learning.  The answer then was to classify them ED/BD, put them in a self-contained classroom located far away from every other classroom way down the end by the gym or band room, cap their count at nine, give them at teacher and two teacher aides and try to forget they exist.  They went to all specials and even lunch alone.  Think hard...does this sound like school or an episode from MSNBC's "Lockup Raw?"  And, do you think any of these kids ever got unclassified as disturbed?  They didn't have parents to advocate for them.  They didn't have a parent who could spell a-d-v-o-c-a-t-e.  We bagged them and tagged them in elementary school and the path to their future was pretty well established.  It was so unfair especially because then the classification stated that a child "must have an average to above average IQ, not be learning disabled and have no other handicapping condition." 

So, how could I help these kids?  I wasn't Pollyanna.  I knew the realities of life and of these kids.  I decided early, I consciously chose not to become cynical.  I guarded that choice every day of my career even as a administrator.  I guarded that choice in my everyday life about everyday problems and everyday people. I knew that being cynical made one hard and prevented one from seeing and embracing all of the  possibilities, from truly caring about those less fortunate, those less able, those who stumble and fall either through circumstance or through their own poor choices.  Being cynical hurts others. 

I decided that I'd choose sad over cynical.  I'd carry around my sadness inside, but I wouldn't let it make me hard, let it make me be unkind to people who crossed my path and weren't very deserving of kindness most of the time.  I figured that choosing sadness over cynicism only hurt me, not anyone else.  Choosing sadness would enable me to do what I did with clear eyes and hope that I could make a difference somehow.  That I could keep on going.  I knew the chances of me "saving" any of the kids I had were slim. But if I were cynical right up front, the chances weren't slim, they were non-existent. 

I've never regretted my choice to choose sad over cynical.  It's this same attitude I bring to my work as a Guardian ad Litem today.   I am sad sometimes, but ever hopeful.  I see parents who love their children yet cannot parent for a myriad of reasons.  I see children who are resilient and bright and hopeful about their lives.  They just want to be loved and cared for.  Where is there a place for cynicism in any of that?  I'm getting old.  I'm not going to change.  I don't want to change.  I make no apologies for that.  We all make our own choices.  Just remember, none of us live in a vacuum.  Our choices are like pebbles thrown in a pond, sending ripples in all directions.

I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can

I've been negligent here in my little sliver of space in the Cyber World.  I've had other priorities; namely, my everyday life and the people who touch that life in ways both large and small.  I've been really focused on both family and the children I represent as a Guardian ad Litem.  I am an Introvert.  I know that I present outwardly as what many consider an Extrovert, but the nature of my training as an  administrator gave me the skills to glad hand with diverse populations of patrons and be a salesman for the school district and really, what is any good teacher but an actor upon the classroom stage, performing six one man performances every day?  An Introvert is re-energized from within and spends their emotional resources in a narrowly focused manner.  The Extrovert is the one who is energized by lots of "people contact" rather than depleted by it.  You can take this quiz to find  out which you are.  You may be surprised at your result or it may just be that I am an outlier.  Try the quiz and see.

A disproportionate amount of my time and emotional energy has, in the last month, been spent in my work as a Guardian ad Litem.  Every GaL is different and comes from a different background.  I'm not a gitchygoo and fawn over the baby kind of person.  I don't want to be a court appointed Grandmother. I don't want to take kids out to a ball game or to Burger King. I have plenty of grandkids of my own.  My outside area for my doctoral work was school law.  I'm a trained and pretty skilled  quintessential bureaucrat.  I understand law and I understand governmental systems.  I don't consider the parents who have had their children removed by court order the enemy.  The majority of the parents are messed up people incapable of caring for a kitten much less a child.  All of mine have addictions, some with mental health issues who self-medicate.  Would I invite any of these people over for dinner?  No.  Do I think their kids should be handed back to them?  No.  Do I try to help them and come to them from a place of support rather than condemnation?  Absolutely.  I'm about the law.  I'm about the process.  I'm about everyone's rights.  I'm about kids being safe.  I'm about kids being loved by the people who should love them.  I'm about being careful, crossing the t s and dotting the i s.

By statute the primary goal for children under court protection is MANDATED and ALWAYS reunification. with parent/s.  The mandated timeline is one year from sheltering date. Parents are often incarcerated during part of the year.  All parents are assigned a case worker and are given a case plan that has tasks such as drug and alcohol counseling, frequent drug testing, anger management classes, domestic violence classes, parenting classes, psychiatric treatment and so on.  They have to get a job.  They have to secure housing.  They have to register with the child support enforcement people.  They begin, usually, with eight hours a month (2 hrs per week) SUPERVISED visitation with their children. 

 Do I feel sorry for the parents?  No.  They threw the first snowball.  Do I knock myself out trying to help them?  Yes.  Children belong with their parents if at all possible.  You can believe me or not, but these parents love their children.  Not our definition of what loving children looks like.  They're too messed up for that.  They're too drug addicted.  Or they're too intellectually deficient IQ-wise.  Or they are too mentally ill.  They don't know how to love like we love.  Much of what I see is generational.  It's pretty difficult to parent if you've never been parented.  If you have no model for what a healthy parent child relationship looks like how can you create one?  But here's the thing, I believe in regrets, redemption and resolution.  I'm going to knock myself out keeping track of these parents, talking to them on the phone, offering them rides if they can't get to visitation appointments, just listening to them.  I have to believe they can complete their case plan, they can get clean, they can get that GED, get that job, get rid of that man who pulls them down, be clear eyed and clear minded.  If I don't believe in redemption for these mothers (or any of us) how can I believe that the world will keep spinning, that Daffodils will poke up through the snow every Spring?  If I don't believe in any of that, how can I believe in myself? 

The work I do is soul sucking.  It exhausts me.  That's why this little blog of mine gets neglected.  I'm exhausted just from writing this.  But, I miss writing.  Because, hey I'm an Introvert, remember?  And, I live in my own head, so I miss doing a brain dump here. There's a lot  more I have to say, to spew.  I need to empty it out. 

PS:  I redecorated here at 3AM this morning.  I've gone contemporary minimalist (I think).  Did anyone notice?