Nothing Much

Thank freakin' God!

The longest work week of my life is finally over, and now I can get down to the business of laying around. Well I could get down to it, except that my long neglected home life needs some attention. Since I'm the designated Yard Nazi, I'm going to continue on my never ending Take Back the Yard March. I haven't got a million people to sign up yet (and thank God...they'd ruin the lawn) but I'm going with the "quality, not quantity" strategy. A little burning, a little mowing, a little poison ivy, a lot of beer. Repeat.

I should post a picture of the latest eBay truck, because I think it may be the ugliest one yet. But it runs great and I've decided there's a certain mystique to a really crappy-looking truck. For one thing, no one challenges me in traffic. In the unspoken but well understood rule of the road, we all do a quick assessment of who's got more to lose, and it's never me. So people don't cut me off like they did in my shiny SUV. They assume I'm crazy and let me go by. I roll down the window, rest my farmer-tanned arm on the window ledge, and cruise along at 45. Take that, Escalade-driving bastards. Yes I DO own the road.

Oh...and speaking of...the students are back in Carbondale. That means the bars on the Strip are packed until closing time, and after that it's keg parties for the rest of the night.

I left work at 1 a.m. last night. It was my earliest night this week and I was excited about going home before sunrise. but I had forgotten that the bars close at 1, so it was a like bumper cars at the carnival getting out of town. I managed to not kill any students, although some of them needed killing, and headed home in the middle of the touring group of Drunk Drivers on Parade. We went 70, then 40, then 70, then 40...they took turns driving in the right lane, then the left lane, then the left shoulder, then the dirt on the left side of the left shoulder, then the right shoulder, then back on the right lane...for 20 miles. I bailed at some point and took side roads. Even though I have less to lose, I'm not sure most of them were in any condition to notice.

So the week is over and the lives are all saved. I'm looking a three day weekend dead in the eye, and I won't be the one blinking. Three Day Weekend, I'm coming after YOU! And I'm bringing my weed eater!

Woe Is Me, I Am Woe.

Today is one of those days where I volunteered to work my shift and half of a night shift so Chemene can get at least one night off per week. I did it to be nice, and maybe to build up a little emotional currency in my coworker bank for my own unanticipated meltdowns. I remember how bad working nights is. It destroys your life and leaves you a vicious, depressed, emotionally-unstable weepy husk of a human. And working 7 night shifts in a row is more horrible than anything I can imagine. Remember those 10 plagues? Cake. I'd take boils and locusts over 7 night shifts any day, hands down.

However, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished. I'll clock out at 3am, I'll be home by 3:30 and we're heading out for our Nebraskan Adventure at 7am.


Pitiful much?

I mention this, not just to elicit the sympathy of my foil-helmeted friends and minions (although that would be a nice gesture, if anyone is inclined), but also to pre-justify my lack of blogging this weekend. Hopefully I'll be back Sunday night with a freshly-killed and tastily field-dressed Jeep.

In the meantime though, I have one dose of seizure medicine left, so I'll be spending the day stalking my neurologist for a new prescription. Is there anything more Hunter S. Thompson-esque than a sleep-deprived, seizure-prone Med Tech crossing the country with her lesbian lover to bring back a $350 car in a weekend?

Can I be any more of a clichè?

The Culture of Praise...and a Haunting

Okay...two interesting things today:

One...the ghost of Jimmy Cliff has miraculously intervened in our lives, in the form of an unsolicited YouTube video posted to this very blog. I thought Lori did it, she thought I did it...but now we believe it was Jimmy that done it. We were disappointed that he didn't add any text, possibly about the availability of good dope in the afterlife.

Spooky.

The other interesting thing (and probably more pertinent to the rest of you who aren't being haunted by Jimmy Cliff) is that I heard an interesting Talk of the Nation on NPR. Half the show was devoted to youthful indiscretions, and how long far into your adult life you should have to pay penance for them, and the other half was about "The Culture of Praise".

The culture of praise part fascinated me. It was about the expectations of young employees, those in their 20s and 30, for their workplace. They expect to be valued and praised a lot for achievements that appear minor to us old folks: showing up on time, showing up at all, actually getting some work done at work, etc. A lot of workplaces are reconfiguring their HR strategies to take those expectations into account. They achieve this is by, among other things, sending voice mails to employees thanking them for coming to work on time for a month, having "confetti parties" when they achieve their departmental goals, and providing copious gifting for their fickle charges.

The theory behind all that professional love was that parents of our generation intentionally inculcated in our children the belief that they were special. One caller called it the "Mr. Rogers Effect." The self-esteem movement was apparently begun innocently enough by parents who wanted to give their children all the emotional support and love that they felt they'd missed out on during the Father Knows Best era of the '50s and '60s.

So our peers continually reinforced to their children their inherent value. And our kids apparently took that message to heart. The result? Confetti parties.

So there I was, laughing about how ludicrous the idea of all that excessive workplace reinforcement was, and I arrived at my own workplace to find...

T-shirts! For everyone! Telling us that "There's No Us Without You!"

It's a sick world indeed when self-esteem comes to the Heartland. Luckily, I've done my part to stop the madness: I've explained to my own kids that children have no value until they can actually do something. They've taken this to heart and have no visible self-esteem. My work as a parent is done.

Note: The Evie School of Parenting will open it's doors promptly at 9am. Anyone who arrives late will be summarily grounded until Evie forgets why she was mad. All students will receive an "F" until they can convince Professor Evie that they deserve a better grade, possibly with generous endowments to the Evie U. Library Fund.