I've had it.

I've had it with the incompetant substitute. I've had it with the parents who can't teach their little monsters how to get along with others. I've had it with the bureaucracy and the rigidity and the uniformity.

Fuck it.

I'm home-schooling my kids. I'm letting Katie finish out the year at her school and then I'm teaching her and her brothers at home from then on out.

I don't know how I'm going to swing this. But I have to. I have no other choice. I can't drive her into town every day, and I'm not leaving her where she is now. This is my only option. I can get a geographical exception and send her to another crappy public school, but...no. No thanks.

And before you tell me that home-schooled kids are freaks, I'm going to tell you: I know, but I'd rather raise a brilliant freak than a poorly-educated prom queen. I can count on one hand the number of things she'll miss out on by not going to school.

I am so insane.

In my i-tunes cart: the habanera from Carmen performed by Denyce Graves

Did I ever mention my haunted car?

Back in 1991, my dad bought me a car. It was a black Ford Tempo. He bought it from an older man who lived waaaay on the edge of town, out near the horse farms. He had bought it new for his daughter. When my dad attempted to make small talk with the man about his daughter, he would only say that she was "gone". The word "gone" can mean many things, but his reluctance to go into any sort of detail about her indicated to me that maybe she'd run off with a loser and cut Daddy off when he expressed his disapproval.

So, anyway, like, six months go by. I'm in college. I'm still living with my parents and commuting. One day, I leave for school and shortly after, two policemen knock on my folks' door. They want to know if they own a really crappy old Ford with a torn headliner (heh. They didn't really ask about that. Nor about the constant gas smell. But I digress). My mom is startled; she thinks I've been in an accident. No, they say; a person has recently contacted the police department about a crime that was committed and my car was probably involved in the crime. They say they need my car to help solve the crime. My mom has to call the dean's office to have somebody pull me out of Econ class to help the police find my car in the lot and have it towed to the crime lab.

Get this: the man's daughter was, according to the bits and pieces of stuff the police were willing to divulge, a drug dealer. She may or may not have ripped off someone with whom she was doing business. She was roughed up, thrown off a highway overpass, and stuffed in the trunk of her own car.

In the trunk of my car.

I got the car back about a month later. I've never seen a ghost, and the jury is still out on whether or not I believe in them. But the thing was as good as haunted to me. It had quirks that I couldn't explain that seemed to develop overnight. I chalked it up to whatever residual presence there might have been. I could almost feel she was in the car with me, and so, I could no longer drive it. My dad sold it for parts and I was once again carless. I left for Hilo not long after that. The odd thing is that my current car is also a mid-size Ford that has the same quirks.

on the tube: Mean Girls

Still making it to the gym. On the other hand, I'm still eating girl scout cookies by the fistfull. At least my calories are cancelling themselves out somewhat now.

Posted by: lisa at February 4, 2005 09:38 PM

Posted by: Jeff at February 7, 2005 10:57 AM

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