There are real problems in the world: In Paris, staff members of a satirical newspaper were killed by Muslim extremists for posting silly cartoons of the prophet Muhammad (among other offensive images); in Colorado Springs, some white nutjob detonated a homemade explosive devise outside a building housing an NAACP chapter; and right here in Washington D.C., the political party that now holds both branches of Congress is doubling down on their delusions of grandeur and their racism.*
But I am not going to talk about these real problems. It's not that I don't have thoughts on them; I do. It's that I don't have a lot of free time, and I want to talk me -- about my problems. After all, what's the point of keeping a blog with a readership barely in the double digits, if I don't get to talk about me? Also, when it comes to the tragedy in Paris, at least, I don't want to get shot for saying the wrong thing.
My biggest problem, at the moment, is that I'm tired. Lil' S has been wearing us out at night. We got him off pacifiers, which is good. But now we've just traded one problem for a more annoying one: He doesn't ever want to go to sleep. As soon as you mention the word "bedtime", he starts whining. And he's already mastered the art of the stall: "I need to wash my hands... I want more soap... I want a book... I want milk... I wanna different blanket... I want my panda... I want my Grover... I want socks... I don't want socks... I want the black pillow... I wanna sleep in the other bed... etc. ... etc." And once we get through all that, if he's still not properly placated, there is always good old fashion tantrum-throwing. Don't think my kid is above the tried-and-true meltdown.
[I couldn't embed this clip, but it's relevant ... and funny.]
We are at the point now where we toss him his bed, lock his door, let him cry and scream for five minutes and then go up and try it again. If we're lucky, by the second or third iteration he will actually stay in bed and fall asleep. (And if we're extra lucky he will say some hilarious/cute things while throwing his fits: Open up this door, right now!) But then he usually wakes up once or twice throughout the night, and we have to repeat the process. To make matters worse he's been getting up for good way too early -- like 5:30 a.m. early. He doesn't start daycare until 8:30, and I'm usually the one the who gets up with him, so not only am I super tired, but I also have to entertain him (or listen to him whine) for three hours. Yes, he's only going to be a little kid for a relatively short period of time, so I should probably just enjoy the fact that we're together and that he actually likes having me around. But it's difficult to have meaningful father-son time when my brain is still producing delta waves: Hey Lil' S, let's play the lie down on the sofa and cover your eyes with a blanket game.
Now, of course, in theory, I could be less sleep-deprived fairly easily, simply by going to bed earlier. But that's another problem: I can't go to bed earlier. I mean, I can, of course -- I can physically get into bed at anytime at want -- it's just that it's extremely difficult to actually fall asleep. No matter how tired I am throughout the day, my body revs up at night, and I never feel like going to sleep before midnight (at the earliest). If I get into bed any earlier, I'll usually just lay there and be frustrated. And then even if I am able to fall asleep early for a few days, the first chance I get -- when I don't have to work in the morning or get up with the little guy -- I'll stay up late again and screw everything up.
I'm not an insomniac, my body just wants to be on a later schedule, and it's hard to convince it otherwise. I liken it losing weight. Everybody can be in great shape, if they put in the work to do it. It's really just exercise and eating right. (Excluding the rare cases of people with glandular problems or some other medical conditions.) But the unfair part is that it's different amounts of work for different people. Some can keep the weight off just by walking to their cars every morning. And then others have to -- as Will Ferrell once said about himself -- work-out constantly just to be slightly fat. If you are in that latter group, you might decide that it's not worth the time and effort to be completely fit. You might be happier being a bit chubby and spending your life doing something other than exercising and eating kale. That's how I am with going to sleep early; I'm sure I could do it, if I absolutely had to, but it would be hard, and I wouldn't enjoy it. I'd rather just be tired all the time ... and complain about it.
Anyway, let's move on to the next problem. This one also revolves around Lil' S. (It appears as if all my problems involve my kid somehow ... huh.) Specifically it's his school. He'll turn three this August, which means he qualifies for PK3, and, as I've come to discover, you are officially a terrible parent if you don't enroll your child in PK3, so we've been looking into this. It's actually a somewhat complicated process. Remember the good old days when you just took your kid to the school in your neighborhood and signed him or her up? Well, apparently, those days weren't so good for a lot of kids, so here in DC we now have the charter school system. There are a bunch of privately run schools, and you have to put your name in a lottery if you want to go to one. (Since PK3 isn't legally required for children in DC, we even have to use the lottery for our local public school.) This means you have to pick out the schools you like online, schedule open houses to see them, and then, if you like them, apply and hope your number gets picked. It seems a bit much for a kid who still gets a little confused counting past 12, but it's the system we got.
It certainly doesn't help that S and I have wildly different ideas about what makes a school a good school. Her main criterion is "What's it's rating?"; mine is "How much time is taking him there going to add to my morning commute?". When you draw the Venn diagram of schools that she likes and schools that I like there is an intersection with only a few elements -- hopefully we get into one of them.
In general, I'm not sure how I feel about charter schools. The pro argument is that they given parents options and create competition, so that failing schools have to keep up. The con argument is that they draw away the best students (those with parents who care enough to apply to the lotteries) from the public schools, thus making the already neglected public schools even worse. My tentative feeling on them is that they are like Obamacare: better than nothing, but not better than an alternative, but that alternative isn't politically tenable because it is too easy to label it "socialist", and we as the American voting public immediately dismiss anything that can be labeled "socialist", even if it is a good idea, because we don't really think through the issues on which we vote. If I were king this is how I would fix the school situation: I would enact a law in each state that the best funded public school in the state had to receive the exact same resources as the least funded. That is, all schools get the exact same resources. Yes, it would require people "pay" for other kids' schools through their taxes; yes, it would be redistributionist (you could even called it -- gasp -- socialist); yes, I think it would work.
Ok, that's all I got today. Until next time...
*Note: This is mostly a joke. I don't know if this Scalise guy is really a racist or not. But I do "love" that if you raise concerns over him once convening with a white supremacist group, Republicans accuse you of "race baiting". That's one thing I've noticed about many Republicans: when you bring up things that poke holes in their world view, their response is to give you a label (socialist, appeaser, unpatriotic, race-baiter, etc.) without further explanation of why, even if this is true, it automatically invalidates your point. They rarely actually consider the content of what you say on its own merits. And they almost never rethink their own views because of it. It's ironic, isn't it, that the party that loves to talk about personal responsibility and accountability, loses their collective shit when somebody holds up a mirror. Actually, it's not ironic, just hypocritical.
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